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[USEC_OFFICER]

If you don't already have Blood on your pretender or a site which grants bloodslaves then breaking into blood is definitely not worth it as Ulm. Too much time wasted gathering slaves for too little benefit.

But if you do have a reliable source of bloodslaves without searching with random commanders then you should definitely start making Bloodstones. They are excellent magic items to have, even if it's only one guy making them on and off.

[Micro102]

So does anyone have any favorite custom settings? I've never deviated much from the default as the only reason I can see the point of doing so is making a game easier or harder, and I still have yet to beat the hardest AI.

EDIT: Also, is there a default population increase value, or do I need growth to get more population? If there is a default, how many death scales can i take without nuking my population?

EDIT 2: Also also, what do you guys think about celestial rainbow + misfortune scales?

[Karlito]

With no growth/death scales population is constant, aside from random events that change things up.

Misfortune is a good dump scale, particularly if you're playing with rare random events. You just have to have an easy way to deal with barbarian attacks.

[Micro102]

With no growth/death scales population is constant, aside from random events that change things up.

I.....Need to go restart a game.

[Cruxador]

With no growth/death scales population is constant, aside from random events that change things up.

I.....Need to go restart a game.

Don't worry, there's nothing wrong with killing everyone in the world as long as you win. Just expand fast enough to outpace your death scales and you'll be fine.

[E. Albright]

...still going. Lots of small-but interesting bits here.

Spoiler: Dominions 5.22 (click to show/hide)

This patch updates the Greekish nations with new features and pretenders. Also a whole bunch of fixes and improvement for random things.

General

• Foul Air didn't work in combat
• Battle inconsistency fixed
• New ability: Spring Immortality
• Cloud Trapeze had wrong distance shown when selecting target
• New summoning ritual for Greek nations: Procession of the Underworld
• Battle performance improvements
• New Gods for Greek nations: Titan of the Spring, Titan of Growth, Titan of the Hunt
• New Gods for Greek nations: Titan of the Crossroads, Grey Ones
• Destruction spells destroy one level at a time but helmets and shields too
• Magic armors have partial resistance against destruction spells
• Don't lose teleport ability from old age
• Unique summons get orders cleared when resummoned
• Broken helm had wrong info icon
• New map editor feature, ctrl-x, expand area of all provinces
• Fixed purging of failed random gods
• LA Arcoscephale got Hydrophoros
• Therodos forts prevent the last population from dying
• Improved mouse click hit locations when recruiting and transferring units
• Increased number of old network connections that are saved
• ctrl-9 to show province numbers on map
• Blinking units auto succeed at freeing from earth grip/web/tangle vines
• Hell Power updated
• Most horrors are now floating
• All blood spells requiring blood slaves not castable under water
• Death sound effects when immortals die too
• g for goto province in map editor too
• Ethereal crossbow now properly soul slays the target
• Passwords replaced with ***
• Dome of Corruption less horror marking and granting +2 magic scale
• New look for soul vortex
• New look for Drain Life and Leech
• New spell for LA Ulm: Gift of the Moon
• New ritual for late Arco: From Death Comes Life
• 2 new spells for late Arco
• New priestesses for Arcoscephale
• AI got better understanding of trinity gods
• More popups for item abilities
• Mistform will never negate more than 25 points from a single hit
• More rituals got "goto targeted province"
• Gore attack from horns will be lost when wearing a helmet
• Can no longer seduce over unfrozen river
• Goto province was missing on some assassination type messages
• AI item distribution improvement
• Capped damages will no longer damage shields
• Spells affecting only demons didn't work properly
• New layout for empowerment screen
• Shadow on modified map text colors was inverted
• UW castles now have triton defenders when owned by land nations
• The Ark blesses wielder if he's sacred
• Constructs can no longer heal in enemy labs
• Spell casting AI more likely to cast resistance buffs to boost existing resistance
• Poison res from spells increased 5 -> 10
• Illithids didn't target single non mindless correctly
• Reported deaths from Wrath of God, Purgatory, etc. didn't work properly
• Leadership penalty from feeblemind and dementia now rounded down
• Graphics for banefire strike
• Destroyed temple message when conquering forts
• Blood Fecundity enchantment no longer shown in battles
• New divine titles
• Event fixes
• Typos fixed

Modding

• Spell numbers for modding 1100-2999 -> 1300-3999
• #nextingeo works for single target spells too
• Event modding: #req_targminmorale, #req_targmaxmorale
• Event modding: #req_targnoitem
• New commands: #uwfireshield, #farsail, #templetrainer, #islandnation, #syncretism
• New commands: #fireblessbonus, etc.
• New command: #domwar for nations
• Event modding: #req_targforeignok
• Event modding: #req_domowner
• Event modding: #req_targinanimate, #req_targmindless, #req_targimmobile, #req_targanimal
• Event modding: #req_targmagicbeing, #req_targowner, #req_targundead, #req_targdemon
• #multihero.. goes up to 7
• Do not count dom5ws_pfid when counting number of files for workshop
• New commands: #manikinreanim, #supayareanim, #greekreanim, #ghostreanim
• Better error codes from workshop failures
• #reanimpriest never requires an argument now
• Can now mod descriptions for exiting spells/units/items
• Fix for #defunit... commands

It's not mentioned, but looking over the pretender lists a bunch of the older graphics look A LOT shrarper, so it seems KO did some cleaning of old low-res stuff on the sly...

