The latest iteration of the series just announced by Illwinter… and arriving in less than two months. Real time battles, more spells, new nations, new 3D engine!
New Features
Real time combat
Per unit combat logs
Design your pretender’s bless effect
Priest’s banishment and smite spells will depend on what type of god he follows
History playback when game is over, see how dominion spread and provinces changed owners
New random maps with bridges and better looking terrains
New resource system with recruitment points that encourages recruiting in highly populated areas
Fortifications built by starting at the basic type, then upgrading it later
New research queue, researching is now one school at a time
New movement system
Winter shown on map and affects movement
Dominion overlay on map to clearly show its boundaries
New retreat system, good leaders can prevent units from dispersing in all directions
Updated user interface with information more clearly presented than before
New 3d-engine with better looking terrain, huge performance increase for good graphics cards
More reliable network, now works on less than perfect connections too
New nations
Some old nations have been reworked and updated
More spells, magic items, special abilities, events, monsters, titles, thrones, …
There is also a large number of new mechanics and unit traits that can affect a battle. E.g. shields can be damaged or broken if struck by a very hard blow, so using shields against giants with large axes may not be adviseable.
I hope for example that large units like giants have a chance to hit two small units, instead of one. It would be a way to fix the problem of large vs small units that Dominions have (small hobbits are more powerful than a giant, because the bonus of multiple attackers against a single defender is pretty big).
Perhaps the biggest change is the change to recruitment. It seems Illwinter didn’t like how everyone ignored the new fort options, and always built the cheapest ones, so now bigger forts give more commander recruitment points. Finally a reason to build them.
Yep, it actually never made sense to me, how your god is imprisoned, and it didn’t matter a lot because somehow his/her bless and scales affected the Dominion. If you make a Pretender which is all about a strong bless/scales, taking Imprisoned was pure advantage with little penalty.
edit: ohh, I just thought another big change. At first the change to real time battles seemed nice (shorter big battles), but tactically there is an important difference: Before people were ‘exploiting’ the fact that a single turn doesn’t happen at the same time like in a WEGO system, inside a single turn there was a order between the units, and people used that to chain up spells in the correct order, to be able to launch a big spell at the end of turn 1 instead of turn 3, despite needing other spells done by his mage companions. Not anymore.
Note “Saravan Guard here costs 46 rec points and a map move of 14. Map Move is done differently where moving through provinces is generally easier now, as the province type is a fixed value (normal and farmland is 6, Forest and Waste is 10, Cave 12, Mountains 16, Snow +4, Enemy Controlled Territory +8 (or 6 for stealthy units), Roads -4)”
LA Erythea(=Pelagia, sort of) cap-only StR. Won’t be old unless she hits several randoms, but can always start with afflictions. She can also marry one of her brothers and become H3. Male version has slightly different paths and is older but overall very similar
(The new icon is Sun awe: it’s like awe but weaker in snow/rain and doesn’t work in caves water & darkness)
