Dominions 5 Announced

[Agesilaus]

I enjoyed it. I feel the AI is a little more difficult. How do I play online with you lot so I can rack up some easy victories?

I liked the Thrones of Ascension addition to Dominions 4, and now I like the cataclysm ending. The random map generation was good, gave me an interesting map with a river separating two continents. The new fort mechanics didn't change much, it was a small map with a 5 players so there were already enough forts and I never tried to build any new ones. Is the only difference to forts that you first have to build a palisade?

I played as MA Arcoscephale, picked Athena as my pretender and decked her out in low/mid tier gear, leading a massive horde of chariots and hoplites. I found her to be pretty much invincible after casting ethereal and air shield on herself, combined with items that gave her luck, twist fate, fatigue regen, and displacement. Smashed the other faction that was on my small continent, then hit a wall until I could cross the river to the other side. Huge pain in the arse, but once I got across I built a temple and gateway'd my pretender over with a trillion chariots and knocked out another faction.

The last faction facing me was pretty big (stacks of 400+ units), so I dug in and just started building tonnes of temples. Then, cataclysm occurred.

Basically, massive horrors suddenly appeared at the Thrones of Power and just started destroying everything. Also, if you cast a ritual you get attacked by a horror. I could see my opponent got hit by something big and green, and I initially got hit by what looked like a big grey bedbug. Maker of Ruins. Anyway it obliterated the army I had defending the Throne of Ascension, then after a little while it destroyed the Throne, and then it started walking around and destroying everything else.

In the meantime, my pretender seemed able to kill the "Defiler of Dreams" that was appearing whenever a ritual was cast, so I let her continuously summon Abominations. However, after the third summon a big pink slime appeared and killed her with some sort of reflect-damage effect (OBVIOUSLY A BUG, Athena would be wise enough to stop hitting it). It was a Slave to Unreason or something. Anyway I stacked all my units on my last Throne and won a short while later because my dominion encompassed the final territory, or my opponent lost his last Throne, whatever. Athena is the Pantokrator, all hail the victor.


I didn't use blesses at all. How do you get a lot of bless units? You can only build them in your capital city, and they're expensive. What if your capital is in a shit spot or something happens to it, are you just screwed?

New retreat rules. Try losing a battle, you get a nice retreat report.

Useless addition, I never retreat from battle.

 

[Dayyālu]

I enjoyed it. I feel the AI is a little more difficult. How do I play online with you lot so I can rack up some easy victories?

http://www.rpgcodex.net/forums/inde...20-dominions-5-defenders-of-the-faith.119310/

Join now or never. I'm creating the map now for the thing.

 

[Dayyālu]

Is the only difference to forts that you first have to build a palisade?

Yes, and upgrade it afterwards. In MP, forts are essential for extra commander recruitment, and to kickstart your research. A player is supposed to build several forts in his first year to guarantee a good research base.

I played as MA Arcoscephale, picked Athena as my pretender and decked her out in low/mid tier gear, leading a massive horde of chariots and hoplites. I found her to be pretty much invincible after casting ethereal and air shield on herself, combined with items that gave her luck, twist fate, fatigue regen, and displacement. Smashed the other faction that was on my small continent, then hit a wall until I could cross the river to the other side. Huge pain in the arse, but once I got across I built a temple and gateway'd my pretender over with a trillion chariots and knocked out another faction.

You built what, in lingo, is called a "SuperCombatant", or SC. a God or God-level chassis that can take on armies on his\her\its own. Kinda common in MP, and also common to build lesser versions known as "thugs".

I didn't use blesses at all. How do you get a lot of bless units? You can only build them in your capital city, and they're expensive. What if your capital is in a shit spot or something happens to it, are you just screwed?

Nations have different blessed units. If you lose your cap and your best troops are cap-only you are screwed. But you can recruit as many sacred units par fort as you have "Dominions Points", selected at Godgen or increased later with more temples. Blesses can be a nice extra or central to your strategy, depending on the nation or the bless. For example, think of exploding Flagellants.

