Let's Read Giant Wusses: A Dominions 5 tourney LP

[Infinitum]

Yes and no. Scouting nets are pretty sparse early on, and most people follow the "and then there were none" doctrine of diplomacy where they NAP everything and endlessly try to convince everyone else to gank eachother. Not a lot of opportunists out there. (That said, Man starting next to certain flavors of Ashdod bless literally cannot win an early war. Dominions is not a finely balanced game in the least).

 

[mondblut]

Whoa. New nations? Ind is really quite something by the looks of it. 4 different kinds of cap-only sacreds alone, what the fuck. Dog-headed people, amazons, unique joo summons, omg.

 

[Dayyālu]

Whoa. New nations? Ind is really quite something by the looks of it. 4 different kinds of cap-only sacreds alone, what the fuck. Dog-headed people, amazons, unique joo summons, omg.

Yes, new nations and a bit more involved in weird mechanics than the old ones. Ind is like a long historical in-joke and shitpost just in one. I am not joking. The nation automatically shitposts for you.

Like, around turn 20 they automatically send everyone a H2 commander as a gift with a message "You know, you are all False Gods but we're so awesome, why you just don't submit to us and everyone is happy, 'kay?"

 

[mondblut]

Tempts me to roll a "normal" session with just one age rather than 100 nations, now that the Faerun map from Dominions 3 has been converted for Dom5 too.

 

[Reinhardt]

I guess i've lost. Technically i'm not, but i'm lagging behind everyone else too much. Took me a while to figure how to claim the throne, started crafting items only after reaching 2-4 in everything, zero buildings in provinces until i met giants, my pretender is a whatever retard, i'm starting to understand importance of key provinces instead of grabbing everything i can - bridges teached me this. To reach province i want now i need to start 2 wars instead of grabbing just one province earlier. And i still have no idea how to conquer underwater provinces with humans - my capital in on the coast and every underwater province belongs to another nation.

Won every battle but lost the war.

 

[Dayyālu]

You're playing Single Player right

Follow this simple guide

Spoiler

Take a Great Serpent a Pretender (it's NOT an optimal choice in MP bar in some cases, it was once a go-to pick but some things have changed)

wait not this guy



A snek murderfucks indies and even the AI has problems in dealing with it outside the box. Take it Awake, get like Dominion 6 Earth4 Water 3 Prod3 Misf 1 for a small reinvig bless (if you don't want to delve too deep into bless strategies now) for MA Ulm or the like

You need Prod for the armours, if you want another nation take Order or Growth instead

WAIT I FORGOT ULM HAS MUNDANE RESEARCHER YOU CAN DUMP MAGIC TO GAIN FREE POINTS

Whatever, details

This is not an optimal build in any way, it's simply a fuck around build for SP

Remember that the AI starts wars almost randomly, it weirdly considers PD a strong incentive to attack/not attack you, so the strategy of "PD Dumping", wasting 400+ G on the Province Defense (you know what province defense is, right? it's that small number you can click on on the province overlay, it lets you recruit local defense that acts as , well, local defense and it regenerates freely)

While your Giant Snek goes on a rampage on the easier indies (set him behind and let him chew their faces off for now) you need a basic research goal

Alteration 2

You need Quicken Self for your snek, so he can chew faces faster, and Stoneskin, so he gets even more tanky. He regenerates, so he can eat a hit or two, but now he's essentially unkillable by indies and the vast majority of even midgame AI human/elf/ogre armies

Giants may be a problem if they took a adequate bless. Massed Barbs and Knights should be avoided because massive impact damage, bring an army to fuck with 'em

He also works underwater if needed, in that case you want to script Ice Shield too (it's a spell that works just UW, some are weird like that). With a fully functional nuclear option at your disposal you can play with battalions and get the feel of it, or merely fuck around

Morale, particularly at the beginning, is important, don't let the maluses stack
Remember that long weapons have "repel" attributes, a pikeman block can inconvenience inferior troops quite a lot

Try then to experiment with Evocation spells (for blowing shit up) , check what your mages can cast and go to town

Remember that this is a basic fuck around guide to let you murderrape the AI, it won't work on MP

 

[Demo.Graph]

Since we're it's coming out time.

