Dominions FOUR: Sequel to the Best Game Ever

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TheDemon: Dec 11, 2006; _{...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.}

New Players: Hit ? while playing the game for a list of keyboard shortcuts! :siren:

Dominions 4 is now on STEAM. :siren:

It also occasionally sales down to $10, although not that often.

Desura and Gamersgate keys work on Steam.

Dominions 4 is a multiplayer fantasy turn based strategy game with RPG elements and a Diplomacy-style metagame.

This is also the thread to talk about Dominions 3 if you don't have 4 yet. Anyone interested in Dominions could try out the Dom3 Demo; there's no Dom4 demo yet..

Cthulhu vs Spanish Inquisition vs Zombie Jesus vs Chimpanzees

Thread Guidelines:
1. Take all talk about specific games to the PGS thread. This includes timer requests, saying you signed up to a game, sub requests, diplomacy.
2. The exceptions that are OK and encouraged in this thread:
- ONE announcement of each new game
- ALL strategy discussion, including game-specific strategy questions
- ALL post-mortem talk be it post-mortem for your nation or the game as a whole

:siren:

Goon Game Service You MUST sign up here if you want to play multiplayer with goons. Yes, do use your Steam profile where it says Desura link, brainwrinkle hasn't updated for Steam yet. Verification is manual, so have patience.

Discord: https://discord.gg/ZeyP96u

The IRC channels are #dom4goons on synIRC. #dom3goons on synIRC is pretty much defunct, if you want Dom3 chat just go to #dom4goons.

#dom4goons is by far the best resource of Dominions knowledge anywhere on the internet and also a pretty good place for finding mutliplayer diplo contacts.

What is Dominions?

Dominions is the best game ever because it is a cross between an old-school 4x and a fantasy adventure game, with lore based on real-world mythology, that has delivered literal years of multiplayer entertainment. Expect a game that takes cues from Master of Magic, space 4Xs like Master of Orion 2 and Stars!, or a tabletop RPG. Don't expect Fantasy Rome: Total War.

The breadth and depth of play in Dominions is insane. There are over 50 nations with a roster of Pretender gods to pick from. You customize your pretender by buying advantages and disadvantages. Once play begins there are 1000 unit types, 600 spells to research, and 700 magical sites to uncover. You can choose between 300 pieces of equipment to gear out heroes who can take down armies single-handedly. Eventually, you can cast game-altering global enchantments that cook the world, heal lost limbs, or blot out the sun.

That's breadth. Dominions has depth. You can sneak or teleport into lightly defended territories, burn the temple, destroy their roads, funnel their taxes to your own forts, and disappear. You can set up a self-fueling Wish chain where you wish for more wishes. You can wipe out your enemies not with armies but with faith, fueled by sacrificing hundreds of virgin maidens upon your altars. You can crack open the gates to Tartarus and summon dozens of insane dead pretenders to serve in conquering the world. You can order a sudden teleport attack on all your rivals' capitals simultaneously, cleaving the gates in one turn with teleported siege equipment and blitzing the garrison before they can react. These are all actual, game-winning endgame strategies.

Another huge asset in Dominions's longevity is its moddability. Unit and spell stats can be customized simply by pointing the game to a text file. Mods load automatically when you load a game that uses them. Maps are just an image file and accompanying text file listing province connections.

Dominions "depth" at work

What's changed in Dominions 4?

Illwinter has a list here, but to sum up
- Team support
- UI Improvement & Streamlining, for example you can give orders without opening the scripting window
- Support for widescreen and big resolutions
- Gemuse toggle
- Reworked blesses
- New scripting options like Formations and Fire and Keep At Range
- New sprites
- New nations, new spells, new mechanics
- Better modding support like full Item Modding

In terms of new mechanics, these are the things you'll have to adapt to:
- Throne victory is the most common type. Fort cracking and holding the right territory is important.
- Tax management removed. Big changes in early game and less micro in late, but also unrest-raising strategies are better or even broken.
- Tax and gem income now has to be traced back to a fort. Raiding is both more difficult and more tactical.
- Rituals have a range. No more teleport across the entire map, but range 6 teleport is still pretty good.
- Research formula is now 5+2xPaths. Magic scales are now +1/-1 rp per tick. Research costs are much higher at top levels (5k at level 9). Games can end without ever hitting level 9s.
- Some mages are "slow to recruit" meaning they take two turns. You'll need to build more forts.
- Some mages are now recruitable without forts, dependent on terrain type, like LA Pyth's revelers.
- Reverse communions are gone. Learn your standard/turbo communions.
- To get bless regen you'll now need N9 for 10%. N4-standard is no longer.

Dominions 4 Nation List

:siren:

NEW PLAYER ADVICE STATION :siren:

Note: I haven't sanity-checked any of this advice, so your mileage may vary:

Turin Turambar posted:

I tried years ago the Dominions 3 demo, but the UI seemed to me super bad (and also the random maps are pretty ugly for the uninitiated). I hated having to click on each unit to know what was and how you couldn't compare stats between units, instead of having a normal table where you can see all the stats in one view. I left it thinking it surely was overrated :P.

Years later, I tried again with Dominions 4 after hearing how awesome the series was, this time doing it more properly, reading the manual, doing the tutorial included in the manual (yes a non-interactive tutorial, you have to read the manual and the do the stuff in the game) and with patience. And hey, the UI was still bad the game was promising. Then you get over the graphics, and the UI is alleviated with extensive use of keyboard shortcuts.
So yeah, I got in the game in Dominions 4, it isn't impossible.

So:

a) Read the manual. Use a tablet or a ebook reader and have it as your book to read this week. Do the tutorial included.
b) Faster lookup of units, spells and items here http://larzm42.github.com/dom4inspector
c) Be aware that one of the "problems" for noobs is how front loaded is the game. Before the first turn there are already very important strategic choices to make, when you make your Pretender. You have to know about dominion spread, bless mechanics, scales, choose a pretender depending of the strengths of your nation, etc.But one you overcome that problem the game is much more clearer.
d) Keys to learn

r to recruit
t to setup army
c to see a battle report in the selected province
v to view the battle in the selected province
n is next commander, f is previous commander
m is the message (events) list
? to list all the rest of key shortcuts, which are different depending on what windows you are in that moment.

Have Some Flowers! posted:

Hello new players! We're here to help - hop on IRC and ask questions, and ask them here too.

Big things to focus on as a new player:

1) Learn how to recruit troops and 'expand' by taking over independent provinces near your starting spot. A good player can pull upwards of 25+ provinces in the first year against the AI, but aiming for 15 is a good starting point.

2) Learn how to research magic, and how to script your mages to cast certain spells in battle. Flaming Arrows (a Fire spell at Enchantment 4) is a good target to go for if you have ranged troops. Thunder Strike (Evocation 4) is great if you have strong air mages. Horde of Skeletons (Enchantment 5) is really good if you have death mages. Those are some good examples, but you can really just pick an interesting spell and shoot for it.

3) I'd recommend picking some of the more simple nations. EA Vanheim, MA Vanheim and LA Midgard are all very simple and very strong nations to get started with.

4) Avoid Dominions 3 Let's Plays at first - they will make you interested in strategies that don't necessarily work anymore in Dom4. Focus on expanding well and learning how to script your troops and mages.

5) Once you're comfortable with expanding in your first year, hop in a newbie game! Everyone else is terrible, too.

6) Bookmark this website and use it: http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/. It helps you lookup magic, items and units quickly.