Useless addition, I never retreat from battle.

You don't choose to retreat, they make you retreat. Trust me, everyone loses. And if you join MP, don't be afraid to ASKASKASK, Dominions isn't hard but it's a tad.... obscure in its mechanics and the MP community is kinda brutal.

Not the Codex, of course.

 

[Agesilaus]

Is the only difference to forts that you first have to build a palisade?

Yes, and upgrade it afterwards. In MP, forts are essential for extra commander recruitment, and to kickstart your research. A player is supposed to build several forts in his first year to guarantee a good research base.

Don't the forts leech resources from surrounding provinces, so building a bunch of them near the cap will result in the cap getting less resources/recruitment ability?

 

[Dayyālu]

Don't the forts leech resources from surrounding provinces, so building a bunch of them near the cap will result in the cap getting less resources/recruitment ability?

Yes, but they also (AFAIK in Dom3\4) improve the resource management of the province, guaranteeing you more resources. I don't know if this still works in Dom5. In theory, the golden rule is to have a fort handplaced to guarantee optimal resource management: in reality, you get what you get as the situation requires.

The true bottleneck is commanders: more mages you have, more research you have, less danger of falling behind the curve. Dominions is all about counters and diplomacy.

 

[Johannes]

The game's pretty underwhelming honestly.

There's a lot of changes here and there, like ok, bow damage is now partly determined by strength. And 2-hander users get their strength multiplied by some modifier. And only the unit attacked can repel now, not his friends in the same circle. Does these and many other mechanical / balance changes make the combat better or worse? Hard to say, overall it doesn't matter shit except making different units be useless than before, or the old shitty units even more useless.

The big changes are the new strategic movement system and the realtime combat system. The strategic movement system is annoying as fuck, mostly makes it harder to see where units can and cannot go, and making elves even more annoying (they can go deep into enemy territory with just 1 move).
The realtime combat system looks cool enough but atm has some silly stuff like archers consistently not hitting moving units, bodyguards lagging behind a moving commander, and Storm not being able to stop flyers from attacking you.

The new fort building / commander recruitment stuff I like, and the new content, but overall I'm not so sure whether I'd have more fun starting a Dom4 or Dom5 game. There's some UI improvements too but much less than 3 -> 4 had.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

But this is a matter of principle

Yes it is.

 

[Mortmal]

I didn't use blesses at all. How do you get a lot of bless units? You can only build them in your capital city, and they're expensive. What if your capital is in a shit spot or something happens to it, are you just screwed?

Bless in dominions are extremely powerful if done right,theres many of combos the exploding flagellants are one . Myself i love a small group of rephaites , think about 7 in nature 8 in blood, that gives you regen and blood vengeance(reflect the damage). So a few dozen of sacred giants will wreck everything, its a wonder to see them slaughter huge doomstacks , gaining experience and nearly unbeatable.There's no secret you have to read guides , its far too complex to find all the strong combos by yourself.Add in numerous items that can enhances those strategies, very hard to keep track of all.

 

[Agesilaus]

The realtime combat system looks cool enough but atm has some silly stuff like archers consistently not hitting moving units...

WAIT, is this why my wind guide tian qi archer doomstacks are shit??

 

[DakaSha V]

Sadly the worst dominions so far. Probably still worth playing over 4, but meh

 

[Raghar]

What happened to daksha IV?

 

[Beastro]

I gave CoE4 a try but ran into the problem of my playtstyle not meshing well with it. Would this be more up my aisle for more of a grand strategy style game even if it seems to have zero diplomacy and not really a SP game?

I did like CoE4, I just found it very rough around the edges and too rushed.

 

[thesheeep]

I did like CoE4, I just found it very rough around the edges and too rushed.

Explain.

I found nothing about CoE4 rushed.
And all Illwinter games are... rough.

 

[Beastro]

I found nothing about CoE4 rushed.