Mondblut would probably disagree with this, but he is the only Dominions player I know who enjoys playing this game in SP somehow.

I play Dominions solo only.
I began in PPP. I've pirated up to 3, then bought 4 and 5 (Fucking Gamersgate... why it takes a Jolly Roger to make a game portable?! And even Gamersgate is better than a Steam cancer). I've played a lot of 3 and 4. And by "a lot" I mean "a lot for me" - about 2-3 weeks of game evenings per year. I guess I didn't play Doms in 2019 at all.
I tend to play in two modes. First is a quick playthrough of some pretender concept on a small map just to scratch that Dominions itch and try some stupid shit (flying snake with a fear helmet? naked boob dom-10 awe pornstar titan? a cross breeding specialist?). The second is an all-nations game where I roleplay hard when I'm in a mood for high-fantasy escapism, logorrhea and some random plot generation.
I've never bothered to play multiplayer. My job sometimes requires me to skip all civil life for several days in a row, so I would inevitably miss turns. Even if not for this, MP games are a commitment. Just to reach a midgame you need to make a turn every evening for a month. In SP I can get to that stage in several hours and then run around with some ephebophile oreiad rapist squads. And I can, for example, summon Juggernaut and call him "Hawking Engine" or spam Ether Gates just for the sake of it being SPACE INVASION, RUN and don't think about being assraped by others for playing suboptimally.
I still enjoy watching other people play competitively. It's like a soccer on TV that requires brain.

 

[Reinhardt]

Since we're

Well, no updates, no Grimwulf's rage...

 

[Reinhardt]

You're playing Single Player right

Follow this simple guide

Spoiler

Take a Great Serpent a Pretender (it's NOT an optimal choice in MP bar in some cases, it was once a go-to pick but some things have changed)

wait not this guy



A snek murderfucks indies and even the AI has problems in dealing with it outside the box. Take it Awake, get like Dominion 6 Earth4 Water 3 Prod3 Misf 1 for a small reinvig bless (if you don't want to delve too deep into bless strategies now) for MA Ulm or the like

You need Prod for the armours, if you want another nation take Order or Growth instead

WAIT I FORGOT ULM HAS MUNDANE RESEARCHER YOU CAN DUMP MAGIC TO GAIN FREE POINTS

Whatever, details

This is not an optimal build in any way, it's simply a fuck around build for SP

Remember that the AI starts wars almost randomly, it weirdly considers PD a strong incentive to attack/not attack you, so the strategy of "PD Dumping", wasting 400+ G on the Province Defense (you know what province defense is, right? it's that small number you can click on on the province overlay, it lets you recruit local defense that acts as , well, local defense and it regenerates freely)

While your Giant Snek goes on a rampage on the easier indies (set him behind and let him chew their faces off for now) you need a basic research goal

Alteration 2

You need Quicken Self for your snek, so he can chew faces faster, and Stoneskin, so he gets even more tanky. He regenerates, so he can eat a hit or two, but now he's essentially unkillable by indies and the vast majority of even midgame AI human/elf/ogre armies

Giants may be a problem if they took a adequate bless. Massed Barbs and Knights should be avoided because massive impact damage, bring an army to fuck with 'em

He also works underwater if needed, in that case you want to script Ice Shield too (it's a spell that works just UW, some are weird like that). With a fully functional nuclear option at your disposal you can play with battalions and get the feel of it, or merely fuck around

Morale, particularly at the beginning, is important, don't let the maluses stack
Remember that long weapons have "repel" attributes, a pikeman block can inconvenience inferior troops quite a lot

Try then to experiment with Evocation spells (for blowing shit up) , check what your mages can cast and go to town

Remember that this is a basic fuck around guide to let you murderrape the AI, it won't work on MP

Noted, but i will keep making retarded pretenders for now until i understand why things works how the work.

 

[mondblut]

SC pretender is a colossal waste in opportunity costs. You could have scales that easily allow you to outbuild and outrecruit everyone. You could have a bless allowing your sacreds to rape everything. You could have access to magic you can't access otherwise. Instead you only get a single big dumb unit that stops being relevant by the start of midgame.