Turin Turambar posted:

A primer about the game

1 You recruit commanders and normal units in your province with fort (recruit button)
2 The normal troops form squads, which have to be under a commander control to move around, ala Heroes/King's Bounty. You have to transfer them manually.
3 Dominions score in the build Pretender at the start of a game is more important you may believe, raise it up to 7, at least.
4 How to build stuff:
-Commanders can build new forts.
-Priests can build new temples, needed to recruit more priests and other "holy" units, and help to expand your religious-magical influence in the world (the white candles). Priests also has the option to preach in a province, which is like acting like a temple in the spread of the religion. Priests has a few spells, like Banish (good against undead) and Blessing (essential to bless special holy troops).
-Mages can build laboratories, needed to recruit more mages.
-Mages can go out to use the action "search magical sites", which they give you magical gems over time, the equivalent of mana in other fantasy 4x games.
-Mages in labs can research more magic spells, cast magic rituals (need gems) which include summoning spells, and forge magical items (also need gems). They also cast spells on battle, of course.
5 That initial Dominion score, temples and priests help spread your Dominion, which have certain scores associated to it, the scales you choose at the start of the game. The idea is simple: if you are a god of Order and luck, the lands under your Dominion gain more order and luck, you are a god of death and chaos, the lands will gain said features (like bonus gold, extra events, province's population dying, etc etc).
6 Blessing is the most complex but still inside of what we could call "basic features", and it's important because some nations use it as main strategy.
Your Pretender God has magical scores, like Fire 9 Or Nature 4, you choose then when you create him. This means he can do Fire and Nature magic, and he is especially good with Fire spells, but also means the bless of your god will be related to fire (+attack) and nature (+hp). Normally every Nation has most types of troops as normal soldiers, and in addition one elite troop which can be built in the capital, marked as "sacred" unit. Sacred units can be blessed in the middle of balttle by your priests, your prophet or your own God (that is just another unit in the game) to gain the extra bonus described above, related to the magic your Pretender God knows.

fool_of_sound posted:

Let's talk about Pretender Design. It's one of the most opaque and intimidating prospects for new players, and it's very easy to get option paralysis. That said, it's not nearly as hard as it looks. I'll break it out step by step:

---Step 1: Do some research
Use this neat little tool to take a look at your nation. Skim your troop and national spell choices, maybe ask some goons in IRC what the nation's major strengths are; they aren't always obvious. You don't need a ton of detail, just enough so that you don't feel lost when looking at the nation.

---Step 2: Analyze your expansion needs
Having at least average expansion is extremely important in the vat majority of games, and it can be difficult to hit that goal without a proper early game strategy. First, you need to identify your expanders; the vast majority of troops aren't effective at expansion, being too expensive, too prone to losses, too weak without mage support, or just too useless. Look through all your recruitable troops, and take note of the following:

Defensive:
------Protection 16+
------Shield, preferably Tower Shield
------High length weapon: spear, pike ect. (hover over the weapon to see the Length)
------HP 30+
------Defense 16+
------Other defensive traits like Ethereal, Glamour, Regeneration, Awe, or Shapechange

If your unit has at least three of these things, or two but does one or both very well (like MA Ulm Pikeneers with their Protection 18 and Length 6 Pikes), it's potentially a useful expander.

Offensive:
------Multiple attacks, preferably with a decent accuracy (10+) and damage (15+) (hover over the Attack score to see accuracy with each attack, and over the weapons to see the damage; don't forget to add strength for melee attacks)
------Equipped with good ranged weapon, like Longbow or Crossbow, while costing ~10 gold and resources or less
------Fear or another dangerous aura, like Cold or Heat
------Trample

If your unit has any one of these and at least one of the defensive traits, it's also potentially a useful expander.

In both cases, you should be careful to take a look at the unit's price. Mundane expanders shouldn't probably cost more than ~25 gold each, sacreds shouldn't cost more than about ~50 gold, and fear monsters or tramplers shouldn't cost more than ~100. More than that and you'll have difficulty amassing useful armies fast enough for good expansion.

In any case, you should always test expansion in single player when trying a strategy you haven't before. It'll save you a lost of frustration.

If your best expander appears to be one of your sacreds, you should check out the Bless section next. If it's a mundane troop, skip down to the Caster section. If you don't have any particularly good exapanders, skip down to the Awake Expander section (though you might want to read over the mage analysis part of the Caster section anyway).

---Step 3: Bless
Blesses are cool. Not only can you have some of the best expansion in the game with a good sacred backed by a good bless, but you can also use them to win your first war if you're pick the right opponent. Generally, when goons talk about a 'bless' they mean a major bless, the sort you get for giving your pretender a 9 in a magic path. There are also minor blesses (gained at level 4 in a path, and improving from there), but they're usually fairly incidental. I'll talk about them anyway, but when you are pursuing a bless strategy, you should always take a major bless. In general, most nations never want more than one major bless (and maybe a minor on the side); it's just too expensive to go double or even triple bless unless you are playing an extremely bless heavy nation which has a strategy that can scale well (like EA Mictlan). Blesses also makes your god a powerful caster, albeit a focused one; I'll talk about important things that unlocks as we go. The blesses, major and minor, are as follows:

------Fire: Minor bless grants a bonus to Attack, and major bless gives your sacreds flaming weapons, improving their attack power and letting them hit high armor magical enemies. Fire is a go-to bless; it works best on units with multiple attacks, but can do well with almost any sacred. If you don't have a specific reason to pick another bless, you should usually go Fire or Blood. Fire bless also gives access to Eternal Pyre and Lightless Lanterns; a large boon for later game research.
------Air: Minor bless grants a bonus to Precision, and major bless grants an 80% chance to ignore mundane projectiles. Air is a terrible bless, and you should never take it. Archer accuracy is less useful than simply raining down a million arrows, and it's easy to draw arrows away from your sacreds with a small squad of shield equipped troops off to the side.
------Water: Minor bless grants a bonus to Defense, and major bless grants your sacreds an extra turn every other round. Water is a powerful bless that most sacreds can use fairly well, but works best with units with already high Defense, or on units that Trample. Water bless also gives access to Vengeful Waters, which makes your lands difficult to scout and slightly more annoying to invade.
------Earth: Minor bless grants Revigoration, which restores a small amount of Fatigue every turn, and major bless grants +5 to Protection. Earth bless is a popular minor bless, since less fatigue means your troops are less vulnerable to critical hits, and in conjuction with a major earth bless is quiet powerful on high armor sacreds like knights; it boosts their protection so high that they become nigh untouchable to most mundane troops, and the revigoration helps offset their very high encumberance values. It also gives access to Earth Blood Deep Well, which helps you make better use of powerful Earth magic like Earthquake, Curse of Stone, and Rain of Stones. As an aside: do not take this bless for the purpose of buffing mage priests; the revigoration amounts aren't substantial enough to justify the cost unless other units are benefitting as well.
-----Astral: Minor bless grants extra magic resistance, and major bless allows your sacreds to avoid the first attack that would have hit them. This is a terrible bless, not so much because the effects are useless; they're quiet decent in the late game, but because they do almost nothing to help you in the early game, when you really need your sacreds to shine. More useful than the Astral bless itself are the myriad powerful spells you unlock from high astral: Eyes of God, Stellar Focus, Arcane Nexus, and Wish.
-----Death: Minor bless grants Undying (extra HP, but units who use that extra HP die at the end of battle), and major bless grants Death Weapons (small amount of armor piercing and magic resistance negates damage). Death bless is mediocre; the effets you get are useful enough to justify the bless, but substantially less powerful than basically anything but Air and Astral. On the other hand, it does unlock a lot of useful spells: Well of Misery, Utterdark, a slew of army sized undead summons, and the favorite 'gently caress you all' of Dominions, Burden of Time.
-----Nature: Minor bless grants extra real HP, and major bless grants 10% Regeneration per round. This is the go-to bless for giants and other high-hp sacreds; the more HP a unit has, the more powerful the bless. It also has a less obvious use: if your nation has sacred astral or blood mages, a Nature bless allows you to turbocharge your communion, because each point of Regeneration on a communion or sabbath slave counts as 10 points of Revigoration. This bless is however obsoleted by access to a Nature/Astral or Nature/Blood mage. Nature has a ton of very useful spells unlocked by a god with this bless: Mother Oak, Call the Worm That Walks, Wild Hunt, Gift of Health, Enchanted Forests, and Gift of Nature's Bounty.
------Blood: Minor bless grants a bonus to strength, and major bless grants Blood Vengeance (a chance to reflect any damage take back on the attacker). The other go-to bless, Blood is a less powerful bless in the early game, but maintains a lot of usefulness into the mid and late games, since Blood Vengeance makes mass attack spells much more of a pain to use. Blood magic is trickier to use than other sorts of magic, but a Blood god can help you break into a lot of utilitarian blood magic if you're willing to invest the effort required, including several powerful magic items, powerful summoned demons, and expanded magic diversity through demon lords.

Pick your major bless immediately, and try to figure out which chassis you want. You're looking for a god with a high score (preferably 3, but 2 will do) in the path you want. Minor bless can come late if you end up with enough points to spare. Remember: if you don't have a good reason to pick a different bless, go with Fire or Blood (with Fire being easier for newbies in general).

