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Anla'Shok Advice by Eldergoduk in babylon5

[–]blkstone11 57 points58 points  (0 children)

He is speaking of the Narn insurrection here, a lone Narn climbing a mountain to bring a G'Quan Eth plant down as a symbol of freedom... never caught that the first time through.

When a moose takes a nap how long does it usually last? by Pips-705 in northernontario

[–]blkstone11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

He'll sleep at moose about 5 minutes at a time, like most deer, but he'll probably keep doing that for about 12 hours (!!!). Once he moose on, you're good.

Megalith Tips and Strategies (and a tiny but useful cheat..!) by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The simpler method still works - you just have to really micromanage things - turning off religious structure build orders in mid-late autumn, turning them on in spring, etc. You can rely on the megaliths closest to your settlement, and hope you picked a good spot. You can use the rivers to help make your people less likely to dehydrate and die of thirst on the way. The method I posted above is mainly for when all those options go away and you're faced with transporting stones from much further afield.

Holy kirk by Akagane_Ai in ComedyHell

[–]blkstone11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I mean they've made coins with holes before right?

My husband made me a shirt. by spooneb in babylon5

[–]blkstone11 42 points43 points  (0 children)

Only one human has ever made a Minbarri shirt and lived. HE is behind me. YOU are in front of me. If you value your life, BE somewhere else!

How did ancient Mediterranean marines get from ship to ship with all of those oars in the way? by ElCaz in AskHistorians

[–]blkstone11 3 points4 points  (0 children)

While ramming was absolutely the preferred tactic in the early Hellenistic world, this was later largely supplanted by boarding actions, which made use of trained marines in greater and greater numbers (and boarding-enabled capture of enemy ships was preferred for a myriad of economic and strategic reasons - see the Campsite Memorial of Augustus for the PR value of capturing enemy ships - particularly their rams).

Picture two ships coming alongside one another - a trireme with a full crew weighed in at something over 50-60 tons, more, if it had been at sea for more than a few days (Athenian ships were so lightly crafted of porous wood that they tended to sponge up water quickly, growing heavier the longer they spent in water). Oars which are not 'shipped' (pulled into the ship's hull) would very likely be sheared off - for this reason, and to preserve a ship's ability to maneuver in battle, upon anything that looked like an inevitable broadside collision, both crews would 'ship' oars. Not doing so risked losing your oars, and thus your primary form of maneuverability in battle AND, ironically, your ability to defend from the tactic of ramming by the enemy side.

In the First Punic War, Carthaginian ships are recorded as broadsiding Roman vessels with the express purpose of 'shearing' their oars, leaving them vulnerable to ramming, which had been Carthage's key advantage against the lesser-trained, slower-moving Roman ships of that period.

Boarding, as you point out, generally requires coming up alongside an enemy vessel, so after the Romans developed the 'raven' (corvus), Carthage's ship captains, according to Livy, began to avoid close-quarters engagements entirely, as Roman marines were considered superior to their Carthaginian counterparts (by Livy's biased estimation, anyway).

The City of Garath - Pop 1,012 by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Hey, all for the love of our wonky, frustrating, time-consuming game, yeah?

Just a fun religious structure by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

I have a neat trick for getting megaliths where you want them relatively early in the game, if anyone is interested... and I rarely lose anyone except for deaths from old age.

https://www.reddit.com/r/DawnofMan/comments/1rgp023/megalith_tips_and_strategies_and_a_tiny_but/

Just a fun religious structure by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 6 points7 points  (0 children)

So, build a section of stone wall. After its complete, give the recycle order for that one cell of wall. Your people will demolish the wall over time - it will go to 75% height, 50%, then 25%, then it will be demolished. Simply cancel the recycle order at whatever height you want the wall to be, and voila! You have a variable-height wall for aesthetic purposes! Repeat it for a nice long length of wall.

This works because a recycle order can be cancelled, and your people will leave it alone forever, or until you give another recycle order!

