It’s one major difference that always get me confused when I come back from CoE!
@TurinTur: thank you for all those tips: I am definitely not ready for MP. Evaluating forces is hard enough for me, but to be able to factor in the optimal dominion effect… Pssht goes my brain.
I didn’t read through all of Turin’s post, but i’ll mention the counterpoint - early expansion is great IF you can do it. That kind of knowledge really only comes through experience - knowing what your troops are likely to survive and what they aren’t and there’s not a more fundamental divide in dominions play. In essence, it’s Sun Tzu 101 - know your enemy and know yourself.
In my present MP game, i launched on a bit of a gamble - with only 15 archers, a prophet, and a half dozen of my sacred ‘cavalry’ i attacked and won two provinces. True to turin’s post - aggressiveness is good. But I launched that attack based on the knowledge that my forces, and in particular, the sacred 6 cavalry were strong enough to win the battles i put them in. However, if i was wrong - i likely would have been set back so far as to have just left the game.
Part of what makes dominions a great game is that ‘feel’ you get as an experienced player. Yes…you might lose. A roll might go wrong. Shit might just go sideways. But…you have a feel the more you play this…yes. These troops will win this battle. These troops will take that province. And it’s why I started this current game and didnt expand in round two, but have been successful since. My latest battle was my ~ 24 troops against ~50…but ultimately it came down to those 6 sacreds…and sure enough, i’ve won again (and hi…niefelheim?) but now down to 22 troops (and 6 sacreds).
I think it was @tomchick that great choices make great fun. And dominons is a game about making those great choices…
I believe the AI doesn’t consider this an automatic act of war. I had some times where the AI didn’t attack me after a fortuitous clash like this.
Just started watching your stream Tom. Firstly, I can appreciate the difficulty in trying to both play the game, explain what you are doing and communicating with an audience at the same time. These aren’t basics you’re missing, but some general thoughts I have.
With Pretender design, I reckon going cold 3 would have been a good idea. I always see that as extra points that can be spent elsewhere. Your economy won’t suffer too badly, particularly during the warmer months when lands under your dominion are more likely to drift back to the ideal cold 2. In fact, by staying at cold 2, I think you’d be more likely to fluctuate between cold 1 and cold 3 and it could well affect your income worse as a result.
The death pick up seemed a little odd - that is the pick up of withering weapons. Your sacreds are the giants and you won’t really be able to recruit many of those each turn for a start. Secondly, the giants hit hard enough already and should one hit kill most units, a decay chance in my opinion doesn’t add much. In saying that, the chill aura looks pretty good to flesh out your giants you’d use as thugs, but probably more useful if you were playing defensive. Although I wonder if Ermor would go cold anyway. Bandar I think prefers warm climates. Add to the death pick up, you’ve already got commanders that have death access (death 3) would a death 4 Pretender add much beyond the bless effect?
Based on those two points alone, I’d say investing more in scales would help more than bless effects. But that’s the beauty of Dominions that I appreciate the most is how there are a number of ways to play each nation. The vast array of combinations; spells, items, Pretenders, bless effects, there is so much going on and its impossible to know exactly what an enemy is doing. It reinforces the idea of how important scouting is in this game.
One thing I noted is spell casting and precision stat. Essentially, banishment was missing the skeleton warrior in the first battle. It wasn’t targeting the wolf, it was targeting the skeleton, but the spell kept missing.
For a Giant nation, they are the most valuable unit. I haven’t gotten too much further into the stream, but I’m getting worried at the giants on the front line being surrounded by smaller units that aren’t yours. Giants can take a few hits but will undoubtedly die to a swarming army. It’s the mechanics behind defensive skill and how multiple attacks on the same target take away that defense skill. As as example, I played as Jotunheim on a MP game a while ago and was fighting Pangean white centaurs blessed to have a high defence skill. They were nearly untouchable, but I had a horde of Vaetti (goblins) in front of the army. Part of the idea was to chip away at the defensive skill of the white centaurs, and the spears helped within the Dom 4 repel mechanics. With the Vaetti on the front line, my giants on the back were able to push through as the primary DPS guys and smash the white centaurs into the ground. It is a combined arms approach necessary with Dominions, and this combined arms is something I never really experience much in any other game. Death, or even wounding a giant has a solid economical impact given their cost.