---Step 4: Caster
While Bless pretenders are by necessity also spellcasters in their limited magic paths, pretenders who don't need to provide a bless can consider taking sub-9 paths of magic in multiple schools to open up magic flexibility or unlock powerful spells for your nation. Now do some more research: look at your national mages and check what paths you have a 100% chance of getting on any of your mages; these are your core paths, since you're likely to have the most gems in these paths (level matters here, but not a lot; ~50% of magic sites require level 1 or less, ~90% require 2 or less). Now see what your reasonable maximums are for each path (the highest you can get on up to a 1/4 on a cap only mage or up to 1/16 on a anywhere mage). Don't worry about cross-paths for now, I'll point out where they're important. Now, calculate your booster adjusted maxes (the most you can get in each path with non-artifact magic boosting items; note that I'm not including items that you're unlikely to get without a god's help)

Always apply in order! Don't forget to apply the bonuses you qualify for to crosspath mages as well!
---Fire: If a single mage has both Fire 1 and Death 1, then +1. If a mage has Fire 4+, then +1.
---Air: If a mage has Air 4+, then +2.
---Water: If a mage has Water 1+, then +1. If a mage has Water 3+, then +1.
---Earth: If a mage has Earth 2+, then +1. If a single mage has both Earth 2+ and Blood 3+, then +1.
---Astral: If a mage has Astral 2+, then +1. If a single mage has both Earth 2+ and Astral 2+, then +1.
---Death: If a mage has Death 2+, then +1. If a mage has Death 5+, then +1.
---Nature: If a mage has Nature 2+, then +1. If a single mage has both Nature 2+ and Blood 3+, then +1. If a single mage has both Nature 3+ and Astral 1+, then +1. If a mage has Nature 6+, then +1.
---Blood: If a single mage has both Blood 3+ and Nature 2+, then +1. If a mage has Blood 4+, then +3.

Now that you have your national maximums, lets see what powerful (and useful) rituals and magic items you have access to: (the kind of stuff you care about your god being able to cast)
---Fire: Eternal Pyre (6+)
---Air: Perpetual Storm (5+), Dark Skies (5+), Gale Gate (5+), Staff of Storms (5+), Robe of the Magi (6+ and Blood 6+)
---Water: Maelstrom (6+), Vengeful Water (7+), Streams from Hades (4+ and Death 1+; grants a base Death 3 caster), Contact Naiad (3+ and Nature 1+; grants a base Nature 3 caster)
---Earth: Earth Blood Deep Well (6+), Earth Attack (5+)
---Astral: Vengeance of the Dead (3+ and Death 1+), Crystal Shield (3+ and Earth 2+), Stellar Focus (5+), Eyes of God (5+), Banner of the North Star (5+), Wrath of God (5+ and Air 3+), Ring of Sorcery (7+; +1 to S, D, N, B), Arcane Nexus (8+), Ring of Wizardry (8+; +1 to all paths), Wish (9+)
---Death: Lichcraft (5+; grants a base Death 5 caster), Burden of Time (5+), Army of the Dead (5+), Foul Air (5+ and Air 1+), Legion of Wights (6+), Ghost Riders (6+), Well of Misery (6+), Tartarian Gate (7+), Utterdark (9+)
---Nature: Mother Oak (5+), Call the Worm that Walks (5+), Haunted Forest (5+ and Death 1+), Wild Hunt (6+), Gift of Health (6+), Enchanted Forests (7+), Gift of Nature's Bounty (7+)
---Blood: Send Horror (3+ and Astral 4+), Bind Arch Devil (4+ and Fire 2+; grants a base Fire 4 caster), Ritual of Five Gates (5+), Bind Heliophagus (5+), Three Red Seconds (5+), Infernal Crusade (5+ and Earth 2+), Infernal Tempest (5+ and Air 2+), Astral Corruption (6+ and Astral 6+), The Looming Hell (8+), Bind Demon Lord (8+)

See what your nation can intrinsically cast; you want to avoid overlap while sticking mostly with paths you can expect to get a significant amount of gems in (anything your mages can readily sitesearch, plus astral). You can take paths outside of ones where you know you can expect gems, but that can be unreliable. Pick 2-3 paths for your god (remember to look over your available god chassis to see what naturally fits together), and remember that most gods can use most boosters too. Don't get too attached to your path scores until you've looked at scales, however.

---Step 5: Expander
Are you a nation with default neutral or heat preference? If so, I have good news for you: you have access to the best expander in the game bar none: the Earth Snake. Take an Earth Snake with Earth 6 and Dominion 7, and you'll still have space for net four positive scales; a fantastic deal. Just be sure to always take Heat 1+ on your Earth Snake so that it doesn't die from being cold blooded.

If you are a Cold nation, or for some reason are a heretic who refuses the majesty of the true pantokrator Erfsnek, here's what you need on an Expander:

---A Protection score of 21+, and preferably 25+. Remember that each point of Earth magic on your pretender improves Protection by 1. Invulnerability can also work as protection in a pinch, but is substantially less reliable.
------As an alternate to high protection, the Awe ability. If your pretender chassis doesn't naturally get Awe, you can give any pretender the ability by giving it a Dominion score of 9+. Note that Awe can be unreliable, and you should try to pick a chassis with decent protection or some other defensive ability as well.
---Fear, Trample, or lots of attacks (4+) or an AoE attack. Be sure to check all your chassis' attacks; it's not always obvious when some weapons grant multiple hits.

And, obviously, your expander has to be Awake. No matter what Expander you choose, you should avoid using them to attack undead/statue provinces, and should be wary of attacking heavy cavalry, cataphracts, or knights; expanders can have trouble with them, and nothing is more disheartening than losing your only good expansion option on turn 3.

---Step 6: Scales
Scales are a balancing act. The passive bonuses they provide can be very useful, and can make a lot of nations much less of a headache, but on the other hand they're unliekly to the the catalyst that lets you win the game: good expansion, victory in early wars, and powerful spells are what actually let you win. Take good scales when you can, but don't be afraid of negative scales if they help you unlock other useful things (or even other useful scales, like trading Sloth for Order).

---Order/Turmoil: For MA and LA nations that aren't popkill, Order is almost always a worthwhile investment. It gives less money that Growth in the long run, but being able to snowball off the additional funds in the early game can take you a long way. In EA, Order is less cut-and-dry good, since provinces give substantially less base money, while events give and equal amount. Most EA nations can probably get away with a Turmoil 3 build, though Order is still reasonable.
---Productivity/Sloth: Tally up how many Resources it costs to build ~300 gold of your expansion troop of choice. If the total is <~75, go ahead and take Sloth 3. If the total is <~100, you'll probably want Sloth 2. If it's <~135, Sloth 1. If it's <~180, Productivity 0. If it's <~250, take Productivity 1. If it's more than that, you can take Productivity 2, but troops costing that many resources aren't generally very useful expanders unless they are individually very powerful. If you're a nation that has powerful, high resource troops that are useful throughout the game (like MA Ulm), take Productivity 3. If you are playing on a map without preset capitals, you might consider taking 1 higher Productivity as insurance against starts with few connections, though this isn't necessary if your brace of troops costs >~50 resources.
---Heat/Cold: If your nation has a Heat/Cold preference of 1 or 2, it's worth it to take it one more point towards the closer extreme in exchange for an extra Order or Growth scale; because of the way seasons work, this ends up being a net positive. Arguably the same is true for neutral preference nations taking a Growth scale (but not Order scale) as well. The same is not true moving in the opposite direction: it's not worthwhile to trade a point of temperature for a money scale if your preference is Heat 3 or Cold 3. Don't forget to take Heat 1+ if you're using an Earth Snake or other cold blooded pretender!
---Growth/Death: Much like Order, Growth is a go-to scale for MA and LA nations that aren't popkill. The compound interest you get on your provinces is extremely useful and can net you and extreme amount of money in the late game. In EA, it can still be decent, but is substantially less powerful; you'd probably be better off with Magic scales instead. You shouldn't take Death unless you are playing an all-offense-all-the-time nation (or a popkill nation) that can make up for it's constant income loss with constant warfare.
---Luck/Misfortune: Luck is the subject of a lot of debate, but my personal advise is to take either Luck 1 or Misfortune 1; Luck 1 allows you to avoid a lot of the more nasty common events, while Misfortune 1 doesn't appreciably raise the rate to really nasty events, or unlock more of them. Misfortune 1 is particularly worthwhile when paired with Order 3, since the Order score cancels out the increase in event frequency caused by Misfortune. The only time it's clearly worthwhile to take a different score is when you take Turmoil 3, which should always be taken with Luck 3 to maximize positive event spam.
---Magic/Drain: Determine your main research mage: it should be a relatively cheap mage (high research to gold ratio) that preferably has potential as a combat mage. The lower the chosen mage's research score, the more worthwhile Magic scales are, while the higher it is, the more worthwhile Drain can be. If the mage has 7-9 research, consider a point or two in Magic if you can afford it. If the mage has 13-15 research, consider a point or two of Drain instead. If you are running Turmoil 3/Luck 3, strongly consider taking Magic 3, since it unlock a ton of very good events. You should probably avoid taking Drain 3 without Luck 1+, since doing so unlocks an event that can steal all your gems.

