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Dominions 5 Announced

Dayyālu

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Shaper Crypt
We're at it again. Early November. Some changes are baffling (REAL TIME BATTLES) but I've been at it for years, won't change now. Plus I dig some of the other changes.

Dominions 5
Dominions 5 development has been going on for quite a while now and the game is getting close to finished. If everything goes according to plan, the game will be released on Steam at the beginning of November. Below is a list of some major things that are different in the new Dominions 5.

Bless Effects

A pretender god's bless effect can now vary wildly from one god to the next as you get to design the bless effect when creating the pretender. The magic paths and scales will restrict which bless effects are available and how many can be chosen. E.g. an arch mage with a low skill on many paths will be able to choose many different minor bless effects, while a pretender with only one high path skill can choose one powerful matching bless effect or a combination of lesser ones.

The more powerful blesses require an incarnate pretender, meaning he has to be awake and alive for the effect to be active. Some other bless effects are passive and constantly affect all sacred units, regardless of whether they are blessed. "Water Breathing" and "Larger" are example of passive blesses. Certain nations have exceptionally strong blesses and get extra design points for bless effects.

The pretender god's main path will also determine what type of holy spells his priests will receive. E.g. a fire god's priest will smite his enemies with burning flames, while the priests of an earth god will turn his enemies to stone.


Real Time Combat
Combat in Dominions 5 differs quite a bit from how it was in the previous Dominions games. Now all units do their actions simultaneously, so units will move at the same time as enemy arrows and spells are flying. With the simultaneous move it is no longer important who reaches whom first, the units reach each other simultaneously and it is random which one gets to strike first.

Large battles are now much quicker to watch as they do not take much longer to watch than the smaller ones, but the slow motion replay speed can be useful to take in all that is happening. For those that want all the details there are also detailed battle logs that can be viewed for each unit, so you can see where all the damage came from.


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.

Combat spells take time to prepare and cast in Dominions 5, and more complicated spells have greater casting times. A battle enchantment that requires gems may take twice as long to cast as a fireball spell. Spells that are being prepared may be interrupted if the mage takes damage before they finish casting.

The battles are still fully automatic and player input comes from army setup and initial orders as usual.

Random Maps, Winter and Movement

The random map generation has been remade for Dominions 5, and in addition to a new aesthetic the maps have a winter overlay which will cover cold provinces. The movement system has been revised and it is now possible for very fast non-fliers to compete with slow fliers in terms of strategic mobility. Snow is also taken into account and will make it slower to walk through provinces.

In the early age names of neighboring provinces are known, but in mid and late age names one or two provinces farther away are revealed.

Recruitment Points and Fort Building
Recruitment points is a new resource in provinces. It comes from population, but can be improved by building a fort in the province. A low number of recruitment points can limit the number of units that can be built in a province, so both this attribute and resources should be taken into consideration when deciding where to build a fort.

Mounted troops have lower gold costs compared to dom4, but they have higher recruitment costs than infantry units. Thus densely populated provinces will be more important if you want to recruit knights and other elite units.

Fortifications are now built at the lowest level (usually a palisade). After it has finished construction, the fortification can be upgraded. The level of forts available is generally lower in the early age and higher in the late age. Some nations, like MA Ulm, can recruit architects or masons that can build higher level forts.

Higher level forts also enable faster commander recruitment. Regular commanders, scouts and low level priests require one commander point. Most mages and priests require two points, and the most powerful mages require four points. Provinces only have one command point available to start with, but upgrading from a palisade to a fortress will increase the value to two, and the most advanced nations are able to build citadels that provide three command points.

mainmap2.jpg

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 are many more changes since Dominions 4 that haven't been mentioned here, more information will come later. Dominions 5 will be released simultaneously on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X as usual.
thaum.jpg


armysetup.jpg


fireballs.jpg


research.jpg

I fairly liked the Dom4 approach of changes, even if in the end it's the same game. We'll see in two months, I guess.
 

Malakal

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Looks interesting, good changes but will probably need a lot of balancing.

Bless rush will get a big nerf in favor of scale builds most likely but that really depends what blesses can be active without a pretender.

Real time combat has little overall effect other than weakening the turn1 advantage and thats also a good thing.
 

Dayyālu

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Bless rush will get a big nerf in favor of scale builds most likely but that really depends what blesses can be active without a pretender.

Scale build already got a buff in the Dom3-Dom4 switch, but I'm happy because I always liked scale-heavy nations. The bless and banishment changes are also interesting, at last Priests will be something else bar weak-undead destroyers.



Real time combat has little overall effect other than weakening the turn1 advantage and thats also a good thing.

I doubt it will have "little effect", as a ton of tricks will be negated (RoS\Earthquake spam, suiciding mages, suiciding mages for gem waste) and the buff cycles will become less certain. We could see a big buff of smaller Evo spells if their casting time is small, imagine what a Marignon mage phalanx could do if they can pump an insane amount of Pillars of Fire spam before the enemy can set up battlefield-wide counters. It's no longer a matter of turn order, it's a matter of casting time: I presume a battlefield-wide protection spell will require time and thus leaving a good piece of the army unprotected.

