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[Sean Mirrsen]

All this talk about advanced strategies, and here I am barging in with my usual "let's see how this goes" attitude.

Hello, I am new to Dominions 4. So new, in fact, that I don't actually own it yet. I skipped on buying it when it recently was on sale on Steam, because the nature of the game as described wasn't terribly appealing to me, even if the setting and premise of it was. The demo of Dominions 3 I tried out on a recommendation did nothing to convince me otherwise.

But since curiosity is a harsh mistress, here I am trying my hand at something silly using an "evaluation copy" of Dominions 4, trying to see if my decision not to buy it was wholly justified.

So far, the game proves to be entirely as over-complicated and willfully impenetrable as I expected it would be. The manual goes to great lengths to tell me that in order to be proficient at the game, I need to basically pre-formulate my entire strategy and playstyle with the race I'm going to choose, and the Pretender I'm going to make - before actually seeing any of the units or spells available.

My first attempts at "playing it by ear" have predictably ended... poorly. The game does nothing to facilitate the mentioned pre-formulation of strategy and playstyle, and even though the manual-guided tutorial helped at least to understand the interface conventions and gameplay principles, I'm still sometimes left with a feeling that I'm fighting the game more than the enemy. At this rate I probably will stand by my original judgement and refrain from buying this game even if it goes on sale again. I appreciate the depth and breadth of strategic options, the setting and the lore, the concept and even the approach to it, sacrificing graphics in order to focus on the mechanics. But this much micromanagement, and the attitude that the player must by design come into the game with a plan already formulated rather than being able to formulate and adapt strategies on the fly (exacerbated by the lack of ingame tools to facilitate such plan-making), really mark this as "not my kind of game".

As of this moment, I'm trying to see if ditching advanced civ-building strategies and treating the whole thing as just another fantasy 4X TBS will in any way work. My nation is Middle Ages Man, my pretender is Great Big Rock the Monolith, starting awake with a point in most magics (except Blood and Death) and most positive scales (except luck), with 5 dominion. Just going to crank out an army and conquer the bloody continent through sword and sorcery. Let's see how this goes...

[Delta Foxtrot]

Opening caveat: I play dominions almost exclusively as multiplayer. This will obviously colour my post.

There's this tool to peruse the assets available to a nation (out of game of course!). Pretty handy if you don't want to start a game just to see what each nation can and can't get. In addition, before any "real" game it's fairly customary to run short test games (I do 10-20 turns) to see what works and what doesn't (what if any kind of bless? scales? what scales? research priorities etc.).
So while the interface is crummy as hell, people don't actually play things going in blind.

PvP is mostly about adapting your strategies on the fly. Each nation has certain strengths and weakness and pretenders can focus or diversify those. This is most evident in the midgame, once people have some decent research in a couple of different schools of magic. In a multiplayer game here I'm playing a nation with a ton of skeletons. People have started countering them with specific anti-undead spells. I can switch back to using recruitable soldiers, I can start using spells that improve the mobility of my skeletons. I can try to spread my undead wider than my opponents can their anti-undead mages. I can use remote attack spells to kill off enemy mages from several provinces away. I can recruit assassin's to try and do the same (admittedly non-magical assassin's aren't in vogue right now).

There's plenty that I can do, despite having a very focused nation (strong air magic, undead reanimation). And this whole back and forth countering and counter-countering is what keeps me (most of us?) playing the game.

Now it is true that you generally need mages and research to adapt (those anti-undead spells require specific paths and a specific research to become available), so adapting on a turn-by-turn basis might not always happen (army scripting & recruiting aside). But Over the course of a few turns things definitely shake up. Talking about that same multiplayer match; I was recently fighting 1v1 against an opponent. I was gearing my research, recruitment and manoeuvring to counter everything he was throwing at me. Very recently I was attacked on another front, by another nation requiring me to adjust what I was doing to counter the new threats that became apparent.

Some things to note about Dominions:
It's a fairly war focused strategy game. In something like Civ you could just settle a few cities and turtle until science victory. That isn't how Dominions is played. You recruit units and start attacking independents. Indies die, you start attacking and killing other nations. He who kills best and most efficiently tends to win.
I've seen some people get turned away due to expecting something this game isn't. This game isn't really about playing Middle Age Man and building your own little feudal empire. It's about using Middle Age Man to kill the Cthulhu, the Spanish Inquisition and the Samurai Orcs.