The pace of the game, which I think is where the problem comes from with me. I like games where I can expand and manage and empire, it's more like a deathmatch in that respect.

Is Dominions different or just deathmatch at a slower pace?

 

[thesheeep]

I would say it is very different. In CoE you just manage one or two armies, there's barely any realm management going on.
Dominions has just... so much more than that.
I find it hard to compare the two games, really. Too different.

 

[Beastro]

I would say it is very different. In CoE you just manage one or two armies, there's barely any realm management going on.
Dominions has just... so much more than that.
I find it hard to compare the two games, really. Too different.

Oki, I'll put it on my wishlist.

 

[Raghar]

It's not like you can't try both Dominions 4 and 5 in your home.

Both are quite a bit underwhelming for commercial games. I originally thought everyone can learn proper SW writting, just needs brainpower and few months time to learn at home. But, more I see some recent results, the more I see I was in contact with developers with talent, and these few exceptions who were actually able to learn at home. Majority of people got University title, and are worse.

 

[Raghar]

BTW have you noticed that Dominions 5 UI is basically UI from CoE4?

 

[Johannes]

It's not like you can't try both Dominions 4 and 5 in your home.

Both are quite a bit underwhelming for commercial games. I originally thought everyone can learn proper SW writting, just needs brainpower and few months time to learn at home. But, more I see some recent results, the more I see I was in contact with developers with talent, and these few exceptions who were actually able to learn at home. Majority of people got University title, and are worse.

What do you mean by SW? Swahili or Star Wars?

 

[KoolNoodles]

Just FYI, the invaluable mod inspector tool is up. Spells/Events/Mercs still to come and I don't believe nation summons are incorporated yet(and some other things).

https://larzm42.github.io/dom5inspector/

 

[holla_cabezas_de_mierda]

It's not like you can't try both Dominions 4 and 5 in your home.

Both are quite a bit underwhelming for commercial games. I originally thought everyone can learn proper SW writting, just needs brainpower and few months time to learn at home. But, more I see some recent results, the more I see I was in contact with developers with talent, and these few exceptions who were actually able to learn at home. Majority of people got University title, and are worse.

has anybody figured out what the above text actually means..... Or is it just a bot that came so close to writing a meaningful paragraph that I can't tell if its a real person who is just is too lazy or high to be able to actually make themselves understood, or an automation?

 

[Raghar]

When I began in game development, people cared about what developers could do not about theirs disabilities. Perhaps in recent era, money and ability to smear other is more important, but clean, perfumed, spoiled rich brats were kicked out because they would kill work morale. Typically they were kicked out in testing period. But people with passion typically liked original developers for what they were.



---
BTW game development doesn't have root in boardgames, they are bit unrelated field. I think first game can be... when one programmer programmed kinda microcontroller, then placed it to close to the radio, and interference played music. There were also games on graphic terminals far before computer era. I think first modern game was Doom, which has zero relationship with board games. (BTW Doom was a game famous for physically destroying PC hardware. But computer game history isn't that important.)

 

[Matalarata]

 

[Raghar]

Nobody eats at all, if they don't have #neednoteat tag - it looks like it was inverted. 500 C'tissians consume 0 supplies, but if undead army which consumes 500 supplies is brought into the province they start starving.

 

[Harpsichord]

How do you guys feel about the replacement of spellsongs with the spellsinger trait?

In DOM4 I would stack my beans around my tuathan sorceresses and get them to sing soothing song like a poor man's communion. Now that I can't do that, I am not really sure what to do with my beans other than research/forging.

Any ideas on what to do with them now? Was my old strategy wasteful anyway? It just seems to me that the thing with beans is that their path distribution tends to be wide, flat, and not easily scaled up in a consistent manner. As far as I understand, there's a 1/4 chance that a bean will be recruited with A2, and thus be able to function as a thunderstriker with a winged helmet, and that just feels like too many moving parts/material investment to be worth it imo.

Is this a nerf, or was I just doing it wrong?