Dominions FOUR: Sequel to the Best Game Ever

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

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Here's a new Argatha hero

# ¿ Nov 15, 2013 16:16

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# ¿ May 22, 2024 11:40

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Turin Turambar posted:

Greetings fellow goons. New Dominons player here.

I heard about Dom3, but you know, the graphics/UI/comments about being mainly a multiplayer game as the AI sucked always made me pass up on the game. Also, the price.

But with Dominions 4 I finally tried it, and I'm liking it. Also it helped that in the interim, I played CoE3 that in a way it's a mini-Dominions.

My first game (against Normal AI) was with EA Ulm. It went... not good. The wraparound map without seas and the fact maybe there was more nations for that map than I would like meant I had 4 war fronts, one in every direction, and every time I took a province, they took one in other side, and vice versa. At some point I got frustrated of playing the whack-a-mole game and I started another one.
Also, I sucked.

The second game was better, with EA Arco, in the Aran map. I got to destroy one of the AIs. Alas, I was in a peninsula surrounded by water, water owned by Oceania (was it? the one with Itchosatyrs, Itchotaurs, etc) which made constant raids to my territory including the area of my capital. I could reconquest always, but that situation slowed my expansion by a lot. Meanwhile Ctis owned the hell of another nation in the mainland part of the map, and when I got around to fight them, they had twice the provinces, twice the armies, etc. Still, I thought I could slowly conquest their territory (even as a noob, I have better strategic foresight than the AI!), but in the end, I was dom-killed. By the AI. Ugh. In my noobness, I had only purchased Dom 6 and I still didn't have a good grip on dominion spread mechanics and what's the normal amount of temples to build (and the AI loveees to build temples). My plan was to beat drat Oceania, I had summoned some Sea Troll kings and had forged a pair of barrels of Air, but the pressure of C'tis delayed my plans and between being C'tis temples and Oceania temples around me, baam dead.

The third game, I finally won. It was with MA Atlantis in the Valanis map. Now, that was a interesting game strategically speaking. I rushed War Lobsters and beat the rival sea opponent somewhat early that gave me all the river for me, and that allowed me to do raids. I identified the important points in the map, the river passes, some provinces that were choke points because there were mountains around and took control. There were some reversals and drat Ashdod troops killed easily my weak Atlantis troops (one of the weakest nations, I understand) by in 12 years I won the game. Not that I'm going to touch again MA Atlantis. God what a boring nations. No cavalry, archers, special troops, no spies, or assassins, or heretics, no national spells, no nothing. Just seven melee infantry troops that are near identical between them, and a pair of tougher ones that are still on the same category. Good leadership, priests and water mages but it's all waves of Coral Guards and Shamblers.

Now I want to try some undead nations (yeah, I know about the micro). Because I already played EA and MA, I wanted to play now in LA. So... Lemuria.
Any general hints for them? Pretender strategies? I know I need at least Death 3 to summon the undead commanders. How the freespawn work exactly, I know they appear in forts but also in temples?

Play bless Lemuria and enjoy your self-blessing immortal thugs who can solo expand and smash face if you kit them out. Just try and stay within your dominion so they stay immortal :v:

# ¿ Feb 2, 2014 15:51

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

You can't mod events. Popkill is the reason nobody likes playing against Ermor/LA R'lyeh. You go through a huge shitfight to gain a bunch of provinces that give you no real benefit except maybe some searched out sites, and then you're geared up for a fight that is well different to any other nation and someone else comes and pushes over your sandcastle.

# ¿ Feb 3, 2014 10:22

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Extract the nationgen stuff, run the .jar file that isn't spritegen.jar, then once you make a nation take the stuff out of the mods folder in the nationgen folder and put it in the dominions mods folder

# ¿ Mar 5, 2014 05:25

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Usually everyone rushes to connect after they patch which means, as tenjou has to manually patch from desura, all the games crash because of version mismatches, and tenjou has to run around trying to fix everything

# ¿ Apr 5, 2014 12:34

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Cerebulon posted:

I'm playing as Asphodel in a multiplayer game and for the last five or so turns my upkeep has tipped above my income since everybody's dying all the time. I had a growth dominion in an attempt to counteract it, but the throne of death + constant plagues from year 1 onwards have completely nullified that.
I'm one turn from bankruptcy, is there anything I can do? If I run out of cash am I effectively finished, or will I just not be able to buy anything?
I need to hold out for another few months so I can ravage my enemies with rituals. They can come with their armies and their riches but they're frail and short-lived and I'm practically immortal.

