Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith

Correct, most sacreds are going to be capital only. You should find that info on the nation screen. Temple primary use case is pushing Dominion and recruiting priests or more likely, mages with a temple requirement.

I think he started playing the series before I did :P. I started like… half a year or a year after the release of Dom4.
And in any case I don’t blame Tom, I blame Illwinter and their lack of real tutorials.

Another (stupid?) Question :

I’m playing as the Giant faction, early age, that has dwarven smiths.

I figured my sacred would smash stuff nicely (seems to be working) and I’d recruit loads of dwarf smiths and tech up to creating uber super powerful items, construction school.

So far this seems possible but I’m wondering if it’s worth it.

My best commander (Vannanheim? ) is expensive so is it viable to recruit several commanders, kit them out with items, send them off with a band of sacred troops as bodyguards, with a mage to cast blesses, and have them fight?

Are there items like the horn of doom (game of thrones) that can bring down walls, or summon a dragon in battle etc? Basically stupidly powerful stuff…

Can items be produced for troops? Would make sense…?

I also produced the giants pebble pouch and some boots of strength or something (that allow my commander to trample units ) however it appears I can’t equip them at all? Missing requirements? Like strength or something? Game doesn’t tell me.

Also, is there no way to teleport items, e.g. from my capital to my secondary labs?

Wait, what?! I didn’t know Pretenders auto-blessed their troops.

I didn’t either, that’s awesome.

What makes you think I don’t understand that sacred troops need to be blessed? The new bless effects are a significant part of this Dominions and I explain that from the get-go. My whole approach was making Joten sacred troops so they could benefit from the effects of bless spells (chill aura and those decay blades). I’m a bit surprised that your takeaway is that I didn’t even know that. Do you mean I’m supposed to manually queue up bless spells?

And what are the “core basic ideas” you think I don’t know? I may not know the particulars of Dominions 5, but I’d hope from watching the video, it’s clear that I do in fact know the basics. What basics am I supposedly missing?

Well, no, you get to blame me, because I’ve read the manual. I’ve done the homework to understand the game. But I haven’t done the homework to get good at the game. So, yeah, ha ha, I lose a game on easy, because my issue is with the particulars. Countering Ermor, specifically.

-Tom

Yes, labs allow you to access magic items and gems in your ‘stash’.

Nope, only commanders can equip items.

That would be the Behemoth Boots. If you’re trying to pair them with another pair of boots, then yeah, you can only equip one. Your commander’s screen will show you all his available slots:

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This is of note as some commanders won’t have all slots.

There is lots of stupid powerful stuff, but it is usually high up the research paths. :)

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Yes…and no. Any commander kitted with gear is colloquially known as a thug. Good thug platforms (ie base before kitting) ideally need a few things - decent HP base, magic paths that allow some level of self-buffing, natural bonuses that have an affinity with thugging - regen, glamour, awe, fear, invulnerability, sacred and able to self-bless, etc. Mant of these you will look to add via an item, but if a commander has some of them naturally, they are potentially a good platform. Some nations have decent thug platforms, others not so much and will rely more on summoning decent commanders, or using something like Gift of Reason to turn a normal unit into a commander.

Here is an example:

That’s a thug I used in a team game we had here that was really, really effective. Without all the gear, that commander has excellent magic paths for self buffing (with access to Strength of Gaia, Regeneration, Mistform, Mirror Image, Stoneskin, etc) and Awe, with strong enough magic paths to not be bogged down with fatigue after self-buffing (fatigue will be the death of you if not managed once you engage in melee).

Items added fill gaps - Frost Brand for melee AoE, Vine Shield prevent getting hit by adjacent enemies, Dragon Helm for Fire resistance and high morale, Shroud of the Battle Saint to make an otherwise non-sacred unit benefit from my nation’s Bless (which from memory provided solid reinvigoration), Winged Shoes for high map mobility, Pendant of Luck (being lucky is very good), Girdle of Might for strength and even more reinvigoration.

These dudettes would spend four or five rounds self-buffing then wade into combat, which is typical for a good thug. With all these buffs, a good thug will just not get hit most of the time, while they methodically mow down enemy chaff all day long. That said, they carried with them a stupid investment in gems and crafting time, so to lose one is a massive set back.