It can be serviceable in cutthroat mutliplayer where you need to be 3 provinces ahead of your competition by the end of year 1 or want to beeline and take out a neighbor in early pretender rush - but if you are playing to actually have fun, this is the worst choice possible.

My pick is always a rainbow pretender that gives you all magic in the world (plus forging, plus ridiculous research and universal sitesearching). In the long run (and SP is all about the long run) this option gives you the most longevity and versatility for your buck.

 

[Dayyālu]

SC pretender is a colossal waste in opportunity costs.

In SP you win doing whatever you want because the AI can't play the game. You are map painting or LARPing. Nothing wrong with that. Speaking about "optimization" in SP is borderline useless. Why are you even optimizing? You already won the game if you know how to play Dominions.

Again, nothing wrong with Map Painting!

If someone is just starting and wants something to keep the AI off his back and experiment, I do believe in and I suggested a quick SC build because it's quick, cheap and effective in indie and early-game AI clearing. Even simpler could be a Great Earth Serpent with E7 or something, good fucking luck breaching 25+ protection. A similar "suggestion" could have been the typical Rapetaurs (quickness-regen?) Pans suggestion, but a Snek Pretender can be also used with other human nations, it's not nation dependant.

Like

Spoiler

Works with Pans, a zero-effort murderbless. You trash your scales to gain effective sacreds. Your Pretender needs to be awake because the more powerful blesses require an Awake Pretender. Dump 10+ centaurs per rounds, clean indies, the AI can't deal with this until midgame, and even then

You can dump Regeneration for something else (Minor Earth Bless? Blood Surge?) , take Dormant knowing your murdersacreds won't be active until turn 12, shitton of variations. Fuck around and experiment, but almost nothing that works in SP (bar indie expansion) will work in MP, because the AI is, well, limited. Harder difficulty levels just flat-out give % bonuses to the AI; the routines are the same

Noted, but i will keep making retarded pretenders for now until i understand why things works how the work.

Also, read the manual. I dimly remember that even the manual isn't completely up to date and correct, but hey, I've learned from the Tutorial in the manual back in Dom3 days. If I did it, means that everyone can

I began in PPP.

Weirdest question ever. I've bought all Dominions since the 3 era, but like seriously I'd like to try PPP and Dom2 but fuck paying 10 bucks for novelty. There are still.... ehrm.... pirated copies around? Never found one.

 

[mondblut]

Speaking about "optimization" in SP is borderline useless. Why are you even optimizing?

Optimization of fun income per unit of time spent, duh.

300 different summons from 8 elements, powered by gems from 200 discovered sites = much fun. Beating up indie heavy infantry in melee one province at a time = little fun.

Weirdest question ever. I've bought all Dominions since the 3 era, but like seriously I'd like to try PPP and Dom2 but fuck paying 10 bucks for novelty. There are still.... ehrm.... pirated copies around? Never found one.

Dom2 is p.much indistinguishable from Dom3. The main difference is that instead of "eras" separating nations there are "flavors" to choose from independently from other nations - i.e. after selecting Ermor you get to choose between EA-Ermor, Sceleria-Ermor, MA-Ermor (LA in Dom3) and Lemuria-Ermor.

DomPPP is...fugly. Also only 15 nations.

There are pirated versions of these floating around, but their "support" was abandoned long before Illwinter stopped patching them, so you'd have to settle for buggy, not-final versions.

 

[Reinhardt]

i.e. after selecting Ermor you get to choose between EA-Ermor, Sceleria-Ermor, MA-Ermor (LA in Dom3) and Lemuria-Ermor.

Wait, i remember now! I played it once many years ago - got pirate cd for rent for one day!

 

[Demo.Graph]

Weirdest question ever. I've bought all Dominions since the 3 era, but like seriously I'd like to try PPP and Dom2 but fuck paying 10 bucks for novelty. There are still.... ehrm.... pirated copies around? Never found one.

You'll lose nothing if you skip them in favor of the third. PPP and 2 are basicly redacted versions of 3. IIRC even balance curiosities are the same (like blood summons being a dominant endgame or akashic record being almost always better than manual search or other spells). And IIRC game mechanics are the same (nothing like movement remake in 5 or addition of castle improvements in 4).
If you still want to try them, I can dig a bit through my archive.

