Dominions 5!

[Freyland]

We still love you, LM.




(He's not on my team, right?)

[Zarathud]

Reminds me of that game where my elephants ran to the enemy pretender, failed morale then trampled my own army. Good times.

[LordMortis]

We still love you, LM.




(He's not on my team, right?)

Let's just say I need to be in the newbie class. I am overwhelmed by choice and don't understand the intricacies of units so I don't know how to fight well, where as when we played Dom 4, everyone was rushing and kicking the computer players asses and I... wasn't...

[RMC]

Man, I have had some huge disappointments in Dom. It is one of those games, that you need to be slow at the start to really get a good army and foothold.

I get impatient and start running an army out there, and then BAM, no more army and I scramble to build one back up... <sigh>

[Freyland]

Man, I have had some huge disappointments in Dom. It is one of those games, that you need to be slow at the start to really get a good army and foothold.

I get impatient and start running an army out there, and then BAM, no more army and I scramble to build one back up... <sigh>

We still love you, RMC.




(He's not on my team, right?)

[Holman]

Hey!

I've always been kind if interested in Dominions, but I remember seeing reviews of earlier versions tat suggested the AI was weak. Is that still true?

Even if it is, I know lots of OOers and others have enjoyed multiplayer. (I'm attracted, but I have to be judicious with my gaming budget these days.)

So, in general: what does Dominions have that Civilization or even Warcraft Total War doesn't?

[Zenn7]

Hey!

I've always been kind if interested in Dominions, but I remember seeing reviews of earlier versions tat suggested the AI was weak. Is that still true?

Even if it is, I know lots of OOers and others have enjoyed multiplayer. (I'm attracted, but I have to be judicious with my gaming budget these days.)

So, in general: what does Dominions have that Civilization or even Warcraft Total War doesn't?

Well, it beats Warcraft Total War by being a game that actually exists.
(Pretty sure you meant Warhammer Total War)
Other than having a Fantasy theme, this game is almost nothing like Warhammer Total War.

The AI sucks. It's only real challenge is that it the higher the difficulty, the more gold/gems it gets. At max difficulty, I think it gets 8x gold/gems. But it does not have the ability to know how to spend these resources intelligently. It will recruit many crap troops (though there is a mod I am sure will get updated for Dom 5 to prevent the AI from recruiting independent troops or whatever the mod defines as poor quality troops (might be 2 different mods). It cannot begin to handle the complexity of pretender design and optimal spell usage/forging. Though they have supposedly improved this slightly since the last version.

But with sufficient gold, until you really master the game, sure quantity of crap troops will be a challenge. I have no where near achieved any degree of mastery, I play on about 3 above normal for a challenging AI that I am still confident I can usually beat, but still be somewhat challenged.

In comparison to Civ - there is virtually no empire building (you can build 3 buildings - fort, temple, lab - and you can upgrade the fort a little). A basic fort allows you to recruit your faction's non-capital only troops. A temple is needed for priests (any sacred/priest). Lab for mages (any sort of casting other than holy). Both if the unit is both priest and mage. They have some other game play impact, but that's all you can build. The rest of your money is mostly spent on troops.

Where the game is radically different in a better way - designing your pretender. If you think of something like Master of Magic - the design process here is infinitely more impactful and complex. The setup has a huge impact to how your empire will function. You can also get special bless abilities to enhance your sacred troops (every faction has a 1 or more troops that are sacred - they are the only ones who can be blessed and they are different for every faction - some might be ranged, some might be tough casters, some might suck and get slaughtered - but that might not be bad with the right bless (there is blood vengeance - attacker must save or takes the same damage they inflict; another your unit dies in explosive fireball). There are offensive blesses, defensive blesses, some minor utility blesses. Of you might totally ignore blesses in favor of other things like your dominion (how powerful is it to start, income, production, growth, luck, hot/cold, magic - or the reverse of all these are possible - not just because negative values will get you more points to spend, but some factions actually benefit from negative values!)

Combat is very different as well. You script your troops and commanders. Set up where they will be deployed in battle. You can change this any time during your turn. When you hit end turn, any combats happen between turns. You can view the battle to see what's happening and see a log. Or just read the summary of troops lost and who won. Your scripting of troops is very limited - they get one command (attack/hold/fire - and pick target - closest, rear, various troops types (archers, cavalry, large monsters, few others I think). Commanders get 1 general command but you can script 5 specific commands they will execute first (so you can keep them out for a little bit or more importantly - your casters can be scripted to cast specific spells).

There are a 100 zillion spells to research. You can cast rituals that will summon troops or attack things or alter things. You can forge gear that can alter almost anything about a unit. And just about any combat category of spell you can imagine and few you probably never would have thought of.

So, combat is mostly hands off, but that scripting is critical for success.

[Holman]

Thanks! (yes, meant Warhammer)

I've always thought it was sort of the successor to Master of Magic. Since MoM was built on Civ, I've always wondered how far Dom veered from that inspiration.

[ColdSteel]

I just don't see Civ or MoM as a major influence on Dominions. It's really quite different from those.

[LordMortis]

I just don't see Civ or MoM as a major influence on Dominions. It's really quite different from those.

Dom to me seems almost like and epic level scale port for a strategic level warhammer type wargame, where the Tactics are all drive by AI.

[AWS260]

Is it weird that I kind of want to get the printed manual even though I don't actually own Dominions 5?

[tgb]

Is it weird that I kind of want to get the printed manual even though I don't actually own Dominions 5?

Considering you can buy a game or two for the price, yes.

[baelthazar]

Is it weird that I kind of want to get the printed manual even though I don't actually own Dominions 5?

You can download the PDFs and print your own. I did that.

[Pyperkub]

Just picked this up so I'll be up for the next game!

[RMC]

I am in a Llamma server game, and the player for Eriu disappeared. Still early in the game, so if you want to jump into a game send me a PM, and I can get you set-up as that nation in the game.

It is competitive, but hey I am losing badly already, so you can at least beat me.

[Zenn7]

RMC - did you ever find a replacement for Eriu in your Llama game?