Sigh. I guess it sounds a little weird, but part of the reason I’ve not gotten back into playing dominions is the feeling that all those hours spent learning the ins and outs of every wrinkle to the old communions is now useless, and I’m worried that the game will feel stripped down and over-simplified.
I get the impression that Dom5 continues the general trend of shifting the balance of power away from mage commanders in favor of troops. Is that true?
I would say only in a very light way. Communions can produce a bit more of fatigue, big spells need more casting time, small details like that.
The winner is still the one who complements his army with better and more mages than the opponent in a smart manner.
Can anyone tell me the difference between EA Ur ‘Fortified Cities’, EA Hinnom ‘Giant Forts’, and EA Most Everyone Else ‘Standard Forts’? And where I can find this information on my own? I can’t find it in the manual or in the Dom5 inspector.
Thanks, that’s super helpful.
Is there a way to look at the stats of enemy units in a neighboring province within the game that I’m missing? I can look them up in the manual, but I’d like to be able to view the enemy units that are known to exist in a province.
Thanks. The most difficult thing about the game and Conquest of Elysium is looking at the units to figure out how your armies match up. It would be nice if in Dom5Inspector there was a way to see what unit abilities mean.
So even though i have problems with some of the fundamental designs of the Dominions series, and it often frustrates me to no end, i discovered a faction that really appeals to me.
Ys is cool because i’d never heard of the mythology of Ys before (although rattling around in my noggin there is a memory of some old video game (NES? SNES?) with the name of Ys), and Breton mythology being a thing is pretty cool. (And did you know there’s a province in Brittany called Cornouaille I didn’t! Now i have to go visit Brittany.)
But also… that combination of bless effects that i rolled… and those fire breathing sea horses… i didn’t realize low level blessings could be stacked. IE, 2 Air speed blessings = +60% increased battle speed. 4 nature health blessings stacked = +4hp, ect. So i end up with situations like this:
Yikes!
Wow! Impressive!
I enjoyed toying with those overpowered sacred units of theirs as well.
For info, the two original old Falcom games make some references to some variation of the Breton myth, for instance the hero is named Adol Christin, a redhead, while the fall of Ys was brought by the Redheaded Cretin/Christian. Haven’t had that hero join the cause in Dominions yet, though I guess he isn’t much of a hero.
In the last Dom4 MP game here at Qt3, I had those Morgen Princesses thugged out. A good bless, access to some useful buffs, they don’t need much else. Include a bodyguard of Morvarch knights and they’ll roll through a lot of troops.
I don’t know what has changed with Ys in Dom5, but I can only assume they are still hamstrung by their dependence on coastal or underwater provinces for recruitment. Pushing into land means supplementing armies with indy troops to replace losses.
Yes, I think Ys is basically the same in Dom5, their biggest change is how they are affected by the new bless system, as they are very bless-based.
I found them a bit gimmicky, to be honest. They do one thing well (super expensive but super powerful sacred units/thugs) and that’s it. I miss in them a bit more of unit variety.
Oh, they must have been introduced to Dom 4 after the point i had stopped playing it. Sure enough i booted up 4 and they were there. They were just new to me in 5!
I miss the music from 4, now that i heard it again. The music in 5 i end up turning off. About half of it is good, about half of it is annoying enough it ruins the rest.
Ys was the last nation introduced in Dom4.
And btw, yesterday there was an update for the game, I didn’t post it because it was mostly bugfixing, but it also included some new heroes for LA Ulm.
Dominions 5.14
The new mystic is for LA Arco. They have Reincarnation, SpellSinger, D1N1 + 50%? +50%?, for 95g he seems pretty good, 25% of them will have four magic paths.
Two of the three new spells are remote curse spells, to curse enemy commanders. They have the curious effect of also cursing a random unit in your province, so it’s a double edged sword. One spell is D1 for greek nations, and the other is S1D1 for Jotun nations.
The third spell is a summon spell, Bind Keres, Conj6, D2, needs 9 death gems. It summons 3 of these:
Which is pretty damn good. In fact I would say it’s slightly too cheap right now. It has
-Good stats (17 hp, 14at, 14def, 16mr)
-2 magical attacks with additional AN paralyze effect against undeads.
-Ethereal
-Flying / Storm flying
-Fear aura
-Stealth/Invisible
-Unrest generator
I just completed an 11-person game that ran for a few months. I kept good notes and will post an update, year by year, over the next few days. I didn’t want to post while the game was running because my enemies are constantly watching me! ;-)
The set-up was 11 nations, randomly drawn from nations that we did not often play. Middle Ages, average map settings, cataclysm on turn 75. 11 L1 thrones + 11 L2 thrones = 33 throne points on the map. Ascension was set to 33% so 11 throne points would win the game. We kept to in-game diplomacy only, so messages to other nations could only be sent via the game itself.
The nations we selected were:
The Good Nations, Modern and Just:
Caelum: “A Mageocracy of Winged Humanoids who Inhabit the Highest Mountain Peaks” with a love of Air.
Eriu: “A Nation of Humans and Fir Bolg Lead by the Awakened Sidhe” with a love of Air.
Man: “A Feudal Kingdom of Knightly Humans, Cousins to Eriu” with a love of Nature.
The Neutral Nations, Ancient and Wise:
Bandar Log: “Apes of Uncanny Brightness from the Forests” with a love of Astral
Uruk: “A Warm plain inhabited by large hairy wild men with horns and unkempt hair” with a love of Astral
The Dusk Nations, Deep and Grey:
Agartha: “Strange One-Eyed Humanoids from Dark Caverns” with a love of Earth.
