Blood Bond

[Muddy33]

I should probably go check the manual, but did blood bond ever get reworked to not be crazy vulnerable to GoH/Soulslay kinda thing? Could be one of my favorite new styles.

Looking at Blindfighters. Such an Interesting unit.

[Zonk]

It was never vulnerable to soul slay from what I remember (that kind of effect ignores it), but it's still vulnerable to high-damage hits like Gift from Heaven.

[Muddy33]

Originally posted by Zonk:

It was never vulnerable to soul slay from what I remember (that kind of effect ignores it), but it's still vulnerable to high-damage hits like Gift from Heaven.

Thanks Zonk. If there's some exceptions I'll play around with it a bit. Hoping its balanced so that the high prot won't make really high dm spells so absurdly dangerous on my line. Fine with a square being wiped, not so fine with other squares being taken with them due to my blessing.

[Muddy33]

So I've done a good section of a blood bond/regen playthrough today on LA Agartha. The AoE five seems to the number of squares in each direction the bless extends. In an army of 300 Blindfighters, I could find instances where the damage was shared between 171 sacreds. More commonly it was between 100 and 140 sacreds. In these numbers the mechanic is quite striking, halving almost all damage. I went against a force of approx 550 abysians with demonic support boosted by bloodlust and heavy fire evocations using 300 blindfighters and lost less than 30. Admitedly, using horde of skeletons as LA Agartha should, but the cost for for winning the battle was remarkably low.

Very Interesting mechanic. Will provide screenshot of my pretender below. Quite happy with it. More money than I need with satisfactory expansion power.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=1214386400

[meglobob1]

A big problem with that bless is you don't get the regen or blood bond part until turn 30 to 42 because your pretender is imprisoned.

In MP, you could be a pile of forgotten dust by then. Even if your nations still around, you would likely be miles behind, with no hope of catching up a nation that just took fantastic scales.

Its a fundamental flaw in the new bless system, the longer you are into the game the less effective any bless is because more magic / research has always been a hard counter to blesses.

[Muddy33]

Originally posted by meglobob1:

A big problem with that bless is you don't get the regen or blood bond part until turn 30 to 42 because your pretender is imprisoned.

In MP, you could be a pile of forgotten dust by then. Even if your nations still around, you would likely be miles behind, with no hope of catching up a nation that just took fantastic scales.

Its a fundamental flaw in the new bless system, the longer you are into the game the less effective any bless is because more magic / research has always been a hard counter to blesses.

Maybe. The minor blesses with that pretender are surpringsingly effective. Had no problem taking 60 indies with 9 blindfighters before the incarnates come out. With light infantry and crossbows behind them, I think the minor blessed blindfighters are perfectly capable of defending from anything but large magestacks. Other thing is the new system makes getting research easier, so you can get horde of skeletons up by fall of year two.

Yeah, you might be right about getting eaten alive in mp'er. but I also think it depends on the game settings. With 14 or less provinces per player this build might be too slow, but with more than 14 a player, it might work very well. Additionally, Late Age seems less prone to heavy early game rushes than the previous ages, and 5 seems to do a lot to discourage rushing too. LA seems to quite encourage scales builds, which due to the new castle system really need to build a couple castles before going to war, and the new bless system discourages rushing as well. Now you might be right about the scales, because once heavy duty troop buffs come out, this build could be finished.

Its definately not a blitz build, but if it can make it to midgame in the upper half of pretenders, I think this could work really well. Anyway.

[meglobob1]

It is interesting and thanks for doing the research and letting us know btw

Possibly, Dormant may be better, just for the Blood Bond / Regen. Dormant pretenders arrive turn 10-14, I believe which is plenty of time for the first early wars in MP, which start around turn 20 (+/- 5 turns). I know you lose 200 design points

Another option, is just go with the minor blesses, ditch the incarnate blesses and that free's you up to have a awake / dormant / imprisoned. Which gives you massive flexibility, you could come up with lots of variations build wise here.

I just have difficulty thinking any imprisoned incarnate bless can work in MP, when you don't get the benefits till turns 30-42. I think the time delays far, far too harsh vs benefits.

But its very interesting and thanks for sharing.

[Zonk]

Its a fundamental flaw in the new bless system, the longer you are into the game the less effective any bless is because more magic / research has always been a hard counter to blesses.

I disagree. I think it's a good reason to only take incarnate blesses with awake/dormant pretenders, or to pick blesses that you think will be hard or impossible to counter in the late game. Or get +stat blesses instead.

[peterebbesen]

Originally posted by meglobob1:

A big problem with that bless is you don't get the regen or blood bond part until turn 30 to 42 because your pretender is imprisoned.

In MP, you could be a pile of forgotten dust by then. Even if your nations still around, you would likely be miles behind, with no hope of catching up a nation that just took fantastic scales.

Its a fundamental flaw in the new bless system, the longer you are into the game the less effective any bless is because more magic / research has always been a hard counter to blesses.

Why you'd consider something designed to be an expensive tradeoff - dormant and imprisoned in return for points, and high tier blessings only applying when the pretender is incarnate - to be a fundamental flaw I've no idea.

The lesson of the change is surely not "I can't do the same as I'm used to, so this is a flaw", but "I can't do the same I'm used to, so I must adapt".

