Dominions V

[angelfromanotherpin]

The new Abysian national crossbreeding spell is hella sweet. It doesn't require nature, and produces fire-resistant critters. Each cast gives a set of same-design things. I've had guys with deadly-poison bites and magic paralysis tails. I've had guys with 'Fire Flare,' which is like a single-target firebreath. The last batch I brewed up came with a commander spawn and assigned all his tank-brothers to him. I am filled with unexpected delight.

edit: Oops, fire flare is the salamander attack. They're crossbreeding salamanders into dudes. That was a hilarious misplay.

[DrPraetor]

A brief note on Ragha.

If you take Cold-1, you'll often get to Hot-1 at least one season during the first Summer, which enables you to recruit a Turan Sorcerer (he doesn't pop out of the queue when the temperature drops back down.)

The existential question for Ragha - will the game last long enough for your fire temples to pay off?

Jaguar warriors are significantly nerfed, as they don't regenerate in wereform any more.

C'tis dominion diseases your disciples stuff (as I think it did in Dom IV?), and Arcoscephale confers the scrying-dominion to their disciple.

In disciple games, the impetus for one player to be a bless-bonus nation is pretty strong. These are:
[*] EA Mictlan (Fire +1, Blood +2). You can choose between a Teotl of War (who doesn't get fear), and either a Teotl of the Night or a Teteo Inan, who do get fear and some other paths but will have to buy Fire 6 from scratch if you want Awe in your blessing (you do.)
Machaka shares your temp scale and can have a Wyrm, a Serpent of Chaos, or one of several flyers with Fear, but the Lion Warriors are production-intensive and may not care much about whatever bless you take. Berytos is one temp off and the Colossi are in a similar boat.
Kailasa shares your temp scale and can also have a Wyrm or a big flyer with Fear, but their sacreds already have awe, so you may not care.
Hinnom shares your temp scale but is all the way at the other end of the scale on desirable states for their sacreds.
Lanka is probably your best bet, since you can recruit those ape guys everywhere, they're not too resource intensive, and they'll do okay with a jaguar-warrior optimized bless. The Xibalban Sun Guide is more thematic (although even he is more resource intensive that you'd like, at 15.) You get a Wyrm, that's what you take.

[*] EA Abysia (Fire +2). The Lord of the Desert Sun can get you reasonably-priced Good Awe and Regeneration for your burning ones. You want Death-3, so you want a disciple whose units aren't old, and a bunch of productivity, so (see discussion above) Hinnom is good and Machaka works as well.

[*] EA Agartha (Earth +2). You also want a fire bless so these stupid deep ones can occasionally hit something, you can get Attack Skill, another morale (fire resistance?), and Fortitude off of a Cyclops, who at least causes Fear. The Forge Lord is somewhat cheaper but is he really going to march into battle?
You can double down on the... one-eyed amphibious giant theme and have your disciple be Fomoria? I guess you want a Wyrm...

[*] MA Marignon (Fire +2, Astral +2). Unfortunately, your pretender selection is pretty shit. You don't get Fire and Astral together on any of your dom 3+ chassis (is this an oversight?). You probably want a Dulu of War, who will go F5S4N4B5, which gives you Awe, Twist Fate, Blood Bond, a bunch of hit points (or maybe unaging if you can afford a magic scale?).
Vanheim likes a strong bless (although not particularly that one), and gets meh disciple choices; Eriu likewise, although now I'm thinking about the Hooded Spirit as a disciple/combat chassis. Bandar Log can make (sigh) White Ones everywhere but the temp range is off. Pangaea? White Centaur rush works.

[*] Ma Agartha (+1 Earth). See EA Agartha above, but the +1 bonus probably isn't even worth chasing.

[*] MA Abysia (+1 Fire). See EA Abysia above, but Lava Warriors are a lot less impressive than Burning Ones. Pairing with Ashdod makes a certain amount of sense, several of the gyphon/sphinx disciples cause fear as does the Moloch or Scorpion King.

[*] MA Mictlan (+2 Air, +1 Nature). The Teotl of the Sky is the only Domstr 3+ A/N chassis and he shows up with.. spring hawks? You can have... Wind Walker, Flaming Weapons and Recuperation? Is that good? It doesn't particularly keep your stuff alive, and your disciple is going to be Bandar Log so your blessing wants to be good for both White Ones and Eagle Warriors... ugh. Air Shield doesn't do that much for your eagle warriors. Maybe you just want Awe? Anyway, at least Bandar Log gets a Wyrm.

[*] LA Marignon (+1 Fire, +1 Blood, +1 Astral). The Dulu and Teotl of War both come with Fire/Nature/Blood, and you might add an Astral bless if desired. I don't see any stand-out allies, though - Ancestor Vessels were an above-average sacred (is the howling bow still good?), Agartha is generally strong, Van still gets Van (but gets an inferior one-headed world serpent thing instead of the Wyrm), Ragha can have an Azi but it'll be tough managing the weird temperature stuff.