Machaka: “Priests Rule a Jungle Kingdom with Spiders and Witch Doctors” with a love of Earth and Nature
Xibalba: “A vast realm of Dark, Watered-Filled Caverns Under a Jungle” with a love of Water.
The Evil Nations, Black and Twisted:
Nazca: “A Mountain Necrocracy of Winged Mummified Humanoids” with a love of all paths
Sceleria: “A Splinter Nation of the Undead Empire, where the Dead serve the Living” with a love of Death
Shinuyama: “Strange Dark Beasts and Armored Swordsmen who form a Tribal Society in Caves” with a love of Death
I received Sceleria randomly. Its a pretty good nation, and it would be my first time playing as undead. No matter what nation I received, I wanted to try a super-combatant (SC) pretender because I had never tried one and because one was used so effectively in the last big game I played (I still have nightmares about “Two Shieldz” the Ettin). Sceleria gets reduced cost on Prince of Death, which is a reasonable SC chassis with flying, fear, undead package and leadership.
I discovered the Scalerian Vestals were awesome, with ethereal and good base speed. I increased Death slightly to get the Invulnerability bless (damage reduction of 10 versus normal weapons) which helped both the pretender’s durability and also the Vestals. I debated the second path quite a bit and decided on Earth for the decreased afflictions blessing. In practice sessions the more Vestals I kept from fight to fight the more powerful the nation became, and afflictions are an issue with undead leaders because of no healing.
I added some negative scales like cold and sloth because gold and production are needed less by undead. I increased Dominion to 8 (from 3) to increase the number of capital-only Vestals I could recruit per turn. 8 dominion * 24 months = 192 Vestals vs 6 dominion * 24 month = 144 vestals, a difference of almost 50 after two years. 50 Vestals hit very hard!
The pre-game strategy was to keep the SC Prince of Death and the initial Vestals together to take provinces one by one, and add a powerful Prophet with H4 for the super undead blessing and the remaining Vestals after a few rounds. This would mean low research, no site searching and little other recruitment in the beginning. Mid-game strategy was to kit the SC Prince with defensive and combat items, and to maybe head to Conjuring 6 for Bane Lords. Overall, keeping with strong SC and Thug commanders leading blessed, ethereal, resistant troops.
Here is what my pretender looked like.
Next post … the first year.
Looking forward to it!
Year Zero:
Expansion went as planned. I wanted to avoid barbarians whenever possible, since in testing the barbarians hit the Protection 9 SC too hard. I had a strong barbarian indie as one of my core provinces so I had to divert around them. This meant lower gold than ideal for a few turns, which delayed my recruitment of research mages a little. Other than that, expansion went fine with one province taken per month for the first full year.
Tactics were the Pretender in the middle, casting buffs on himself, and unleashing his paralyzing specters (which the Prince of Death gets for free). In the middle were the decreasing number of human troops from the starting army. On the top and bottom both set to “attack rear” were the ethereal Vestals, with the +attack +speed +magic resistance +morale battlefield buffs from the prophet.
The provinces I took were pretty good, a mix of fields, forests and mountains. I did not wait and site search so gem production was low. I had 2-3 special production or gold sites that did not need discovering out of the 12 or so provinces, which seemed lucky. I was quickly #2 in provinces, gold and dominion.
My initial location was advantageous. I was on the far western coast, with a large forested mountain range between my capital provinces and my nearest neighbor to the east (Man). My norther neighbor Eriu was focusing on research and not expanding much. I almost accidentally attacked by southern neighbor, Machaka, whose golem pretender was similar in composition to my pretender. I was offensive, he was defensive - it would not have been a fun fight.
I decided to eventually focus on Eriu, since their early game research would put them at a disadvantage in the field, and made peace with Machaka. Man had some player issues and had to drop to AI. I took a single province from Caelum who appeared to have over-extended. All in all this meant I had room to expand.
I traded Death gems, which I had tons of, for Earth gems, which I needed for the SC’s kit, from 2 different nations. I traded some intel with someone on the other side of the continent and was able to put together a map of where everyone’s capital was:
Eriu 125 … Xibalba ?? … Bandar Log ??
Sceleria 78 … Man 64 … Caelum ?? … Shin 69
Machaka 17 … Agartha 23 … Uruk 43 … Nazca 34
My research was Alt 2 for Skeletal Body and Stoneskin, and Thau 1 for Frighten - all for my pretender. Then Construction 2 to prep for the gear for the next phase. That’s not a lot of research for the first year, I was at the bottom of the score graphs. I had to dedicate my few mages to it, and had to forgo site searching as mentioned, but also had to delay raising undead for free from each province.
At the end of the year I had completed my initial expansion without much fuss, losing only a vestal or two, and with no afflictions on my Pretender and only a lost arm on my prophet (which doesn’t impact a caster much). Out of 40 or so Vestals in the field only 1 had an affliction - the earth bless was working well.
I split my force, sent my pretender back to my capital to start forging his first set of equipment, reinforced my prophet’s army with additional Vestals and an undead melee commander, and sent the large army around again to clean up the border and maybe then swing north to attack Eriu.
I was in no rush to take thrones. I would rather have good defenses, a good economy and the bulk of my initial force with 2-3 stars of experience ready to turn into something nasty in a few years. The best nation had 3 throne points needed out of 11 by the end of year zero, and a few others had 1 or 2. I didn’t see how anyone could win in the next year.
Here is my position at the end of the first year.
Next post … the second year.
