Incline Dominions 6

[InD_ImaginE]

If it was a hybrid of two other games what would they be?

Medieval Total War 1 (Grand Strategy with map province-based troop movement, with combat happening in a tactical layer) meets DnD 3.5 Arcane Caster. At low level combat is pretty much monkey/haried monkey/fish people bashing each other with sticks but starting mid game you essentially have DnD Arcane Caster in the mix summoning dozens of undead, throwing fireball/meteor, blizzard, and stuff (you can also buff your stick wielding troops).

 

[Andnjord]

If it was a hybrid of two other games what would they be?

Medieval Total War 1 (Grand Strategy with map province-based troop movement, with combat happening in a tactical layer) meets DnD 3.5 Arcane Caster. At low level combat is pretty much monkey/haried monkey/fish people bashing each other with sticks but starting mid game you essentially have DnD Arcane Caster in the mix summoning dozens of undead, throwing fireball/meteor, blizzard, and stuff (you can also buff your stick wielding troops).

And by late game you freeze the oceans of the world, summon hordes of demons to fight angelic hosts, make toads rain on the enemy’s capital, suck the world dry of magic for your own benefit….

It’s all neat.

 

[Malakal]

If it was a hybrid of two other games what would they be?

Medieval Total War 1 (Grand Strategy with map province-based troop movement, with combat happening in a tactical layer) meets DnD 3.5 Arcane Caster. At low level combat is pretty much monkey/haried monkey/fish people bashing each other with sticks but starting mid game you essentially have DnD Arcane Caster in the mix summoning dozens of undead, throwing fireball/meteor, blizzard, and stuff (you can also buff your stick wielding troops).

And by late game you freeze the oceans of the world, summon hordes of demons to fight angelic hosts, make toads rain on the enemy’s capital, suck the world dry of magic for your own benefit….

It’s all neat.

Yes, definitely any solid late game of Dominions ends with the world devastated, population almost extinct and hordes of demons and undead roaming around the barren wastes... its kinda scary how evil it can end up, sun captured, eternal winter and darkness and demonic whispers in the wind.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Sounds fkn awesome to be honest. Doubly so because it sounds very hard to explain.

Its next on my buy list when I get some damn time methinks. Appreciate the responses all.

 

[John Keel]

Can a Bro with a legit copy of DOM6 dm me please ?

Help a fellow Codex's modder

Glory to the Pantokrator

 

[Baron Tahn]

Yeah so picked this up. Good stuff. Many questions.

So where does a person go to find friendly beginner multiplayer matches? Been mucking about with a few races and would love to how multiplayer goes even though Ill be crushed by even the most lightly bearded neck.

Also, map generation question. Random maps seem very unfair sometimes - whats the best advice there? Should I less around with the map creator?

Doesnt seem to be a lot of learning material up for it yet that isnt youtube and I have of course been absorbing the prestigious manual, where do I go next?

 

[Dayyālu]

Yeah so picked this up. Good stuff. Many questions.

So where does a person go to find friendly beginner multiplayer matches? Been mucking about with a few races and would love to how multiplayer goes even though Ill be crushed by even the most lightly bearded neck.

No idea. You could start a "beginner only" match here on the 'dex (or even try to fish for more people in our leper community the RpgHQ) and I guess you'll get 4-5 new players if you publicize it on this thread too. I believe there's enough good will and decency that only real newbs would join.

Also, map generation question. Random maps seem very unfair sometimes - whats the best advice there? Should I less around with the map creator?

I'd suggest checking for maps done by other players. Older Dominions maps were premade and often terrible, but at least gave you a starting point (and some gorgeous art). Maybe the Steam forums?

Doesnt seem to be a lot of learning material up for it yet that isnt youtube and I have of course been absorbing the prestigious manual, where do I go next?

The problem is, a lot of the really old material got lost in the forum nukes (Dominions is old and was sold... was it Desura or something?) and in the scattered communities around. We have several Dom5 LPs and tutorials here on the 'dex, check the Playground and you'll find both games and "tutorial-like" games, like the one made by the reputable sqeecoo and never forgotten Deer Master Grimwulf . I've learned to play (bad as I am) from Something Awful LPs, so it's a viable way. I don't know if Reddit communities or Discords are good, it's a type of ephemeral stuff I never got in too deeply.

 

[Malakal]

Yeah so picked this up. Good stuff. Many questions.

So where does a person go to find friendly beginner multiplayer matches? Been mucking about with a few races and would love to how multiplayer goes even though Ill be crushed by even the most lightly bearded neck.

Also, map generation question. Random maps seem very unfair sometimes - whats the best advice there? Should I less around with the map creator?