---Step 7: Toy around with it
You aren't always going to be able to make a satisfactory pretender on your first attempt. Check out a couple different builds you could go with, and pick which one you prefer. Give it a test game and make some edits if you have the time. There are a lot of options to fiddle with, and the best way to familiarize yourself is to just use them.

Some general advise:
---Titans (large humanoids that are right after the various sorts of immobile) are overpriced at the moment, and you should at least take a look at other options if they're available.
---Rainbows (tiny humans at the bottom of the list) are generally kinda bad, since it's expensive to get them up to a reasonable path and dominion core. They have uses, but in general they're never the best choice.
---You can dormant/imprison monsters as blessers or casters; for some nations this is the only way to get certain paths or path combinations.
---Pop into IRC and ask questions. Newbies who regularly ask how to play tend to enjoy the game more, and stick around.

fool_of_sound posted:

Some useful battle magic:
Fire: Fireball (Evo 3, F2); Phoenix Pyre (Alt 7, F2); Phoenix Power (Conj 3, F2); Falling Fires (Evo 5, F3); Solar Eclipse (Alt 4, F3S1); Prison of Fire (Thau 4, F3); Flaming Arrows (Ench 4, F4); Heat From Hell (Ench 6, F4); Firestorm (Evo 7, F5)
Air: Summon Storm Power (Conj 2, A1); Lightning Bolt (Evo 2, A2); Wind Guide (Alt 4, A2); Mist (Evo 3, A3); Thunder Strike (Evo 4, A3); Summon Air Elemental (Conj 5, A3); Arrow Fend (Ench 6, A4); Storm (Evo 5, A4); Phantasmal Army (Alt 5, A4); Living Clouds (Conj 7, A4); Mass Flight (Ench 7, A4); Fog Warriors (Alt 7, A5)
Water: Rain (Evo 2, W2); Ice Strike (Evo 7, W2); Quickening (Alt 8, W2); Falling Frost (Evo 5, W3); Prison of Sedna (Alt 7, W3); Acid Storm (Evo 7, W4F1); Quagmire (Ench 5, W4); Grip of Winter (Ench 6, Water 4)
Earth: Earth Meld (Alt 2, E2); Summon Earthpower (Conj 3, E2); Blade Wind (Evo 4, E3); Magma Eruption (Evo 6, E3F1); Rain of Stones (Evo 7; E3A1); Destruction (Alt 4, E3); Curse of Stones (Alt 4, E3); Maw of the Earth (Alt 5, E3); Iron Bane (Alt 6, E3); Summon Earth Elemental (Conj 5, E3); Legions of Steel (Const 3, E3); Earthquake (Evo 5, E4); Living Earth (Conj 7, E4)
Astral: Nether Darts (Evo 7, S1D1); Power of the Spheres (Conj 3, S1); Communion Master/Slave (Thau 1, S1); Stellar Cascades (Evo 5, S2); Astral Fires (Evo 6, S3F1); Light of the Northern Star (Conj 4, S3); Antimagic (Ench 4, S3); Doom (Thau 7, S4); Will of the Fates (Thau 8, S4); Solar Brilliance (Ench 7, S5); Master Enslave (Thau 9, S8)
Death: Shadow Blast (Evo 5, D2); Raise Skeletons (Ench 3, D2); Horde of Skeletons (Ench 5, D2); Blast of Unlife (Evo 6, D3); Bane Fire (Evo 6; D3F1); Terror (Thau 4, D3); Wailing Winds (Evo 6, D4A1); Wind of Death (Evo 7, D4A1); Darkness (Alt 6, D4); Rigor Mortis (Ench 6, D4)
Nature: Storm of Thorns (Evo 7, N2); Panic (Thau 3, N2); Creeping Doom (Alt 7, N3); Polymorph (Alt 8, N3); Strength of Gaia (Conj 4, N3E1); Howl (Conj 5, N3)
Blood: Sabbath Master/Slave (Blood 1, B1); Reinvigoration (Blood 1, B1); Agony (Blood 2, B2); Blood Rain (Blood 7, B3)

Note that virtually all spells are situational. This list also omits spells that are primarily useful on or against thugs, since they're a secondary strategy at best. I'm also poo poo At Dominions so my opinions may be wrong.

Boing posted:

I'm still no expert but I'll do my best. There are a lot of approaches to magic, but you're right in that there are also a lot of bad options that usually aren't worth focusing on. To start with, you can use the mod inspector to look up different spells and their requirements, or the manual, which has a bit more details on the actual mechanics of how most spells work.

Battle magic is about destroying your enemy with spells, buffing your own troops to overcome the enemy troops, altering the battlefield to give your troops an advantage, or summoning new troops.

Evocation is the "destroying your enemy with spells" school. If you have a lot of elemental mages (air, fire, earth), Evocation is often your first research priority, paired with Conjuration 3 for the combat boost spells.

If you have a lot of Air access on your national mages, the usual plan is to research Evocation 5 (for Storm and Thunder Strike) and Conjuration 3 (for Summon Storm Power). An A3 or A4 mage can cast Storm using gems, allowing your A2 mages to Summon Storm Power to become A3, and then they can all cast Thunder Strike - this is the king of evocations due to its big AN damage and generous AoE. This alone will get you a long way in most battles, and rarely goes obsolete.

Fire magic can be strong because any F2 mage can boost to F3 using Phoenix Power (Conjuration 3), and can then casting Falling Fires (Evocation 5), a big armour piercing AoE nuke that is good against armoured and unarmoured troops both. Before Evo5, Flare and Fireball (Evo2 and 3) are okay at helping out in fights but you really want to get Evo5 as soon as possible for your mages to do any serious damage. Later on, you can cast Fire Storm (Evocation 7) to gradually burn the whole battlefield to death, which works extremely well if your own troops have fire resistance (like Abysia or Heat Ragha) - or you can cast Fire Fend (Enchantment 8) once you're there. Unfortunately Fire magic is easily shut down because of a spell called Rain (Evocation 2), which increases the fatigue cost on casting Fire spells significantly, and makes Fire mages very upset. Fire magic is considered somewhat poor because of this.

Earth magic has Summon Earthpower at Conjuration 3, which not only boosts an E2 mage to E3 but grants 4 Reinvigoration as well, which considerably helps battle mages spam their spells. At E3, your mages can cast Blade Wind, a kind of scattershot spell that does big damage to unprotected targets like skeletons or jaguar warriors but quickly falls off as enemies become more armoured. You can, however, pair it with other Earth spells like Destruction or Iron Bane (Alteration 4 or 6) which destroy armour and make your Blade Winds get through. Evocation 5 also gives you access to Earthquake (which takes E4, or an E3 casting Earthpower), a battlewide evocation that cripples low-prot armies (and probably your mages as well, if you aren't careful). Earth Meld (Alteration 2) does no damage but holds troops in place and makes them defenseless, which can be really effective against something like a bless rush. Maws of the Earth (Alteration 5) is like a really big Earth Meld that also does huge damage - it owns, but it costs gems to cast each time.

Earth also has some strong crosspaths. Mages with E2 and F1 like Ulm's Priest-Smiths or Machaka's Boudas can Summon Earthpower into casting Magma Eruption (Evocation 6), an awesome battle spell that does big damage in a big AoE and can be spammed for a while. Mages with E2 and S1 like some of Marverni's Druids or Arco's Mystics can Summon Earthpower into casting Gifts of Heaven (Evocation 5), an unwieldy meteor spell that does massive damage but can't be aimed for poo poo - good against large crowds, or highly armoured targets. Mages with E2 and A1 like some of Vanheim's Dwarven Smiths or Midgard's Galdermen can cast Rain of Stones, a battlewide spell that is like Earthquake but cheaper to cast and considerably more powerful.