There are pirated versions of these floating around, but their "support" was abandoned long before Illwinter stopped patching them, so you'd have to settle for buggy, not-final versions.

IIRC there were patched versions under a false flag. I'm not sure whether the patches were final.

Dom2 is p.much indistinguishable from Dom3. The main difference is that instead of "eras" separating nations there are "flavors" to choose from independently from other nations - i.e. after selecting Ermor you get to choose between EA-Ermor, Sceleria-Ermor, MA-Ermor (LA in Dom3) and Lemuria-Ermor.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. You also could turn any nation into a golem cult that gave golem units something like +10% hp and hp regen like living units... But the point cost was so high that it was generally useless.

 

[Joined on the 4th of July]

DomPPP had shareware/free version that capped magic schools to level 4 (or 5?). Feature copied from VGA Planets. Extra challenge for multiplayer.

 

[Matalarata]

sqeecoo someone is not being diligent, I see...

 

[Keraunograf]

Atlantis here! I just wanted to say I'm really really amused by all this.

 

[Reinhardt]

ded gaem?

 

[Reinhardt]

And now i'm sitting at pretender creation screen for past two hours with opened inspector and trying to create god so i could larp as Holy Inquisition... But not some pagan beast or FUCKING FLYING FLAMING SKULL!

 

[sqeecoo]

ded gaem?

Nah, I'm just having an "active" weekend so the LP is on a small pause until I recover! Let's see if I can get an update in today tho.

godammit this thread makes me want to play Dom MP games

Bros, this is the greatest compliment you could give this LP and the joint efforts of Grimwulf and me to entertain you. Thank you.

Also I won't respond to everything cause then I'd never get around to the update, but there's plenty of good advice flying around already.

Anyway, let's get to the update!

Turn 11: Shuffling About

No battles this turn as we were just moving around last turn - that's also what makes me able to squeeze in this turn today.

Let's look at the overall situation then:

We're moving a Gyga from our capitol to the location of the second fort to build a lab (orange), leaving two Gygas researching in the capitol. Our prophet-led group of 21 giants (mostly Skinshifters) is moving on the barbarian province (red) and possibly then to the farm in the west. We have enough giants and the prophet allows us to form a nice line against the barbs, but we are still likely to lose a few giants. Barbs just hit that hard, and there probably 40-60 of them. Fighting them is always painful early on.

A normal commander is moving a 13-strong group of mostly Skinshifters to the east (blue) from where they will take that cavalry province north of there. In our capitol we're building another normal giant Jarl and some Skinshifters:

I know, I know, another turn without a mage, but our prophet Jarl is occupied in the west and I really do want to have a Jarl to make a nice line of troops and boost morale for when we engage Yomi. He'll lead out these Skinshifters next turn and meet up with the dudes taking the coastal cavalry province. That will be our initial anti-Yomi force. Not enough for a big battle but enough to raid and fight a medium engagement; we're counting on Hinnom taking most of the heat.

We're also building a lab in our first fort location (yellow) where the fort is about to finish. In the meantime we're building some cavalry commanders there - they are a bit pricier (50 vs 40 gold) than the normal non-mounted commanders but they are faster in our snowy lands so I think it's worth it since our giants would be slowed down by the normal commanders.

We can also see that Atlantis has taken that province south of the yellow fort (black) with a decent force, and I'm a bit worried they could come in and destroy our fort. That'd be a big blow, but we are trusting to our NAP with him for now.

We've also pinged the SW throne (green) and found out that it has a decent crew of mage defenders:

Four wizards spamming elementals is not something we want to mess with using just Skinshifters, so we'll leave it alone for now.

And that concludes this short update! I'm glad I managed to squeeze this in. Busy times lately. Next time, we'll fight some barbarians and build or first fort! Or have it destroyed by Atlantis, we shall see.

 

[Reinhardt]

I know, I know, another turn without a mage

Hey, i have more mages than you!

