Dominions FOUR: Sequel to the Best Game Ever

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Dominions FOUR: Sequel to the Best Game Ever

Cake Smashing Boob: Nov 5, 2008; I support black genocide

Have Some Flowers! posted:

[*]Move in giant deathballs that defeat anything in their path without losses and can siege down forts and take them.

Actual players will punish you easily for all of these approaches. There are some things you can practice vs the AI though.

How would I go about punishing a singe large army/deathball?

# ? Aug 14, 2014 17:57

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# ? May 27, 2024 15:06

Turin Turambar: Jun 5, 2011

Libluini posted:

I forgot to add, pick a pretender that strikes your fancy, distribute the points like you want and lead your cool nation to certain doom. Just have fun with it, winning is for losers anyway. Experience comes automatically after a couple dozen games. No need to rush to it without having fun, you know?

Of course the point is having fun

, but the discussion was about how to win and hints for new players or people playing AI. My point is that new players can miss the importance of the "prior choices" the game have. I don't feel it's as important in other fantasy strategy games.

I'm the first in believe that Dominions is cool because it has cool nations, lots of units, spells and weird poo poo happening. In fact I still think AI games are "enjoyable", because it's about that.

Turin Turambar fucked around with this message at 18:02 on Aug 14, 2014

# ? Aug 14, 2014 17:58

Neruz: Jul 23, 2012; A paragon of manliness

FREE FLAME BOLT GUYS BEST ITEM OR BEST ITEM?

Seriously what the gently caress Illwinter.

Benito Hitlerstalin posted:

How would I go about punishing a singe large army/deathball?

Battlemagic, especially battlefield debuffs like foul vapors and rigor mortis.

# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:03

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Turin Turambar posted:

Of course the point is having fun , but the discussion was about how to win and hints for new players or people playing AI. My point is that new players can miss the importance of the "prior choices" the game have. I don't feel it's as important in other fantasy strategy games.

Sure, I'm just more of the "learning-by-doing"-school. I feel hints and tips are fine, but you're only really learning by just jumping in and trying out stuff. I mean if I had just mindlessly absorbed every good natured tip, I would've played with giants-only, trying to reverse-communion everything (good lord am I thankful that bullshit isn't even possible anymore, I could never wrap my head around it) and would've been drained of fun pretty fast.

On the other hand, I agree: Planning ahead really helps you, as long as you recognize your plans don't need to make any sense. Plan for whatever you want, winning isn't a must. As I love you demonstrated in one game, sometimes you can even try it the other way around: Steamroll everything with a few well placed globals and you suddenly win without really fighting. That's also a possibility and shows what a good plan and a bit of luck can do!

# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:08

AXE COP: Apr 16, 2010; i always feel like

somebody's watching me

Benito Hitlerstalin posted:

How would I go about punishing a singe large army/deathball?

A single doomstack is inflexible and usually has low mobility unless the entire stack is made up of mm2/3/flying/etc troops, which is rare. If you can create a number of smaller stacks to outmanoeuvre them you'll do a lot better - he might take 1 province a turn, but you'll be taking 2-4 since pretty much any army over a certain size can handle PD.

As suggested above you can also throw really huge AoE evocations/debuffs at him to whittle him down (since a really huge army will have a lot of chaff usually). If you combine the above two strategies then you can smash his doomstack and suddenly he has to deal with a bunch of raiding armies taking all his provinces and no way to deal with them.

# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:14

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

What's the best hero to wish for?

# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:17

Turin Turambar: Jun 5, 2011

What's the best Pretender to try a SC strategy in the mid game with him? What chassis and items to go for?

# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:27

Yessod: Mar 21, 2007

Have Some Flowers! posted:

The first year of expansion is important - you really want to know exactly what troops you need and where to place them vs the various flavors of independent provinces. Against Barbarians, where do you position to make sure your troops get the first hit? Against Horse Tribe, are you better off positioning forward to eat less arrows, or further back to keep your blessing priests further out of harms way? Where do you position to kill off war elephants before they get a turn trampling through your army?

