Guide: Domkill : The Power of Faith

[chrispedersen]

I know that blood preaching does two temple checks. Fairly well tested - and due to the increased size of Dom3 maps probably a good idea.

However, I don't know that anyone has actually verified that regular temples only do 1 temple check. Empirically it seems true...

[Lingchih]

As an unwitting victim of this strategy (or witless victim, your choice), I can attest to the efficacy of it. In fact, I have banned the strat in the Inversions3 game, which is another test game for the EDM mod.

Nice guide Kheldron, and thanks for writing it up. I didn't really think you ever would. I initially thought of it as just a cheat way of winning, but that applied to InversionsRedux, where we were trying to test the new end game summons. In a regular game, I see it as a wholly viable way of winning, and I'll probably use it, if I get the chance.

[Kheldron]

Originally Posted by WraithLord

If this is true then it really sounds like a bug, one that overpowers blood sacrifice vs. regular preaching.
Is it even listed as a bug in the bug thread?

That was thoroughly tested by vfb in the post I linked and confirmed in my experience.
About overpower you can see it both way : preaching is so limited it wouldn't allow such a strat by himself.
Besides, it's not as if blood sacrifice didn't have a cost : besides being a world threat you more or less have to forswear those nice blood summons and ritual to pull out this strat. Ask Mictlan what they think of it...

[WraithLord]

The question is - is dom kill so good now (due to said bug) that it eclipses all blood summons?- If it's much better than all other usage of blood slaves then I'd say, yes it's OP.

[Kheldron]

That's a difficult question. To answer truthfully I guess we have to look at the when and the how.

this strat clearly takes some time to pull out. It's not as if you could turtle and summon tarts until the point you just launch a terrifying onslaught and crush everyone in 2 turns because you make them surrender before your might.

Even if you carefully saved your blood slaves and jade knives until late game to dompush with a sudden and mighty strength, it would still take some time to :
- fill up your own provinces to fulldom
- domkill you immediate neighbors who then would have had much more time to fill up their own lands with candles ->harder/longer
- press forward if you survived the gang that would be WAY more dangerous than the one you'd have had in middle game

I may be wrong but waiting till late game to start dompushing would be more dangerous since a gang then would be more lethal than one in middle game, simply because in middle game, the threats come mainly from your immediate neighbors while those far away don't bother you much. Not so in late game where distance don't matter so much.

Anyway, if you manage to survive being public enemy n°1 in middle game, and in good shape, it certainly eclipses blood summons in medium-sized map imho.
Otoh, one of the main advantages of blood is often that you can play the underdog with it as you once could with gemgens, since blood slaves don't show on the graphs. This in turn allows you to get to those summons without looking too much of a threat to anyone until then.

Dompush really has a neat advantage in late game IF you first survive to its neat disadvantage in middle game of having everyone on your heels with some of your resources (blood/preachers/sacrificers) used on something else than warfare.

Is it OP? Imho no since it has a disadvantage on par with its advantage

But who am I to know for sure?

[chrispedersen]

One of the advantages of dom push as a strategy

- you don't need a lot research
- you don't need a lot of military (hence not a lot of upkeep)

If you forfeit research - you can put a *lot* of blood hunters out.

Really, the issue is map size, and whether graphs are turned on, and finally whether opponents have spies out to see whats happening. Yes, I know they can't see dominion - but if a nation *dies* with military units in the field - good evidence of dom push.

I personally do not view most of the summons in the game as cost effective; I usually push a dom strategy as part of a military strategy - the defender is stressed to defend against both. Whichever he fails at you beat him over the head with.

[Psycho]

Good old blood sacrificing. It is definitively bugged with the two checks per blood slave and if that's not on the bug shortlist, it should be. And due to this bug and the fact how preaching is weak, it is definitively overpowered. I am a bad person, since knowing all this I still tried to use it twice.

First time I was playing Sauromatia. I had two strong opponents - Rlyeh and TC, late game, everyone filled with gem gens. I started stockpiling slaves for the push, but the game ended by concession before I started. The point of this is that I would have a very very hard time defeating them militarily, since we were all about the same strength, but there was pretty much nothing they could do against the dom push. Two opponents in late game, roughly equal in strength, but where one has the option to blood sac are not nearly evenly matched.

