Horror Stories

[Tharivol_Street_Prince]

In this thread we talk about some of the worst, most frustrating Dominions games/situations we've been in.
I'll start.
So I'm playing as the Tuatha in a SP game. About 15 turns in Lugh shows up (luck 3/turmoil 3 ) while I'm fighting off Vanheim. The war's hard-fought because halfway through a bunch of Vaniir slip past my armies and wind up conquering the territories on my peninsula at about the same rate I'm conquering provinces in his territory. So I recruit Balor who takes my frantically assembled Sidhe and slowly pushes the offensive back. Lugh takes my enemy's capital and everything's good. The god, a Cyclops who happened to take Turmoil 1 and Misfortune 3, is hiding out in a province just north of his capital. Immediately about 10 or so soldiers go back to siege the capital. Having about 80 soldiers, and a Holy 5 prophet, I feel pretty good breaking the siege. Halfway through Lugh (who's got an arrow ward of 20%) gets knocked off by a stray arrow. Understandably I'm irritated. So I march Balor up there and attack the province the Cyclops is hiding out in. The reports say the Cyclops is by himself, so I figured at most he had a couple Van soldiers hiding out with him. No such luck. Balor's army of 50 Sidhe soldiers goes up against 90-something soldiers, most of which are human. My second in command dies along with all the soldiers under him. That same turn, in the capital that I paid so dearly for, an earthquake knocks off my temple and a fire my laboratory. And a barbarian horde conquers the territory Balor came in from. This same fate happens to 3 other provinces of mine in the course of 3 turns. One of them actually gets hit with the same fate twice on the same turn. During this time the god of Tien Chi, who conveniently had the same name as the Cyclops, casts two global spells. Finally, when the Cyclops sieges his lost capital and I conquer the territory he was hiding out in, I catch him with a far-superior army. But, as if knowing that it would rob me of the satisfaction of finally ending him, he decides to retreat into enemy territory. The few provinces he has left are all being held by about 100 independent-recruited soldiers, and Marverni just broke into the side of my dominion.

Your turn!

[sum1lost]

This was in a game I just played about half of (two day lan marathon)... Poor guy is playing man, and has a pretty solid set of armies built around longbows, knights, and wardens, with a water bless. He decides to attack Ermor with two of his armies, and captures three territories and a chokepoint territory on an isolated landmass. At this point, Jotunheim attacks the rich farmlands with a surprise attack consisting of an unusual amount of vaettir wolfriders. He sends the armies back a step (Each around 130 men strong) to reinforce his newest army of around 80. At this point, roughly 800 ermorian undead and 200 living finally arrive late to the party. So, he sends his 260 men back to patrol the chokepoint (I've been astral windowing and scouting the whole thing), and pulls the new army into his capital, to bolster his forts against jotunheim.

The ermorian legions arrive, and are slaughtered (much of which is done by some indy preists and hydromanders)- except that they manage to kill a nasty commander (rhianne with defense 30, awe, luck, quickness and frostband), and around 60 troops. The loss of rhianne and some of the commanders means that the army is stuck one extra turn. It arrives just two turns before the jotunheim army breaks down the capital gate, attacks, and slaughters most of the researchers and man's god before routing. Man's armies then turn back the scattered jotuns, but man is down a lot of money and turns with the loss ofthe researchers and around 80 wardens and knights, plus some longbows.

On the way into jotunheim, man careens into a pythium army coming the other way, and gets slaughtered (longbows useless against towershields+storm). Jotunheim is gone, sure, but Man's magical and dominion spread are shot, as all of his resources are going towards defending against ermor.

[GameExtremist]

I was playing in Johnarryns "Warishell" MP game.

Random Nations - I drew EA C'tis, having never played them before i decided on a Dragon pretender - for quick expansion and then would maintain my territory through large armies of Elite warriors and chariots.

I was pumping out Sauromancers 3 a turn in the 3 forts I had and was working steadily towards Tartarian gate and gift of reason. I had a very large territory in the middle of the map and deciding that Sauromatia to my south looked tasty (they were at war with Abysia and Kailasa) I ended our NAP and attacked.

First few turns I did okay, two armies led a double pronged assault.

Then Kailasa went A.I. and then Abysia was taken over by a sub, leaving me to deal with one P'OD Sauromatia, things were going okay, i think I could have won the war until Ulm on my very large border ends our NAP and attacks across my totally undefended border.

Nevertheless I was crushed in short order.

It was one of those games that if I had of pulled my ambitious plan off I would have been in a very good late game position - Tartarians - well of misery and lots of high level Death mages.

One thing I learnt that EA C'tis is very vulnarable to concentrated missile fire....especially when Ulm was spamming "Fire arrows" that really hurt.

Massed Sauromancers casting Terror does well though

[Rytek]

I was playing EA Arco one game wih an awake prince of death with death 9/dominion9. I had just researched construction 4 and flew him back to the capitol to equip him. i took misfortue 3 and needed to kill a few barbarian uprisings that had occured within the realm. This guy was totally decked out with blackseel plate, flame brand, eye shield, luck pendant, horned helm, boots of strength, ring of regen.

He routed the barbarians easy enough, so i decided to sight search. The next turn the ancient prescence showed up and mopped the floor with my Pretender!! Those sleep vines are murder!!!

[Taqwus]

...watching the Hunter of Heroes systematically eat anybody who made the Hall of Fame without caring about horror marks or the lack thereof, was pretty horrifying.

[Shovah32]

Yea, all those horror attacks were pretty bad

[Olive]

Talking about horrors, is horror seed supposed to be usefull ? I successfully implanted 2 units, hosted about 50 turns (test game) and... nothing seems to happen. Did I miss something ? Was I unlucky ?

[Olive]

Does someone use this spell ?

I thought that lots of horrors should attack the target provinces, but I saw none during the ~50 test turns. There were a lot of commanders in the "victim's" provinces and nobody moved during the 50 test turns. I just noticed a few commanders cursed. I'll give it another try.

Has someone already seen horrors with that spell ?

[Kristoffer O]

Horrors leave after battle. If an infested commander gave birth to a horror it would most likely kill a commander and then leave. A scout would proabably not see the battle as it is an assassination. Attack the province and see if there are any commanders left, or if the troops or commanders are horror marked. I don't remember exactly how the spell works.

It is generally a spell thet works behind the scenes, so it is probably difficult to say if it works as it should.

[jutetrea]

I was having problems getting viewable results as well in an SP game where i had tons of resources. Getting attacked by armies of 800 or so I was looking for any advantage.

I finally fought one of the 800 armies that I'd seeded a few times and had 4 or 5 horrors pop up during the battle. I'm not sure how the seeds themselves work/mature/spawn but I think i killed the seeded units and had em pop out horrors. Kind of neat, but without a way to track how it works its a bit underwhelming. It'd be nice if there was a message "xxx lost a commander/10 guys to one of your generated horrors".