Any chance of screenshots of the positioning for these, particularly barbarians / war elephants? I'm able to do it some of the time, but end up predicting wrong from time to time. I'm sure it's also based on the speed of your own units, but I guess the issue is that I don't know how to translate that speed into how far they actually move on the map, other than that "bigger number goes farther"

# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:28

Have Some Flowers!: Aug 27, 2004; Hey, I've got Navigate...

Benito Hitlerstalin posted:

How would I go about punishing a singe large army/deathball?

When you're on defense, your mages typically get to cast first. You can use combinations of spells like Gift of Flight/Mass Flight and Earthquake to kill huge amounts of troops before they get to respond. Spells like Earthquake, Foul Vapors, Bloodletting, Rain of Stones and others hit the whole battlefield.

You can use remote attacks like Murdering Winter or Rain of Toads against a doomstack and they become highly efficient. Combinations of assassinations and Mind Hunts, Manifestations, Disease Demons, Earth Attacks and other rituals can dismantle a deathball and setup a huge crippling loss where the army is left leaderless as its attacked. There was one game where there was a huge army of 200 sacred troops but they had no priests to bless them - they were all killed by assassins. The troops just hung out accomplishing nothing.

Alternatively you can start to move your raiders past the doomstack and capture 3-4x territories for every territory it takes. You can shove tons of chaff defenders into forts it sieges to make them take forever to make progress while you gobble everything else up.

A giant ball of troops and mages is usually the least efficient way to use them. Deathballs can be useful though when you're insulated from the other consequences (they can't raid, they don't have good battle magic or a lot of ritual attacks/assassins) and taking an objective like a capitol or a throne is of huge value for ending the war.

# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:28

LordLeckie: Nov 14, 2009

Yeah you learn that stuff fast anyway, i resorted to disease demons in my very first MP game vs the ridiculous EA Machaka Trex sacreds where they were effectively unkillable with the resources i had so i went after the priests guiding them turning them from unstoppable monsters to mildly less scary unstoppable monsters.

# ? Aug 14, 2014 18:41

jsoh: Mar 24, 2007; O Muhammad, I seek your intercession with my Lord for the return of my eyesight

M_Bison posted:

TRILLWINTER has stealthily added new items! (const-6)

i guess if you consider patch notes to be stealthy

# ? Aug 14, 2014 19:10

Have Some Flowers!: Aug 27, 2004; Hey, I've got Navigate...

Turin Turambar posted:

What's the best Pretender to try a SC strategy in the mid game with him? What chassis and items to go for?

By the time you reach the midgame, you want to be shaping fights with battlemagic. A dormant titan is often a great option for something like this. I would look at the titans and plan around that. Spells that make a big difference in the midgame are things like Rigor Mortis, Storm, Darkness, Relief, Heat from Hell, Grip of Winter, Foul Vapors, Earthquake, Curse of Stones. There are others, too, but those can win fights easily depending on what nation you are.

Yessod posted:

Any chance of screenshots of the positioning for these, particularly barbarians / war elephants? I'm able to do it some of the time, but end up predicting wrong from time to time. I'm sure it's also based on the speed of your own units, but I guess the issue is that I don't know how to translate that speed into how far they actually move on the map, other than that "bigger number goes farther"

Unfortunately it's entirely dependent on what nation you are and what troops and/or bless you're using. I like to position further back vs Elephants and Cavalry because it lets them zoom ahead of their friends, giving your troops time to deal with the faster units first and then the slower units separately.

You'll want to learn how to draw arrow fire to specific squads, and you can do something called a leash where you actually draw their archers forward to meet your melee troops because they're focused on troops that are falling back.

You'll also see some nations that like to pull all of the troops away from their commanders and then kill the leaders quickly, immediately ending the fight. There are many different ways to expand efficiently.