Astral magic is interesting because of a spell called Light of the Northern Star (Conjuration 4), which boosts the Astral power of all of your mages by 1. This allows hordes of S1s (like you see in Pythium, Kailasa, or LA Ulm) to easily become hordes of S2s, and spam Stellar Cascades (Evocation 5) to knock out enemy troops, or Mind Burn/Paralyze (Thaumaturgy 2/4) to take out individual strong targets like dragons or elephants. Hordes of S1s are useful for another reason - communions. Communions are pretty complicated and deserve their own guide, but allow mages to hold hands and cast more powerful spells than they're otherwise able by dividing fatigue evenly amongst themselves. Poorly-managed communions can kill your mages, though, so they take some practice. Good nations for communions include Arcoscephale, Pythium, and Sceleria, since they have Astral crosspaths on almost every mage they recruit.

Water isn't quite as good as the others for battle magic, but if you have a lot of W3 mages like Atlantis you can cast Falling Frost (Evocation 5), a very serviceable cold counterpart to Falling Fires. Water/Fire crosspaths can do Acid Rain (Evocation 4), and its battlefield-wide counterpart Acid Storm (Evocation 7), which can't be resisted and burns through even heavily armoured troops. Nature magic isn't particularly good at killing troops, but Tangle Vines (Conjuration 1) and Sleep Cloud (Evocation 3) have situational uses in battle. The only really good Nature evocation is probably Storm of Thorns (Evocation 7), which can be really good but comes into play rather late. Death magic has a few evocations like Shadow Bolt (Evocation 3) and Blast of Unlife (Evocation 6) but I've always found them an inefficient way of getting things done - if you have death mages, they're probably summoning skeletons (see below). Blood magic has some serviceable battle spells like Leech or Agony but they all cost blood slaves to use, which I find cumbersome, and they're not significantly better. I honestly don't know much about using Blood effectively, so I hope someone can fill in the gaps. Blood does have access to Sabbaths, though, which are functionally identical to communions but cost blood slaves for every mage. Nice if you really want to add in some communions but your mages don't have S access.

Nature magic has some really good battlefield spells like Howl (Conjuration 5) and Relief (Enchantment 6), which are small effects but can turn the tide sometimes. Low-N mages can spam Swarm (Alteration 4) using nature gems to serve as chaff and distractions for your more important troops.

If you have a lot of Death mages in your nation, you'll almost certainly want to be making hundreds of skeletons in each battle using Horde of Skeletons (Enchantment 5) - this is the mainstay of nations like C'tis or Yomi, where you can get D2 mages or better out of every fort. C'tis in particular is quite weak before Enchantment 5 and hits a strong peak immediately once they acquire it. Horde of Skeletons synergises really well with Rigor Mortis (Enchantment 6), which comes in at the very next research level and acts as a force multiplier for your skeletons by tiring out the enemy flesh troops and making them fall over. If you have Water too, you can stack Quagmire and Grip of Winter (Enchantment 5 and 6) on top which does a very similar thing. This combo will get you a long way, and although it can be countered to some degree, the counter to the counter is itself often "more skeletons", so Death can be a really hard path to deal with. Other battlefield enchants that give skeletons an edge are Darkness (Alteration 6), Life After Death (Enchantment 7), and Foul Vapors (Enchantment 5, but N3W1). All are worth using - play around with them.

There are also the very strong in-battle Summon Elemental spells (all at Conjuration 5), though the Air elementals are probably the strongest of these due to being flying ethereal tramplers that are really hard to deal with. At Conjuration 7, you can cast Living Earth, Living Clouds, etc., which summon 4 lesser versions of those elementals, which are excellent for dealing with hordes of low quality chaff like skeletons.

Buff magic is less flashy but can act as a serious force multiplier if applied well. Earth magic gets some big AoE buffs like Legions of Steel (Construction 3), Weapons of Sharpness (Construction 7), and Strength of Giants (Enchantment 3), which make your troops tougher and hit harder. Fire has one of the best battlefield buffs in the game, Flaming Arrows (Enchantment 4), which scales extremely well as you throw more archers into your armies and can also be buffed by Air's Wind Guide (Alteration 4). Air has some powerful buffs later in the game, like Fog Warriors (Alteration 7) and Mass Flight (Enchantment 7), as well as Arrow Fend (Enchantment 6) which is practically a requirement against any nation that relies heavily on archers or archer-like things (like MA/LA Ulm and their national Iron Blizzard).

Ritual magic is about a lot of things, from summoning units and commanders to casting global enchantments that give you a strategic edge.

The best unit summoning spell are almost always national - see Agartha's Olms, Niefelheim's Jotun Wolves, Fomoria's Morrigans, Mictlan's Jaguar Fiends, and many others - though there are a few situational exceptions, like Black Hawks from Call of the Winds (Conjuration 3), which make excellent patrollers, or Awaken Vine Ogres (Conjuration 4) if you have an Irminsul, which are good meaty chaff (but only if you have an Irminsul). Blood magic has some decent summons, especially the Storm Demons and Demon Knights (both Blood 4), though they require crosspaths that may be hard to get. National commander summons also tend to be very strong and are a good source of magic power and diversity, like Caelum's Yazads and Daeva's, LA Ulm's Vampire Counts, and so on. Some generic commanders are also very good mages, though most of these are at Conjuration 8 - the Faerie Court, and the Elemental Kings and Queens. These can help bootstrap you into higher levels of your national paths, or act as powerful combat mages in their own right.

You can use ritual magic to harass enemy armies and provinces - there are a lot of options here, some remote assassination spells like Seeking Arrow (A3, Enchantment 3), Mind Hunt (S4, Evocation 6), Vengeance of the Dead (S3D1, Thaumaturgy 4) Earth Attack (E5, Conjuration 8), and so on - these work very differently to each other and situational but can be used to good effect. Spells like Blight (E2D1, Alteration 4), Plague (D4, Thaumaturgy 7), or Hurricane (A3, Evocation 4) can kill population and raise unrest, which can ruin an enemy's economy, but are likewise a situational use of gems. The capstone of this type of warfare, though, is Send Horror (S4B3, Blood 8), an extremely powerful remote summon that can kill entire armies, though it takes some time to boost up to and requires a strong blood economy to keep going. Once a nation gets access to any significant amount of Horror spam, though, they will often win the game on the back of that alone.

There is a remote sitesearch spell for every path, though they crop up in different research trees - Haruspex, Gnome Lore, Voice of Apsu, and so on. These aren't bad, but it's usually more efficient to have a couple mages with diverse paths go around manually sitesearching. People will probably disagree with me on this though, and the spells can certainly be worth using in certain circumstances.

There are 5 global enchantment slots in each game, and players will normally fight for them. We had a brief discussion about globals recently, and there's usually only a small group that get cast in any game. There is a gemgen global for every element (Mother Oak, Earth Blood Deep Well, Stellar Focus, Gale Gate, etc.) - some of these give better returns than others. Mother Oak (Alteration 5) is often seen because it gives you a nice leadup into casting Gift of Health (Enchantment 7) later in the game, a big buff to your troops in your dominion and one of the only ways to cure afflictions for most nations (and the only way to cure afflictions from lifeless units or undead, which you want if you're pursuing a Tartarian-based lategame). Vengeful Water (Thaumaturgy 7) is really oppressive and hard to deal with, and is a natural choice for anyone who took a pretender with high Water magic - it makes you pretty much impossible to attack by most nations, unless the enchantment is dealt with. Burden of Time (Thaumaturgy 5) and Astral Corruption (Blood 7) are powerful globals that may win you the game if you can play around them (if you have young or undead mages for BoT, or if you can rely primarily on blood magic for AC), but do so by antagonising every other player in the game, so you have to be prepared to fight the world once they're up.

I'm almost certainly missing something, but I hope this is a useful resource to start out with.

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 16:47 on May 3, 2017

# ? Sep 2, 2013 07:40

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# ? Apr 19, 2024 01:39

TheDemon: Dec 11, 2006; _{...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.}

Screenshots

You can put an extra arm item on your immobile monolith

Or put 4 on your crone so she can tri-wield bows of war.

