Incline Dominions 6

[Hag]

Think nations with giants are better than ever, much more than pop kill nations indeed. I just have one question: some shackled mages have communion slave in the unit description, and oppressors have communion master. Does that mean they are automatically in communion, or do I have to script each of them to cast it like before?

They enter the battle in a state of communion, which saves you one slot for spells.

 

[Malakal]

MA Ermor is also weakened by not being able to dump scales as much as before, cant get as big of a bless as before. And the scale they might actually want to max, luck, you now have a malus to.

MA Ermor never was particularly strong since Dom3 (??) what led to it winning games was boring the other players and sheer incompetence of opponents. New players simply can't handle thousands of skeletons.

But on paper it always was a weak nation.

 

[Johannes]

It wasnt strong in Dom3 for sure, in Dom4 you at least could take BV bless to fuck everyone else even more. And Dom5 BV combined with whatever. But idk how strong those Lictor builds were exactly, I've actually never been in a game with MA Ermor in it.

 

[Damned Registrations]

The new glamour stealth bless seems like it'll enable some pretty nasty domkill/hell scales strats with a lot of nations. I know a few nations had that sort of thing before, stealthy heretic units and such, but it's on the table for basically everyone now.

Took a peek at Asphodel, they get nature gems from temples now; combined with the ability to get to growth 4 scales and terraform the map into forest and some of the new forest themed spells, they've got like an actual gameplan now. No idea if it's a good gameplan (probably not) but it's better than what they had before for sure.

 

[Dadd]

kind of lame that the main strategies for countering glamour require glamour

 

[Hag]

kind of lame that the main strategies for countering glamour require glamour

Spirit Sight bless is S+D

 

[Malakal]

kind of lame that the main strategies for countering glamour require glamour

Spirit Sight bless is S+D

Bless usually is not a counter since it requires you having sacred units worth taking a bless for and that can fight off glamour enemies. For example C'tis can't really counter glamor with bless in EA and MA.

The real counter is spells obviously. Undead don't care, demons often don't care either, fireball ain't care for sure.

 

[mondblut]

MA Ermor never was particularly strong since Dom3 (??)

Strictly speaking, there was no MA Ermor until Dom3. DomPPP had THE Ermor, and Dom2 had a bunch of flavors to choose from, namely future EA, MA, Sceleria and Lemuria.

Incidentally, I never played a non-Ermor nation until Dom3. Ermor was my waifu nation in DomPPP, and Soul Gates Ermor (Lemuria) in Dom2.

the other players

who?

 

[Beastro]

Glad to see the game still has the same issue for me it always had:

Once turns start to take 10+ minutes to do, it becomes annoying. Too much manual work.
Like the magic site searching. In theory, I suppose the "Search For Magic Sites (auto)" should automate that, but it simply doesn't work for me. Any mage I set to that will lose that order next turn and I'll just have to do it again... Where's my fire and forget site searcher?

Once you have 30+ provinces, doing a single turn just takes so long it starts to really bother me.

You don't do anything else when playing a turn based game like this?

Any game like this you have other stuff to do while you process those long later game turns. Could be a show/movie you're watching, tabbing out to watch YouTube videos, doing chores, etc.

 

[thesheeep]

You don't do anything else when playing a turn based game like this?

Any game like this you have other stuff to do while you process those long later game turns. Could be a show/movie you're watching, tabbing out to watch YouTube videos, doing chores, etc.

If a game forces me to play another game or do something else entirely while waiting, the game has serious issues.
I want to focus on the game I'm playing - only exception I can think of is multiplayer with other people and you have to wait for them sometimes, which is fine of course.

Either way, that's not the issue here, AI turn times are almost instant for me.
My issue is that actively focusing on doing just a single turn takes forever (once a certain size is reached), making the game grind to a near halt.
And for Dominions, that is mostly due to a lack of automation.

Btw, the issue with the mage auto search not working has apparently been fixed, at least it works for me now.
Which is nice. One menial task less to manually fiddle with.
But there are still plenty things left that are no brainers and could/should thus be possible to automate away.

 

[Beastro]

You don't do anything else when playing a turn based game like this?

Any game like this you have other stuff to do while you process those long later game turns. Could be a show/movie you're watching, tabbing out to watch YouTube videos, doing chores, etc.

My issue is that actively focusing on doing just a single turn takes forever (once a certain size is reached), making the game grind to a near halt.
And for Dominions, that is mostly due to a lack of automation.

I get that. I haven't Dominions yet, but ai ran into this with CoE and it combined with how much of the world planes are pretty much unused by the AI made me give it up.

 

[Mortmal]

You don't do anything else when playing a turn based game like this?

Any game like this you have other stuff to do while you process those long later game turns. Could be a show/movie you're watching, tabbing out to watch YouTube videos, doing chores, etc.

