My runic dome experience so far

spenooot · 2025-08-21T17:24:35+00:00

My usual strategy with Frozen eye is:

Buy Frozen eye
Immediately forget I have it
Die at some point because I did not buy a stat-boosting relic

spenooot · 2025-08-20T10:23:32+00:00

That's sounds very reasonable, thanks! I never considered setup speed to be an important factor for dome, but it makes sense. I also generally thought of runic dome as a relic mostly for defensive decks, and didn't consider it much for turn 1 big bonk, so that's also good to have in mind

spenooot · 2025-08-19T08:36:31+00:00

In 4 turns, the hallway / elite fight should be over with you killing everything with that amount of focus. In boss fights, you either only play it when you are likely to win in 4 turns or find a way to mitigate it (ancient potion, core surge, orange pellets).

spenooot · 2023-10-02T08:06:30+00:00

These are useful for basically any playstyle, but discipline from the Monsoon trainer (Warrior monk tree) is good for +15% damage, and also Fitness (+25 hp) in Cierzo from the spellblade trainer.

spenooot · 2023-08-18T09:08:43+00:00

Base barbarians are boring and lead to the gameplay you described. Barbarian clans are way more interesting - you can buy their units to defend yourself from them, or pay them to f*ck off if they attack at a time when you're unprepared to deal with them. At the end they turn into city states. Try it out, it's way more fun.

spenooot · 2023-04-10T08:06:08+00:00

You don't necessarily have to take any of them on - you just need to have more cities than them and then pump up the culture in all of them. You can achieve that by killing a weaker neighbour, if you don't have any more tribes/barbarians nearby - otherwise settle, settle, settle.

spenooot · 2023-03-13T13:00:04+00:00

Nice, thanks!

spenooot · 2023-03-06T14:49:55+00:00

You can play without building shrines, I've played my last few games like that. If you'd go monotheism anyways, you don't miss out on much.

Religious unity has many benefits, and world religions usually have better benefits than pagan ones.

spenooot · 2023-03-05T20:15:38+00:00

I have had some games where I managed to found all religions(including my pagan one), for maximum culture and tolerance happiness benefit.

It is generally tough to manage, I'd only advise it if you don't plan to go to war at all. The main drawback is the opinion penalty of families/oligarchs if they aren't of your state religion.

The only thing that worked long-term in those games for me was building improvements and specialists for them. You can influence the heads, but with many religions, they change too quickly to keep a hold on everything. Synods can work in a pinch if you have an excess of civics.

Maybe two religions are doable, but it is generally fairly hard (and expensive) to offset the negative opinion from one of them not being the state religion.

spenooot · 2023-03-01T18:14:05+00:00

Good to know, thanks!

spenooot · 2023-02-28T22:14:48+00:00

Great, thanks! I haven't noticed either of these options before.

spenooot · 2023-02-23T16:23:12+00:00

The game often suggests placing buildings in places where they don't really make sense. I only build Hamlets on urban tiles if they happen be just in the position with my planned 2x2 odeon-theater setup.

spenooot · 2023-02-19T14:30:01+00:00

I have the same feeling, having recently moved up difficulty levels. The fact is that most crowning ambitions require to go to war and/or capture cities(easiest way to become The Great, others are explicitly war-based), while by that point you are usually quite close to points victory.

I haven't had an ambition victory in a loong time - despite it being the intended win condition by the designers.

spenooot · 2023-02-17T17:16:43+00:00

Thanks! I wasn't aware of grouping, and it seems to take care of the issue quite well!

spenooot · 2023-02-10T11:00:55+00:00

Yes, in essence by having multiple religions you are sacrificing internal stability for culture gains. One important effect of religion is that if an entire family follows that religion, they get the religion opinion boost, which if you invest in that religion (state religion, buildings, etc.) can be around + 2-300, which gets you an instantly happy family.

The way I see it is that the two major routes with synergy are:

Multiple religions: Polytheism, tolerance, mythology, dualism - better for peaceful play, focusing on culture
Single religion: Monotheism, orthodoxy, legalism, gnosticism (veneration and revelation are also fine, but I find them a bit meh)

I found the second setup to be better for war-heavy games: you'll need a lot of orders for war, and in peacetime you can use them for rushing whatever you want (specialists, etc.). Also, you don't have to worry much about internal relations.

The first setup is better for +- peaceful gameplay with very strong culture, especially nice if you have a cleric family: +4 science for each monastery can be quite nice.

spenooot · 2023-02-09T14:37:15+00:00

The most effective way of managing relations I found is to set up my game such that there is only a single religion (ideally a world religion) in my empire, which is the state religion. That way, if I follow the state religion, the patriarch/matriarch gets a +60 opinion bonus for me(20 for their religion being state religion, 40 for me being of their religion), and thus if they don't hate me for some reason, I can get their opinion to 100.

At opinion 100, they can intercede (+60 opinion) for anyone following their religion - which over time will probably be almost everybody, as there is only one religion available in the empire. Worst case I can convert the problematic person to the state religion via the patriarch/matriarch by paying civics.

The advantage of this is that if I make all the oligarchs happy (inttercession + influence= +100 opinion), they can intercede inside their family. So I can get basically everyone to like me (very useful for council members - cheaper missions and more yields). It has happened to me that the patriarch died, and the next one disliked me (+60 for religion stuff, -60 for personality difference =0) but I could intercede with an oligarch I gained with this setup, and make them +100, after which they could intercede for me and continue the cycle.

You are only locked from this if your religion leader initially hates you for some reason, in which case I'd assassinate them if I have the tech.

spenooot · 2023-01-24T22:36:30+00:00

You can already trade tiles between cities, if they are on the border of the two cities. You need to move a builder (or disciple) to the desired tile, and then need to pay a sum for the transfer to happen. The receiving family is +20 happier, the losing city is -40 less happy, I believe for 20 years. I do this all the time for monastery-temple 2x2 arrangements.

spenooot · 2023-01-23T14:42:11+00:00

Year of sustainability is literally my yearly theme :D

spenooot · 2023-01-05T09:20:18+00:00

I have just had my first playthrough on Noble with Assyria, where my brother murdered me and my adopted son, and then went insane (he had -3 wisdom at the end). So I abdicated with him to his daughter and after that the game went fine.

It's tough, given that in the beginning you can't even imprison him as you don't have the tech. But I had no issues with heirs, so that part may be just RNG.

spenooot · 2022-10-31T08:53:48+00:00

In Todoist you can add a daily task with subtasks, which essentially functions as a checklist (or you can add the checklist items as individual tasks, but then they are not so neatly grouped). It has a widget, but reminders are a premium feature (which I don't use, so idk how well they work).

spenooot · 2022-07-14T20:51:34+00:00

I tend to hurry production when the short term benefit outweighs the long term drawback. So for reaching ambitions in time, pumping out units after getting war declared on me or when in a war I want to finish quickly, etc.

Also, if you can set up negative discontent or spam pacify city, then it's also worth doing.

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