There are a lot of things in dominions that turned out to work differently than the devs intended, but they let things stand because it was cool. I always thought communions would stay that way and I was bummed when they made the change. Linebacker communions were rarely as effective as it sounds (there are usually non-communion ways to buff your thugs anyway). Reverse communions, on the other hand, were a basic staple of nations like mid-Ermor and removing them is a huge nerf to those nations.
Being an only Dom4 player, the other day I was thinking that, given the self buffs casted apply to every member of the communion, and that some nations have thug-like dudes with some astral or blood, it would be possible to buff a lot a group of mages with alterations and enchantments and script them to attack after a pair of turns waiting. I even localized one particular unit that would be good doing it. After I was reminded it couldn’t work because slaves are paralysed :(… and that in fact I didn’t invent anything new, that was the old linebackers communions in Dom3, if I’m not mistaken, eliminated together the reverse communions.
I also read about reverse communions and I get why they got eliminated, but linebackers communions seemed a valid tactic to me, and not that exploitable. Given I couldn’t try, maybe I’m wrong.
I really wish I understood any of what you are talking about. Given my already tenuous understanding of the magic system and casting in general, when you talk communions I’m lost.
I’m going to give a “strong” opinion about a change for the eventual Dominions 5. They took away taxes management in Dom4, reducing the micro. Given that step, there is one more I would like to have: the need to be in a lab to take magical gems. Just say they can be magical teleported given their magical nature. It’s so much of a bother to be taking a few gems each time (it isn’t like they are infinite, you need them for other stuff, so you can’t give 30 gems to each mage and be done with it), or having to come back for them in the middle of a war, or having to micro “couriers” transporting them, that lots of times newer players don’t use as much as they can be use in battles for example, to boost paths.
Or as compromise, put an abstract “courier” system where you can order gems anywhere and they appear in their inventory 1-3 turns after, depending of the distance of the closest lab.
Communions are the more byzantine part of the magic system, yeah.
Basically you script a mage with the “Communion master” spell, and others with the “communion slave” spell, or blood spell equivalent, and they are linked, with the slaves turning into “energy batteries” and the master gains two benefits :1. he doesn’t win fatigue casting spells, it’s distributed among the slaves, 2. he wins +n to his magical paths, with n being 1 to 5 depending of the number of slaves (2,4,8,16,32). So you need tons of mages to do a big one. You can also have several masters, like 3 masters and 10 slaves, with the 3 masters increasing the fatigue of 10 slaves.
Reverse communions was the nickname for an unintended “trick” people used, something about buffing the slaves mages through the communion with spell boosting (see next paragraph) and knowing in what order the mages will cast their spells given their id made you be able to cast spells in the battle for slaves, I think it was something like that.
Linebacker communions use the fact there is a “bonus” in the communions, and it’s that the spells cast by the master to himself (like summon earthpower or aim or ironskin), the effect is also applied to the slaves. That way you can give +1 Earth and reinvigoration to the slaves if you have Earth, with Summon Earthpower. The idea was to cast lots of defensive buffs like ironskin, mistform, luck, quickness and whatever and order your commanders-mages in the communion to attack, as a cheap way to cast the buff spells on them in one go, instead of one by one, and using less fatigue.
In any case, reverse and linebacker communions were eliminated in Dom4, as you say the game is complex enough.
Byzantine is right! I don’t know if I’d have ever come up with that playing the game. Thank you for the explaniation though. Dominions is a game I’ve been going back to and learning bit by bit. Thanks for filling in one of the more obscure corners of the game for me :)
I avoided both Astral and Blood magic in my first games because of that :P
Speaking of magic in Dominions, I remember when I was starting with the game and looked at the spells and thought “bah most low-levels spells are barely worth casting given the price of mages, need for research, time needed to recruit them, etc, and the high-level spells can’t be casted by the normal mages who have just 1-3 in a magic path”. It actually seemed weird that magic wasn’t that important in this magical fantasy TBS game I heard so much about.
But there are ways around it.
- There are some mages that have random paths, so maybe that level 2 or 3 mage can be sometimes level 3 or 4. Recruit enough and you will have a few of them.
- Empowerment. Super expensive, but it can be done for specific cases.
- Items with path boosting. Some paths can be buffed 1 or 2 points with a magical item you can forge.