And yeah, there's a learning curve. Both for the interface itself as well as some basic concepts. I consider myself to 'wing it' a lot, but I've played for over a year now. Just like in music, improvisation isn't a skill for the very beginners. But worry not, it took me my first MP game to fail horribly and wrap my head around some things. Progress for me was fairly fast paced as I played and learned stuff through SP testing and MP failures (and eventual successes).

If you have any difficulties wrapping your head around things, don't be shy and ask. I'd like the think there's enough reasonably skilled and polite folks here to answer any questions you may have.

[Kagus]

I spend most of my time designing and redesigning pretenders, because that's what I find fun.  But yeah, it doesn't take very long at all before the sheer towering weight of the micromanagement starts crushing down on my desire to keep going with a particular game.

It's definitely not for everyone, and it might still not even be for me (I know I'm certainly not going to be particularly "good" at it), but I'm glad I did at least give it a shot so I could sate my curiosity and my thirst for designing new/weird things.


I have been winging quite a few things, and most of the time it crashes and burns terribly and I basically have to go back to the drawing board and start a new test game...  Other times, I wind up with some pretty nifty stuff like the thing I just tried out in this semi-serious singleplayer game I'm playing as Lemuria.

Basically, my armies are a massive amount of undead soldiers.  I managed to get caught up in a vicious land war with C'tis, a living nation who has apparently been dedicating themselves to producing some several thousand ghouls during the first parts of the game...  So basically my dead guys get caught up on their dead guys while their superpriests bomb the everloving fuck out of my armies.  It's been tough.

I've got this one dude though, a random event astral mage (technically living) who just showed up randomly because he'd apparently predicted my victory and wanted to be part of it.  I had him cast ritual of returning, slapped a couple boosters and a pocket full of pearls on him, and told him to teleport off on top of one of the enemy armies.

First time I did this, I just scripted him to cast solar brilliance (battlefield-wide spell that burns undead and blinds the living) and then returning, but that didn't go too well.  He cast solar brilliance on the useless province defense, as the big army was apparently hiding inside a castle just over the hill beyond where he'd teleported to.  And then he promptly passed out, because he couldn't use enough pearls to mitigate the fatigue cost and wound up blacking out, whereupon he was summarily picked apart.

Luckily, I had another guy just like him, so I did the same thing just with the pre-prepped ritual of returning.  And also picked a province without a fort.

What happened this time was that I basically chunked half their dead army in that zone, while also blinding absolutely everybody so they were just bumping about uselessly on the field.  My mage got a bum leg from having a blind dog bite him, but he's alive and off on library duty now...  But the best part is that C'tis was apparently planning on using precisely that army to march in and take one of my provinces, but because of how the "phases" in the game work, my mage basically intercepted them before they got there.  So now the only ones showing up were a bunch of half-burned, blind ghouls being led by mages who could barely plant a spell in my general direction of the battlefield, let alone near any of my important units.


I was pretty impressed with myself.   That match as a whole?  I'm still in a tough spot but I don't want to work with it at all because it's such a goddamn nightmare moving everyone around every damn turn...

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, I can't say I think I'll need any actual advice here. I mean, I get how the game works, the issues are merely with the amount of things the game requires of you.

My little "Imperium of Man" game still rolls along nicely so far. I don't have much magic at all (mostly summoning and crafting. and the remote-site-search spells), so I use the medieval man's answer to a fireball - a good longbow. My armies are primarily archers (and midget crossbowmen) supported by screens of infantry and cavalry/summons as heavy hitters. Got quite a few werewolves among my ranks, I find they work well thematically with Cu-Sidhe. Gave a swamp drake the Gift of Reason and a squad of more swamp drakes. Just goofing around at this point. Jotunheim is almost pushed off out little island, Machaka is blocked by mountains in the north (though seem to be gearing up to fight us), and some other country I can't remember the name of is holed up in the south. My dominion is kinda weak, but its effects are weak in the first place, so as long as some of it remains I'm not too worried.

I guess looking at that long list of spells and units that potentially form interactions, then saying "screw this noise" and stomping on everyone's heads with good old massed ground troops is also a viable gameplay strategy in this case. (likely won't hold up against anyone but the Normal AI's I'm playing against, but eh. )

[E. Albright]

Actually, Man's answer to a fireball is traditionally 8-10 (or 80-100) Flaming Arrows.  Granted, it's pretty hard to cast that with just your native casters, but if you have any independent mages who have at least Fire 2 and can cast Pheonix Power first...

