Some time ago I wrote this:
1 You recruit commanders and normal units in your province with fort (recruit button)
2 The normal troops form squads, which have to be under a commander
control to move around, ala Heroes/King’s Bounty. You have to transfer
them manually.
3 Dominions score in the build Pretender at the start of a game is more important you may believe, raise it up to 7, at least.
4 How to build stuff:
-Commanders can build new forts.
-Priests can build new temples, needed to recruit more priests and other
“holy” units, and help to expand your religious-magical influence in
the world (the white candles). Priests also has the option to preach in a
province, which is like acting like a temple in the spread of the
religion. Priests has a few spells, like Banish (good against undead)
and Blessing (essential to bless special holy troops).
-Mages can build laboratories, needed to recruit more mages.
-Mages can go out to use the action “search magical sites”, which they
give you magical gems over time, the equivalent of mana in other fantasy
4x games.
-Mages in labs can research more magic spells, cast magic rituals (need
gems) which include summoning spells, and forge magical items (also need
gems). They also cast spells on battle, of course.
5 That initial Dominion score, temples and priests help spread your
Dominion, which have certain scores associated to it, the scales you
choose at the start of the game. The idea is simple: if you are a god of
Order and luck, the lands under your Dominion gain more order and luck,
you are a god of death and chaos, the lands will gain said features
(like bonus gold, extra events, province’s population dying, etc etc).
6 Blessing is the most complex but still inside of what we could call
“basic features”, and it’s important because some nations use it as main
strategy.
Your Pretender God has magical scores, like Fire 9 Or Nature 4, you
choose then when you create him. This means he can do Fire and Nature
magic, and he is especially good with Fire spells, but also means the
bless of your god will be related to fire (+attack) and nature (+hp).
Normally every Nation has most types of troops as normal soldiers, and
in addition one elite troop which can be built in the capital, marked as
“sacred” unit. Sacred units can be blessed in the middle of battle by
your priests, your prophet or your own God (that is just another unit in
the game) to gain the extra bonus described above, related to the magic
your Pretender God knows.
Keys to learn
r to recruit
t to setup army
c to see a battle report in the selected province
v to view the battle in the selected province
n is next commander, f is previous commander
m is the message (events) list
y setup army in the “destination” province
shift + M cast spell every month
shift + O forge item every month
control + move to province to force move order instead of sneak order
? to list all the rest of key shortcuts, which are different depending on what windows you are in that moment.
About Pretenders:
There are, in a very general way, four types of gods to choose from:
-Immobile gods (statues usually)
-Titans
-Monsters
-Rainbows (the human guys)
Some people use strategies where most of the pretender design points are
invested in a heavy bless or in scales. In that case, their pretender
won’t do much for most of the game (maybe cast a pair of global
enchantments and some summons in the middle game), so they pick a statue
or fountain, an immobile god in other words.
If they pick a combat capable god (titans, monsters), then they will use
it to help expand in the early turns faster than usual. With a few
types of combat Pretenders and if you pick your battles, they can win
alone, so they can take two provinces per turn, one the Pretender, the
other starting army. Later, when they can forge magical items they can
turn into thugs/SCs, which are terms invented by the community to refer
to units which can take armies on their own.
The difference between titans and monsters is that Titans are more
expensive but they start with two or three magical paths instead of one,
and they can buy the other ones cheaper.
Rainbows are called that way because they are used when you want someone
with the broadest range of magic possible, the human mage Pretenders
can buy new magical paths with just 10 design points. So they can have
Fire 4 / Air 3 / Earth 3 / Astral 5 / Death 2 or whatever. That gives
them some magical flexibility that can be good to solve some unexpected
challenges. With so many magic types they are also good searching
magical sites.
Some of them are picked just for the boost to research, there is one guy
who gives extra research points to every mage in the same province.
While not very exciting, the edge to research can be very important in
the game.
In summary, pretenders can:
-not do a lot, but have a powerful dominion score and good dominion scales that benefit your nation passively
-not do a lot, but have 2-3 magical paths at 9 which gives a good bless to the holy units of that nation.
-Combat, assisted by magic or not.
-Lead armies (lots of them have good leadership bonus)
-Be the most powerful mages in the game: that includes good research
score, potentially good magic site searchers, potentially good variety
and flexibility of magic, casting powerful spells both in battle,
casting powerful rituals like globals and summons.
How to learn the game, First:
a) Read the manual. Use a tablet or a ebook reader and have it as your book to read this week. Do the tutorial included.
b) Faster lookup of units, spells and items here http://larzm42.github.com/dom4inspector
c) Be aware that one of the “problems” for noobs is how front loaded is
the game. Before the first turn there are already very important
strategic choices to make, when you make your Pretender. You have to
know about dominion spread, bless mechanics, scales, choose a pretender
depending of the strengths of your nation, etc.But one you overcome that
problem the game is much more clearer.
Extra reading material: first post in https://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3568182
