I agree completely with what you said about troops and mages. I disagree with your focus on point buffing and I disagree with your implementation of Shuten Dojis as thugs (also you aren't the first to come up with the idea and neither was I in my guide but that doesn't make us less cool 😎). I generally feel like point buffing is best for "quality dense" units like EA Van blender sacreds, vaetti berserkers, black templars, etc. Point buffing is also best when you use stuff that is easy to case with cheap mages that is highly effective, like star gazers casting ethereal. I feel like Shin's units aren't quality dense enough (30g of snot goblins in a square, 50 of the dai borks) and their mages aren't really cost effective at casting anything but moss body (and even then 135g per mage isn't amazing) except as an emergency option where you blow gems to squeeze out all the power you can from each square. Also fluffing is a time where you want to break out the gems to squeeze more power out of your wights but that is fluffing, not point buffing really. In general I would aim for more area buffs, which being a nature & earth nation Shinuyama is better at anyway; Shinuyama lacks easy access to classic point buffs like Luck and body ethereal but has really easy access to wooden warriors, legions of steel, and strength of giants (and later quickening & weapons of sharpness [these two let you DELETE super combatants lol]). Shinuyama's troops do really well with these sorts of buffs anyway since they already come with at least token armor and low natural protection (meaning that even the furs snot goblins will go up to respectable heavy infantry levels of protection with LoS & WW while the heavily armored Dai Borks will be approaching the stratosphere rapidly) and their propensity for 2h weapons and bows on melee capable units means that they double dip on the bonuses from SoG. WW, SoG, & LoS having large areas of effect and long ranges also helps you to cover your undisciplined units without needing high effort and fiddly scripting for buff pits and such. In short you will get a lot more mileage out of your mages with AoE buffs like this than from point buffs. Adding point buffs on top of this is still a decent decision though since they will stack multiplicatively (WW & LoS mean that moss body is harder to pop and SoG will get more of the enhanced hits in if you are protected by moss body; same logic applies to quickening, iron warriors, etc.). Regarding the Shuten Dojis and to expand on what you already said they come with good invulnerability but no armor so the benefits of iron warriors are relatively small and thus I avoid if in favor of the lion pelts you mentioned (with a hammer it will rapidly pay for itself in mage turns and gems not to mention greater effectiveness) for protection and maybe an AoE weapon or effect shield if you feel really fancy or an AP/AN weapon if you need to kill thugs. Shuten Dojis with snake bladder sticks work particularly well because the poison ticks don't wake people up though you do need to get poison resistance on your guys though. With some light fluffing for just stuff you can cast without gems (enlarge, moss body, and/or quickening) they can mulch PD and they can also work really effectively when mixed in with the front line of troops thanks to their sleep auras as you mentioned. The Shuten Doji puts enemies to sleep so the surrounding troops can kill them while the surrounding troops take hits for the Shuten Doji who is still life draining as much HP as normal. Again, multiplicative boosts to army effectiveness. Naturally buffs on an army embedded Shuten Doji are yet further multiplicative boosts as +str on life drain does more healing and legions of steel on lion pelts give more protection, keeping your sleep auras up in even harsh conditions. Nit picks aside good vid and thanks for making it! Lot of insightful stuff that I agree with and some insightful stuff I never even thought of before and now I want to play another Shinuyama game. P.S.: don't forget banefire for another easy way to delete enemy elites late game.

@LucidTactics

Жыл бұрын

Agree with most of your points. I think in general you are right about AOE buffs > point buffs for the goblin hordes. I dont think i meant to imply that one should be point buffing goblins a ton, more that its a strong option for when you have lots of mages and not a lot of troops. The point buffs more i think are for thugging applications - where i think they are really strong! Thanks for your comments - pinned them so folks can read em all!

@tax274

Жыл бұрын

Glad we are in agreement then! Thanks for pinning.

Oh man I'm so excited, I've spent probably 500 + hours just on Shinuyama and they have so many different things going on, very excited to hear your take.

The bandits are stealthy, unlike the disciplined bakemono. So those are your only options for bodyguards if sneaking.

@Isvoor

Жыл бұрын

Also the bandit archers have hats, and size isn't as important for archer duels. So especially if there's no mountain discount, they'd do okay compared to the bakemono archers.

Looking at the higher price swordgoblins (bakemono warrior) they do have 1 moral over their pike counterparts. 10 rather than 9 so still nothing to write home about. 2 More attack and def too. Still not sold, but there could be edge cases where you'd prefer them. You know the kind of edge cases Arco would find and use, nothing for beginners like me to worry about. Once I manage to properly point buff before they run off to fight the enemy consistently we can talk about edge cases. And try to remember its 5 and not 3 of those tiny terrors on a tile when trying to point buff.