Have Some Flowers! fucked around with this message at 19:27 on Aug 14, 2014

# ? Aug 14, 2014 19:20

Kitfox88: Aug 21, 2007; Anybody lose their glasses?

Libluini posted:

Counterpoint: Taking a nation because I wanted to play Elves and making a pretender based on a theme instead of a plan, resulted in this:

Which resulted in this:

By the way, Kitfox? How many armies makes that yet? Three or four? Maybe you should send a few more mages with them next time?

Edit:

I forgot to add, pick a pretender that strikes your fancy, distribute the points like you want and lead your cool nation to certain doom. Just have fun with it, winning is for losers anyway. Experience comes automatically after a couple dozen games. No need to rush to it without having fun, you know?

I thought you had sent most of your Mage stack north so I didn't send support :downs:

Besides, you're casting storm and storm power which obliterates most of my direct combat magic anyway.

But yeah, you go into Dom expecting to lose but determined to make it as fun a loss as possible and you'll do okay.

# ? Aug 14, 2014 19:35

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Kitfox88 posted:

I thought you had sent most of your Mage stack north so I didn't send support Besides, you're casting storm and storm power which obliterates most of my direct combat magic anyway.

But yeah, you go into Dom expecting to lose but determined to make it as fun a loss as possible and you'll do okay.

That stack up north is actually a second stack I recruited while I was walking down with the first army.

Yes, I have two stacks of mages now. :v:

# ? Aug 14, 2014 19:53

Kitfox88: Aug 21, 2007; Anybody lose their glasses?

Libluini posted:

That stack up north is actually a second stack I recruited while I was walking down with the first army.

Yes, I have two stacks of mages now.

Fukien elves man :negative:

# ? Aug 14, 2014 20:28

jBrereton: May 30, 2013; Grimey Drawer

amuayse posted:

What's the best hero to wish for?

In the vanilla game, Berytos' King of the City, probably?

F3A2B3H3 with a +3 Blood Hunting bonus, can SC. Easily good enough to break you into enough Fire to do most things through the new Flame Spirits, useful amount of Air, and more importantly, enough Blood and bonus ability that he can pretty much break any faction into it by himself. Doesn't even eat that much pop or poo poo up your provinces with unrest for a Melqart.

For specific things:

D4 to grant Tart access eventually, there are a few with unique unit names:

- Last Partholonian (A2W1D4, Immortal, Glamour)
- Pharmakeia (A2S2D4N4, Female, Glamour)
- Hag (A3W1D4N2, Size 3, Female, Flying)
- Master of the Shadow Blossom (F1E2D4B1, really good name unit name, eyeloss on attackers but not that much health)
- High King (D4H3, Gaze of Death, is a cool giant)

N4+Sx/E2+ to cast big Nature globals:

- Pharmakeia (see above, she's pretty great as a utility mage)
- Wanderer (E2S3N4H3, 4 Animal Awe, the single best bootstrapping non-PG nature caster in the game due to his skills and slots; can get to N7 to cast every single Nature spell by himself at Constr-6, hypothetically peaks at N8 with a Tree Staff/Moonvine Braclet/Tome of Gaia which is more than sufficient to cast anything in that whole tree)

Blood for breaking into blood:

- King of the City (see above, useful overall)
- Malphas (F3S2B4, flying assassin with Patience 3 and 2 Dark Power, also has a Warlock shape)
- You can't really do better than a Prince of Lust, though (F4S3B5, generates 3 blood slaves per turn, has fear, generates 1d6 Succubi at the start of every battle, is all 'round a rude dude with hella 'tude)

jBrereton fucked around with this message at 20:34 on Aug 14, 2014

# ? Aug 14, 2014 20:32

M_Bison: Mar 15, 2014

jsoh posted:

i guess if you consider patch notes to be stealthy

It's not in the patch notes.