This will also weaken Flyers, as they won't necessarily get the first strike in now. Can't wait to see it in action, though.
 

Malakal

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OK I take back my words, saw a guy post some bless effects - F now can get awe, D can now get fear. Seems like bless effects have become vastly more powerful.

Still, it will be a timing issue and bless rush will be more all in.
 

Malakal

Arcane
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Here is F and D blesses. Fire shield, awe, explosion on death and fear, reforming flesh seem most interesting here.
ASQM92e.jpg

ASQM92e


Here is S and N. S seems massively buffed with ethereal on bless and very cheap magic weapons access, there is also penetration and 50% spell range and those are big too. N has recuperation and regeneration but also the always nice berserker.
aVB7kvj.jpg

aVB7kvj

aVB7kvj
 
Last edited:

Dayyālu

Arcane
Joined
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Messages
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Location
Shaper Crypt
Some of the images don't work. Pliz fix.

The bless list looks mightily interesting, a ton of viable options. And the combos look like a fascinating option. The long reign of N9E4 is at its end, at last.
 

Malakal

Arcane
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Poland
Some of the images don't work. Pliz fix.

The bless list looks mightily interesting, a ton of viable options. And the combos look like a fascinating option. The long reign of N9E4 is at its end, at last.

The images are fine, I had some issues linking so the IMGs are remnants of my attempts. I will post more images once I get my hands on them.

Looks like stuff like a rainbow with mage tailored bless could be strong.
 

Malakal

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Right, here is B blesses, very straightforward it seems. Blood bond shares damage between nearby sacreds and blood surge is a temporary bonus on enemy unit kill. How will blood bond work with massive damage spells like gifts from heaven? Only time will tell.

jHeLdBs.jpg


Also EA Rus confirmed.
 

Hobo Elf

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Platypus Planet
This came out of nowhere and it's pretty close to release as well. Wish they'd try to work on making the game more SP friendly, but Illwinter is probably not interested in even attempting that.
 

Raghar

Arcane
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Jul 16, 2009
Messages
22,506
This came out of nowhere and it's pretty close to release as well. Wish they'd try to work on making the game more SP friendly, but Illwinter is probably not interested in even attempting that.
Wanna SP? Get a pirated version.

This would be nice freeware game, when they wouldn't charge 30-50$ for it.
 

Grif

Learned
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Messages
231
Oh man. I didn't realise they were already this close to releasing Dom5.
 

Dayyālu

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This came out of nowhere and it's pretty close to release as well. Wish they'd try to work on making the game more SP friendly, but Illwinter is probably not interested in even attempting that.

They merely can't. AI would collapse under the strain. CoE is as near as a SP-focused, lite Dominions we will get, and it's challenging not thanks to AI but thanks to roguelite elements and "crap to find and fight".

This would be nice freeware game, when they wouldn't charge 30-50$ for it.

More deserving of my money that 99.5% of "proper games". Not even talking about AAA games, if only indie devs had the focus of the Illwinter guys we would be golden. And we are better off than in the Dark Ages of Dom3. What was the platform they used them, it was like, hell

It helps they don't give a shit about balance :lol::lol::lol:
 

thesheeep

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To me, the biggest issues are the UI, no usable SP and how insanely long turns can take in the later game. At least the realtime battles and better logging should help with the second one somewhat.
The UI looks barely touched at all :negative:


This came out of nowhere and it's pretty close to release as well. Wish they'd try to work on making the game more SP friendly, but Illwinter is probably not interested in even attempting that.

They merely can't. AI would collapse under the strain. CoE is as near as a SP-focused, lite Dominions we will get, and it's challenging not thanks to AI but thanks to roguelite elements and "crap to find and fight".
That's just wrong.
All they would have to do is make some proper campaign AI that can be reasoned with. They don't even need to touch the spell, army composition, etc. AI. And some very simple diplomacy could very easily be done. After all, the AI already seems to be following some agenda - nothing prevents adding some diplomacy here.
Of course they couldn't create an AI for a game like this that could keep up with a decent player, but I doubt anyone would expect that.
But some basic alliance forming, maybe target setting, trading and non-aggression pacts would go a long way.
 

mondblut

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That's just wrong.
All they would have to do is make some proper campaign AI that can be reasoned with. They don't even need to touch the spell, army composition, etc. AI. And some very simple diplomacy could very easily be done. After all, the AI already seems to be following some agenda - nothing prevents adding some diplomacy here.
Of course they couldn't create an AI for a game like this that could keep up with a decent player, but I doubt anyone would expect that.
But some basic alliance forming, maybe target setting, trading and non-aggression pacts would go a long way.

Yes, yes, yes. Nobody needs a fucking Deep Blue here, just something to entertain us while losing gracefully.