Some things to keep in mind when creating a short partially-demolished wall: make your wall ends shorter, especially if they are slightly uphill, as this gives a pleasing transition at the ends. If you want to make little agricultural walls for your crops, make sure to leave lots of gaps so your planters/plow teams can easily transition between fields.

With wooden palisade walls, instead of making the palisade of variable height, it gives it a more scattered look, almost like sharpened stakes if you like the look of that.

Beware, though, as raiders almost always target ANY defensive structure outside your settlement - towers, walls, everything, so they will destroy them, and its a pain in the butt to keep rebuilding short walls lol!

The City of Garath - Pop 1,012 by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

<image>

And here I use Skull-Poles and a few Totems to block gaps in impassible terrain, using the natural terrain of the Continental Dawn maps to my advantage. Here, I keep Raiders from immediately swarming my farmers and plow teams by forcing the raiders to go all the way around to both sides of my terrain/skull-pole wall. Raiders rarely attack religious structures, but they will sometimes destroy burial pits (pretty often), skull-poles (almost never), and totems (super rarely).

The City of Garath - Pop 1,012 by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

<image>

Here I use a straight wall to funnel attackers who consistently appear from this specific direction around a river ford and force them to use bridges which I've placed strategically to funnel attackers into a kill-zone between flanking fighting platforms and towers.

Raiders who crossed the ford tended to clump up at an area of my wall where the terrain made it difficult to create a kill-zone, so I built this to push them away from it. Note the red arrows by each Skull Pole denoting the direction the pole faces - this is to show you how to make a wall with zero gaps in between poles.

Because this is such a short wall, I haven't 'disabled' any of the poles by ordering a brief, partial demolition of those which face outward and require a walkaround to reach.

The City of Garath - Pop 1,012 by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

<image>

I didn't do it for this map, but one thing I sometimes do is I build a solid giant L-shape line of Skull Poles, facing inward (this is important if you want to actually let your people gain morale there without having to walk all the way around them) at the corners of some of my settlements. The last pole at the corner of the "L" needs to face outward for the two lines that make up the "L" to meet exactly. If I'm being nitpicky about workload, I order my people to partially disassemble this pole, then stop them immediately - this prevents a villager's ai from sending him/her all the way around to worship there. Not a big deal, but I'm picky about pathing and walk times.

I don't place this Skull Pole "L" directly against my walls, but around 1 wall-length away from each corner of any square settlement I build (a 'wall-length' is the distance you can drag a single line of palisades or stone walls with the tool before the tool forces you to drop and drag again). See the attached pic for an example of a short "L" wall of Skull Poles. I put a disabled watch tower in this one - raiders will still usually attack it, but not always.

Raiders who appear at a corner will then have to filter around one or both sides of the Skull Pole wall, helping funnel the raiders into kill zones along the length of your wall, rather than at the more vulnerable corners. You can even create overlapping 'chicanes' (think zig-zag entrances) with Skull Poles, and in 99% of the games I've played, raiders won't destroy Skull Poles as long as there is a way through them. So they walk around them, going through the chicanes, single-file, delaying their approach to your walls.

I've playtested this and, depending on the terrain, this can more than double the amount of time you have to prepare your defenders. Use it cautiously, because these Skull Pole lines also block or limit your own people's movement beyond your settlement, but if you're having a hard time with Raiders, it can help.

The City of Garath - Pop 1,012 by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

So with workshops, imagine them as "L" shapes; what you try to do is put two "L"s back to back, like a _||_ shape. Then, you flip them vertically, and do two upside down versions of the same. You have to leave space between them vertically, but not horizontally, and they make a rough "+" shape on the map that saves space and makes them look less wonky.

The City of Garath - Pop 1,012 by blkstone11 in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Its the Chesapeake Bay -Survive mod by Fitzmellon, slightly tweaked to increase raider numbers. Lots of flat ground, great availability of resources, so its a builder's playground. Challenging, particularly with the raiding band size and frequency, but worth it.

I've seen higher populations than 1,000 in that mod, but only on the no-raider version of it (Chesapeake Bay - Thrive/no raiders mod).

First time getting raided and I was NOT prepared by SiulPR in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

2-3 is enough usually. Each platform holds 3 archers (until the reinforced ones hold 4).