Get me some drat screenshots, goons. In the meantime, here's Dom3 screenshots:

Things All Players and Especially New Players Should Know
:words:

time

General
- To sign up to a game, sign up to the Goon Game Service here. Yes Steam profile link over Desura is fine. Once registered & verified, you can claim a nation of a game in signup phase (read the Message from host in case there are special rules). Also good to check the PGS thread for more info.
- To connect to the game, go to Network in Dom4, and connect to the ip address and port listed on the page. Please note the Goon Game Service is just a tracker site. It does NOT interact with the Dominions 4 server for you.
- To make a pretender for multiplayer: First, make sure the right mods are active. The easiest way is to connect to the server then disconnect. Then go to Game Tools -> Create a Pretender God. Once the pretender is finished, reconnect to the server and pick the nation. If you have only one pretender it'll upload automatically.
- Remember to give your god a password for multiplayer network games, or else some rear end in a top hat could log in and teleport all your mages into the ocean and rename all your commanders "Dongs".
- DO NOT PRESS START. All you'll do is delay the game and extract an idiot tax from the host who was stupid enough to keep this option enabled.
- If your menus are disappearing or you're having regular crashes generating turns, this is the game's copy protection in action. You may have entered your serial key incorrectly, in which case edit or delete the "key" file in the main directory. I'm sure you can imagine the other reason why you'd trigger the copy protection.
- The easiest way to host a game is to sign up on snek.earth and let that site host the game for you. Once you have the game set up there you can run Dominions 4 and connect to the address snek.earth gives you. There may be other game hosting sites or individuals around, too.
- To host a game yourself, manually, you'll need a computer that can be on 24/7 and a stable internet connection. Use a script or a specialized shortcut to run the game in text-only mode. Here is a server script by brainwrinkle, scripts make hosting easier by helping you do game settings and backing up turn files.

Multiplayer Etiquette
- A game of Dominions can last for 3+ months. When signing up for a new game, make sure you can commit for the whole run.
- Take it easy joining more than two or three games at once, and space out your signups by at least a week. Turns take 5 minutes to do at first, but towards endgame they can take from 30 minutes to 2 hours. You don’t want to be in three games that are all in endgame at the same time.
- A silent neighbor is more threatening than a friendly one. Talk to your neighbors.
- Make all timer requests either to the host directly or in the PGS thread.
- If you have to drop out, please let the PGS thread or host know. You might find a substitute or the host might delay the game for you. AI control is permanent and fighting AIs is no fun for the other players.
- If you’ve been knocked down so hard that you cannot realistically get back up it is ok to set your nation to computer control. It's a learning experience to fight to the bitter end if you want to.

Terminology
- EA, MA and LA stand for Early Age, Middle Age, and Late Age respectively.
- SC is a supercombatant, a unit with equipment and buffs designed to take on entire armies and win.
- Thug is a cheaper unit designed to solo province defense and add firepower to armies.
- We use shorthand to refer to magic paths. For example, D2S1A1 would refer to 2 levels of Death, 1 level of Astral and 1 level of Air magic. The letters are:

code:

A - Air
W - Water
E - Earth
F - Fire
D - Death
S - Astral
N - Nature
B - Blood

- Note that Air got dibs on "A" first, so Astral had to settle for "S".
- CBM is the Conceptual Balance Mod, a mod for Dominions 3 that dramatically changes the game. Some of the changes are obvious but many are subtle changes only a veteran would spot. The Shrapnel Forums and Dom3mods communities use it almost all the time, while the Goons here use it occasionally. If you're new the differences aren't significant enough to worry about.
- AE and AG are AwesomeEndgame and AwesomeGods respectively, two very popular goon-made mods that make endgame summons and pretender gods more powerful.
- FF and OPM are Forbidden Friendship and Other Peoples' Mods, combination mods that combine CBM with AE and AG.
- DE is Dominions Enhanced, an incomplete total conversion mod that mixes up how the game plays.
- None of these mods work in Dom4 yet, but it's a very good bet that they'll be ported over.

Gameplay tips
- New players will often start on maps far too big. Play on a map with at most 15 provinces per nation. This is a normal size.
- Most nations are viable, but if you want a nation to hold your hand you cannot go wrong with giants: Hinnom, Niefelheim, Fomoria, Ashdod, Jotunheim, Gath, Utgard. Also nations with good sacred units, provided you use a bless, like Mictlan, Lanka, EA Oceania, LA Pythium and the aforementioned giants also hold your hand in the early game.
- For learning to use battlemagic pick a nation that has level 3 or 4 in a single elemental path, like Caelum, Argatha, Vanheim, Patala and many others.
- The "n" key selects the next idle commander. Use it to check if you've missed someone.
- Magic Always Wins! And to get magic, you need mages to research and they cost gold. Castles to increase your mage recruitment also cost gold. See a trend?
- You'll want to have started a second castle before the end of year 1.
- Low domscore on a pretender build is extremely dangerous. Increasing your dom effectiveness in-game is very expensive, and the lower end of the domscore scale (below 6 or so) is laughably ineffective.
- Do a quick test of your pretender build and expansion strategy before committing it to a multiplayer game. You'll want at least one province per turn. If you can hit 12 to 15 provinces by the start of year 2, it's a competitive expansion strategy. My record in an actual multiplayer game is 22.
- Hire at least 1 PD in every province you take. Stealth scouts can capture a province with 0 PD without a battle, and some players will make a point of doing this every chance they get to "teach" you not to make this mistake.
- Scouting and intel are critical. Hire scouts from non-fort provinces to extend your network. The score graphs are also a fine intel source if you learn to read between the lines.
- Don't bother recruiting independent troops. Your national troops are nearly always stronger or more efficient, and its advantageous to build castles for mage recruitment. Obviously this is just a rule of thumb.
- Do hire independent commanders. National commanders compete with mages for castle recruitment slots. Sometimes you'll want a national commander for a morale bonus, but mages are still more important.
- Construction is a tempting early research goal, but it won't help defend against a rush. Evocation or Alteration are safer choices.
- Gems are very important in the midgame and the most important thing in the endgame, so in the earlygame and midgame you need to sitesearch everywhere you can with as varied paths as you can.
- Powerful spells will require higher paths than your mages have. This guide (possibly old as it's Dom3) is essential to figuring out how to power up your mages. Empowerment is extremely inefficient and wastes a lot of gems compared to using boosters.

Help I'm dying to the AI
~~I heard the AI got a big upgrade in Dom4. That said, the strategies for beating it should be pretty similar.~~ The AI is still as boneheaded as ever.

You want magic mages castles gold and more magic. The AI is pretty good at hiring hordes of troops. If you're being overwhelmed, you probably needed more castles which means you can recruit more troops and mages.
The easiest spells to use are in Evocation and Alteration. The AoE blasting spells like Falling Fires, Falling Frost, Thunder Strike, Magma Eruption and Blade Wind are all simple to use and effective. In the buffs/debuffs category, Destruction, False Fetters, Wind Guide, Flaming Arrows, and Darkness (if applicable) are huge force multipliers. To be able to spam these, the in-battle magic boosts from Conjuration 3 (Phoenix Power, Earthpower, Stormpower) are useful.

Help my mages won't do what I tell them / target who I want them to
Scripting is a mess until you get a lot of practice, but the main issues are a) There are no valid targets in-range. Buffs won't be cast on someone who already has that buff. b) You don't have enough gems. Read this. c) The AI thinks there will be friendly fire. d) The AI targets enemies by predicted hitpoint damage, often ignoring MR (but not elemental resistances).
They key is make the most of your 5 rounds of scripting, and make sure you're in range both for your 5 rounds and for the off-script rounds. The off-script rounds will also conserve fatigue so you can't expect tiring spells.