Another pet peeve of mine is notekeeping. How hard could it be to implement counters for a player to set on the map with little tooltips saying "enchantment site here", "lizard shamans prov", etc?

Cybersports jocks playing 15 province map duels get all the love :despair:
 

Dayyālu

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The UI looks barely touched at all

I've never found the revised Dom4 UI particularly terrible. Wait, bar the "Wait" commands hidden as a key shortcut :lol::lol::lol:

But I guess we'll get some incremental streamlining. With roadbuilding and a new focus on fortresses, they are needed.


That's just wrong.
All they would have to do is make some proper campaign AI that can be reasoned with. They don't even need to touch the spell, army composition, etc. AI. And some very simple diplomacy could very easily be done. After all, the AI already seems to be following some agenda - nothing prevents adding some diplomacy here.
Of course they couldn't create an AI for a game like this that could keep up with a decent player, but I doubt anyone would expect that.
But some basic alliance forming, maybe target setting, trading and non-aggression pacts would go a long way.

It's not wrong, per se. Dominions SP is already "go and fight everything because there is nothing else and the AI can't deal with the minutiae".

Dominions AI is indeed very basic, and all it takes into considerations are troops numbers. Basic diplomacy could be done, but the meat of Dominions is the interaction between the strategic layer and the tactical layer, the "spell, army composition, etc. AI", that nowadays acts kinda randomly. Strategic AI is non-existent.

Would some simple diplomacy helps SP larping? Probably. Still won't help the basic problems of Dominions SP AI, and I prefer CoE SP to Dom SP if I need to merely play against braindead AI. Less micro, more toys. It's just me though.

Another pet peeve of mine is notekeeping. How hard could it be to implement counters for a player to set on the map with little tooltips saying "enchantment site here", "lizard shamans prov", etc?

Wait, you don't keep paper notes of all your games with specific data about provinces and poptypes? Are you insane?
 
Joined
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Messages
1,563
All they would have to do is make some proper campaign AI that can be reasoned with. They don't even need to touch the spell, army composition, etc. AI. And some very simple diplomacy could very easily be done. After all, the AI already seems to be following some agenda - nothing prevents adding some diplomacy here.
Of course they couldn't create an AI for a game like this that could keep up with a decent player, but I doubt anyone would expect that.
But some basic alliance forming, maybe target setting, trading and non-aggression pacts would go a long way.
5kiGwrp.jpg
 
Joined
Jul 4, 2014
Messages
1,563
Dominions would need a diplomacy system that doesn't mess with the turn sequence. So something like in Civilization or Master of Orion would not be viable.

Something simple like Warlords 2's system where you set a "stance" per every faction whether you want peace or war with them. And unless both sides have peace-stance against each other, they're at war.
 

mondblut

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Another pet peeve of mine is notekeeping. How hard could it be to implement counters for a player to set on the map with little tooltips saying "enchantment site here", "lizard shamans prov", etc?

Wait, you don't keep paper notes of all your games with specific data about provinces and poptypes? Are you insane?

Paper notes are too 1986 for me :negative:
 

HeatEXTEND

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http://www.illwinter.com/dom5/index.html

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 are many more changes since Dominions 4 that haven't been mentioned here, more information will come later. Dominions 5 will be released simultaneously on Linux, Windows and Mac OS X as usual.

Real Time Combat
Combat in Dominions 5 differs quite a bit from how it was in the previous Dominions games. Now all units do their actions simultaneously, so units will move at the same time as enemy arrows and spells are flying. With the simultaneous move it is no longer important who reaches whom first, the units reach each other simultaneously and it is random which one gets to strike first.

Large battles are now much quicker to watch as they do not take much longer to watch than the smaller ones, but the slow motion replay speed can be useful to take in all that is happening. For those that want all the details there are also detailed battle logs that can be viewed for each unit, so you can see where all the damage came from.

Long Live Illwinter :salute:
 

Malakal

Arcane
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More info:
1. time stop spell is in!
2. Earth blesses give temper flesh and recuperation effects.
3. Wind walker is bonus map move, fateweaving is curse on attacker effect.
4. Blood surge is 3 att 3 str 1 def 1 reinvig on kill for a short duration.
5. It may be possible to dispel enemy blesses with banishments.
6. 1 point in path is 1 bless point, some nations get a national bonus like MA Marignon getting 2F and Agartha getting 2E points as long as it has at least E4.
7. Berserk is a base of 3.
8. Stat blesses (attack/def etc) can be taken multiple times. They are around 2 stats each.
9. New LA nation is Pelagia, it has heavy incest lore.
 

Johannes

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casting coach
Interesting. Impossible to say yet what exactly will be the most broken or popular kinds of builds with the new system - but seems like there'll be a lot of room for different builds.

Cautiously optimistic about RT combat, too. It's possible that it's implemented in a shitty way that dumbs the game down, but it's got a lot of potential as well. It will be very different that's for sure, in terms of what counters what in mage scripting, probably.
 

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