The major blessing sacred rushes of earlier Dominions games is a thing of the past unless the player is willing to tank his scales in return for that power rather than doing it safely with half-tanked or decent scales and an imprisoned pretender, but is that really a bad thing? I don't think so, and this change appears intended to counter that type of play.

While anything goes in SP, for MP you'll probably want to restrict your use of incarnate blessings mostly to awake and dormant pretenders, while using imprisoned pretenders primarily for scales builds with magic chosen for late game rituals/crafting (as usual) and then possibly some incarnate blessings chosen based on that magic.

[Fortuna]

Originally posted by peterebbesen:

Why you'd consider something designed to be an expensive tradeoff - dormant and imprisoned in return for points, and high tier blessings only applying when the pretender is incarnate - to be a fundamental flaw I've no idea.

Yeah, I rather think the idea of ?9?9?9 imprisoned pretenders that overrun the world on day 1 is a bit more flawed. I mean, how do you defend against that without one of your own? Now, you can have some badass specialized blessed troops (with even quite a bit of spell resistance) but your opponent has time to research something that can fight them.

Imprisoned pretenders were far too casual in Dominions 4. Now you have to think, but are rewarded with a ton of design points.

[Twogun]

one other thing to consider on the 'incarnate is too expensive' front-

nothing happens in a vacuum. say you have gone with a heavy incarnate bless. you are a good player, so you still get a decent expansion, now you are working toward magic goals that'll synergize with your bless.

at the same time, say i took a nation and went minor bless/scales or used an awake pretender or both. and expanded way better than you did.

well, at that point, say turn 20+, diplo is coming into play. maybe you and another nation say, 'he's too big, lets hit him' or you sign a mutal defense pact. or whatever.

the incarnate bless kind of becomes a hidden strength at that point.

for a player good enough to expand reasonably well without overwhelming early game, and cagey enough to hit the top of his power arc around turn 40(after the first rounds of wars have broken out)...that might translate into WIN.

i'm not saying it's the best way to go. i'm just saying in certain situations, that major incarnate bless might work really well, meta-game wise. of course, we are all testing different blesses now, and nobody goes too deep in those games. so incarnate is no fun. but in MP, might be a different story.

[Muddy33]

Thought I'd come back to this with some updated information on the blood bond mechanic.

1) Blood Bond effects approximately a 10x10 area, with the unlikely possibility of linking up to and over 320 human sized units.

2) The damage from blood bond can be negated, and is partially based on proximity. Linked units near a wounded unit are more likely to take damage from blood bond than a more distant soldier. E.I. if 40 damage is being distributed over 60 units, most units will take no damage, will some nearby the original wound will take 1 damage and some will take 2 damage. My approximate guess as to the distribution in the scenario would be 5 soldiers taking 2 damage, and 10 soldiers taking 1 damage, and then the more distant soldiers negate the damage by rounding down to 0.

3) Regeneration values are not effected by Undying hitpoints. You do not gain bonus hp regeneration from undying hp anymore. Stacking undying and regeneration does not increase the regeneration rate per turn. Important to know when designing a blood bond pretender.

What all this means is that blood bond can actually be incredibly powerful when used with a recruit anywhere human sized sacred using regeneration and blood bond. My favorite chassis so far has been the Blindfighter, but I've had great sucess with Jaguar Warriors and Kala Mukhas. It has some applications to Flagellants and Khylsts but is not as powerful due to the low power of these sacreds. With a critical mass of strong troops and regeneration, blood bond can be comparable in defensive value to etherrealness. There are potentially interesting applications with MA Ermor that I have not explored in depth. There are probably a number of summonable sacreds that I have not considered that might be viable as well.

The single simplest requirement I've found for a human sized blood bond troop is prot value. Blood bond halves all damage after prot, creating an inciredible synergy with regen, blood bond, size 2, and high armor. Due to the fact that blood bond can be a vulnerability without critical troop mass, I beleive it should not be taken awake, and could be potentially viable imprisoned due to the difficulty of countering a real blood bond stack. In addition, an imprisoned blood bond pretender will bring the blood bond online only when multiple critical mass armies can be formed. At no point will an imprisoned blood bonded pretenders armies be vulnerable to spike damage, and the extra points from imprisoned will allow you to take minor blesses that allow for competitive expansion along with decent scales.

Edit; would love to hear people's thoughts as to good summonable sacreds for this bless strategy.

[Twogun]

would it not be as effective for Lanka's sacreds? they are size 3 i think. would the increased regen value(higher HP) compensate effectively for the lower number of possible blood bond units to share damage?

[Fortuna]

Originally posted by Twogun:

would it not be as effective for Lanka's sacreds? they are size 3 i think. would the increased regen value(higher HP) compensate effectively for the lower number of possible blood bond units to share damage?

I did Niefel Giants (size 5) with Blood Bond, Regeneration, Fortitude, Fire Resistance +5 (for a total of 0FR) in SP. A pack of 24 of them walked over a Berytos army lead by 30-some elephants and stormed their fortress of fire slingers without any real danger to themselves. They also strolled into a level 3 throne infested with Spring Hawks and Air Elementals with no protection other than the bless. By the end of the campaign a number of them were limping but otherwise no real damage was sustained. I don't know if it is "as strong" with large units, but Blood Bond + Regeneration seems to synergize to good effect at any size as long as you achieve critical mass (as MuddyBonkers described).