Little Dom4 rules and mechanics you'll need to know eventually or learn the hard way
- Commanders that can sneak will do so by default. If you want them to fight or defend use CTRL click to force them to move normally.
- Script your mages and place your armies. This is very necessary! You can use ctrl+number while hovering over a script to save it to that number, and the number again to paste it.
- Magic Resistance does NOT resist all magic. It is an all-or-nothing diceroll against only spells that specifically state MR Resists. Elemental Resists are damage reduction, however.
- EA and LA Mictlan can ONLY spread dominion through Blood Sacrifice. Have a priest sacrificing starting Turn 2!
- Any province can connect to any other province; borders are graphical only. Turn on the Neighbors filter to confirm province connections.
- Random events are capped at 4 per nation (or possibly not, not sure on the Dom4 mechanic). This severely limits the benefits of Luck scales in the lategame.
- Some hostile spells appear anonymously as random events.
- You can't catch an army by chasing it. Non-magic movement is executed simultaneously, then battles are fought. You need to move to where the army will be.
- When two opposing armies move towards each other, the army that moves is chosen at random. Occasionally there is a bug where neither army moves.
- Sieging a castle doesn't count as owning the province. If an outside siege is your last province, your nation will die!
- Teleporting onto a fort does not cancel a movement order from inside nor will it fight troops moving out of the fort.
- Retreats from a stormed castle rout normally, they don't automatically die (manual error).
- Casting sequence in battle is from first to last in unit ID order which is the order they appear in the scripting list.
- Forging and casting rituals is randomly either from first to last or from last to first in unit ID order. All nations are included. If you need something done first, have both a mage first and a mage last in the list do it.
- The good irresistible spells are Bane Fire, Acid Rain, Petrify, Drain Life, Leech, Life for a Life, Claws of Kokytos and Infernal Prison (this list may change with Dom4). They all have pros and cons even compared to resistible spells and some unit types are immune to certain ones like Lifeless to Drain Life
- Manual Errata
- Turn order & movement sequence
- Communions
- Gem use
- Quick and dirty tutorial on battlemagic

This section is still being updated for Dom4, but 99% of it still applies.

Dominions 4 Links
Buy the game at Steam, ~~Desura~~ or Gamersgate
When there are patches they'll appear here
Goon Game Service
Official Forums
Beta Bug Report Thread
Modding Community Forums
Server Script by brainwrinkle

Let's Plays
Matryx's R'lyeh LP (archives). Also here without thread commentary.
Bremen's Monkeys LP (archives). New player perspective.
Gabriel Pope's LP (archives). Gabriel Pope is not personally playing, he is watching over the shoulder of all ten of the players' nations. Lots of experienced players are involved in and talk strategy in this game, making it a good read if you'd like some in depth Dominions knowledge.
ZobraTHut's Arco LP (archives). Also here without commentary. New player perspective, with elephants.
Collective LP organized by Lilli (archives). Complete. Also here without commentary
~~TexasR2D2's LP (started 10/2011) Overview LP.~~ (dead)
~~ATartanTory's LP (started 07/2011) where ATT narrates 10 hapless fools with a slight bit of RP.~~ (dead)
~~Legoman727 LP (started 04/2011). Overview LP.~~ (dead)
~~Lilli LP (started 04/2011). Overview LP.~~ (dead)

A visual representation of the Dominions random number generator

Dominions 3 Welcome To Tartarus Check-In Station

Not everyone has Dom4, so here's the part of the OP where I cram in everything about Dom3 from the old OP.

If Dominions 3 isn't working, PATCH. YOUR. GAME. 98% of "x isn't working" can be fixed by this. 1% is the copy protection at work. The final 1% are legit bugs.

Dom3 Links
All
the old threads
Dom3 Wiki please note most of the wiki is pulled from a database using scripts; units will list their natural prot instead of their equipped prot
Dom3 Mod Inspector a utility better than the wiki for looking up Units, Spells, Items, Armor and Weapons. Can load mods through the url (for example, CBM).
The Dom3 DB and Event list spreadsheets can be downloaded here
The Strategy Index on the old Dom3 forums which contains guides of extremely varying quality with no quality control
Dominions 3 Modding Community. CBM is developed here, as well as a host of mod nations
Llamaserver, the PBEM server the official forums uses to host their games. PBEM is different from our Network games. You will need to post in the specific game's thread on their forums before signing up for games here. I link it because it has a very handy map browser
Dominions Goons Steam group that is almost completely ignored
Guide to Creating and Administering a Game on someone else's server by TenjouUtena
Guide to setting up your own Dominions 3 server by Matryx
Sample code for hosts to back up turn files
Magic Path Booster Guide, by FAR the most important guide
Dom3 Communions Guide
Quick and dirty tutorial on battlemagic
Quick guide to blood hunting

Common Dominions 3 Mods
One-Stop Mod Download Page (CBM, AwesomeMods, FF)
Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94 by QM and Llamabeast. The official community's de-facto standard for game balance and tweaks. Since 1.7 it plays quite differently from the basegame.
Old archive of CBM 1.6 CBM 1.6 is CBM but much closer to the vanilla game in playstyle, the only major change being the removal of gem generating items.
Endgame Diversity Mod 1.21 by Llamabeast, which adds supercombatant-quality summons to diversify the SC chassis available in the endgame. Included in CBM 1.7+ and AwesomeEndgame.
~~AwesomeSites by NinjaDebugger, which adds many recruitables and income to magic sites to make them more interesting.~~ Since the 3.26 patch this mod is broken.
AwesomeGods by NinjaDebugger, which gives new abilities to many pretender chassis's to make them more interesting.
AwesomeEndgame by NinjaDebugger, which is EDM with the less powerful additions jacked up to par, and big power boosts to high level single summons.
AwesomeItems by NinjaDebugger.
Forbidden Friendship by Feinne, a compilation mod of CBM, AwesomeGods and AwesomeEndgame, with a few additional balance tweaks
Dominions Enhanced by TheDemon, which a mod where I change anything I want with the intention of giving every spell and unit a useful niche.
Combination of Single Age and Standards For all-ages games

Install a mod by unzipping/placing it into your dominions3/mods folder.

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 04:59 on Feb 19, 2017

# ? Sep 2, 2013 07:41

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

IMPORTANT!!!!

Claiming a throne is not the same as capturing one. To claim it, you need to put a level 3 priest or pretender/disciple onto the same province. There will be a special monthly action called CLAIM THRONE. Once you claim it you may get neat bonuses. Some thrones you do not need to claim to get all their bonuses, but you still need to claim them for throne points.

amuayse fucked around with this message at 09:20 on Sep 2, 2013

# ? Sep 2, 2013 07:44

TheDemon: Dec 11, 2006; _{...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.}

quote:

Bwa? Is it just me or are some of the site finding spells missing?

They've been shuffled around and renamed. Look in different trees or at higher research.

e: Augury and Haruspex are Thau3, Auspex and Gnome Lore are Thau4. Arcane Probing is Evo3. Dark Knowledge is Conj3. Bowl of Blood is Blood2 but only B1. Acasic Knowledge is the new all-sites spell and is Conj 6.

TheDemon fucked around with this message at 07:50 on Sep 2, 2013

# ? Sep 2, 2013 07:47

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

Arcane Probing Evo 3
Bowl a Blood Blo 2
Haruspex Thau 3
Augury Thau 3
Gnome Lore Thau 4
Auspex Thau 4
Dark Knowledge Con 3
Voice of Apsu Con 4
Voice of Tiamat Con 5
Acashic Knowledge Con 6

All of them require two in their respective paths, except for Dark Knowledge, Bowl of Blood, Arcane Probing (only 1) and Acashic Knowledge (3 astral)

amuayse fucked around with this message at 08:01 on Sep 2, 2013

# ? Sep 2, 2013 07:59

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

SANTA MARIIIIIIAAAAAAA

# ? Sep 2, 2013 08:00

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

This game is going to be so good. Only a few more weeks and we can start playing MP. :allears:

# ? Sep 2, 2013 08:02

TheDemon: Dec 11, 2006; _{...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.}

Multiplayer is working just fine right now.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 08:03

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

I love the repeat recruitment option so much. Watching all these troops pour out like fresh baked cookies makes me happy, which evens out due to the absurdly long construction times.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 08:03

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

TheDemon posted:

Multiplayer is working just fine right now.

Saves are incompatible between beta and release and I don't really feel like committing to 2-4 months of playing the beta.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 08:05

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

What's weirder is the research. It's not that hard to get to level 3 in any path, but after that it's really really difficult.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 08:09

LordLeckie: Nov 14, 2009

amuayse posted:

Arcane Probing Evo 3
Bowl a Blood Blo 2
Haruspex Thau 3
Augury Thau 3
Gnome Lore Thau 4
Auspex Thau 4
Dark Knowledge Con 3
Voice of Apsu Con 4
Voice of Tiamat Con 5
Acashic Knowledge Con 6

All of them require two in their respective paths, except for Dark Knowledge, Bowl of Blood, Arcane Probing (only 1) and Acashic Knowledge (3 astral)

I guess that will mildly slow down the midgame acceleration that happens when people start pouring all their gems into early remote searching because half the time there isnt a better use for them.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 08:21

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

Line formation calvary charges do look pretty cool.