[Kagus]

You might also like playing MA Ulm.  Ulm is the traditional "smash it with stuff" nation, and boasts some of the best human armies around.  Their mages are pretty straightforward and not exactly a centerpiece of the nation either, but recruiting some of them in forts will let you make EVEN MORE heavily armored soldiers as they provide a resource boost to the province they're in.

Unless things have changed recently, MA Ulm is basically all about stomping all across the map early on with their footsoldiers before anybody's really had a chance to push out their weak and unmanly "magic".



On a completely different note, trying to design a decent pretender for Ur is...  Proving difficult.  Trying to find what Ur's strengths actually are...

Even worse though is trying to design a pretender for Jomon.  Aren't enough pretender points in the world!

[E. Albright]

Well, the "pretender patch" due out in a month-or-so-ish will be raising points available without raising chaises costs except for Titans (and maybe Messengers), so that might help... in a month-or-so-ish.

I'd agree that MA Ulm is the premier "just smash it" nation. MA Marignon is a decently straightforward starter nation, too, though they might tempt you to start fussing about with "spells" and "magic"...

[Kagus]

Thing is, Jomon could reeeaaaally use an awake expansion pretender what with how difficult it is to mass Jomon's troops early on (despite them being actually pretty damn good once you do hit critical mass), but they don't get any chassis that can do that and give them the excellent scales they need to properly leverage those good national troops and cheap forts.  Ur might get helped out though, as the concept I'm working with seems reasonably sound, I just wind up running out of points before it gets to the right balance.

And on top of that, it'd be great to have some "in" to death magic so you can get the ghost generals (oni aren't worth thinking about summoning) and possibly Gozu-Mezu.


I've really wanted to get into Jomon, but the pretender design has been stumping me...  Haven't had a chance to try out Jomonese reverse communions yet.

[E. Albright]

Oh, Kagus, haven't you heard? Reverse communions are soooooooo Dom3.

(When the last master departs the battlefield, one way or another, all slaves get a big fat pile of Paralyze. This was the devs' way of clarifying quite thoroughly that reverse communions were a bug, not a feature.)

[Kagus]

....oh.  So, basically, Meditation Sign is completely worthless.

Well, good to know.  My dreams of a bunch of onmyo-ji led by a teaching sign and meditation sign monk (and possibly another onmyo to cast PotS, provided that stacks) are apparently misplaced...   Well, now I don't have to worry quite so much about trying to get them off the ground, heh.


On a completely unrelated note, I don't know if I'll ever be able to actually take order-misfortune on MA Man ever again...  The Ettin King is just too fantastic a hero to pass up.

EDIT:  And since we're on the topic of buzzkills, I suppose it's also unintended behavior that insane commanders can proclaim themselves to be your prophet, and actually become one?

[E. Albright]

Hmm, I thought only LA R'lyeh had that behavior. Of course, when they do it you just end up with more prophets. O/w, don't leave the reigns of prophethood lying around if you have mad commanders?

(Inconvenient as it is, I actually love the idea of random insane prophets, so if non-Dreamlands nations do that too, I'm perfectly happy about that.)

....oh.  So, basically, Meditation Sign is completely worthless.

Well, you could still use a matrix to put a monk with it into a communion and just spam it for five rounds, and it should reduce all the slaves' fatigue by (15 - shared fatigue cost) per casting. It'd still increase communion longevity even though it wouldn't be so gruesomely abusive as a reverse communion, but still...

[Kagus]

Thing is, Jomon doesn't really have much in the way of cheap communion slaves.  Closest thing they get is the onmyo, with his 165 gold non-sacred price tag and slow-to-recruit status.  Basically the main reason I was thinking reverse communion, so those onmyos would actually be able to put their decent skills to use.

Also, didn't find out until just today that the meditation sign only reduces fatigue by 15...  I thought it was as hilarious as the other signs and was basically a free version of reinvigoration.  Didn't look at it in the inspector until just earlier.


Also, apparently scales don't "equalize" like I thought they used to...  If a dominion-affected province goes to not being in any dominion, the scales won't change until/unless something else moves them.  I thought they all just moved towards neutral values if no dominion or sites were affecting them.

Kinda puts a wrench in my ideas regarding a shit-scales LA Pythium.  By tanking the scales I could put out an awake virtue with D9 to beef up the hydras for even more expansion, plus a dash of blood to help bootstrap into that and also use blood feast to remove any afflictions she DOES manage to get.