 

[Undead Phoenix]

As butthurt as I am over having to sub out on my multiplayer games, I'm amused by how much greater Grimwulf's is over something he's not involved with


New Kool Krew game when?

 

[Reinhardt]

What Sqeecoo does instead is this:

Pure genius.

 

[Reinhardt]

Boy, having bless relly changes everything. Even cheap flagellants can rape everything that moves.


My first pretender was just glorified site searcher - yes, he had literally zero blessings. And he was awakened. So it looks like i just sent those sacred knights to their deaths. Well, whatever.

 

[sqeecoo]

Turn 12: Happy Year 1!

Ok, let's try to keep this going! The laziness is strong with me at the moment so updates are slow, but they will pick up with the ebb and flow of my emocean (emotional ocean).

We are entering spring of Year 1 with this turn, hence the title. For some reason the first year in a Dominions game is counted as year 0. Seems kinda stupid to me, but what can you do. Any excuse for a celebration, eh?

Last turn we attacked a barbarian group:

Our giants are set in a LONG line to nicely surround the tightly packed barbarians - if we can hit and kill a lot of them quickly before they grind down the massive HP of our Skinshifters we can rout them before they do much damage.

The plan works decently well - while we don't surround them TOO much some of the barbarians get stuck behind the line, and after the first exchange of hits the barbarians rout immediately, as their HP are not enough to reliably survive hits from giants but their armor and defense and minimal, so the hits we got in were enough to rout them after the first exchange of blows.

No losses! Very nice. The overall plan is as follows:

We can see that Tien Chi (TC) has taken the farm province beyond the barbarians we were aiming for (red). Ah well, too bad. A single commander like that sitting in a province (especially over several turns) often indicates that a fort is being built. Similarly, we can see a barbarian leader sitting in the province Atlantis nabbed from us (black) which means that they may be building a fort there. Since EA Atlantis can't actually recruit anything from non-UW forts this probably means there is some indy mage type that can be recruited in that province - hopefully not something very valuable that they grabbed from us.
However, a commander sitting in a province does not necessarily mean a fort is being built - we have a commander sitting in the adjacent farm (black) just to be ready when we get the money to build a fort, but we are not actually making one there at the moment. But I find it pays to have some commanders in position to start forts in this phase of the game; you never know when you will get a lucky event or something. We also have a commander sitting in the amazon province (green) ready to start a fort there. As I said though, that was a mistake: we should have just built a lab there and got one of those mages every two turns, saving our forts for Skratti and Gygas.

The army that fought the barbarians is moving back east and will go fight Yomi as fast as it can get there, while our expansion group in the east is attacking that cavalry province (blue). They are set up in an incredibly boring single square:

It's generally better to set your dudes in two squares in this situation so you get more surface area (i.e. closer to a line). But I'm not doing that here since it's a cavalry province - if there's a decent amount of cavalry and they hit one of our two groups of 6 in that formation, they could rout that group if they do a lot of damage - say, killing or badly hurting 3 guys. That would leave us with only the second group of 6 that may not be enough to win. Whereas the big 12-strong group will probably not rout even if they take enough damage to kill 3 guys.

Our second fort is finishing up (yellow), but this turn I'm still site-searching with the Gyga there instead of building a lab, since we both have to continue construction of the next level of our first fort and because I wanted to start our first Skratti there and a Gyga in the capitol.

As you can see we are also recruiting

troops

in the capitol.

We can also see a decent-sized group of bakemono to the east (red), perhaps gearing up to take that indy province north of them. Interestingly, a lot of them are archers. Yomi gets a group of bakemono archers in his starting army but I wouldn't build more after that. Bakemono get packed really close due to being size 1 and 6 to a square, so you want as many as possible to get as much frontage as possible - archers go against this idea since they will stay behind and fire, possibly hurting your own bakemono fighting in melee.

Finally, our pretender has awoken this turn!

Lord of Eloquence, very fitting for this LP. Here he is in the flesh, so to speak, if you've forgotten his description from earlier:

He will research in the capitol for now, and with his nice 35 research he doubles our research points per turn to a massive 65! Construction 4, here we come! (not really)

That concludes our turn. Next time, we will see whether being square was the smart move against that cavalry province!