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- Jun 28, 2017
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Welcome to my very first LP.
This is Dominions 5, a game I have been fascinated with for a while now. It can be described as the Dwarf Fortress of Strategy Games - Meaning it is very intricate and highly simulationist, at least when it comes to battles. Think “Spearman #264 lost an arm in the last battle and now can’t wield his weapon anymore, so he goes and punches giants with his left fist instead”.
It is very much rooted in Fantasy but takes its inspiration largely from real life mythologies instead of the usual Tolkien-esque settings. And let me tell you: That shit gets weird at times.
It should be noted that I am NOT a very proficient player. The skill ceiling is incredibly high and the multiplayer community very tight-knit. I will be playing a regular single player match against normal AIs. The AI is, sadly but not surprisingly, pretty shit. This however allows me to do some more goofy things that wouldn’t work in a MP game.
I thought about which nation represents the Codex the best and decided to be Agartha. The nation consists mainly of a bunch of big fat pale cave-dwelling nerds that aren’t very good at physical things. The similarities to the average Codexer are obvious.
The first thing we need to do is design our Pretender God, the guy we want to eventually end up as the sole deity of the world - The Pantokrator as the game calls it. There are many basic forms a god can take, from regular mortal wizards to monsters, titans and even inanimate objects that achieved awareness by virtue of the worship they received.
This is what I went with:
In essence it is a big Pale One wizard nerd who is very good at Elemental and Death Magic. (Death is not necessarily an evil path. Blood Magic is. We don’t really do that though.) Generally speaking, a 3 in a magic path is the upper end for normal magic users and they usually don’t know more than two or three paths. So you can tell this guy is pretty powerful with magic already.
Next up is our “Bless”, a very powerful and highly customizable buff that only works on specific sacred units. In a MP environment people would go for a Bless that includes resistances against the most common forms of damage but the AI isn’t really good enough to exploit our lack of defense. Instead I opted for making our dudes generally better, stronger, faster and harder. They are going to need it because…
This is the most powerful unit we can recruit. The absolute elite of the elite. Notice his Attack and Defense? 10 is the fucking average for a human militiaman. As I said, these guys are not good at physical exercise. He will need all the help he can get to actually hit things. When he does, however, he yeets things from existence. His bronze armor is alright and his glaive is actually very powerful and magical, so he won’t have any trouble hitting ghosts and such.
Our Dominion Effect determines what the lands we conquer will be like. Will people be productive and orderly or will there be chaos and death? I opted for a slight boost to our production because the Seal Guards take a lot of resources to recruit and a hot environment since all Pale Ones are cold blooded, meaning they perform worse in winter and are prone to falling asleep from exhaustion. Other nations will thrive in different Dominions and some don’t give a shit about the scales at all because they receive units for free. Often by first killing the people in their provinces and raising them as undead.
Lastly I opted to have our Pretender imprisoned at the game start, meaning he won’t be around for a couple of turns. That isn’t a big deal because our Bless mostly works without him being active, except for Stygian Flesh (Protection against physical damage), which will start working once he wakes up.
So, what do you call the leader of a mighty nation of fat pale nerds? Why, there is only really one choice:
(The titles are randomly generated depending on your magic paths.)
This is our starting position:
Weirdly enough the game didn’t spawn our capital in a cave. Agartha loves caves for various reasons. However, we have a nice “cap circle” - provinces around our capital - that we can make use of. A fort such as our capital will draw resources from the lands directly adjacent, so every province we conquer that is next to it will directly improve recruitment and income. There are also multiple Thrones of Ascension near us, these are used to actually win the game and they can provide some juicy buffs once claimed.
We have no info on the surrounding lands on the first turn and it is generally a very bad idea to walk into a province blind. It might contain only a few peasants with spears… or it might be full of extremely pissed off barbarians that will curbstomp you. Thus the first turn is used to set up our research and recruitment instead.
This is our starting army, a bunch of slobs - some in armor - lead by a mediocre leader.
Here’s one of our research paths. There are many, similar to spell schools in Dungeons & Dragons - Conjuration, Evocation, Enchantment etc. As Agartha we really want to reach Conjuration 3 to gain access to Rhuax Pact. This will allow our Fire mages to summon some pretty good units for the low low cost of 2 Fire Gems.
It should be pointed out that magic and magic paths are absolutely not created equal in Dominions 5. You would THINK that Fire magic evocations are great at nuking shit but that really isn’t the case. Fire resistances are easy to come by and the majority of fire spells are targeted, meaning your mages will more often than not miss the unit they were aiming at. On the other hand, Air magic is great at nuking things because lightning bolts from the sky hit instantly and are much harder to resist.
The plight of the average Abysia player in Dom5.
So, our units are kinda meh and can’t hit for shit. How do we expand then? Thankfully Agartha has some allied races available that will help us out a lot. Meet the Olm:
Mind Blast is a fantastic tool because it has infinite range on the battlefield and stuns units. It helps break up formations and obviously a stunned enemy will be easy to hit even for our guys. I recruit a mix of Pale One infantry and olms to beef up our starting army.
Additionally we need researchers. These come in the form of Engravers:
They’re not very useful in a fight but being sacred (the candlestick icon) means they cost less upkeep and they’re good at figuring stuff out for us.
I also send our scout southwards. It is a good idea to make note of possible choke points like bridges and mountain passes on the map and plan expansion accordingly. Sadly there seem to be NO CAVES AT ALL on this map. The RNG hates caves for some reason. We will have to deal with it.
Pillarspawned, our generic general, will become the Prophet of Dark Underlord, making him a high level priest and thus able to cast a limited number of spells and, most importantly, spread our Dominion to the heathens who have not yet heard of the superiority of TB over RTwP.