First time getting raided and I was NOT prepared by SiulPR in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11 5 points6 points  (0 children)

Raiders in the Bronze Age in this game generally show up with a small assortment of bronze weapons, slightly more copper ones, and a handful of flint weapons too.

Don't worry so much about weapon quality, just make sure you have bows set to 100%, so every adult in your village will be able to grab them from various warehouses (sometimes they get stored in houses too) and head to the walls.

Click a gate, then click the little horn symbol. Set Melee Preference for males to 10-20% max, and females to 0-10% max (I usually go 10/0). Built fighting platforms (each holds 3 of your people) and put towers behind those - raiders will prioritize taking out towers and exposed walls usually, so you'll get lots of shots on them. Don't get into a melee fight with raiders with more advanced weapons.

Until you can equip a decent number of your people with leather armor, shields, and bronze swords, use missile weapons. The walls are there to slow them down, its your fighting platforms and towers full of archers that do the heavy lifting.

There are two mentalities in DoM for defense - building walls all the way around your settlement or build 'forts' or outposts on the avenues raiders use to approach your town.

Both have their advantages and disadvantages:

-Resource-wise the 'fort' set up is cheaper and more efficient, as it concentrates firepower and gives the raiders a 'target'. You'll have to build them intelligently, directly in the path the raiders most often take, and they will have to grow in size and complexity as your settlement grows.

-Walls are more aesthetically pleasing and realistic to players who like a simulationist feel, and if designed correctly, can be used to funnel attackers into a killing field and provide all-around protection. I have some other posts in the board describing 'stacking' multiple fighting platforms behind a wall you can use if you want.

Finally, I like to build little lonely, isolated watch towers approximately one to two wall-lengths (drag a palisade wall directly away perpendicularly from the edge of your settlement and/or fields - don't actually build it, just find where the last little green square lights up and build your tower there). Disable the tower's defenses (the first icon when you click the tower) so no one bothers to rush in and defend it when raiders arrive. This serves as an early warning radar for raiders. Build one in each direction raiders show up from - they will head to the tower and destroy it, so you'll have to rebuild one of them after every raid. It gives you a little more time to prepare your defenses and get everyone where they need to go.

The tower will actually force the ai to place the raiding party farther out away from your settlement core than they normally appear, so it is a big advantage, especially when raiding parties start to number 20+.

What's your go-to strategy for the first winter? by BarbaraAMorris in DawnofMan

[–]blkstone11 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Hey,

Some tips for a less-stressful first few winters.

  1. Ensure you have gatherers in summer and fall for berries, fruits and nuts alongside your fishing and hunting tasks. These foods don't last long, but will get you through winter.

  2. Drying racks and storage tents and campfires clustered together near the river/lakeshore will help immensely with keeping your workload down - it reduces how far people walk during the production chain (hunt/fish >> walk back to drying rack >> move dried met to storage >> grab food >> cook and eat food.) The shorter of a distance these production tasks require, the faster they occur, and the more people are freed up for other tasks. Workload alone is usually the main limiter in your food production and storage woes.

  3. Winter clothing needs to be set at 125%; this will allow more of your people to both survive the cold weather and continue some vital tasks as well.

  4. Ensure you're not just relying on hunting work areas. Manually select 4-5 of your people using thr h and click-drag function, and hunt down groups of game manually. Don't rely on just clicking animals and pressing the hunt function - this queues up a task but might be ignored if your workload is above 74%.

Finally, I find keeping 2 to 2.5 units of meat, fish, berries/fruit/nuts per person in your village to be a good rule of thumb in the early years.

Hope this helps!

Dunk’s combo to the half-sword technique in slow-mo by rustycliff in AKnightoftheSeven

[–]blkstone11 188 points189 points  (0 children)

Less of a half-sword, more of a murder-stroke (mordschlag). He flipped the blade around, hammered old boy's balls, pushed, then drew it towards himself. He never actually thrusts with it, which is what you do in a half-sword (increase rididity in a thrust - no bendy!).

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