If a game forces me to play another game or do something else entirely while waiting, the game has serious issues.
I want to focus on the game I'm playing - only exception I can think of is multiplayer with other people and you have to wait for them sometimes, which is fine of course.

Either way, that's not the issue here, AI turn times are almost instant for me.
My issue is that actively focusing on doing just a single turn takes forever (once a certain size is reached), making the game grind to a near halt.
And for Dominions, that is mostly due to a lack of automation.

Btw, the issue with the mage auto search not working has apparently been fixed, at least it works for me now.
Which is nice. One menial task less to manually fiddle with.
But there are still plenty things left that are no brainers and could/should thus be possible to automate away.

Magic site auto-search is a blessing for sure, but there's still a lot of things to improve, yes. When I summon or recruit new mages, it would be nice to have them auto-research when idle, instead of defending when there's a lab. Ferrying the troops is a lot of micro; a rally point is much needed. It's still as good as ever, but there aren't enough improvements from Dom 5.

 

[Berekän]

You don't do anything else when playing a turn based game like this?

Any game like this you have other stuff to do while you process those long later game turns. Could be a show/movie you're watching, tabbing out to watch YouTube videos, doing chores, etc.

If a game forces me to play another game or do something else entirely while waiting, the game has serious issues.
I want to focus on the game I'm playing - only exception I can think of is multiplayer with other people and you have to wait for them sometimes, which is fine of course.

Either way, that's not the issue here, AI turn times are almost instant for me.
My issue is that actively focusing on doing just a single turn takes forever (once a certain size is reached), making the game grind to a near halt.
And for Dominions, that is mostly due to a lack of automation.

Btw, the issue with the mage auto search not working has apparently been fixed, at least it works for me now.
Which is nice. One menial task less to manually fiddle with.
But there are still plenty things left that are no brainers and could/should thus be possible to automate away.

When I summon or recruit new mages, it would be nice to have them auto-research when idle, instead of defending when there's a lab.

There's a toggle for that in the options, available in Dom 5 too.

 

[Tanaka]

You don't do anything else when playing a turn based game like this?

Any game like this you have other stuff to do while you process those long later game turns. Could be a show/movie you're watching, tabbing out to watch YouTube videos, doing chores, etc.

If a game forces me to play another game or do something else entirely while waiting, the game has serious issues.
I want to focus on the game I'm playing - only exception I can think of is multiplayer with other people and you have to wait for them sometimes, which is fine of course.

Either way, that's not the issue here, AI turn times are almost instant for me.
My issue is that actively focusing on doing just a single turn takes forever (once a certain size is reached), making the game grind to a near halt.
And for Dominions, that is mostly due to a lack of automation.

Btw, the issue with the mage auto search not working has apparently been fixed, at least it works for me now.
Which is nice. One menial task less to manually fiddle with.
But there are still plenty things left that are no brainers and could/should thus be possible to automate away.

Magic site auto-search is a blessing for sure, but there's still a lot of things to improve, yes. When I summon or recruit new mages, it would be nice to have them auto-research when idle, instead of defending when there's a lab. Ferrying the troops is a lot of micro; a rally point is much needed. It's still as good as ever, but there aren't enough improvements from Dom 5.

There is a setting for this in the game options.

 

[Sinilevä]

So far completed two games against the AI. Like some pointed out it seems like the giant nations are pretty strong. Played as Agartha against five mighty aggressive AI and couldn't even leave my cave, because Muspelheim was bloating like nobody's business. Managed to conquer couple of provinces on the surface, but got beaten back into the cave in no time. The second game was for another cave nation Xibalba. This time the AI was standard and it felt like it was pretty passive. It could amass huge armies, but it wouldn't try to invade my cave or capture thrones. I won by simply sitting in the cave until I got all blood magic spells researched and only then surfaced. It was still a pretty long fight for the thrones, AI used a lot of magic and global enchantmnets, but again didn't try hard enough to secure the thrones. Overall, so far I find SP to be entertaining, although I'm not a good player.

 

[Nathir]

I just bought this game, never played Dominions before. I have no idea what's going on. But I did manage to win a battle and conquer a new province with my starting army.

Can I use my god to go out and fight? Is there a drawback to it, or should I do it?

 

[Damned Registrations]

Can I use my god to go out and fight? Is there a drawback to it, or should I do it?

That's a complicated question. The short answer is, if it's a big tough monster (Say, over 20 protection and 120 Health), go for it, as long as the fight is within your dominion (the areas within the highlighted border, which can extend beyond the provinces you own.) If you're not sure, send it along with an army and watch if it gets beat up. The drawback is that if it dies it can take a while to revive and it might suffer permanent injuries, including crippling it's spellcasting.