[*] LA Mictlan (+1 Water, +2 Blood). Take a Teotl of Rain, with Quickness, Blood Bond, and a bunch of bonus hit points.
Assuming you're playing on a map with caves, Patala can get sacred Naga everywhere. You could also ally with Xibalba or... C'tis, I guess? Gath?

[angelfromanotherpin]

[*] MA Marignon (Fire +2, Astral +2). Unfortunately, your pretender selection is pretty shit. You don't get Fire and Astral together on any of your dom 3+ chassis (is this an oversight?).

Pretty sure the big giant head is still F2S1B1.

[DrPraetor]

[*] MA Marignon (Fire +2, Astral +2). Unfortunately, your pretender selection is pretty shit. You don't get Fire and Astral together on any of your dom 3+ chassis (is this an oversight?).

Pretty sure the big giant head is still F2S1B1.

Oh, you're right. But, if you're going to invest in an awake pretender, you really want it to be walking around stomping stuff. I think the Athena titan is the best bet since she causes fear.

[Longes]

These guys know what magic is for!

[sum1won]

Hi. I stopped by because I'm writing up a list of various dominions communities. This one has been on previous lists, and I wanted to check in to see if you folks minded being linked.

Since I'm here, I'll also participate in the thread a bit.

I can confirm that starting neutral armies are a bit sterner than they were previously. The default neutrals have relevant orders instead of just being big blob. So they are a lot harder to game. Neutral Raptors are sitting around on Attack Rear, Neutral Archers are on various different fire orders. It means that old tricks just don't work at all and the new tricks aren't going to be nearly as good.

All in all, I think a lot of factions are going to have a really hard time with early expansion.

-Username17

Per illwinter, archers don't have different fire orders so much as default target selection is a little better to make it harder to bait them.

I can't help but notice that archers seem much less effective than they used to be. I think this is a result of the new real-time combat system. My suspicion is that the aiming algorithm hasn't changed since Dom4 but since enemies advance while the arrows are mid-flight, arrows now have a terrible hit rate.
. . .
The T'ien Ch'i game, though... my expansion was abysmal. Now, a lot of that could be me not knowing what I'm doing with this new combat system overall. But when it took me 3 tries to conquer a modest province of barbarian indies I paid attention. That used to be a cake walk for MA TC. .

Archers are a little strange right now. It's more of a sidegrade right now - some players are having a lot of success, and others are having the same problem you are having. I am not yet sure why. I will say that with the current targeting, simultaneous resolution becomes a noticeable problem against units with 25+ ap.

A secondary issue (in addition to the repel changes) is that barbarians are significantly nastier under the new system. They hit for more damage, are smarter about who they attack, and can't be timed. You're not the only player to struggle with them. As noted by FrankTrollman, a lot of players are going to have to throw out their old scripts.

I hadn't, though I was musing earlier about using a strong air bless (which would allow you to purchase the precision boost effect numerous times) and easy access to Wind Guide to turn Gift from Heaven into a tactical nuke rather than a the meteorite-equivalent of spray-and-pray.

One cute little detail I discovered earlier was that MA Ulm gets an additional forging discount (20%) on the Blacksteel Items, including the new Blacksteel Sword. A Master Smith can, out of the box, forge a shield for 2 gems and the full plate for 6. Not anything super exciting, but it does mean you can turn an awake pretender or an early hero into a Prot-24 tin can with minimal investment.

I assume that same mechanic is available for other items for other nations, but I have checked yet. Maybe Marignon can forge the Flambeau on the cheap, for example.

Caster blesses look to be a lot of fun. Enough pretenders get the A/N crosspath that you will see a fair amount of precision+unaging (very nice for Shinu, abysia, pythium, etc, because it also negates most of the stat penalties from old age, including the penalty to mapmove). Also worth noting that this is part of a subset of blesses that serve to shore up a weakness: I've already seen an anti-rush build to mess up incoming sacreds. That bless isn't useful for most sacreds, but it makes fighting spammable garbage (ancestral spirits!) very painful for elites. I think you'll also see other specialty blesses

I can confirm that some nations besides Ulm do get discounted items, but the mechanic isn't terribly widespread yet.

A brief note on Ragha.

If you take Cold-1, you'll often get to Hot-1 at least one season during the first Summer, which enables you to recruit a Turan Sorcerer (he doesn't pop out of the queue when the temperature drops back down.)

The existential question for Ragha - will the game last long enough for your fire temples to pay off?

Jaguar warriors are significantly nerfed, as they don't regenerate in wereform any more.

