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[Kagus]

Has any work been done regarding EA R'lyeh's Androdai/Mind Lord mind merging? If I remember correctly it was a nifty concept, but fairly pointless in execution thanks to an assortment of factors... Perhaps most importantly the fact that, post-merge, there was absolutely no way to tell which lord and androdai pair were merged with each other, which was distressing because neither one could be used for another merge until the merged androdai was killed, and unwittingly attempting to cast the ritual with an already-merged individual would still spend the time and pearls for casting, but wouldn't do anything.

I thought the coastal options of EA R'lyeh were a pretty neat idea, and having special coastal troops seemed like a nice way to help the primarily water-locked nation get a foothold on land. ...but even the trooper androleths are a bit "meh". Sure, they're walking mind blasters, but compared to MA and LA illithids they cost the same amount of gold for exactly half the HP, less than half the natural armor, 2 less MR (still reasonable at 13), and a MASSIVE weakness to decay or other age-based attacks.

Their only real improvement over the illithids is the fact that they have 14 points of body armor, thanks to that bronze cuirass they're toting around. However, this pumps their resource cost up to 16 for a nation that otherwise doesn't really have any particular use for resources, while illies still have the base 1 res cost. This would be tolerable, even awesome if they got a matching cap, but no... No such luck. Still just a teensy widdle 2 armor on the head of a 14 health, size 2 weakling with no shield and that costs 50 gold.

The main thing the androdai have is that special little mind-meld they can do, which seems to be less about getting some heavy astral firepower on land and more about shifting a big mind lord's S-ranks into a form that can wear/hold astral boosters better than the space slug can. But unless I'm mistaken, pumping S up to really high levels is generally about plopping down globals, which is exactly what you don't want to do with an androdai thanks to them being reasonably squishy (although perhaps no more so than the usual magely type), and having a natural lifespan of only five years (considerably LESS than the usual magely type).

Remember also that natural age variation can result in you recruiting an androdai to discover that it's already 3 years old... Even discounting the time it takes to move them into a province with a mind lord and then performing the ritual, that really doesn't give you a lot of time for a global to be up before the caster starts playing the old-age Russian roulette, completely without needing outside influence.


I think perhaps that my biggest disappointment with that whole system is that only the astral levels get transferred... If a particular mind lord has a good spread of other schools, none of that comes through in the androdai. Sure, I suppose being able to transfer the magical abilities of a 420g STR cap-only fellow into the head of a 190g "throwaway" mage would perhaps be a bit overkill, but c'mon... So many fun tactics you could pull out if you were able to do that.

...oh, hey, wouldja lookit that... Would appear that the androleths even have a slightly less powerful form of mind blast than the stock-standard illithids do. Yay.

[ThtblovesDF]

Yeah the entire thing is a huge disappointment, sadly.

Transformation does everything that spell wants to do, better. The air/water item handles things better, too.

The idea of stuffing several slug-minds into a human vessel would be great, with plenty of options for horror marks and other stuff ("Event trigger: A unit with over 20 astral magic dies") -> The Fabric of time and space is damaged and horrors leak into all provinces until the gap is closed by killing the GATE WATCHER.

[etgfrog]

So I was trying out EA R'lyeh, they have 10% insane commanders and one of the orders they have is "That is not a star."

[Cruxador]

So I was trying out EA R'lyeh, they have 10% insane commanders and one of the orders they have is "That is not a star."

Probably referring to the "star" that crashes into R'lyeh in between EA and MA. It's definitely not an ordinary star since it's full of illithids, who we can infer were using it as something like a space ship.

[etgfrog]

So I was trying out EA R'lyeh, they have 10% insane commanders and one of the orders they have is "That is not a star."

Probably referring to the "star" that crashes into R'lyeh in between EA and MA. It's definitely not an ordinary star since it's full of illithids, who we can infer were using it as something like a space ship.