The idea was to plant labs in high-income provinces and then start stacking up the heretics to remove my polluting dominion from them so I could keep up the income and population.  Gave me a reason to make a bunch of revelers (the most effective heretics), which gives an early blood income from the randoms going out and hunting the "bad" provinces.  I wanted a bunch of blood random revelers, because if you give one an armor of twisting thorns, they can cast Blood Fecundity and start actually making those dominionless provinces grow and be even more profitable.

The hunted provinces would get a fair amount of unrest, especially since with death scales I was basically just trying to squeeze as much blood out of them before they withered away anyways.  Fantastically, Pythium gets that serpent assassin who costs 60 gold and counts as 25 soldiers when patrolling, making them fantastic partners for the blood provinces.


My main problem, as I found out, was that the drain scales in the affected provinces weren't budging, and there's no way to really fix that.  As I said, I was expecting the scales to neutralize after a while...  Clearly, some altercations are necessary.


EDIT: Hmm...  Is it just me, or are there more critters that can actually survive getting the "lost the head" affliction than before?  I'unno, I've just got an ao-oni running around with no head.  ...and that nonexistent head apparently only has one eye in it, as he also has the "lost an eye" affliction.

And he's mute.  And feebleminded.  I suppose these are all symptoms of not having a head...

[Sean Mirrsen]

I'm apparently not training troops quickly enough. While the "blot out the sky" tactic works fairly well, especially combined with the elite unicorn cavalry (I don't even care to keep them blessed, there's no bonus worth speaking of), I am in need of more armies to plug up the little enemy squadrons leaking through and capturing my provinces when I'm not looking.

Plus Agartha has taken residence in the oceans that I don't have access to yet, and Machaka is almost literally burning their gold, they've built three castles while I'm besieging the one they built near my territory.

But at least Jotunheim is gone. Ultimately I wasn't even the one to do them in, even if I did all of the actual damage. I killed their Pretender fairly early on, and without their god, prophet, or any temples, eventually the much-stronger-than-mine dominions of the other two nations squashed the final shreds of Jotunheim's presence out of existence. I'm making sure to keep at least a token presence up, with that in mind.

Right now my armies are stretched a little thin, so I'm using the time of relative balance to accrue some gems, make some items to upgrade a few of my mages, and start making some manuals of water-breathing so I can take Agartha out of the ocean. I'm considering just getting a force together and taking one of the two remaining thrones, which should give me victory, but... that would require actually having a prophet. I lost two prophets to ridiculous tactical mishaps (once he was taken out by a province defense archer volley, from amidst his own gaggle of longbowmen, the other time I forgot to change his orders to account for him no longer fighting with other generals, so a pair of flanking heavy cavalry got to him while everyone else engaged the rest of the forces), and with all the military moving around, none of my generals can spare a turn to prophetify themselves. :|

If there's one thing the game's good at, it's wasting my free time.
I'm playing a small random map against just four normal AIs. I shudder to imagine what sort of fustercluck a larger game against real people can devolve into.

[Kagus]

I started watching an LP someone put out with "High level play", where he goes up against something like 14 impossible AIs.  Only thing I could think was "Sweet fucking bebbejezzus, this is gonna take FOREVER".


As far as prophets go, y'all may wanna consider summoning/finding something a bit beefier or sneakier to prophetize next time, heh...  Humies tend to die.  A lot.  As I'm sure you've noticed...

If you managed to find some death mages lying around, Conjuration 1 will get you Black Servants, who are sneaky little undeads who can make for decent-ish prophets.  Prophet dominion spread works when they're stealthed in enemy lands, and any undead or demon commander with priest levels can reanimate the dead.  Worth considering.

Also, I was under the impression that uniknights aren't sacred anymore, they're just stupidly expensive...  Really strong, but also really expensive.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I'm playing a small random map against just four normal AIs. I shudder to imagine what sort of fustercluck a larger game against real people can devolve into.

People are mostly diplomatic enough that you can avoid total free-for-alls that AI fights succumb into.

Not that it gets any less chaotic when you've got nations that can fly or sneak or sail anywhere. And that's before you factor in the many spells that allow for even more strategic mobility

Also you don't actually need anyone special to be your prophet. Unless you're extremely low on gold, you could just recruit some random independent scout or a commander and prophetize them. Those guys are a dime in a dozen. Or you could summon a black hawk (Call of the Winds, A2 spell at conjuration-3) and prophetize it. It's a bit fragile chassis but it can fly if you value the mobility.

And no, unicorn knights aren't sacred (only sacred units can be blessed). And since your bless is dependant on the magic your pretender took at game start it may or may not be worth recruiting and blessing your sacreds.