Also another important note. Low level Conjurgation has been BUFFED to the extreme.

amuayse fucked around with this message at 09:24 on Sep 2, 2013

# ? Sep 2, 2013 09:06

nimby: Nov 4, 2009; The pinnacle of cloud computing.

I had nearly forgotten about Dominions 3. I think I'm going to try my hand at 4, I've been taking better care of my new PC so that the video card most likely won't die on me again.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 09:13

Feindfeuer: Jun 20, 2013; shoot men, receive credits

For someone who plays Dominnions 3 only on and off by himself from time to time... is there a reason to 'upgrade' to the 4th installment? Asking cause I'm just guessing that it will be as insanly expensive as the 3rd installment again, which was probably the most expensive game i bought that year (not counting the mountains of moneys I waste on 'free' games)

# ? Sep 2, 2013 09:31

canada jezus: Jul 18, 2011

Dominions 4 is like 25� at this point, if that factors in to your decision. Haven't played it enough to actually answer your question though.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 09:32

uPen: Jan 25, 2010; Zu Rodina!

Feindfeuer posted:

For someone who plays Dominnions 3 only on and off by himself from time to time... is there a reason to 'upgrade' to the 4th installment? Asking cause I'm just guessing that it will be as insanly expensive as the 3rd installment again, which was probably the most expensive game i bought that year (not counting the mountains of moneys I waste on 'free' games)

The developers ditched Shrapnel (and their insane pricing model) some time ago. Dom3 has been sold for as low as $10 and dom4 is launching at $35.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 09:34

Feindfeuer: Jun 20, 2013; shoot men, receive credits

canada jezus posted:

Dominions 4 is like 25� at this point, if that factors in to your decision. Haven't played it enough to actually answer your question though.

That's less than half of Dominion 3, and I bought that probably a year after it was released.
~~Did they change publishers or something?~~

Edit: so they did, nice. I'm picking this up soon than.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 09:35

TheDemon: Dec 11, 2006; _{...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.}

Feindfeuer posted:

For someone who plays Dominnions 3 only on and off by himself from time to time... is there a reason to 'upgrade' to the 4th installment? Asking cause I'm just guessing that it will be as insanly expensive as the 3rd installment again, which was probably the most expensive game i bought that year (not counting the mountains of moneys I waste on 'free' games)

Cost has been covered. In terms of upgrade, Dom4 is definitely iterative rather than transformative, so the differences won't be massive. There have been a LOT of UI improvements though. I guess it depends on what your annoyances were with Dom3, and whether you're willing to pay for either more content or some of those annoyances fixed.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 09:41

nimby: Nov 4, 2009; The pinnacle of cloud computing.

quote:

-Newly caught blood slaves goes to lab automatically if possible.
-Range restrictions on magic rituals and items and spells that can be used to boost ritual ranges.

These 2 alone would warrant an upgrade, in my opinion. No more thousands of clicks to retrieve your blood slaves, no more surprise-death from ranged assassinations into your home fort.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 10:28

Pomp: Apr 3, 2012; by Fluffdaddy

Automatic recurring recruitment is 100% worth the cost alone.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 10:47

Robhol: Oct 9, 2012

Nice, pre-ordering this now. I always wanted to try Dominions 3 after reading some of the LPs, but was put off by the ridiculous pricing. �23 for the pre-order is quite reasonable though. Looking forward to figuring out how the hell to play it!

# ? Sep 2, 2013 11:31

Nothingtoseehere: Nov 11, 2010

Once the actual game is released, there's plans for a MP LP in the work to try and get more people into the game.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 11:39

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

There's a very powerful tier item that can increase the range of rituals.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:00

A Tartan Tory: Mar 26, 2010; You call that a shotgun?!

Nope, it's not sucking me in again, not happening. I enjoy my spare time thank you!

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:09

TheDemon: Dec 11, 2006; _{...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.}

amuayse posted:

There's a very powerful tier item that can increase the range of rituals.

And a global (evo 9, 80 w gems, W7 N5) that slowly domes all your provinces.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:18

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

This is a rather interesting replacement for dwarven hammer. It's a very powerful item, so that requires a buttload of research.
It gives a forge bonus of 1 but it's also an irremovable miscellaneous item.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:28

builds character: Jan 16, 2008; Keep at it.

TheDemon posted:

And a global (evo 9, 80 w gems, W7 N5) that slowly domes all your provinces.

What are your initial impressions?

Also, is blood sac as a viable victory strategy dead?

Edit: that's the dominions I know and love - go ahead and equip this powerful magic item for which we have not mentioned any drawbacks. It'll be fiiiiine, we promise!

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:29

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

Another interesting item. The Disease Grinder gives a unit that equips it the "disease grinder" tag. It heals one unit in a province of disease and gives you a free death gem. Not a temporary death gem, a real death gem.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:41

Konec Hry: Jul 13, 2005; too much love will kill you; Grimey Drawer

nothing to seehere posted:

Once the actual game is released, there's plans for a MP LP in the work to try and get more people into the game.

Read this as MLP LP and got very angry very quickly.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:42

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

The First Anvil is a miscellaneous unique that gives a dude the Master Smith tag, which allows the guy's paths to be boosted for forging. Similar to Forge of the Ancients. It doesn't stack if you already have Master Smith like on the Forge Lord pretender. Sadly though, it does not answer the question of whether the hammer or anvil came first.

amuayse fucked around with this message at 14:49 on Sep 2, 2013

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:46

NinjaDebugger: Apr 22, 2008

I keep getting an error opening dbg-file in the beta, anybody know a way to resolve this little problem?

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:52

Harvs: Sep 1, 2008

Ahh I loved dom3 even though I was terrible at it and I had so much fun playing with goons. Unfortunately I had to stop due to pc and internet problems and then other commitments but that's all mostly cleared up now so I reckon ill pick this up when it goes live. Really happy to see its much cheaper than dom3 and on a digital distribution service, hopefully it'll make its way to steam soon!

# ? Sep 2, 2013 14:58

TheDemon: Dec 11, 2006; _{...on the plus side I'm feeling much more angry now than I expected so this totally helps me get in character.}

amuayse posted:

Another interesting item. The Disease Grinder gives a unit that equips it the "disease grinder" tag. It heals one unit in a province of disease and gives you a free death gem. Not a temporary death gem, a real death gem.

Of course, this is only a gemgen if you have a disease first. Not sure if anything has synergy with it, maybe Bane Venom Charm if that's still in?

# ? Sep 2, 2013 15:05

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

I think it would be useful if you got a castle full of old men researchers.
A neat thing about the copper arm. It gives you another arm slot.

amuayse fucked around with this message at 15:17 on Sep 2, 2013

# ? Sep 2, 2013 15:12

Great Gray Shrike: Oct 22, 2010

Diseases are now apparantly supposed to eat 1/10th hp per month rather than 1 hp per month, so they matter a lot more if they hit high hp creatures; I think that item will be used a fair bit.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 15:24

Lege: Oct 12, 2005; hurf im badass

Those new items are really cool. Dom 4 GOTY all years

# ? Sep 2, 2013 15:53

builds character: Jan 16, 2008; Keep at it.

Great Gray Shrike posted:

Diseases are now apparantly supposed to eat 1/10th hp per month rather than 1 hp per month, so they matter a lot more if they hit high hp creatures; I think that item will be used a fair bit.

As a gemgen with harvester of sorrows.

# ? Sep 2, 2013 15:58

amuayse: Jul 20, 2013; by exmarx

I just realized. If you have a Destroyer of World pretender and you put a bunch of copper arms and give it gloves of the gladiator...

# ? Sep 2, 2013 16:34

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# ? Apr 19, 2024 01:39

Pain of Mind: Jul 10, 2004; You are receiving this broadcast as a dream...We are transmitting from the year one nine... nine nine ...You are receiving this broadcast in order t

Something feels clunky about the interface but I cannot place my finger on it. Also, I cannot go more than 3 turns without it crashing due to some dbg error or whatever. Is that common or do I have a bad install?

Pain of Mind fucked around with this message at 17:01 on Sep 2, 2013

# ? Sep 2, 2013 16:44

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

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