- Spells with path boosting. Some elements can be buffed with a spell, to use at the start of the battle. Summon Earthpower, Summon Phoenix Power, Summon Storm Power, Light of the Northern Star, etc.
- Using a gem to gain +1 for a spell.
- Communions, if you have mages with blood or astral, you can gain 1-4 points in battle spells.
With a combination of this, I reached level 11! Astral with a mage that just had Astral 3. He had 25% change of 1 extra Astral, 2,5% chance of a second astral point, there are two spells that buff his magical scores, he had 3 path boosting items, and a small communion for an extra point. That’s how you can cast Master Enslave in that big battle :).
Basically the first thing I do when I’m going to try a new nation is to see what magic level reach my national mages, and what level of item boosters can forge, and then what level of national/general mage summons can do, and what the highest level I can reach transferring the item boosters to the new mages or doing new ones, and then what high level battle spells and global enchantments I’m going to be able to cast.
You also need to look at the random cross paths. Maybe one dude is Air3 Earth 1 with a random of 100% Water/Air/Death/Earth. So recruiting hiim is oing to give you 4 variants of the mage: he is going to be A4E1, or A3E2, or A3E1D1, or A3E1W1, so there will be 4 variants of items and spells each one can do, and because there are items and spells that need two magical paths they could be able to use some of them, and in lots of cases said items and spells are a bit stronger than normal (I suppose to balance the fact they are harder to use)
Convoluted? Oh yes.
Shuttling gems around is one of the more annoying things around. In most cases it does make it hard to go on a rampage, but with a lot of micromanagement you can get around it.
Communions aren’t as complex as they seem, at least they never were to me. A bunch of wusses make a few other dudes badasses. Possibly at the cost of their own lives. Keeping them alive is the only really complex part of the equation imo.
Another cool thing is to craft a Crystal Matrix for a mage to make them a communion master even if they don’t have Astral or Blood magic. The Slave Matrix I used a lot more when reverse communions were a thing, but you can make someone a communion slave with one of those. Crystal Shields are another very nice item, although more expensive and harder to craft in Dom 4, that boost all magic paths of the mage by one through its auto cast of Power of the Spheres.
Yeah, Astral magic lacks “punch”, one of the most “offensive” spell against armies is just Stellar Cascades that basically puts people to sleep :P.
But what they lack in punch they give in versatility and scalability: communions, easy item boosters like crystal coin and skullcap, two booster spells while the normal thing is just one (power of the spheres and northern lights, the last one global to the battle), two items with auto-cast these two spells, the banner or Northern lights and Crystal Shield, matrices to speed up communions, the Dispel spell, lots of mobility (astral travel, teleport, gateway), the possibility to mind hunt enemies, bf spells like Antimagic and Doom, anti thug spells like soul slay, opposition and enslave mind, and finally Arcane Nexus, Wish and Master Enslave.
And don’t sell Stellar Cascades short. One caster won’t do much, but Stellar Cascade spam is a huge force multiplier against SCs, thugs and armies. Fatigue kills - high fatigue lowers defense and greatly increases critical hits.
Yeah I know, it’s a good spell to spam when you have 20 S1 mages + light of northern start. But it was a nice example of how “indirect” is Astral, while other magic schools directly blown them up into bits.
So I played my first game today, just a quick small map/one opponent to learn how things worked. And I won, but I have no idea how.
I was happily recruiting dudes, moving armies around, conquering provinces, raising undead…you know, as you do…and I ran into the other player. We fought back and forth over a couple of provinces for a while, decimated each others armies a bit, and then settled into a sort of cold war buildup. I was amassing a Serpent Army of Doom and moving it into position to attack, when suddenly I get a message saying that I’d won…the other guy was dead. No battles that turn, certainly nothing I’d done, but apparently he just croaked on his own or something. I did have two Thrones, but there were three on the map, so it wasn’t victory by Throne-sitting.
So, that was interesting. Will certainly be trying again, probably on a larger map with a bit more manuevering room, since that small map left very little room to do anything before the battles started.
Question - if you’re a non-aquatic race, what’s the best way to deal with rivers in your way, and underwater provinces nearby? I saw a Flight spell, but it looks like it’s tactical, not something I can cast on an army for movement. And nothing I ran across allowed ship-building, although the manual does reference units with a sailing ability.