The long answer involves a billion caveats about various types of defenses and particular enemies that might get through them and spells and equipment and such. Some gods are built to solo provinces all day long, others are weaklings better left in a fort to cast spells or make items. Others are glass cannons that can cast big lategame spells later on, or are potential one man armies, but only after you build them an arsenal to make them invincible.

 

[Nathir]

Huh, how do I cast spells?

 

[Sinilevä]

Huh, how do I cast spells?

Man, I hate any kind of guides for games since it's usually much more fun to discover the game by yourself, but this is one of them games where it is worth to learn at least the basics before playing. Time stamped for magic:

 

[Andnjord]

Can I use my god to go out and fight? Is there a drawback to it, or should I do it?

Post a screenshot of him so we can explain why he should or shouldn’t leave his man-cave.

 

[Nathir]

Can I use my god to go out and fight? Is there a drawback to it, or should I do it?

Post a screenshot of him so we can explain why he should or shouldn’t leave his man-cave.

 

[Hag]

What do we have ? 91 hit points are not much, and more importantly 4 protection is terrible. Since he is huge (size 9 out of 10) he can be easily surrounded and get defense penalties, and his low protection means it will get damages quickly and usually die in a couple of turns. Not that is attack and defense skills are incredible to start with (15 is above average but nowhere top-tier).
He has three magic paths but all at 1, which mean he can't cast anything but the most basic spells. He has ok leadership but his place clearly isn't on a battlefield. You can use him either as a researcher (11 Research points are still good to have) or as a blood hunter since he has some bonuses for it.

You can probably craft magical items (unlocked with construction magic path) to offset his weaknesses and turn him into a supercombatant, but his low magical paths will heavily limit his ability to cast spells to protect himself or attack others, so it will be a very risky endeavour.

 

[Malakal]

What do we have ? 91 hit points are not much, and more importantly 4 protection is terrible. Since he is huge (size 9 out of 10) he can be easily surrounded and get defense penalties, and his low protection means it will get damages quickly and usually die in a couple of turns. Not that is attack and defense skills are incredible to start with (15 is above average but nowhere top-tier).
He has three magic paths but all at 1, which mean he can't cast anything but the most basic spells. He has ok leadership but his place clearly isn't on a battlefield. You can use him either as a researcher (11 Research points are still good to have) or as a blood hunter since he has some bonuses for it.

You can probably craft magical items (unlocked with construction magic path) to offset his weaknesses and turn him into a supercombatant, but his low magical paths will heavily limit his ability to cast spells to protect himself or attack others, so it will be a very risky endeavour.

Dont sugarcoat this, its a horrible pretender and it can do less than a cap only mage.

Especially for Micltan/Xibalba.

 

[Dayyālu]

I just bought this game, never played Dominions before. I have no idea what's going on. But I did manage to win a battle and conquer a new province with my starting army.

Can I use my god to go out and fight? Is there a drawback to it, or should I do it?

There are online tutorials on how to play Dominions. Even if they're narrated by basement-dwellers with horrible voices they're usually good. We should have some LPs on the Playground with the basics, hell *I* learned to play Dominions from the age-old SA LPs before they went full troon.

Your Pretender is a very important unit and has several functions:

- It decides your Bless. Blesses are important because your Sacred Units get them when blessed. Take Early Age Mictlan for a test game (EA Mictlan is a complex nation so it's just a test). Take the Bloody Mother and ape this:

Get in the game, make your initial commander your prophet (press space) and set up his combat routines (press T, battle orders, cast a specific spell). Set him to Divine blessing and recruit 10-20 Jaguar Warriors and send them to battle, see what happens. They regenerate and hit pretty hard, that's your blessing.

- It can be used as an Expander/Supercombatant with strong chassis (Earth Snake/Wyrm) or with some spells for buffs (from the Alteration school, for example).

- Magical researcher or endgame caster/forger.

You can get extra design points by making him dormant (will come out in 12 turns) or imprisoned (36 turns).

 

[Damned Registrations]

Another option (which is garbage for multiplayer but can be fun for single player) is to pick one of the skinny mage dudes at the bottom of the list, given him ~2 in basically everything, and use him for two things: Follow behind the army into controlled provinces and 'search for magic sites'. He'll find basically everything there is to find aside from really rare sites that require 3 or 4 in a single path. And the second thing, is research construction and have him sit around making equipment. Since he can find all kinds of gem sources, you'll have access to nearly every piece of equipment at each tier of construction, and can make some really powerful dudes by filling every equipment slot. This is an inefficient way to play, but I think it's a good way to naturally explore the myriad of mechanics in combat, from basic stuff like stat stacking, to weird oddball stuff like eye gouging swords and cursed objects or defensive swarms of animated clay birds. Giant nations can be good for this since slapping magic gear on a giant is more impactful than slapping it on a human.