C'tis dominion diseases your disciples stuff (as I think it did in Dom IV?), and Arcoscephale confers the scrying-dominion to their disciple.

Not sure where you got this, but jaguar warriors definitely regen in wereform if blessed, just like in dom4. They don't regen without a bless, just like they didn't in dom4. (and yes, ctis diseasing its disciples' units - those not immune, coldblooded, or sacred- happened in dom4 too, as Baalz found to his chagrin in one of the first disciples games)

Oh, you're right. But, if you're going to invest in an awake pretender, you really want it to be walking around stomping stuff. I think the Athena titan is the best bet since she causes fear.

I thought this initially too, but some immobiles are so much more cost-effective for a bless (or simply provide for better bless options) that it can sometimes make up for the fact that they can't fight themselves. Recall that only one nation on a disciples team benefits from the awake titan, but all three have to pay the scales cost. Even for solo games, it can be worthwhile in some edge cases (Awake demilich!). The athena titan is quite nice, though.

[Ikeren]

Been too busy all week to download it, but finally doing so.

[K]

Well, the UI is uglier. That's a thing.

Definitely a lot of changes. Bless strategies seem heavily nerfed because you need an awake pretender to get the good ones off the ground, and archers suck now, so Lanka needs a radical rethink on strategies.

Oddly, a spellcaster Bless strategy might be the most interesting possibility.

Do the old maps work with Dom5? I seriously need to stop looking at these maps.

[Username17]

Heavy Cavalry is much better than it used to be. It's like whoa. Expansion armies of like 7 heavy cavalry are a thing. And I don't mean seven super blessed glamour cavalry, I mean just dudes in chainmail with lances.

Anyway, someone needs to explain to the Swedes that "Moiety" is an Anthropological term that is technically correct but in no way a word that is normally used in normal English language descriptions. Tribes, clans, fucking whatever. Anthropologists use the term Moiety and people outside the Anthropologist Moiety do not.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

Flying units on attack rear seem to go after characters a lot more reliably.

[Username17]

The new troop hierarchy seems to go:

Heavy Cavalry >> Heavy Infantry >> Archers >> Light Infantry >> Undisciplined Crap

So Marignon has easy early expansion not because they have cheap crossbowmen, but because they have Royal Guards. And Royal Guards are fucking awesome. It honestly feels really weird writing that down.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

How do people feel about the new random start research thing? I haven't noticed it being impactful at all.

[Username17]

How do people feel about the new random start research thing? I haven't noticed it being impactful at all.

It's sometimes quite impactful in that many nations start with access to a decent battle mage as one of their early commander options and starting with Evocation 2 is real different from not doing that.
You're probably only going to squeeze out one 4 point commander in the first year, so if your 2 point commander can shoot fire darts during early expansion that's quite nice vs them casting fire flies, which is still basically useless.

-Username17

[Username17]

Heavy Cavalry is an acceptable expansion strategy against pretty much everything. Any faction that has access to heavy cavalry automatically can be played with an imprisoned god and some productivity scales.

I did a test game with Caelum and their mammoths and determined that Mammoths are embarrassingly terrible against Barbarians with mauls, but completely capable of handling most other indies. I assume that Bandar Elephants work the same, but I am leery about extrapolating that to smaller things like Troglodytes, Chariots, and Minotaurs.

A line of infantry backed by a blob of archers is honestly not very good at expansion. Light Infantry gets slaughtered doing that, and Heavy Infantry takes enough casualties that it's hard to keep the front lines supplied. Some factions probably just need an awake expansion god, because otherwise there's too good a chance they will find themselves bottled in the early game and never escape.

Possession of mercenaries in the early turns is fecking huge. I expect a lot of those mercenaries to go for like 200 gold more than their asking price in the first three turns, which will be a huge kick in the nuts for everyone who bid and failed. I expect a lot of multiplayer games will adopt the rule "no bidding on mercenaries in Year 1" or something like that.

-Username17

[Red_Rob]

Flying units on attack rear seem to go after characters a lot more reliably.

Yeah, I'm in a game with EA Arco and they have 15 provinces by turn 6. A single Wind Lord will hit the back line every time, and now they have H1 to self bless they can take most indies solo.

It's egregious enough that we've reported it as a bug. If it's working as intended there needs to be some counterbalance to flying nations.

In general expansion seems a lot more costly in terms of troops. Possibly it is just the fact you can't count squares and use decoys to get First Strike every time, but sending out a decent number of above-average units and expecting them to mop up doesn't seem to work as well at all.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Yeah, I'm in a game with EA Arco and they have 15 provinces by turn 6. A single Wind Lord will hit the back line every time, and now they have H1 to self bless they can take most indies solo.