And it supposedly works like a poor man's dragon mastery? +1 to dragons summoned, I think it's well worth the cost and might make drake summoning worthwhile!

The patchnotes mentioned two other armours, nothing about the sceptre, anyone notice anything else new?

As for beginners, in yor first multiplyaer game I recommend an awake dominion9 dragon. You can't go wrong with something like that. Dominion 9 is important because it gives your pretender awe. He can pretty much take on any non-throne, non-undead indie province. You can probably turn1 blind expand.

M_Bison fucked around with this message at 01:21 on Aug 15, 2014

# ? Aug 15, 2014 01:07

AXE COP: Apr 16, 2010; i always feel like

somebody's watching me

Knights armour is basically just super-black steel plate. Champions Cuirass is another arena reward.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 02:03

Stevefin: Sep 30, 2013

Turin Turambar posted:

The big secret you have to know about Dominions is that your odds of winning are 50% decided before you even start your first turn. It's a very front-loaded strategy game, we could say. I'm talking of what you choose before: nation, pretender, scales, bless, etc. Yep, 50%.
Take a nation that sounds "cool", pick a pretender that strikes you fancy, and distribute the points more or less even without a real plan in mind (as a first-time player surely do), and you will barely survive.

In the other hand, examine carefully the nation you are going to play, its strong and weak points, the possible synergies between units and spells, the possibilities of blesses, what magic in your Pretender could synergize with the national mages and what magic could complement the areas they lack, what scales are appropriate to maximize the strong points of the army and the economy, what magic path you need to bootstrap a magic booster production, what key spells you should research first, what troops are going to be your expansion army in the first year, if you should take an awake or dormant Pretender taken in account the previous point, etc, and your odds of winning will increase heavily.
It's all about synergizing Nation, Pretender, magic and scales.

Now, that's the general point, that's why people say IRC, because the possible synergy/strategy will be different in each nation and there are different options each.
After that, it's all about snowballing in the first years, take lots of territories, that means more riches, that means more troops and mages, that means more forces to take even more territories, etc.

And that is kind of what I find the problem is, what should be simple questions to get a hang of basic mechanics ends up with 'its complicated. spend half a day on IRC to find out' as I don't have the time for in between work and other daily things, and that IRC does not keep a record to help with a 'goto' while I learn these mechanics.

Stuff like that picture modifiers under units and what some actually do, some are straight forward(flying,injured,Strong against attack type) and than some like Ethereal. which means they are a ghost. but what does that mean on a mechanical point of view in the game? Does it not take damage from normal weapons? or less damage from normal weapon? This one I did try and got very confusing results with no real answer as to why. And research magic, I keep reading this is the most important factor in the game, but with no real explanation as to why.

And than there is the Nations and Pretender Gods. Again for a simple answer of 'what should I focus as XX nation' tends to end up with 'its complicated' as the answer, And than the Pretenders, such as what is really the difference between the different type of Gods? Such as how does Humanoid Archmages, Dragons, Titans and Statues differ besides the obvious like dragons are dragons and statues can't move. I don't even know where to begin with assigning points to my God and realm and how much do they really impact overall.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 03:12

Goatse James Bond: Mar 28, 2010; If you see me posting please remind me that I have Charlie Work in the reports forum to do instead

Stevefin posted:

And that is kind of what I find the problem is, what should be simple questions to get a hang of basic mechanics ends up with 'its complicated. spend half a day on IRC to find out' as I don't have the time for in between work and other daily things, and that IRC does not keep a record to help with a 'goto' while I learn these mechanics.

Stuff like that picture modifiers under units and what some actually do, some are straight forward(flying,injured,Strong against attack type) and than some like Ethereal. which means they are a ghost. but what does that mean on a mechanical point of view in the game? Does it not take damage from normal weapons? or less damage from normal weapon? This one I did try and got very confusing results with no real answer as to why. And research magic, I keep reading this is the most important factor in the game, but with no real explanation as to why.