You can set up how many thrones you need to win a game. 3 of 5, 3 of 3, 5 of 10, etc. The question is, did you won just one turn after reclaiming a throne?
If yes, then it was that. If not, then you won by Dominion pushing.
In any case Dominions is known as a “mp” game because the AI isn’t good enough, it can’t be given the game’s scope and complexity. You can some fun playing against it in Mighty AI, two notches above the normal AI, when you are more familiar with the game and remember to put the type to standard or aggressive instead of random. There are more settings above it but it just cheats more and more and more, and it just isn’t fun to fight the 10th 400 man army they throw you in a row. Still, I have fun checking around different nations, and with 80 of them…
Rivers usually have bridges to cross over in some provinces, or they can freeze on winter. If you refer as pure sea provinces (there are some maps when a “river” made of a row of sea provinces is in the made of the map), well:
-There is no ship building, no.
-There are some units with abstract “ship use”, the sailing ability, it allows to travel up to 4 provinces across water with an army of hundreds. And one item that gave you the same ability, a pocket magical ship or something like that.
-Flying units can’t fly over sea. It’s bullshit, I know. The other day it happened to me, I just wanted to fly over one single sea province and I couldn’t :(. It’s a strange omission, given how complete can be the mechanics of the game. Though the ability it can serve to fly over real rivers, mountains, swamps, etc. There are also items that give the flying ability.
-There are water breathing items, both for personal use and army.
-In fact the real problem is when you are an underwater nation and want to “get out”, there are barely any items that gives the ability to breathe air as water.
You know, though we talk a lot about the game’s mechanics, given their deep and the difficulty to grasp everything, I think my favorite thing about Dominions aren’t the mechanics but the setting, the style, the tone. Other fantasy game are super vanilla in their fantasy, where the factions are “orcs”, “elves”, “humans”, “dwarves”, and little else. I ask… “who are they, really?” And the answer is “an orc is an orc, the do orc-like things. They are green”. Humans are humans, their niche is defined by the virtue of not being a fantasy creature in the fantasy setting. Etc
Boring, unimaginative. Super vainilla and generic, run of the mill heroic fantasy tone and D&D style of world.
While Dominions have a different vibe, it’s more a sword & sorcery / dark fantasy setting, which a style barely used in video games instead of generic fantasy somewhat inspired by D&D. The nations have a personality, a certain character, even if there is no campaign nor voice actors. It isn’t the same saying Ulm or R’yleh or Agharta or Sceleria or Vanheim. I find their mix of real history with mythology and their own unique flair of fantasy really good.
Not only that, the game world isn’t static, there is a sense of history (I suppose thanks one of the devs is a history teacher?) in it. It isn’t only flair text, looking at the nation troops, you can see Agharta or Abysia or Caelum changing over the ages, you can see the migration of Atlanteans when they lose their citadel to an icy land or to the jungles (LA Atlanits or LA Mictlan), you can see all the big chaos with Ermor and their undead pratices that affected several nations, or the civil war in Vanehim, and I like how some times the nations are mixed, like it would happen in real life, in nations like Ragha, Nazca, Atlantis, the Hinnom giant in Berytos being adored as a god, Lanka having Kailassa monkeys controlled by demons, all the elves nations that get eventually mixed with humans, etc.
Yeah, sounds like a ‘domkill’ - short for dominion kill. The dominion strength is represented by the little candles on the map, and if you left-click on one of your temple sites or push the ‘o’ key, it’ll give you a full breakdown of how many candles you are producing per turn.
Its worth reading the rules on this, but the simple version is - candles represent how strongly people believe in your God, and if nobody believes in you, you cease to exist :)
Ah, ok, the dominion victory was probably it, as I had a whole lot of little candle things. As I caught sight of his territories during our various skirmishes, it was apparent that the AI didn’t have squat in the candlepower department.
Sounds like the game just didn’t last long enough for me to discover the sailing units and/or water-breathing items. Will have to keep an eye out in the next one.
Thanks for the info, fellas!
The sailing units are usually a national thing. You either have them or you don’t.
Water breathing items usually require certain magical types. Water mages and Air mages are the two that come to mind being able to contruct items that will get you under the seas.
That link goes to a local file on your hard drive :)
Lol, true, I had open the local version XD.