Tip: Template for reducing late game MM hell

[Psycho]

Even without VPs it is always enough to take those 10-20% of provinces, anyway. Once your opponent sees that you can take his lands bit by bit, it becomes evident that you will win eventually and futile to continue the game.

[Micah]

You sum up the advantage of a sneak attack pretty well, but I don't see how that relates to gem items.

If you lose 90% of your territory in a turn and can't reclaim it quickly you're sunk either way...there's still a large gem swing in favor of the attacker and your income will drop below your upkeep. In either situation you've got to rely on what you have on-hand to orchestrate your counterattack, not what your income is providing. Once the attack is sprung the difference between having 20 gem income versus your opponent's 80 without gens and having 70 versus your opponent's 130 with them is of little importance, you're still way behind and unlikely to catch up, even if the proportions are comparatively better. At that point the defender is reduced to protecting the few castles they have left, since an offensive push against a superior opponent that is expecting it is folly. Which leads us back to extreme cases of turtling, which it seems no one likes.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Psycho

Even without VPs it is always enough to take those 10-20% of provinces, anyway. Once your opponent sees that you can take his lands bit by bit, it becomes evident that you will win eventually and futile to continue the game.

Well, if you can take my provinces bit for bit and I can't do nothing about it, then you already have some advantage that I can't beat, I wasn't talking about that.
However if I can do something and you are just advancing with your real forces (instead of holding them back or making a trick switch whenever you take a province etc.) I can just equip my counters and teleport them on you/let you run into them. Especially as I don't care about particular provinces I can just have 1 less SC as you and 10 cheap raiders to take exactly as many provinces from you as you from me.

[K]

Originally Posted by Micah

You sum up the advantage of a sneak attack pretty well, but I don't see how that relates to gem items.

If you lose 90% of your territory in a turn and can't reclaim it quickly you're sunk either way...there's still a large gem swing in favor of the attacker and your income will drop below your upkeep. In either situation you've got to rely on what you have on-hand to orchestrate your counterattack, not what your income is providing. Once the attack is sprung the difference between having 20 gem income versus your opponent's 80 without gens and having 70 versus your opponent's 130 with them is of little importance, you're still way behind and unlikely to catch up, even if the proportions are comparatively better. At that point the defender is reduced to protecting the few castles they have left, since an offensive push against a superior opponent that is expecting it is folly. Which leads us back to extreme cases of turtling, which it seems no one likes.

I think that the gem gen income is important, which is why people attach so much importance to it.

I mean, you can lose 90% of your provinces and take most or all of them back after a few turns of thug summoning and forging (both of which require some gem income); it's folly to believe that a sneak attacker is a superior opponent and will defeat you just because they attacked you while your attention was directed elsewhere.

[Micah]

Summons and forging don't require gem *income*, they require gems, which can be saved and aren't subject to being attacked by other players. Taking out gen items doesn't prevent you from keeping a strategic reserve on-hand.

[K]

Originally Posted by Micah

Summons and forging don't require gem *income*, they require gems, which can be saved and aren't subject to being attacked by other players. Taking out gen items doesn't prevent you from keeping a strategic reserve on-hand.

But sustaining a meaningful counterattack does require an income. Basically, an income is the difference between a sneak attack always being a fatal blow or being simply very damaging but something you can fight your way out of.

I doubt anyone truly minds if an opponent is running on a reserve while they have an income because its a simple fact that someone on reserves has a limited number of turns before they become powerless. This means the win will always go to the sneak attacker if they show even a little sense to just wear out that reserve.

There is a pretty clear consensus that having gen-gems makes it harder for an aggressor to steamroll a defender. You've been arguing that it doesn't, AND that having a reserve is like having gem-gens and it does. Pick a side of the debate, because you can't have it both ways

[vfb]

Just to get my two cents in, I'm all in favour of (1) sneak attacks, and (2) making it easier for an aggressor to steamroll a defender.

[Micah]

If your counterattack is "meaningful" you'll be reclaiming provinces and hence income quickly. If you can't recover a significant portion of your provinces you're screwed in either case.

And my "side" of the debate is that gens make it harder to root out a defender from his last few forts, since his income isn't eliminated, but doesn't facilitate a meaningful comeback. It's a bit more nuanced than you make it out to be.

Due to a plethora of factors (first turn advantage, shelter in a fort and having concentrated force being the major ones) the defender's force in Dominions is much stronger than an attacker.

This additional effectiveness of the defenders' units due to defensive advantage combined with a disproportional, concentrated income, leads to what is, IMO, an undesirable situation in which it is neither feasible for the defender to mount a successful counterattack due to losing their defensive advantage, or for the attacker to risk a frontal assault on the defender's stronghold, leading to a non-interactive standoff.

If the defender tries to actually DO anything the fact that his income is still a fraction of the attacker's will quickly catch up to him and he'll have to either abandon his gains or have his forces picked apart since he is then forced to spread them out and risk offensive movement.

I suppose if you think that these kinds of standoffs are a plus we'll just have to disagree, as it is ultimately a matter of opinion, but I'm fairly confident in my analysis of the cause-and-effect game, especially after my experience dealing with Calmon's last stand in Artifacts...After trying to attack his last fort a couple of times and losing significant forces each time I finally stopped trying. He eventually thought he had a moment of weakness to exploit and attacked me, but was easily crushed without his defensive advantage, which concluded the matter. My only mistake was trying to finish him off instead of waiting from the beginning, and waiting isn't a very exciting game IMO.

[K]

Originally Posted by Micah

If your counterattack is "meaningful" you'll be reclaiming provinces and hence income quickly. If you can't recover a significant portion of your provinces you're screwed in either case.

And my "side" of the debate is that gens make it harder to root out a defender from his last few forts, since his income isn't eliminated, but doesn't facilitate a meaningful comeback. It's a bit more nuanced than you make it out to be.

Due to a plethora of factors (first turn advantage, shelter in a fort and having concentrated force being the major ones) the defender's force in Dominions is much stronger than an attacker.

This additional effectiveness of the defenders' units due to defensive advantage combined with a disproportional, concentrated income, leads to what is, IMO, an undesirable situation in which it is neither feasible for the defender to mount a successful counterattack due to losing their defensive advantage, or for the attacker to risk a frontal assault on the defender's stronghold, leading to a non-interactive standoff.

Having an income is the same as having a reserve in that you are still spending gems at a fixed rate per turn, and the natural result of no gem gens is that people will keep greater reserves. This seems obvious now and thanks for pointing it out.

But, this means that the very situation you are trying to avoid will still happen.

The only difference is that people will give up and go into "revenge mode" earlier where they decide they can't win and that they are going to try to grind up as much of your forces as possible. They'll do this because without an income they'll have to make that reserve do as much damage as possible, so turtling is the natural choice due to the very advantages you discussed.

Calmon would have still ground up your attacks on his fortress with or without a gem gen income (going into an endgame fortress is always dicey, and it sounds like you were using an "army fighting" army and not a "fortress busting" army). The only difference is that he probably would never have tried to escape since he would have no hope of turning his reserves into the income he'd need to get his provinces back.

Your position is not more nuanced .... it just makes no sense. To achieve the result you want would require modding out fortresses or maybe using that one fortress that has no walls as everyone's fortress. You'll still get ground up by mage-heavy armies, but the only way to fix that is to mod out mages.

Removing gem gens only makes the game less interesting as people horde gems for inevitable sneak attacks (or they auto-lose because their reserve in insufficient).

[Psycho]

I meant that the fortresses are useful. I didn't express myself well. It was the response to Squirrelloid saying they aren't useful.