And than there is the Nations and Pretender Gods. Again for a simple answer of 'what should I focus as XX nation' tends to end up with 'its complicated' as the answer, And than the Pretenders, such as what is really the difference between the different type of Gods? Such as how does Humanoid Archmages, Dragons, Titans and Statues differ besides the obvious like dragons are dragons and statues can't move. I don't even know where to begin with assigning points to my God and realm and how much do they really impact overall.

Just some quick notes:

- On research, pick some neat/powerful looking spells and beeline to them. You'll get the hang of what else is useful in the process (by testing on AI, anyway). Death nations, for example, place a lot of emphasis on Enchantment 3 and Enchantment 5. Research is important because mages are the game's most powerful force multiplier.

- On pretenders: you can find rather a lot of discussion on this topic, but the really short version is, outside of scales, pretenders exist to do at least one of several things: punch things directly in the face (dragons, for instance); shore up some lacking magic paths in your nation (pretty much everything); and/or provide a bless to a nation that has decent sacreds.

The immobile pretenders are obviously not supercombatant candidates outside of amusing niche circumstances, but they're extremely cost-effective for scales and some bless builds. My go-to as MA Agartha is the Pillar, for example, because they benefit from an earth bless immensely and have good enough path diversity that they don't really need it from their pretender.

There are Kind Of A Lot of guides to pretty much everything you asked floating around in the wilds of the internet. Dominions 3 guides are still 90% useful to Dominions 4 players. Also, try looking over some of the Lets Plays.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 04:01

I Love You!: Dec 6, 2002

Stevefin posted:

And than there is the Nations and Pretender Gods. Again for a simple answer of 'what should I focus as XX nation' tends to end up with 'its complicated' as the answer, And than the Pretenders, such as what is really the difference between the different type of Gods? Such as how does Humanoid Archmages, Dragons, Titans and Statues differ besides the obvious like dragons are dragons and statues can't move. I don't even know where to begin with assigning points to my God and realm and how much do they really impact overall.

Actually in general it's not that complicated. Only a few nations have "it's complicated" baseline gameplans, and if you mention a nation you're interested in that isn't one of those nations (Tien Chi being the most common outlier that people beeline for) I can probably give you a very short general gameplan here in thread that will get you to and through the midgame without you having to spend half a day seeking answers to questions.

IRC questions are more for understanding the mid- and lategame, much of which you can ask as you encounter stuff. It might be too late to fully react to at that point, but as a newb you aren't going to be able to react to a vet's bullshit in time anyway your first game or two. It's more about the learning experience and understanding at that stage.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 04:11

TheresNoThyme: Nov 23, 2012

Also keep in mind that certain effects are worth googling about (and yea, ethereal is one of them) but a successful game can be made out of just doing a handful of bread n' butter things really well, rather than obsessing over whether you've memorized the formulas for encumbrance's fatigue effect and every other detail you can stumble upon. Can you recruit and script a decent thunderstrike + storm army by turns 15-20? Congrats you just beat 50% of multiplayer opponents in a newbie game - and I'm including myself in that group btw.

edit: basically beaten by I love you

TheresNoThyme fucked around with this message at 04:18 on Aug 15, 2014

# ? Aug 15, 2014 04:14

The Gentleman: Jun 21, 2012

The most important is to look at what your mages have, and what you can reliably recruit. Check http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/ to see what you can build outside of your capital, recruitable mages in numbers is good, but even powerful cap only, slow to recruit mages can make up the cores of your mage cadres. Remember to take into account path boosting spells such as phoenix power or summon earthpower.

Then of course, look at the rest of your nation. Are you a nation called Pangaea and get so many nature gems you dont even know what to do with them? Cast mother oak and get even more! Then summon poo poo all day long. Have easy access to good recruitable thugs? Going for construction 4 may be good thing.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 05:44

Turin Turambar: Jun 5, 2011

Stevefin posted:

And that is kind of what I find the problem is, what should be simple questions to get a hang of basic mechanics ends up with 'its complicated. spend half a day on IRC to find out' as I don't have the time for in between work and other daily things, and that IRC does not keep a record to help with a 'goto' while I learn these mechanics.