I'm aware of that, I just found it funny that the insane commanders know its going to happen.

[Kagus]

So I was trying out EA R'lyeh, they have 10% insane commanders and one of the orders they have is "That is not a star."

"That's no moon!"


RE: Scooty scoots. I feel EA Machaka could do with an honorable mention here as well, since they get a 75g sacred spy, making it the lowest-upkeep recruitable spy in the game (the generic spy and MA T'ien Ch'i's imperial consorts are cheaper up front, but they're not sacred). Spies are pretty neat.

MA Machaka bumps the cost up to 90g, but gives them an actual level in holy rather than just being a dead-end sacred... But if you're doing spy stuff you're not preaching, and if you're preaching you're not doing spy stuff. Monks all the way, man.

[Jilladilla]

Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith has just been announced!

I'll post the basic new features list here, and post some commentary on some of the big features for those of you who don't want to or can't follow the link below it. Also, there should be a proper Dom5 thread started up soon by me for all things Dom5, this is the Dom4 thread after all, don't want to drown out the legitimate questions for help in all of the hype after all.

New Features! (Copy/Pasted from the site)
-Real time combat
-Per unit combat logs
-Design your pretender's bless effect
-Priest's banishment and smite spells will depend on what type of god he follows
-History playback when game is over, see how dominion spread and provinces changed owners
-New random maps with bridges and better looking terrains
-New resource system with recruitment points that encourages recruiting in highly populated areas
-Fortifications built by starting at the basic type, then upgrading it later
-New research queue, researching is now one school at a time
-New movement system
-Winter shown on map and affects movement
-Dominion overlay on map to clearly show its boundaries
-New retreat system, good leaders can prevent units from dispersing in all directions
-Updated user interface with information more clearly presented than before
-New 3d-engine with better looking terrain, huge performance increase for good graphics cards
-More reliable network, now works on less than perfect connections too
-New nations
-Some old nations have been reworked and updated
-More spells, magic items, special abilities, events, monsters, titles, thrones, ....

Real time combat!
The turn based system is gone! No longer do you have to fear advancing into Turn 1 Rain of Stones or Earthquake Spam!

Both sides go simultaneously, and unit attack order is based upon RNG. Also, spells now have a casting time, and there was mentions of being able to interrupt a spell if you damage the caster too.
Oh right, you also get to see the glory of all your fireballs being launched. At the same time.

Finally, shields can be broken if hit really hard now.

Design your Bless!
No longer does a N9E4 Pretender mean your bless is 10% regen, +8 max hp, and -2 fatigue/turn!

It now operates under a point-buy system, with your points dependent on your magic paths! So a N9E4 pretender has 9 nature points and 4 earth points to spend. At least, that's what I interpreted from one of the screenshots anyway. Some bless effects are quite cheap, for instance said screenshot showed a 'Magic Weapons' bless effect for 2S, so Rainbow Pretenders just got more viable, as X4 isn't the minimum for a bless effect anymore.

It also bears noting that the more powerful bless effects require your Pretender to be physically present in the world to take effect; if they're busy napping, being imprisoned, or just plain dead, your sacred units will not benefit from that bless effect! At the same time, some effects are passive, and will affect your sacred units even if they aren't blessed! Waterbreathing and 'Larger' were some examples presented of these.

With this system, you never know if that F9 god has one or two really big effects or a bunch of little ones, which makes things more fun!

Oh right, while technically not related to blessings, but your priests will get fun new spells based on your Pretenders magic paths. It'd make sense for a priest of a god of fire to be able to burn things yeah?

Recruitment and Command Points
Recruitment is a new resource attached to provinces just like income and resources, and will represent just how many people the province can spare to join your armies.

It's fairly simple, isn't it? A province with 50 iron mines but only 100 people just wouldn't be able to spare the manpower to join the army, in spite of being able to produce more than enough equipment to outfit an entire legion in just a month!