Doesnt seem to be a lot of learning material up for it yet that isnt youtube and I have of course been absorbing the prestigious manual, where do I go next?

Join discord, there are multiple, usually very friendly, there is also Steam groups and some forums also run games.

RNG maps are shit and sometimes eliminate you at game start, issue is very old.

Try some blitzes - real time MP matches - for fast learning how spells work, which are good etc.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Id be very up for a disciple game too under a few powerful players.

Have read a game or two on the dex. Enjoying the mp game currently in progress although I can see that its hard to get detail with everyone hiding their cards.

I'll have a look for the discord too, cheers

 

[Hag]

Doesnt seem to be a lot of learning material up for it yet that isnt youtube and I have of course been absorbing the prestigious manual, where do I go next?

Guides for older versions of Dominions are still valuable, since the game still plays in a similar way. There are some guides on the dom5 wiki that can be useful : https://illwiki.com/dom5/guides
The New Player one gives a good tour of the basics, the Expansion and basic Magic use are useful to get pointers. Pretender design requires to have enough experience with the game to know about sacred units, the impact of scales and magic planning so it can wait until you know your way around.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Yeah, had a gander at that too. Getting the hang of scales and blesses now. Find it hard to go past the Allfather when he is available just because Odin is cool, not really maximising potential.

Tending towards less sacreds and higher scales at present but next time I might try heavier scared strategy. Reading the dom 5 stuff makes me think scales got a bit of a buff and blesses/sacred strategy got a bit nerfed?

 

[Hag]

Tending towards less sacreds and higher scales at present but next time I might try heavier scared strategy. Reading the dom 5 stuff makes me think scales got a bit of a buff and blesses/sacred strategy got a bit nerfed?

Scales were not really buffed but re-balanced. You are now more limited in your choice but other factors (and in particular your prentender, but also your nation itself, thrones, events, etc.) can influence them further. They can also reach +/-5 now instead of +/-3, but it seems to bring mostly bad things. Not sure about a nerf of blesses. Biggest nerf was the price of all magical units that went through the roof so depending on which nation you play sacred units may become more difficult to field.

I actually tried to use the new scale system while creating a pretender for the current MP game. Ubar benefits from a +1 heat bonus so they start at 3 already, but I chose a pretender that add yet another one so my dominion would spread a +4 heat, a bit too hot even for me but -I hoped- destructively hot to neighbor nations. However Ubar priests are not very good at spreading dominion, I took a very average dominion value for the pretender and war has stopped me from building enough temples so my dastardly plan has failed so far.

 

[JB_0x0003]

Yeah, had a gander at that too. Getting the hang of scales and blesses now. Find it hard to go past the Allfather when he is available just because Odin is cool, not really maximising potential.

Tending towards less sacreds and higher scales at present but next time I might try heavier scared strategy. Reading the dom 5 stuff makes me think scales got a bit of a buff and blesses/sacred strategy got a bit nerfed?

Don't think about these as separate strategies. Dominions isn't designed like most other games where you'll have the "Magic nation" who wants to do lots of magic. With very few exceptions, every nation interacts strongly with every mechanic. Almost every nation will use their bless/sacreds to a substantial degree, even if they aren't the only thing they're doing. It's a very different design ethos from most modern games.

However, blesses were made much weaker. In Dominions 5, you would get a bless point for your first level in a magic path, and now you only get them for each level above 1. This is makes almost every bless substantially more expensive on every pretender. It doesn't matter for a new player, though. A lot of the advice about blesses in dominions 5 was written by people who weren't very good at the game.

Another thing to remember: the group of people who play dominions actively is really quite small, and games take a very long time (average is 1 turn/day), so people don't really a good understanding of the game or balance in general. Take everything people say with a substantial grain of salt. Innovating is extremely possible, even for a brand new player.

RNG maps are shit and sometimes eliminate you at game start, issue is very old.

Host your own games and set the 2 or 3 neighbor provinces as "nostart" in the editor. Fixes all the bad parts of the more flavorful maps. You can play on mapnuke if you want a perfectly "fair" map, but that creates a horrifically boring grid. I'd never subject myself to 2 months of that.

 

[Baron Tahn]

Thanks yeah Ive been mucking around a bit with the early game and can see all sorts of interesting ways things might work.

Surely tho taking someone with only one sacred unit vs some races that have 2 or 3 different types would mean they were less into blesses? Blesses only work on sacreds right?

So with someone like Ulm its better to go scales and beef up production for all dat armour? Sooo many questions but Im keeping my eye out for a disciple game if you know of any on the cards let me know. Sometimes a proper ass kicking is the only way to learn.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

With very few exceptions, every nation interacts strongly with every mechanic.