Stuff like that picture modifiers under units and what some actually do, some are straight forward(flying,injured,Strong against attack type) and than some like Ethereal. which means they are a ghost. but what does that mean on a mechanical point of view in the game? Does it not take damage from normal weapons? or less damage from normal weapon? This one I did try and got very confusing results with no real answer as to why. And research magic, I keep reading this is the most important factor in the game, but with no real explanation as to why.

And than there is the Nations and Pretender Gods. Again for a simple answer of 'what should I focus as XX nation' tends to end up with 'its complicated' as the answer, And than the Pretenders, such as what is really the difference between the different type of Gods? Such as how does Humanoid Archmages, Dragons, Titans and Statues differ besides the obvious like dragons are dragons and statues can't move. I don't even know where to begin with assigning points to my God and realm and how much do they really impact overall.

Have you read the entire manual? It has an example of the writer looking at Bogarus, seeing what units are worth and what aren't, in what the mages are good, and choosing then his plan of action.
Basically, you have to look:

-Army, what units are good, and what units are bad? Is there any obvious synergy in between them? For example, you are supposed to use Salamanders and Beast trainers together with EA Abysia. If you have a good mage with battle spells (say Thunderstrike) and cheap and tough spearmen, the answer is obvious, lots of mages to attack with a wall of spearmean to hold the line.
-Is there any unit with some special ability or just being plain weird? Can you think how it should be used?
-Holy units, can you build a lot, or only in the capital? are they good? If the answer is yes, maybe you should think doing a heavy bless strategy for the game.
-Mages, what will you have? What high spells can they cast, eventually? What good spells can they "almost cast", and they can with a little help in the form of gems or empowerment? In between all the spells, any good synergy with your army? If you have lots of archers maybe you want Fire Arrows or Wind Guide.
-Magic path boosting. There is a reason they made a chart in the manual. Use it. Sometimes with it you can see how you level 2 Nature mages can be level 4 with them. You may want to spend a few points of your Pretender for some key magic that will later allow boost all your mage abilities in that way.
-Try the nation in a fast test game. Have their troops problems to expand fast in indie provinces, or is the other way? If they have problems, maybe you want to go with a combat awake pretender to compensate and he will help with the expansion.
-Scales. Is your army gold heavy or resource heavy? What's the constraint factor when you recruit your troops? You want to pick order and productivity scales to compensate and maximize the number of troops you can recruit in any given turn. Magic scale: can you recruit lots of cheap researcher, or a few expensive but very good ones? If it's the first case a positive magic scale will benefit you the most, if the latter a negative scale won't be as bad as for others.
-And lots more. Communion uses, special abilities of your nation (like cheaper temples or being a roman ghost), national spells and summons etc

# ? Aug 15, 2014 09:19

Absum: May 28, 2013

In addition to all that's been said I strongly recommend new players to click on literally everything. There is a lot more information ingame than people seem to realise.

For example if you click on ethereal it would at least have told you a unit is "very hard to hit with normal weapons", which is a pretty good clue as to how it works (iirc 75% miss chance don't quote me on it though).