Forts can boost the recruitment points available, but no news on if it can pull it from adjacent provinces like they do for resources.

One last thing: Calvary will no longer cost as much gold, instead they will use up additional recruitment points!

With the introduction of Command Points, Slow to Recruit seems to be a thing of the past; it seems to be technically possible to recruit multiple commanders per province per turn now, but no confirmation.

Scouts, normal commanders, and weak priests will only cost 1 command point, according to the preview info, but mages and stronger priests will cost 2 command points. Exceptionally strong mages, likely those that are currently StR, will cost 4.

That being said provinces will only have 1 command point by default, forts (not palisades apparantly) can raise it to 2, with Citadels being able to give a province 3 Command Points per turn. The mention of mages that cost 4 Command Points implies that these will work like resources, so you'll be able to recruit your mages from a palisade even if they cost 2 or 3 points, you just have to accept only being able to recruit one every 2 or 3 turns.

And speaking of forts, you can't just start building a citadel now, you have to start from the bottom, and then upgrade the fort to the higher tier options.

Release Date? OMG JILLADILLA WHEN IS THE RELEASE DATE?!
They said that if everything goes as planned that they will release in the beginning of November on Steam, with PC, Mac, and Linux versions being released simultaneously. Oh, and they said that there is more information on changes that will be released in the days to come, so stay tuned!

[AlStar]

The fireball spam screenshot is definitely pretty.

I wonder how the simultaneous movement/firing is going to work for spells and arrows - will archers/wizards be smart enough to take into account the fact that their targets are moving? Will some spells (hello, vine arrow) still be crazy slow when flying across the battlefield, and will casters take that into consideration?

I really, really like the idea of buyable bless and bless affecting priestly powers. Always seemed silly to me that all priests were functionally the same, even though one might be representing a god of fertility while another is serving a god of death, they both called down beams of holy light on their targets.

[E. Albright]

I'm charmed that we've got some movement back towards Dom1-style dynamic maps.

[Culise]

Also, MA Uruk.  At least, I'm guessing MA; it's a continuation of EA Ur, and it's not bleak enough for LA.

[Cruxador]

Another new detail: There are new fonts, basically the ones from CoE4, which so far I have only seen people disliking and I myself also don't like. Despite the new fonts, Tir na NÓg and Tíen Chí are still rendered with apostrophes instead of accents. However, messages are editable now.

I wonder how the simultaneous movement/firing is going to work for spells and arrows - will archers/wizards be smart enough to take into account the fact that their targets are moving? Will some spells (hello, vine arrow) still be crazy slow when flying across the battlefield, and will casters take that into consideration?

I'm not in the beta, but from someone who is, it works fine.

I really, really like the idea of buyable bless and bless affecting priestly powers. Always seemed silly to me that all priests were functionally the same, even though one might be representing a god of fertility while another is serving a god of death, they both called down beams of holy light on their targets.

It's technically not the bless that does this, but the pretender paths. The water smite is pretty cool, it does 10+ damage and then another 10+ drowning damage to creatures that breath.

[nenjin]

I like the new fonts. But I'm a font nerd, and Dom has been using the same shit fonts for at least 2 games now.

[Cruxador]

I like the new fonts. But I'm a font nerd, and Dom has been using the same shit fonts for at least 2 games now.

I'm a font nerd too and I see no grounds on which to like the new ones.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I was wondering why Dom 4 hasn't received any updates for a while. Now I know it's because they've been working on Dominions 5.

Real time combat sounds like it could shake the metagame up but it's something I'd have to see in action before deciding on anything. How does defence reduction from multiple attacks work now? Does it stack until the unit moves again? Work on a timer? What about fatigue? Not to mention aiming ranged attacks and the like, which AlStar has already pointed out. What about hold and attack orders, buffs and so on? Is timing going to be even trickier to sort out now that it's in real time? How does this all affect common army compositions and counters, like dual-wielding units taking down giants and the like? Arrow spam to cut down light infantry?

