They’ve removed taxes and non-artifact gem generator items so that takes out some of the micromanaging. You’ll still find yourself spending hours managing your armies but that is really what the game is about. In that regard it is much the same except some very small UI improvements e.g. assigning spells is now a first in first out queue so if you accidentally misclick the wrong spell when making your spell queue you dont have to redo the lot.
The micromanagement really depends on how optimized you want to be and how big or late in the game your empire is. To really wring out all the performance you can get out of a turn, you can spend an awful long time researching spells available and strategies and spending time individually scripting and placing armies. However, most of the time you can go 75-90% of the way, which you can do fairly quickly once you get used to the game systems, and still be effective. You may not win MP games against the pros, but you can still have an enjoyable game and compete against the AI quite well.
I learned back in the day through the various forums on the game including guides people had written and AARs of games people played. Starting out I would pick a nation/strategy that someone else had used and followed that to get used to the game systems and start to succeed a bit. After doing this quite a few times I would start to use the guide that @psyanojim linked above and search for nations, summons, and other spells to build strategies around and to play/test with in games. This started with the Shrapnel game forums, which still has some good references from Dom 2-3 that somewhat still apply, then went to Desura and now I am not sure where the go to forum for information is. I wrote an AAR of our MP game here a year or so ago I can dig up a link on, if it would be helpful, that does a 1000+ word write-up of my first 35+ turns or so. It can at least explain some of the thinking that goes into a nation/pretender strategy and how one person can manage expansion and some other game systems.
If you guys get a game going, I would be willing to be a sounding board to bounce questions off of for a player. We did some disciple games in the past where we would try to pair up new players with veterans, but I am not sure how well that went over. It may be a bit overwhelming for some players when a veteran starts pumping them with tons of information during the setup and turns. @Thraeg may be able to shed some light on this. I thought this type of game would be right up his alley, but I don’t think it took for him and not sure if our disciple game helped or hurt there :). One option would be to pair a veteran player with each new game player in a MP game that would just be a resource to ask questions and bounce strategies off of in private. Not sure if that would make sense, but an idea :).
I also picked it up cheap. It’s a super rich game, but very confusing to a beginner. A newbie game could be interesting.
The manual has a nice stepped run through of the first 10 turns or so of a game. And the manual is written by Bruce Geryk, so you know it is good. Not, ‘it’s full of hexes and chits and CRT’s’ good, but good nonetheless!
The disciple game was pretty helpful. Having someone giving relevant info and guiding through the choices was quite nice.
The reasons the game didn’t quite click with me were unrelated:
-It seemed like the strategy was largely about learning a million individual moving pieces, rather than having a manageable number of components with complexity arising from their interactions.
-As with many large sprawling multiplayer games, much of the result seems to come down to diplomacy and chance – where everyone starts, who decides to attack who when, etc. I don’t tend to find these sorts of soft factors as interesting as the game systems themselves, so I prefer games with a tighter focus on direct conflict with a specific enemy.
-A common problem for multiplayer 4X games is having a lot of the early game be low-interaction with other players, as everyone is expanding locally and consolidating their positions. Then this is followed by a relatively short few turns of direct interaction and conflict that often winds up being decisive one way or the other, as someone’s main force gets wiped out. The game we played seemed to fall into that pattern, though I don’t know if it was typical or not. I find this pattern frustrating, and prefer more of a sustained, low-key interaction with opponents where you can have minor victories or setbacks and be jockeying for position over a longer period.
-Having to manually email save files back and forth and copy them to the game directory was an extra point of friction with trying to enjoy the game.
All that said, I still had fun, and wouldn’t be against trying it again at some point if I had the free time.
Thanks DA and Kelan. I’ll probably get it for $9 even just to support IW. Dominions might be my favorite game of all time, it’s just got one big flaw as far as I’m concerned.
DA, I recall being in an MP game with you a few years ago in Dom2 or 3. We had an alliance and you ended up winning the game. Do you guys play FFA’s in here or team games?
We play both. The last 2 have all been normal games but we have played a teams of 3 game, a teams of 2 game and a game with just 2 large teams. People might be interested in another teams game now that we have finished one of the FFA games.
Thanks.
[quote=“Thraeg, post:3185, topic:74012”]
The reasons the game didn’t quite click with me were unrelated:
-It seemed like the strategy was largely about learning a million individual moving pieces, rather than having a manageable number of components with complexity arising from their interactions.[/quote]
Not sure why I feel the need to jump in here, as I haven’t played any Dominions in the past few years - but I played a lot of Dominions for many years before that.