[George_Chickens]

Would everyone say the game is worth 50 Australian dollars, or is it best to wait for more content patches and fixes?

[E. Albright]

Despite the number of fixes in that list, the game is very stable. It just has an incredibly large number of moving pieces and they sometimes interact strangely... but waiting for fixes isn't really necessary. And there's enough content that you won't have experienced it all by the time more content is patched in. So if you're interested in it for what it is, and think you might be willing to pay $50Aus at some future date, you might as well do it now.

IMO. I was a day-one buyer who's been mucking about with this since Dom1.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Would everyone say the game is worth 50 Australian dollars, or is it best to wait for more content patches and fixes?

I would watch some let's plays first and/or read some after action reports first. (The LPArchive has two for Dom 3 which are horribly outdated but are enjoyable to read and give you a basic understanding of what the game is like). As much as I love Dominions, and I fucking love Dominions, I know that it is very much a niche product. Make sure you know what you're getting into before you buy it full price.

But if you do think that the game is for you, then you definitely should get it. The only reason to wait would be to get it on sale. The game already has a massive list of nations, units and spells to play with and is very much stable and complete. If you don't think you would enjoy the game then further patches won't change anything. If you would enjoy the game then further patches are just icing on the cake and you can easily wait for them while already owning the game.

[George_Chickens]

I'm a short term Dominions player, I've been playing for 4 or 5 years now. It's just that the small map selection turned me off, and I was wondering if I should keep playing 4 and wait for a price drop.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Oh. Well the adding of snow/winter broke a lot of the old maps, so the map selection hasn't improved. However workshop support means that it's easy to collect/install maps from the community. So I would say that if the list of new features and nations doesn't excite you, grab it on sale.

[nenjin]

Can no longer seduce over unfrozen river

Apparently love does know some bounds.

I'm a short term Dominions player, I've been playing for 4 or 5 years now. It's just that the small map selection turned me off, and I was wondering if I should keep playing 4 and wait for a price drop.

I've always generated random maps to play so this has never been an issue for me. It's a slightly more of an issue in Dom 5 because no one remade the 3rd party map generator that I used in 3 and 4, and the one Dom4 and 5 has just never quickly produced maps I enjoy.

Anyways, I think Dom5 is worth the price.

[Cruxador]

You can also consider buying when it's on a level of sale that fits your budget, but keep an eye on the two hour timer for no-questions-asked returns, and if at an hour and 45 minutes, you don't think it should be interesting, consider doing a refund. I'm not sure that you can really get into the game properly in two hours though, at least in the sense that you won't get a thorough understanding of the breadth of the game and won't see much at all of the depth.

I'd recommend reading AARs as the most effective way to get a feel for the game. I don't consider video to be a great medium for Dominions, although although YouTube has them most plentifully. There are a handful of good Dominions 4 AARs that I could recommend, but since Desura doesn't exist any more, I can't find the links to any but my own. Still, some should turn up in Google.

Edit: took so long on this that I got triple ninjaed.

I'm a short term Dominions player, I've been playing for 4 or 5 years now. It's just that the small map selection turned me off, and I was wondering if I should keep playing 4 and wait for a price drop.

The small map selection isnt as big an issue as it might seem. All the old maps still work fine, there's just some new graphical features that they don't have. And there's now Steam workshop support for maps so it should become easier over time to find lots of good maps.

[E. Albright]

I'd also add that the map generator is a lot better than it was in Dom4, though I absolutely loathe certain things about the maps it makes (foremost being my personal bugbear, connection density). A lot of players find it to be great, and the maps it makes are both less obnoxious structurally and more visually pleasing than Dom4 vanilla random ones. And as Cruxador points out, Dom4 maps still work in Dom5 - they'll just have no winter graphics and really ugly procedurally drawn dominion overlay... but if it's too bad looking, you can turn off dominion overlay in the map filters.

[USEC_OFFICER]

I finally looked at the new priests/spells that Arco got and I have to say that I enjoy the life and death theme that LA Arco has going on now. Admittedly I'm not certain how useful some of it will be, like exchanging nature for death gems at a 1-to-1 ratio with their new priestesses, the Lampads apparently reducing troop loses while using Stygian paths or Rhapsody for the Dead being an AoE spell that makes non-mindless undead flee, but it's pretty dang flavourful and a definitely improvement over what Arco used to have. Much better than MA and LA Arco being functionally identical.

_{Also 'Gift of the Moon' making wolves invulnerable amuses me for some reason, even if it is probably useless.}