Second time I took MA Pangaea. I wanted to make dominion push my main strategy. Nice cheap stealthy H2 priests, 200g temples, blood sac, I took vamp queen with high dom for the pretender to spawn an army of vampire lords. Then 20 turns into the game I realized that MA Pangaea cannot blood sac, it's only EA version that can do it. And then Vanheim became my main opponent and seeing my horde of vampire lords he started blood sacing to limit their effectiveness. Oh boy, was it hard to defend from this, even with my 200g temples and nice cheap priests. He would teleport a Van thug into my lands, then next turn summon a dark citadel there, build a temple and start blood sacing in the middle of my territory. My dominion started crumbling fast.

The best defense from this is to raid - constantly raid his blood hunters. Golems are nice, since they are immune to most blood spells and can teleport and return. Unrest spells are good. Assassination spells work well against some blood nations (Vans are pretty much immune to them). Revelers are also nice if you are Pangaea, but there are also other nations with spies and stuff. Blood hunters in castles are the toughest, but if you take the province during magic phase, they lose two turns of blood hunting. When you take the province their order are reset for the current turn and on the next turn when they regain the province the blood hunt order can't be issued.

When I put up the Gift of nature's bounty and started spamming temples and dryads everywhere, thing started looking better and I even managed to push his dominion back. A group of about ten dryads stealthy preaching on his castle was able to stop blood sac dominion spreading from there. I don't know what his dominion score was, though. But still, I had to overpower him in priests 10:1 to start fighting back.

Ideally what I think a patch should do is reduce the temple checks to one per slave and move preaching to the same step in the turn sequence as other dominion spread. That way preaching would actually be useful against blood sac.

[Squirrelloid]

Blood sacking only really works against nations where you have a substantial dominion advantage over them *and* the ability to leverage that dominion advantage. Against an opponent with well-entrenched dominion they have plenty of time to attack you militarily and destroy temples or disrupt bloodhunting before you come anywhere close to killing them.

2 checks/slave seems perfectly reasonable in that context. Its a way to kill someone you were already beating, and it uses valuable mage time and burns slaves. (Especially if you're doing enough blood sacrifice to matter, the cost in slaves per turn is stupendous). Remember you can't target dom spread.

Now, blood sacrifice is much better on smaller maps, and it much better on non-wrap-around maps. (You can fill a corner with dominion, which limits the direction future candles can propogate).

[WraithLord]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Ideally what I think a patch should do is reduce the temple checks to one per slave and move preaching to the same step in the turn sequence as other dominion spread. That way preaching would actually be useful against blood sac.

second that.

[Valerius]

As the Vanheim player Psycho referred to above I'll mention that I had a dominion of 7. Obviously not high enough that I was planning on a dominion kill victory but of course I intended it to be a tool - especially in the MA where there's only one other blood sac nation. My initial worry was actually MA C'tis and I did in fact start next to him and he did have a crazy strong dominion (if I didn't know better I'd swear it went to 11). When the province south of my cap switched to his dominion I decided it was time to started blood sacrificing earlier than planned.

Then when I saw Pan's horde of vampire lords (and that damn VQ) it became even more important. Interesting to hear how many dryads he had preaching because I was surprised when the blood sacrificing eventually failed to convert even some of the provinces where I had forts and was sacrificing. But certainly what finished me off was the destruction of my blood economy. Another thing that I think limited my sacrificing is that I had a string of provinces leading up to and through Pan's territory - I would preferred to have been able to face him with a solid block of provinces with my dominion maxed out.

Funny side note from that game is that I couldn't protect all my provinces from his raiding so I'd choose a few each turn to send anti-thug squads to. And I would almost always guess wrong. It got to the point where I didn't try to figure out where he would attack, I'd just randomly select provinces to defend. And I'd *still* be wrong. I still have a strong hatred of Rock the golem.

Not sure if blood sac is OP but barring a patch changing the mechanics it seems a possible fix is removing jade knives or making them more expensive.