I can see how it looks at first like just a million individual pieces. What makes Dominions so deep is that those many components interact through a manageable number of properties to create enormous complexity. The result is that virtually every strategy has many possible counters. Sure, some nations are strong and some weak, but for almost any situation other than a really weak nation up against a really strong one, you can counter what your opponent is doing. What you need most is lead time to adapt your forces to do what will work, and for that you need good scouting. But you need to go way, way beyond “he has rocks, so I need paper.”
The chance factor in starting position is maybe the most unfortunate part of many Dominions games. Some maps are better than others. One approach not taken often, but possible, is to have a 3rd party look over the first turn file and regenerate the game if the start positions look too unbalanced.
As for the diplomacy aspect - that’s personal preference, I suppose. I enjoyed that the game was not just about clashing pixels - you had to interact directly with other human beings. But I can see how it would be a major drawback to people with other preferences.
It is certainly common for a few nations to be eliminated quickly in early wars. But once past that stage, you have a fair bit of control over your own playstyle preferences. You can turtle up or you can be almost constantly at war. I’m not sure about the current state of the game, but it was often a problem that 4 or 5 nations survived to later stages and no one wanted to be in the first major endgame war. That sort of stalemate can be not so much fun.
The late game stalemate was often simply a matter of not wanting to appear as too strong an aggressor. Oftentimes you knew you could take out a single nation, but if you took out that nation one on one, the other nations would be pretty quick to come to your victim’s rescue. Thus five often became three.
I enjoyed the diplomatic jockeying in dominions. To me that was the reason to play the game. Wish I had been as effective at the wargame portion.
Quick AAR on the OldSchool game, its been a while so I’m struggling to remember the very beginning!
I normally go for bless-rush with a strong Pretender, so I decided to try the total opposite, and go for a low-bless late-game scales build with a human Pretender.
So PPPPP the Arch Mage had F4W4E4D1 paths, Dom 5 and O3P1C3G0L3M3 scales
Maxing out Order, Luck and Magic meant that gold and gems flooded in, and Pelagias already efficient researchers got a huge boost. The graphs showed Pelagia had an easy research lead for the entire game.
Cold 3 is an easy points boost for underwater nations which are capped at +/-1 heat/cold in underwater provinces, and also Ice Elementals are awesome! Plus Agartha was a potential amphibious competitor, and they really hate the cold!
The magic paths gave Pelagia strong access to all except Blood, and allowed forging of elemental staves, rune smashers (mind hunts ftw!) and other such goodies
Basic plan at the start was to rush Conj 5 to ensure I could fight off anyone who attacked early, and use Shark Tribe Tritons to expand.
Initial expansion was nice and smooth, research was piling up fast, and the world stayed at peace for a long time. Worked in my favour with the early-game weakness of the build. Hero Thaumas arrived early giving a big boost to S and A access.
Biggest mistake was possibly delaying Pearl King production for too long. I didn’t appreciate just how good they were.
Other mistake was not grabbing enough coastal land, but this was not a big problem. Pelagian Explorers would have been nice for an even bigger research boost, but the underwater researchers were doing just fine.
So - does anyone have any recommendations for good AARs to read for Dominions 4? I’ve been searching but I’m not having much luck, and I think it would help get my head around the game.
I am not sure if it is helpful or not, but I have part of an AAR up on my blog that I wrote over a year ago from our QtAnon game here. I had a lot of fun writing it anyway :).
Hmm, not sure how links work on this new site. Feel free to delete or fix it if I mess this up.
http://greyskyegames.com/blog/2014/12/15/qtanon-dom4-rand-pbem-game-setup/
I removed the password protection for the first 25 turns as I had that turned on at first as the game was still ongoing when I started this. I am not a Wordpress expert, but that link goes to the first post in the series and you can probably just use the “Next Post” link at the bottom to cycle through them or use the other standard WordPress navigation tools. There are a few other posts filtered in there, but most of them are from the Dom 4 game.
The Famous Tom Vs. Bruce Series introduced me to Dominions 2. Below is the AAR, which is a great read. @tomchick did a great job, but I can’t seem to find a Tom vs Bruce for Dominions 3.
Dominions 2
http://www.1up.com/features/tom-bruce-11?pager.offset=1
The AAR for Dominions 4
Dominions 4
Both excellent suggestions. Thanks!