So, if the thug platforms you have access to are not ideal, they can still be effective, but do not over gear them! Or, as you say, pair them with some blessed troops to help mitigate their weaknesses or provide some meat shield.

If you’re playing Vanheim and the expensive commanders you are referring to is the Vanadrott or Vanjarl, then they are not too bad as a platform:

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Sacred and can self-bless - very handy if your bless benefits them. Decent Air, so can Mistform and Mirror Image. Glamour is a decent natural bonus and they have good natural Defence. Biggest problem is lack of HP and no natural way to regenerate (no nature magic) or reinvigorate (earth or nature magic). You will lose these guys, so don’t over-gear them. A Horror Helm, AoE weapon like a Frost Brand and pairing them with a handful of sacred units set to guard commander will make a pretty good raiding force, but your serious gear investments should probably be in a summoned commander of some sort. You could add a Vine Shield and Girdle of Might, but then you’re probably starting to over invest, at least in a MP game.

Vanheim!

yes, that picture looks like my commanders.

I’m guessing I can create items to heal them right?

I should clarify - the troops need to be actually under the command of your Pretender, not just on the same battlefield.

Aye:

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Among others…

So when is it a good idea to queue multiple casts of the same spell? I noticed Das did this sometimes, but not always, in his tutorial videos.

Along the same lines, is it necessary to cast Bless more than once? How long does Bless last?

If a mage has a queue of five spells, does the mage cycle through them again and again, or does the mage cast them only once?

Thanks, that’s important to know.

I have to clarify Shareleo’s clarification: It isn’t true :P
Pretender bless the entire battlefield. In fact I just checked it just in case…

…when you want to cast a spell several times, I guess. Usually you cast one or two protective spells for the mage who is doing the casting (because it sucks when a stray arrow kills a 300g unit), and then whatever defensive or offensive spell you want. It may be the case you just want to rain down fireballs or have a big army to buff, in that case you will order the same spell several times.

Blessing effect has an AoE5, which it means it will affect five squares (NOT all squares in a radius of five). The duration is for the entire current battle.

Mages only go through the queue of 5 orders once, then they will try to follow your general order (which can be attack, cast, fire, advance and cast, etc).

So the better script here would be to cast bless as the first spell, and put the mages near the Sacreds, then send the sacred forward and keep the mages back?

Basically yeah. It’s normal to chooser ‘hold and attack’ order to the sacred squads, so they stay there for two turns, that way your priests or mages have time to bless them before they run off.

Yes it’s possible, in fact it’s one of the key tactics for Vanheim. Vanjarl are good thugs. They start with defense 22! They have air magic to cast mistform and other good spells like Cloud Trapeze to attack behind enemy lines, they have glamour, they are stealthy and fast, they are sacred and are priests themselves so they can autobless…

On the other hand, it’s a bit more difficulty you may think to do a good thug, you can’t throw whatever better-than-average commander with some random magical items and expect to win against armies. It’s what people usually does when they are starting with the game, and usually ends way sooner than they could think of.
To be honest it requires a more intimate knowledge of the game, how fatigue and encumbrance works, how protection stacks, how to counter being surrounded, the concept of layered defenses… and do everything in an economical way, because if you are spending 90 gems in a dude what just going to capture 5 half empty provinces, you could have done it from the start with a few dozen spearmen, for cheaper and in less turns.

The particular @Spock was asking was in regards to buff spells, I think: Das spams the same Sermon of Courage repeatedly, and it isn’t really apparent if he does it only for a timing reason, or because their effects would stack. I think what @Spock wanted to know was which buffing or debuffing spells stacked, and how to tell them apart. Well at least that’s what I want to know.

Also Tom’s stream was anything but painful to watch, mean sir! Maybe you had to be here, but it was one of my favourite of this year - besides his Hat in Time magnum opus, of course.

It might also be a mounted commander. Leaders on horseback don’t get to wear boots with special abilities.

Yep, Left_Empty, part of what I was asking was whether buffs stack.

Also, I was curious whether Blessing had a limited range. I see from part 2 of the manual that spells have varying ranges; Blessing is listed as “15+.” Does this mean its minimum range is 15, but more powerful priests can cast it from further away? Also, it says AoE “5+”; does this mean it can affect a minimum of 5, and possibly more units?