Something nobody mentioned that you might want to try and do in future is casting transformation with your pans, to turn them into animals that don't cost upkeep.

# ¿ Jun 3, 2014 04:16

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Khris Kruel posted:

Hey guys, my wife just got me this game for my birfday and I'm super excited about joining the game. I never played Dom 3 but I heard it was like Risk and I was pretty good when I was 10. Anyways will be joining a game as soon as its done downloading and will read the manual during my first turn.

See ya'll on the battlefield!!!!

I post this here? http://steamcommunity.com/profiles/76561197979145759/

You should also hang out in irc so you can ask questions, and also people hate it when other people in their game aren't in irc to do diplomacy

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 14:21

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Stevefin posted:

Funny enough this maybe the most useful post on a newbie level I have ever seen. Most of the time its this answer

And all of this comes down to time I don't have and experience I am lacking

Irc honestly is your best resource. There's too many different nations calling for different strategies for people to be able to give you a good basic strategy that applies to everything in an effortpost. I'm not saying you need to be online 24/7 to benefit, but you should strongly consider joining a beginner game and popping in to irc to ask questions as they come to mind. The more conversational tone of irc tends to let people build on each others advice, and i suppose helps keep the thread free of super specific questions and responses.

# ¿ Aug 14, 2014 15:47

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

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

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

yes, here is a list of them http://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/?page=site&showmoddinginfo=1&showids=1&sitepathid=10

# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 12:51

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

jsoh posted:

you get head loss from taking more than 5 or 6 damage to the head and then your head falls off and that kills anything that doesnt hae a replacement head or isnt undead i think

a second form works for this and lost a head only kills things as it is applied, so you can have whole armies of headless shapeshifters

# ¿ Dec 16, 2014 05:46

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Dominions Four: I just want my fish-mans to be viable.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2014 11:49

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

they have to rework the way underwater works completely, basically.

# ¿ Dec 26, 2014 12:01

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Eschatos posted:

Now foreignrecruit S1s would be a different story, that would get you amazing research too.

you could give them a research malus

# ¿ Jan 21, 2015 10:34

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

amuayse posted:

I keep bugging Illwinter to be able to mod flysprites but they won't

they probably don't remember how to

# ¿ Feb 19, 2016 07:55

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

jBrereton posted:

Throw the manual in the trash, open up the mod inspector and play around.

Like the devs didn't even write it, Some Guy did.

a Guy who is on record as saying he doesnt like it when game mechanics are explained iirc

# ¿ Apr 1, 2016 02:48

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

legs are just arms u walk on... makes u think...

# ¿ Apr 7, 2016 07:55

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Nuclearmonkee posted:

Fill all dead air with screaming children imo.

we already have the irc if you need screaming children

# ¿ Apr 12, 2016 14:20

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Samog posted:

for a long time changing the rarity on a site reset everything else about it, so you would have a map full of 0-gem sites unless you remade every site from scratch

thrones are sites too arent they? so if youre lazy and just automate something to change every site you also hit the thrones and then they stop having throne defenders. also who was the insane person who made the level zero sites and actually bothered recreating the characteristics of every site back when changing the rarity did wipe everything

# ¿ Apr 22, 2016 00:46

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

Atlanton posted:

I just did a test game and everything seems to be working except for the generation of forts and labs that are tied to searching some sites (i.e. Castle Arcanum or the Citadel of the Loremasters). Thrones work fine too.

there;s only one way to find out, and that is to immediately start a game without doing any more testing!

# ¿ Apr 22, 2016 02:37

quite stretched out: Feb 17, 2011; the chillest

didnt the community balance mod for 3 eventually go into some insane power creep spiral anyway, resulting in every game being some insane murderfest of modded zmeys or whatever

# ¿ May 20, 2016 05:26