@tax274

Жыл бұрын

I think that the wakizashi goblins would be best when facing things that have weapons longer than yaris (pikeneers mostly), things which rely heavily on defense (cavalry, machakans with great hide shields, etc.), things vulnerable to slashing (darkvines come to mind), and things that can't be repelled (long dead most often) but against high protection (thanks to 1h vs 2h and pierce damage vs sometimes slashing) and anything else (pretty much all regular troops) yaris are the superior weapon. The wakizashi goblins are a fairly niche tool and you might go a whole game without needing one but having the option of wheeling them out when they would be ideal is good to have.

Please make a series with these guys! They are my favourite faction concept in all of Dominions, I got so excited when I saw thi vid up :D

What is the best way to show support for an updated guide for Dom6?

500+ gobo Archer + flaming arrows are a funny thing 😂

The bandit archers are actually pretty great at rading, being stealthy, disciplined, and competent both at range and in melee. Their issue is resource cost, but if one is gold- or recpoint capped with tons of resources, it's nice to invest in a squad or three of them and put them with a stealthy fluffer. Varying raid compositions makes it harder for the enemy to counter raiding on the cheap. The bakemono warriors (with swords) actually have significantly better stats; +2 attack, +2 defense, +1 morale, +2 hit points. But as you say, length 1 weapons are an issue for them, as is the high rec point requirement. It doesn't hurt mixing a few in, esp against enemies with short weapons, but yari are the go-to.

@Mewobiba

Жыл бұрын

Also, don't underestimate Kappa Chiefs as UW thugs. With 17 natprot and a built in bonus attack they do a lot of work.

@Mewobiba

Жыл бұрын

Shuten-doji come with invulnersbility 15; if the enemy isn't fielding magic weapons, Protection does nothing and Iron Warriors is only decent.

Yay i love yomi, but i can make no real sense of shinuyama, so it's great to see somebody smart talk about it!

I think the only chance I've had to play them it didn't go super well unfortunately. Will be interesting to see your thoughts on them. EDIT: Welp, just found out why it didn't go well. I definitely wasted my early game when I played them. I was not aggressive enough.

Something I really hate in dominions is how many things are make or break simply because of elementals. Been watching a lot of videos and playing a lot and so much just comes back to elementals. "X elemental will wreck this" or "is it just better to spam x elemental". They're hardly the end all be all but they just come up so often. It's just so mindless and boring. But I main the Van nations so maybe I can't complain about mindless play as a dirty elfer.

The bakamono warriors might be good because 6 of them on a tile is a lot of damage. THeir defense is also a bit higher

The little vampire thugs and you getting hit with the ark in that throne made me laugh. Would like to know more about your thoughts on the summons. Worth it to take turmoil for some of them like the oni rather than tanking income a ton via the temp scales? Are there any you like or don't like. It seems like some of them would really help transition into the late game.

@LucidTactics

Жыл бұрын

I dont think you want turmoil if you want to slam little goblins :)

@DarkSideBrownie

Жыл бұрын

@@LucidTactics I did enjoy the remembering of the bone grinding trap from the Atlantis game. Thanks for the insight. The temp scale income penalty is scary to me on scales builds.

@soccrplayr232

Жыл бұрын

@@DarkSideBrownie Honestly rec points are mostly not a problem beyond the early game if you don't spawn next to any mountains/highlands outside reducing the micro of recruiting your gobbos from a whole bunch of mountains but you also will never have anywhere near enough turmoil power things outside Yomi/Lanka for it to really impact anything. A lot of the summons kind of get bullied out by spending the gems on items and in combat gem use or are hard to use outside gods but summon kitsune can do a lot for your late game access and dai oni are cool.

Dai bakemono archers with ubas casting mossbody will win a lot of early wars

your reasoning on the bakemono price was almost as good as your rating of MA C´Tis in your tierlist.

@LucidTactics

Жыл бұрын

Ma ctis stronk

*slaps tile* this baby can fit so much murder.

How would you make an acid storm trap viable? I feel like you can't equip your caster to be immune to the acid, so what would the play be there?

@LucidTactics

Жыл бұрын

A SC can definitely be immune to it, especially with regen and SV up.

@DarkSideBrownie

Жыл бұрын

@@LucidTactics maybe summon some lamias for guard commander duty to help fuel the vortex? Or is that too expensive

@soccrplayr232

Жыл бұрын

Wearing armor items almost does all the work all by itself, acid storm really doesn't do all that much damage. Not dying to the army is way more difficult.

@Leiska86

Жыл бұрын

It's 4 AP damage. Slap on basically any armor and he'll be virtually immune to it.

@tax274

Жыл бұрын

@@LucidTactics Ya, a lot of the time a sorc/wight can roll up in heavy thug gear, get the usual buffs put on them, cast acid storm/fire storm/heat from hell/whatever, and then go take a nap for the rest of the fight and wake up once everyone else is dead. Obviously doesn't work against prepared enemies since a few dudes with GSS can slice them in half but against a big skelly spam communion or something without embedded thugs and dedicated thug counters it can be devastating.

GOBLINS

that random ARK LOL

super cat timestamp: 57:44

In Dom4 Ma Shinuyama was bad and because of tthat i never looked at them since now, and i must say they are really good, they got many nice buffs!!!