I skipped ahead, and I’d say Ermor did just what I was concerned with above - swarmed you with numbers. I saw the big fight at The Mirks and shook my head. 2-3 Ermor troops per square bashing away at a single giant isn’t going to lead to good times. Bad luck Tom.
It seems the Dom5 Inspector is now more or less complete, before it was missing some categories like spells or events. Time to do a summary of what we have, including Dom4 to do the comparison:
Dom 5 Items: 407, 17 national. Dom 4: 371, 9 national.
Dom 5 Spells: 966, 875 not counting the Holy path. Dom4: 909, 855 not counting H.
Dom 5 Units: 3286, 2270 national. Dom 4: 3114, 2167 national.
Dom 5 sites: 1157. Dom 4: 1028.
Dom 5 mercs: 76. Dom 4: 68.
Dom 5 events: 3220. Dom 4: 3193.
Dom 5 weapons: 721. Dom 4: 678.
Dom 5 armors: 235. Dom 4: 215.
For example these are the new national items:
I <3 Illwinter.
And new national spells:
Nice. End of Culture I have used before, but the rest look new. Same with the Jade Mask; that was there before, but maybe it didn’t used to have the national flag.
It’s a different spell, using the same name.
Now it’s a global spell, that doubles the freespawn gained by Yomi.
Oh! Nice!
Pretenders and disciples in dom 5 are auto-blessed in their dominion, but cannot be blessed outside their dominion.
I don’t see that mentioned in the manual under bless or dominion effects. Is it still true that sacred units are auto blessed if in the same army as the pretender? I don’t see that mentioned in the manual either. The manual does say that pretenders are not sacred and can’t be blessed, so I’m confused.
It will be! Manual is still being updated. When it is ready, it will be available for printing on Lulu with all the unit stats and spells, etc.
Sacred units should be blessed on the same battlefield as the pretender, regardless of whether or not they are in the same army or even came from the same province. EDIT: This must be in their own dominion, however, just like the pretender.
Is there a way to highlight where all commanders on the map? I see little troop icons in various provinces, but I can’t tell which provinces contain commanders and which don’t. I know I can right-click on a province to see the commanders there, or use the N key to cycle through commanders, or look at a list of commanders using F1 – but I’d like a “big picture” view of which commanders are where. Maybe I’m missing something?
[F1] will give you your overview screen.
No, you aren’t missing anything. The game UI is lacking like that.
For example in the F1 screen you should be able to go to the recruit screen of every province (right click?) but you can’t.
One thing I didn’t realize until right now is that in the army setup screen you no longer need to exit out of a squad’s battle position to select a different squad - just right-click on the red box of the squad you want to select.
Good tip about squad selection, Brooksi; thanks.
I won my first game! OK, it was one-on-one vs the easy AI, and the map setup unfairly favored me. I was Machaka against R’yleh, and all the thrones were above-ground, while R’yleh’s territory was all underwater at first. Still, it was a good learning game for me. I experimented with spells, crafting, summoning, battle formations, etc. I enjoyed watching the ebb and flow of my “heat” scale, especially as the thrones I occupied all seemed to induce cold. Anyway, I won in early spring of year 4.
So, time to increase the AI difficulty. I might still spring for a small map one-vs-one. Also, I used east-west wraparound, but that feature annoyed me the whole game; on a tiny map, east and west duplicated themselves on either side of my screen. I think this time I’ll try not wrapping around.
5.07 update
MA Man (LA too? no idea) has access to N1 spells to do the communion master/slave. In the Thaum school.
5.08 is out, which I think was a hotfix for the supply bug. Also, there will be a printable manual available from Lulu soon.