An idea for a newbie game might be to cobble together a co-op vs AI match. The addition of disciples in this game really enhanced it as far as I’m concerned. It offers the chance for people of all skill mixes working together, where the hardened vets can offer sage words of wisdom and advice to the green recruits. Something to think about anyway if there was an interest in getting a game happening.
The limitation to this sort of game is how it fails to really highlight the initial expansion diplomacy wrangling, and the need to be efficient with early game expansion. Also, can a game have AI players from the start with games hosted on llamaserver? I don’t remember.
Quick Summary of Pelagias various wars from QTOldSchool:
Pelagia vs Arco: Initially went horribly wrong, proved just how awful Pelagias troops are on land. 100+ turtle warriors got slaughtered by Flaming Arrows. It was then that I changed approach and formulated the strategy that won Pelagia the game on land - Pearl King teleporting thugs to hit weak armies and cut off retreat routes, Pearl King thug/mages and buffed Vine Ogres for the main armies, and +MP mind hunters nuking enemy commanders and heroes. Howl also caused carnage against the squishy Arco mages.
Pelagia vs Oceania: Pearl King thugs and mind hunters took out the super-blessed Aphroi raiding groups on land, but Oceania simply ran away underwater. There was only one major battle underwater, which was an overwhelming Pelagia victory. Pelagias underwater troops are simply better, and the mages cheaper. Buffed Shark Tribe Tritons, Vine Ogres and Water Elementals with heavy mage support were unstoppable. Pelagia also had a huge research lead over Oceania… Magic 3 vs Drain 3.
Pelagia vs Berytos: Berytos was broken by war with Oceania at this point. This was a mopping up exercise, Vine Ogres made mincemeat of the super-high def Berytos forts.
Pelagia vs Nief: Nief sneak-attacked with expensive giant troops, many were amusingly defeated by underwater PD, espiecially the Shark Tribe PD which left no giants alive. Pearl King thugs teleported in to take the water back, and from that point Nief spam-cast Leprosy and Horrors. Pelagia sacreds with their magic weapons beat the Horrors easily enough, and Pelagia had Gift of Health by this point which negated Leprosy. Pearl Kings had trouble with the stronger Jarl thugs, but had the mobility to choose fights. Earth Attack spam against Niefs Gygjas made him very angry, and when his hero and Father Illearth were killed, Nief ragequit.
Pelagia vs Rlyeh: Another underwater mismatch, but Rlyeh had the benefit of a sneak attack with 100+ shambling tramplers. Pelagia was also worried about Mind Duels so had to avoid using Pearl Kings without other S mages in support. Rlyeh took his shamblers onto land, where they were wiped out by a couple of teleporting A queens using lightning. After that, Pelagia just steamrollered Rlyeh underwater with the Vine Ogre/Shark Tribe Triton/Water Elemental combo with heavy mage support.
Pelagia vs Agartha: Tricky matchup, Agartha had some nasty Poison Golem thugs, loads of ethereal undead from that national spell, and was the only nation with comparable research to Pelagia. After losing a Pearl King in a 1v1 duel with a Poison Golem, the strategy became simple attrition. Cold +3 dominion was horrible for Agartha, so spreading that became a priority, and the buffed Vine Ogre land armies handled Agarthas troops. Pearl Kings communioned up to H5+ tore through the undead, and a couple of Pearl Kings had been kitted out as serious thug-killers, and these handled the Poison Golems.
Pelagia vs TNN: Pelagia had a massive advantage by this point, so it was just a case of swarming with superior numbers. Main battle was an underwater attempt by TNN to use Master Enslave, but Pelagia had antimagic casters ready, and it was another thumping underwater victory for Pelagia. Still, TNN caused more underwater damage to Pelagia in this battle than anyone else had managed.
Pelagia vs Sauro: Again, Pelagia had a huge advantage by this point. Pearl King teleporters took about 20 provinces in the first turn, and thug-killers took out Sauros Tartarians. Sauros armies were too slow to respond to Pelagias crazy mobility.
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 Dominions FOUR: Sequel to the Best Game Ever - The Something Awful Forums
So in summary, Pelagia had awful land troops, but excellent underwater troops, efficient researchers and mages, surprisingly strong S magic (especially with the W->S gem conversion), and the Pearl Kings made excellent mobile thug/mages, with their ability to use both S and A magic to teleport.
If you are ever in an EA game with lots of water, and you want to dominate the water, choose Pelagia :)
It should be noted that with the way domain spreads after the patch, a domain of 7 is no longer necessary, and even a domain of 5 or possible 4 is survivable.