This depends on your strategy/set-up though, few nations get to do everything well at once; Magic is for everyone always, scary sacreds and scales and fuckyoulategamemagiccasters? Nah.

 

[JB_0x0003]

With very few exceptions, every nation interacts strongly with every mechanic.

This depends on your strategy/set-up though, few nations get to do everything well at once; Magic is for everyone always, scary sacreds and scales and fuckyoulategamemagiccasters? Nah.

On most nations you want to have lategame casters available or the ability to make the relevant boosters to climb in multiple paths, because otherwise you simply get outscaled in the lategame. You can do a strategy with no strong lategame but that's NICHE and you'll almost always have some plan like Faerie Queens or Tartarians for the late game.

There are also very few nations where you want to ignore your sacreds. It's true for MA Oceania and some of the Ermor splinters, but just having a 5 point stygian skin buff makes your troops nigh instantly win versus pure mundane troops. If your sacreds are mediocre, they're still an important mechanic to consider.

You kind of missed the point of what I'm saying tbh. "Scales" isn't a mechanic you interact with inside of a game. Your resource intensive troops are.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

My point is that the power of nations in different aspects of gameplay is relative; If the worst nation scores 80 in an aspect and the best scores 100, both assumed to be respectable scores on a scale of 100, the 80 score is still a relatively very low score, rock bottom in fact. I would advise taking note of these relative power levels in order to maximize the nation and reach the late-game, where indeed everything starts to blend together (even) more, in a strong position.
And if scales aren't interacted with during the game neither is your bless, or your pretender magic paths? I'll agree I'm missing your point there, I'd say none of those constitute a constant that you fire and forget during pretender design.

 

[JB_0x0003]

how's the AI and UI in recent versions?

Wanted to play recently, but remembered how I suffered in Dominions 3 playing LA Ermor, or some other necro shit - endlessly creating and moving stacks of skellies was no joke, and other nations AI was crazy.

UI is better if you know the hotkeys. AI is the same (completely unable to fight back if you mobilize a non-zero number of mages).

My point is that the power of nations in different aspects of gameplay is relative; If the worst nation scores 80 in an aspect and the best scores 100, both assumed to be respectable scores on a scale of 100, the 80 score is still a relatively very low score, rock bottom in fact. I would advise taking note of these relative power levels in order to maximize the nation and reach the late-game, where indeed everything starts to blend together (even) more, in a strong position.
And if scales aren't interacted with during the game neither is your bless, or your pretender magic paths? I'll agree I'm missing your point there, I'd say none of those constitute a constant that you fire and forget during pretender design.

Mr. Extend, relative power level doesn't matter for what you and I were talking about.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

And I quote:

With very few exceptions, every nation interacts strongly with every mechanic.

 

[JB_0x0003]

And I quote:

With very few exceptions, every nation interacts strongly with every mechanic.

Mr. Extend is UNFORTUNATELY merely 5'10, and has thus decided to NEVER INTERACT with THE GYM because he is not in the TOP FIVE PERCENT of all PHYSICAL SPECIMENS. Some might say that this is STUPID and is a good way TO LOSE BITCHES but Mr. Extend has assured me that this is OPTIMAL PLAY.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

wtf do you know me?

Spoiler

GYMS are for BITCHES, I SWIM twice a week + monday>thursday morning/evening routine AT HOME so SUCK IT

Spoiler

I AM pretty SHORT though

 

[Andnjord]

27 provinces searched with fire 2 and Augury, precisely zero fire sites found. I know it's Late Age, but how much does the game hate me?

EDIT: HeatEXTEND , I just loaded the save and it's actually 48 provinces searched in total, 19 of which with Augury...which yielded a grand total of TWO (02) fire sites, on of which was actually found by AI Agartha.

I had to spend about 60 turns with zero fire income, goddamn.

 

[Demo.Graph]

I had to spend about 60 turns with zero fire income, goddamn.

It means you have to search for water.
Or blood. Blood is the price of victory. /Clausewitz

 

[JB_0x0003]

27 provinces searched with fire 2 and Augury, precisely zero fire sites found. I know it's Late Age, but how much does the game hate me?

EDIT: HeatEXTEND , I just loaded the save and it's actually 48 provinces searched in total, 19 of which with Augury...which yielded a grand total of TWO (02) fire sites, on of which was actually found by AI Agartha.

I had to spend about 60 turns with zero fire income, goddamn.

Trade with people. It's a multiplayer game.

 

[TheDarkUrge]

Is there ANY way to play MA ermor that doesnt involve Lictor spam?

I like their style of popkill + freespawn but if I have to do the same thing every game it will kinda be boring