Another example is your units age and maxage (the age at which they reach old age). The game shows these if you click on fatigue in a unit's stat screen. Now I understand that that might be kinda weird, but that is why I advise clicking on everyhing, that is how I found stuff like this.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 09:45

Neruz: Jul 23, 2012; A paragon of manliness

Ethereal is 50% miss chance on nonmagic weapons, True Ethereal is 100% miss chance on nonmagic weapons and 50% miss chance on magic weapons (and possibly spells)

# ? Aug 15, 2014 10:11

jsoh: Mar 24, 2007; O Muhammad, I seek your intercession with my Lord for the return of my eyesight

manual says its 75% miss chance

# ? Aug 15, 2014 10:14

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Absum posted:

Another example is your units age and maxage (the age at which they reach old age). The game shows these if you click on fatigue in a unit's stat screen. Now I understand that that might be kinda weird, but that is why I advise clicking on everyhing, that is how I found stuff like this.

iirc you can also find upkeep cost under.. Morale i think? Not that you would ever want to know what the upkeep cost of a unit is ha ha don't be silly

# ? Aug 15, 2014 10:28

Stevefin: Sep 30, 2013

As for the online guides i did look but found ones that started but just the front page.lets plays. I have not found a good one for this and i am on steam. As far as i know it does not have a manul

# ? Aug 15, 2014 10:29

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Stevefin posted:

As for the online guides i did look but found ones that started but just the front page.lets plays. I have not found a good one for this and i am on steam. As far as i know it does not have a manul

You can get the manual from the bottom of illwinters page, here http://www.illwinter.com/dom4/, its not completely up to date however, and may contain misinformation.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 10:32

Turin Turambar: Jun 5, 2011

Stevefin posted:

As for the online guides i did look but found ones that started but just the front page.lets plays. I have not found a good one for this and i am on steam. As far as i know it does not have a manul

Oh, you haven't read the manual? That explains a lot of things! After you read the 400 pages, including the tutorial and the strategy part, you will have less problems.

Yeah, I don't know why he hasn't uploaded the manual to Steam. Lazy dev.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 10:50

Neruz: Jul 23, 2012; A paragon of manliness

willus posted:

You can get the manual from the bottom of illwinters page, here http://www.illwinter.com/dom4/, its not completely up to date however, and may contain misinformation.

It is up to date; they update it every patch. It's just not always telling the truth because Illwinter do not understand how their own game works. (Niefelheim has strong pd guys)

# ? Aug 15, 2014 10:57

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Stevefin posted:

As for the online guides i did look but found ones that started but just the front page.lets plays. I have not found a good one for this and i am on steam. As far as i know it does not have a manul

After reading the manual from Illwinter.com, this can also help: Dom 4 Mod Inspector

This lets you look up units, spells and magic sites. It's really helpful in a cinch.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 12:04

ChickenWing: Jul 22, 2010

The manual is a handy reference and good to skim through if you've got the time. The modding manual is good when you want to know what a particular unit ability does, as it contains all the modding commands - for example

Modding Manual p.24 posted:

#ethereal
The monster is ethereal. Non-magical weapons have only 25% chance of harming the monster when they hit, but when they do, they inflict full damage unless mitigated by another ability. Ethereal monsters can pass through walls during the storming of a fortress.

If you want a good Let's Play, the ones on the LPArchive are both amazing and informative. Their endgame strategy differs a lot from the average endgame of dom4, but they're definitely a good read and good for some basic strategy and explanation of what's useful. You can find them here:
http://lparchive.org/Dominions-3-(by-Lilli-et-al)/
http://lparchive.org/Dominions-3/

garth ferengi/Modpud is also writing an LP based on a game that is currently running here:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3656229&userid=0&perpage=40&pagenumber=2
It's less informative on the game and more a discussion of her personal strategy, but it still makes for a good read so far, plus it's up to date!

In the end though, the only way to reliably learn is to play versus people. Playing vs. the AI is fun to muck around with and try stuff out, but you're rarely going to be challenged. Furthermore, AI strategies don't generally apply to multiplayer, so you're going to get your butt handed to you and further reinforce your non-desire to play against people. You probably won't win your first couple games (there are semi-vets in IRC who have a whole lot of games under their belts with zero losses), but the game is fun enough that that's okay - especially as you learn more and more with every loss, until finally your accumulated knowledge puts you in the top spot. Hell, you might even win your first game - newbie games are organized every time it seems like we've got a batch of fresh meat, and most people there don't know their rear end from their elbow (although you still get the occasional hitlerfucker "NO GUYS TOTALLY A NEWB ONLY SIX GAMES UNDER MY BELT LET ME JUST PLAY MA ERMOR HUEHUEHUE").

