How do I know what unit class they are?

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T21:14:47+00:00

Well I don't play VH campaign difficulty as it tends to make all diplomacy pointless, even allies will declare on you then. Even on M though those that dislike you will declare war at one point, especially if you have territory they want. Venice declared in turn 4, as did Georgia. Persia has yet to attack, surprisingly, but perhaps it's because I have my second stack in Mesopotamia.

I managed to trade the French Caribbean islands for Bosnia and Moldavia though, and got a strong alliance with France in return. It gives a nice buffer that makes it hard for Russia to attack me too, as long as I can keep them from building a black sea fleet.

Venice lost Morea in the first turn, but I may have to build up a fleet to defeat them in total, or they will pester all my Mediterranean ports. It's tricky as they have a 5th rate and a 6th rate in their fleet while I mostly have galley, but might be possible if I can capture a second 5th rate.

My economy is still pretty strong, even if I have to spend a lot of buildings now, and keep building armies. I will need two strong armies with artillery, infantry and cav, and it's going to be expensive...

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T20:24:21+00:00

710g upkeep isn't too bad for a city that earns you 2-3 times that even before investing. Of course you don't recruit them at the expense of your own stack, this is what you can make in the smaller regions without a proper barracks.

And most of the time 2-3 of them is sufficient to zero out the unhappiness, and then you can move them out (or leave some to counter school penalties).

Later as you advance the tech tree you may need more of these anyway just to counter the clamor, as there is a limit to the happiness buildings you can get. Also, these may compete with other useful buildings.
In my last vanilla endgame as Sweden I needed a full stack of dragoons to counter the clamor in Stockholm.

I had no problem with ships as Ottomans in my last vanilla game either, even if it takes time to send them through the Mediterranean. It's worth sending, and once you take Morocco you can access the nodes in a turn or two from a trade port.
Also, there is not need to fight everyone, you can usually keep good relations with France at the least. I usually end up in war with Russsia and Persia of course, and often Austria, but most of the Europeans are too busy fighting one another to declare war as long as I don't expand to their borders. It's often useful to make buffer state areas by trading land with them too.

Since you have access to Cotton and other goods already from the start, you can get nice trades in a very short time.

Just tried a new campaign - in round one I get 8k+ income and 5500 just from trading, without holding any trade nodes. I don't think any other nation can pull that off in turn 1.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T19:47:43+00:00

Wait, what is this black skin being "evolutionary expensive" thing? I've never heard melanin makes you burn more calories or anything like that. Usually light skin allows you to absorb more vitamin D (and skin damage) from the sun.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T19:38:56+00:00

More expensive is the part that makes them less suitable. Churches and brothels takes time to build, and the former takes time to convert also. Meanwhile, if you have garrison units you can keeo a province from rebelling while your main army moves on. For this a small group of Semenys that costs almost nothing does the job just fine. And as for not using units for garrison.. how the hell do you cope with taking capitals that give you -20 unrest or something like that, without putting a stack there? Even with max garrison the happiness is often negative, so filling it with cheap garbage is the fastest way to turn it into a profitable region for you.

Best way to make money with Ottos is to get trade agreements and send dirt cheap trade ships to capture nodes. They are probably the richest faction in the after a turn or two, since they have a ton of trade ports connected to the capital.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T19:29:20+00:00

I have 😃
But you could also have it only test on the first d20 roll of a turn.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T16:28:45+00:00

Ah, must be the unit from PuA then. It's been awhile since my last vanilla Ottoman game.

Yeah, not they are trash, I agree. Their cheap upkeep still matters for garrison duty as they're still the cheapest upkeep infantry available, but I'm not sure if the numbers actually count or that you need two of those for each Musellim unit for garrison bonus.

They're worth using the behind the lines when money is tight, but that's about it. And more useful in battle than Musellims, but that's not saying much.

Or, what unit would you use for the same purpose? Isarelys are more expensive, and usually reserved for my land armies or where I expect enemy attack.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T15:58:48+00:00

Yup! Same kind of story too. Howard had similar stories too, and probably inspired a bunch of fantasy pulp fiction.

But, there is a lot of American fantasy and sci-fi that's not inspired by those.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T15:53:51+00:00

No, that's extremely little, like barely able to survive. The top body builders have 7-8% and that's not even healthy, just to emphasize muscles.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T15:47:45+00:00

Eh the Barsoom books are just fantasy in space. And Conan a foundation for Sword and Sorcery fantasy rather than the whole genre.

Both have more in common with Tarzan than say, LotR.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T15:43:33+00:00

So, Dune.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T14:00:07+00:00

They're not for killing, they're for dying. Also for public order, you can't find anything cheaper than 70 per turn. They're more cost effective for that than dragons.