In contrast I have no doubt that the new bless mechanics will shake up the game. Rainbows are going to be more viable  than they are right now since they'll have a host of cheap blessings instead of one, two or even none, since a minor bless no longer requires at least 4 points in a path. I doubt that a host of small blesses can compare to a couple of massive ones, of course, but any advantage is better than none. For example, having magic weapons on your sacred units (at just 2 points of Astral) will help against Sceleria and their Shadow Vestals or anyone else with ethereal units. On the other side of things, incarnate blesses means that you can't just set your pretender as Imprisoned to pay for a massive bless and semi-decent scales anymore. You have to think about when your pretender will show up to activate those powerful blesses that you paid for. So either you set them as awaken and suffer through terrible scales by invading your neighbours or make them sleep until you need them in the mid-game. I doubt that these changes will result in the fall of Earth/Nature being dominant for blesses since reinvigoration and regen will undoubtedly require those paths. Hopefully it'll weaken the dominance of those blesses, probably by making them incarnate and needing your pretender to be around for them to work, or at the very least enable you to splash some other stuff on your pretender instead of being locked into EXN9. I wouldn't be surprised if, say, E5N6 or something similar got you the regen and reinvigoration you wanted, which should free up points for better scales or a handful of additional magic for another blessing. Basically something like that to make blesses less stale and/or predictable.

Also, the recruitment revamp intrigues me. Recruitment points should make the bat-folk and similar nations less powerful in the early game since they can't swarm as easily as they do now. High resource units won't be hampered as by this change, since you still aren't going to recruit many unless you're Ulm or someone else with resource generating commanders. Hopefully the cheaper cavalry won't require obscene amounts of recruitment points either or else they still aren't going to see much play. The introduction of commander points is going to be the real game changer for recruitment, I think, since (from what I understand) even a piddly 1 magic mage requires 2 of them to be recruited. So it's no longer 1 fort = 1 commander, which in Dom 4 is going to be a mage 9 times out of 10. In Dom 5 it's going 1 fort = 1~3 commander points. Which is to say 0.5~1.5 mages, because people are still going to invest most of their commander points into mage power. But since national generals and scouts cost half of a mage fort-turn wise, I'd imagine that they'd see more use than right now. Giving up recruiting a mage to get two generals or scouts/assassins is a more favourable than only getting one after all. Having only 8 commanders out of 10 being a mage is still an improvement after all. Balance is going to be a major issue with commander points, I think. If building a second palisade is cheaper than upgrading one to a fortress then why bother upgrading if it's just going to take more gold/time and result in the same mage production? How is this going to impact, say, Mictlan and other nations that can only build palisades? Or are they going to be able to build fortresses as well now to keep pace with everyone? At the very least I'm sure that spamming palisades everywhere and recruiting cheap evocation spammers everywhere is going to be a viable strategy for the early game. Either some nation will have weak mages that require only 1 commander point to recruit or those path-based priest spells will enable cheap priests to fulfill the same role. Either way I'm interested in seeing how it'll turn out.

With all that said... As hyped as I am for the game, I get the feeling that it's going to be to Dom 4 as 4 was to 3. Not a massive improvement or change but enough of an iteration that most people will play it instead. Given how much time I spent with Dominions 4, not just playing but also strategizing and theorycrafting, I'm sure it'll be worth the money to upgrade. I'm just not sure that everyone else would feel the same way though.


EDIT: I found this thread with more info about the features in Dom 5. Lots of juicy details here. I'm still looking over them all.

EDIT2: Magic forging paths and gem costs are not longer as tightly intertwined. Get hyped.

[nenjin]

They said High Level mages would take 4 recruitment points, but the layout they gave doesn't really say what gives 4 points. 1 for a basic province, 2 for a fortress, 3 for a citadel....so I assume 4 points only comes from your home city?