Thus ends Turn 1.
This is Dominions 5, a game I have been fascinated with for a while now. It can be described as the Dwarf Fortress of Strategy Games - Meaning it is very intricate and highly simulationist, at least when it comes to battles. Think “Spearman #264 lost an arm in the last battle and now can’t wield his weapon anymore, so he goes and punches giants with his left fist instead”.
It is very much rooted in Fantasy but takes its inspiration largely from real life mythologies instead of the usual Tolkien-esque settings. And let me tell you: That shit gets weird at times.
It should be noted that I am NOT a very proficient player. The skill ceiling is incredibly high and the multiplayer community very tight-knit. I will be playing a regular single player match against normal AIs. The AI is, sadly but not surprisingly, pretty shit. This however allows me to do some more goofy things that wouldn’t work in a MP game.
I thought about which nation represents the Codex the best and decided to be Agartha. The nation consists mainly of a bunch of big fat pale cave-dwelling nerds that aren’t very good at physical things. The similarities to the average Codexer are obvious.
The first thing we need to do is design our Pretender God, the guy we want to eventually end up as the sole deity of the world - The Pantokrator as the game calls it. There are many basic forms a god can take, from regular mortal wizards to monsters, titans and even inanimate objects that achieved awareness by virtue of the worship they received.
This is what I went with:
In essence it is a big Pale One wizard nerd who is very good at Elemental and Death Magic. (Death is not necessarily an evil path. Blood Magic is. We don’t really do that though.) Generally speaking, a 3 in a magic path is the upper end for normal magic users and they usually don’t know more than two or three paths. So you can tell this guy is pretty powerful with magic already.
Next up is our “Bless”, a very powerful and highly customizable buff that only works on specific sacred units. In a MP environment people would go for a Bless that includes resistances against the most common forms of damage but the AI isn’t really good enough to exploit our lack of defense. Instead I opted for making our dudes generally better, stronger, faster and harder. They are going to need it because…
This is the most powerful unit we can recruit. The absolute elite of the elite. Notice his Attack and Defense? 10 is the fucking average for a human militiaman. As I said, these guys are not good at physical exercise. He will need all the help he can get to actually hit things. When he does, however, he yeets things from existence. His bronze armor is alright and his glaive is actually very powerful and magical, so he won’t have any trouble hitting ghosts and such.
Our Dominion Effect determines what the lands we conquer will be like. Will people be productive and orderly or will there be chaos and death? I opted for a slight boost to our production because the Seal Guards take a lot of resources to recruit and a hot environment since all Pale Ones are cold blooded, meaning they perform worse in winter and are prone to falling asleep from exhaustion. Other nations will thrive in different Dominions and some don’t give a shit about the scales at all because they receive units for free. Often by first killing the people in their provinces and raising them as undead.
Lastly I opted to have our Pretender imprisoned at the game start, meaning he won’t be around for a couple of turns. That isn’t a big deal because our Bless mostly works without him being active, except for Stygian Flesh (Protection against physical damage), which will start working once he wakes up.
So, what do you call the leader of a mighty nation of fat pale nerds? Why, there is only really one choice:
(The titles are randomly generated depending on your magic paths.)
This is our starting position:
Weirdly enough the game didn’t spawn our capital in a cave. Agartha loves caves for various reasons. However, we have a nice “cap circle” - provinces around our capital - that we can make use of. A fort such as our capital will draw resources from the lands directly adjacent, so every province we conquer that is next to it will directly improve recruitment and income. There are also multiple Thrones of Ascension near us, these are used to actually win the game and they can provide some juicy buffs once claimed.
We have no info on the surrounding lands on the first turn and it is generally a very bad idea to walk into a province blind. It might contain only a few peasants with spears… or it might be full of extremely pissed off barbarians that will curbstomp you. Thus the first turn is used to set up our research and recruitment instead.
This is our starting army, a bunch of slobs - some in armor - lead by a mediocre leader.
Here’s one of our research paths. There are many, similar to spell schools in Dungeons & Dragons - Conjuration, Evocation, Enchantment etc. As Agartha we really want to reach Conjuration 3 to gain access to Rhuax Pact. This will allow our Fire mages to summon some pretty good units for the low low cost of 2 Fire Gems.
It should be pointed out that magic and magic paths are absolutely not created equal in Dominions 5. You would THINK that Fire magic evocations are great at nuking shit but that really isn’t the case. Fire resistances are easy to come by and the majority of fire spells are targeted, meaning your mages will more often than not miss the unit they were aiming at. On the other hand, Air magic is great at nuking things because lightning bolts from the sky hit instantly and are much harder to resist.
The plight of the average Abysia player in Dom5.
So, our units are kinda meh and can’t hit for shit. How do we expand then? Thankfully Agartha has some allied races available that will help us out a lot. Meet the Olm:
Mind Blast is a fantastic tool because it has infinite range on the battlefield and stuns units. It helps break up formations and obviously a stunned enemy will be easy to hit even for our guys. I recruit a mix of Pale One infantry and olms to beef up our starting army.
Additionally we need researchers. These come in the form of Engravers:
They’re not very useful in a fight but being sacred (the candlestick icon) means they cost less upkeep and they’re good at figuring stuff out for us.
I also send our scout southwards. It is a good idea to make note of possible choke points like bridges and mountain passes on the map and plan expansion accordingly. Sadly there seem to be NO CAVES AT ALL on this map. The RNG hates caves for some reason. We will have to deal with it.
Pillarspawned, our generic general, will become the Prophet of Dark Underlord, making him a high level priest and thus able to cast a limited number of spells and, most importantly, spread our Dominion to the heathens who have not yet heard of the superiority of TB over RTwP.
Thus ends Turn 1.
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