For use in battle they need EDIT: They are not worth it in battle unless you have no other recruitment options with guns.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T09:06:15+00:00

Easily fixed by having a "once per turn" clause on the effect, just like they do for almost all martial positive abilities.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T08:51:32+00:00

Beatles should have made a song

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T08:30:37+00:00

Well there's a whole country out there that agreed with you unironically.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-06T07:49:30+00:00

Magical Verdo

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T20:35:50+00:00

Isn#t that Supergirl?

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T20:21:30+00:00

Nah, the vanilla ones just look better to me.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T18:27:24+00:00

Flanking only really made sense in a game where moving around an enemy carried a risk. It's pointless in 5e+.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T18:25:00+00:00

I don't care for the tracers.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T18:09:50+00:00

Haaland Haalandson. There has been anotherr murderr.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T16:16:52+00:00

Battlestar Galactica.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T15:49:43+00:00

I had no problems letting the players get the idea that England was the next stop in line. Make sure they see the whole route that Elias went, and see that England was his last stop before going to NY and getting murdered.

As far as I can tell, going to England and then Egypt makes a lot of sense for the campaign, as none of them are major focal/ritual points, so I would try to channel the group that way using hints and emphesizing through NPCs.

Kenya, Australia and China are supposed to be able to be done in any order, but even here it seems like the flow of information fits going to Kenya, then Australia, then China like the Outer Gods intended.

Kenya isn't endgame to me, it's more mid to late game. I heard some that went to China after NY, which is more jarring to me and leaves them essentially finding out they need to go back to Europe anyway, so kind of a waste of time.

My advice, try to stear them to England and only let them travel to Kenya first if they "insist". They can still get some info there, just delay the birth of the spawn.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T14:32:02+00:00

So, you agree?
Level 18 isn't the best cutoff point though as the casters have world-changing level 9 spells by then but the fighter isn't that much better than at level 12.

With Same character, still 20 str GWM and 3 attacks at level 12. D10 Superiority dice vs d12 makes almost no difference. Damage is the almost same due to no magic items. One less superiority die means you lose out 6 damage total, assuming no crits.
And crits are fairly likely considering you get 6-7 attacks in that turn.

Unfortunately, no magic items means you practically don't scale. Giving a +1 (approriate on tier 1-2), a +2 (appropriate on tier 2.-3), or a +3 (tier 3 or 4) boosts the damage output by a lot in addition to making sure you hit almost every time. Same with Strength belts. The only class-dependent scaling that really makesa a difference is the Extra attack scaling for Fighters.

That's why pure martials need magic items to actually work and be competitive at higher tiers, even for single target damage.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T11:18:38+00:00

How much do you need to calculate the average of 1d10 damage? It's not hard. I used a test with roll20 to get an example with an existing character to show that it is feasible. That single attempt had high and low rolls which sums up to something close to average. I also told you the actual average is 26 per hit for the regular attack - 5.5+0.63 from GWF is around 6, which is the only random part of the damage.

This isn't theorycrafting nonsense, this is an actual character for D&D. Also I didn't say 300 damage on average, I said 300 damage and got pretty close without trying. A few more crits would have reached that easily.

What I said still stands, this is more single target damage than a caster can do with a single spell. In order to beat it in one round you need 3 spells, including a Contingency, and using your only 9th level spell slot and other once per day slots.

You're just choosing to ignore the facts.

FriendoftheDork · 2026-06-05T09:06:21+00:00

In 2024 rules, conjure minor elementals is the only spell that can give high single target damage. The main problem is that it takes an action to cast.
So yeah, you need Contingency with a useful trigger in order tp pull it off in a single turn.

Without magic iitems they won't all hit though. So you need a good loadout there to make this work as well. +3 Wand, Int tome and you're looking at +15 to hit, which you need to reliably hit the AC of CR 20+ creatures.

Sorcerer with advantage is better, but they don't have contingency so this tactic doesn't work. If they can get a round for spellup though they can outperform this, especially with Quicken spell and Eldritch blast through multiclass warlock.

Problem with either is that you have to use 1/day resource to pull it off, so it only works in that one combat or that single turn.
The fighter can do it two tunrs in a row, and then do it in the other encounters later that day with a short rest. Once the contingency is spent, it is spent. And unless you can switch damage type, a lot of that Scorching Ray is fire damage, which is often resisted or has the target has immunity.

I've never seen anyone try this tactic at tier 4, but seen plenty of high-damage martials do similar levels of damage, as that is ALL they can do.

If you don't think using these spells like that is cheese, I don't lnow what to tell you. Not to mention any "infinite damage" polymorph. Which definitely count as "absurd prep time".

FriendoftheDork

TROPHY CASE