TL;DR just play with goons. Spend half an hour in IRC every turn doing diplomacy, make a google doc to record your agreements/game notes/etc. It's really not much more of an investment than a normal game.

ChickenWing fucked around with this message at 14:32 on Aug 15, 2014

# ? Aug 15, 2014 14:29

jBrereton: May 30, 2013; Grimey Drawer

Guy who asked about Why To Research Magic:

The reason to research it is that magic gets much more powerful and flexible as it develops.

I'm sure you've been disappointed by Earth mages casting Flying Shards early on and not really doing anything. But they're actually very powerful battlemages with a little research.

For example, at Alteration-2, there is a useful spell called Earth Meld, which stops a bunch of enemies in their tracks and makes them trivial to hit in melee combat. It doesn't make your troops any stronger directly, but it does make your opponents a lot worse.

Now you have to be quite close to cast it, which means you probably have to position your mage right (there is a little luck to this, but you'll get a good eye for ranges like 15 or 20 over time, because a lot of spells use them), and script your mage to attack a couple of times and then cast Earth Meld, or they'll do something else instead (they don't move closer by themselves unless they have nothing they could cast with a Cast Magic order, which is why you'll see Nature dragons with no orders attacking, where a Cyclops will cast Flying Shards unless you tell them otherwise).

It's little bonuses like that which make or break battles. Another good one in terms of early Earth magic is Strength of Giants at Enchantment-3, which gives your troops in the area it gets cast on 4 more strength, which you can pretty much call 4 more points of damage.

Troops like Ulm's Steel Maidens go from probably taking 3 blows to kill giant troops like Fomorians to usually only taking 2, which is the exact amount of attacks they have without anything making them quicker. If you can kill your opponents without them striking, you can keep on fighting without having to get reinforced, and even for a faction like EA Ulm which has very generous recruitment (they get a lot of troops in non-forted Mountain/Forest provinces), that's always way more convenient.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 15:46

LordSloth: Mar 7, 2008; Disgruntled (IT) Employee

Neruz posted:

It is up to date; they update it every patch. It's just not always telling the truth because Illwinter do not understand how their own game works. (Niefelheim has strong pd guys)

According to the illwinter main page, the main manual is on version 4.04b, it certainly lacks Ragha and Caelum changes. It is up to date with Agartha, however.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 15:58

jBrereton: May 30, 2013; Grimey Drawer

The manual is incredibly long and a lot of it is inaccurate. It isn't 1997, try to give people better advice than "RTFM", especially when you have to go looking for it.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 16:07

Neruz: Jul 23, 2012; A paragon of manliness

LordSloth posted:

According to the illwinter main page, the main manual is on version 4.04b, it certainly lacks Ragha and Caelum changes. It is up to date with Agartha, however.

Huh I thought they'd updated it with Ragha, wellp.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 16:21

Libluini: May 18, 2012; I gravitated towards the Greens, eventually even joining the party itself.

The Linke is a party I grudgingly accept exists, but I've learned enough about DDR-history I can't bring myself to trust a party that was once the SED, a party leading the corrupt state apparatus ...; Grimey Drawer

Neruz posted:

Huh I thought they'd updated it with Ragha, wellp.

As consolation price, you can buy a hardcover version of the manual on their site. You know, so you have something neat for your book shelf. :v:

# ? Aug 15, 2014 16:29

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# ? May 27, 2024 15:06

Neruz: Jul 23, 2012; A paragon of manliness

Yes that is what my Warcraft manuals need; a Dominions 4 manual to lord over.

# ? Aug 15, 2014 16:40

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Video Games > Dominions FOUR: Sequel to the Best Game Ever

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