It's not just flyers. Cav set to attack rear are less reliable than flyers, but I've still seen them pull off very aggressive clearing sweeps of the back field. I've had some success with rearguards to draw their attention and small Guard Commander assignments.

In general expansion seems a lot more costly in terms of troops. Possibly it is just the fact you can't count squares and use decoys to get First Strike every time, but sending out a decent number of above-average units and expecting them to mop up doesn't seem to work as well at all.

It seems like indie provinces aren't just badder, they're also bigger. You see heavy cav in the 20s instead of the 10s, and barbarian/tribal armies in the 60s-80s range instead of 30s-50s, and so on.

[DrPraetor]

Hi. I stopped by because I'm writing up a list of various dominions communities. This one has been on previous lists, and I wanted to check in to see if you folks minded being linked.

Is that directed at me? I certainly do not mind being linked.

Where is the list of Dom V communities going to go?

[K]

Yeh, indies do seem to be tougher and nastier, and there is a good argument to not run with archers at all if you are not using super-heavy troops.

For example, a Regen Bless will no longer turn a five-man squad of Lanka tiger-head rakshasa into a reliable province-taker, especially if they are taking friendly or unfriendly archer fire.

Ethereal Bless, on the other hand, is amazeballs. It may not be a compelling late-game Bless against human enemies, but it takes indies with a speed that is quite persuasive. Murdering cav provinces with no losses to your five-man team is great.

Lanka also took a hit where only some leader units can reanimate undead. Not only can you no longer recruit indie priests for reanimation, but even your own non-mage Lanka leaders can no longer be made into reanimating priests with Prophet.

Add that to Holy no longer giving out free undead Leadership (must take a separate Bless for that), Lanka is just less fun now. There's a strong argument to not use demon troops with Lanka now.

[Red_Rob]

Heavy Cavalry is an acceptable expansion strategy against pretty much everything. Any faction that has access to heavy cavalry automatically can be played with an imprisoned god and some productivity scales.

Turns out lances weren't breaking and were being counted in every attack. That bug got fixed in the new patch that just dropped, so heavy cav might not be an i-win button any more.

[Longes]

What are good pretender designs for LA Ulm? So far my best results were with a dormant Fountain of Blood D3/B5, Order 3, Productivity 2, Cold 1, Growth 1, Misfortune 1, Magic 3. Once the fountain wakes up I set it to alternately blood hunt, summon vampires and forge blood searchers.

I've been trying to make a vampire queen work (for thematic reasons), but she's so damn expensive.

And on a related topic - what are the best blood nations of each era and how to do blood properly?

[K]

Dom4 rules for blood hunting are:

1. 30% base chance per point of Blood and Dousing bonus. Blood 0 is like 5%. Therefore, Blood 3 is 90% base chance.

2. Increasing failure chance for provinces under 5K pop.

3. Increasing failure chance for unrest. Since blood hunting causes unrest, there are diminishing returns.

4. Each hunter is checked in order, so the first few get more slaves than later ones.

5. Slaves gained is d6 + Blood level + Blood dousing bonuses on a success, with 6s exploding.

6. Ten pop lost per blood slave.

Most of these rules still seem to apply. Can't be sure of all this early in Dom5.

[Username17]

Heavy Cavalry is an acceptable expansion strategy against pretty much everything. Any faction that has access to heavy cavalry automatically can be played with an imprisoned god and some productivity scales.

Turns out lances weren't breaking and were being counted in every attack. That bug got fixed in the new patch that just dropped, so heavy cav might not be an i-win button any more.

Yeeah. I'm not sure there is a method for really reliable expansion with most of the factions. Like, the starting neutral armies at 5 are sometimes pretty fucking brutal and it's easy to be surrounded on all sides by 60 heavy infantry or worse. Heavy Cav isn't good enough to just crush all that bullshit anymore, and I don't know that there's an answer for multiplayer other than starting with the neutrals down or starting people with extra provinces.

In other news: some factions have 3 Commander points instead of 2. This is a big deal, because it means that you can make a researcher and a general in the same turn, but it also means that you can queue up a researcher and one of your 4-point major mages and the major mage comes out next turn so you still get a caster every turn without ever having to take a turn off in your capital.

-Username17

[Longes]

Heavy Cavalry is an acceptable expansion strategy against pretty much everything. Any faction that has access to heavy cavalry automatically can be played with an imprisoned god and some productivity scales.

Turns out lances weren't breaking and were being counted in every attack. That bug got fixed in the new patch that just dropped, so heavy cav might not be an i-win button any more.

Yeeah. I'm not sure there is a method for really reliable expansion with most of the factions. Like, the starting neutral armies at 5 are sometimes pretty fucking brutal and it's easy to be surrounded on all sides by 60 heavy infantry or worse. Heavy Cav isn't good enough to just crush all that bullshit anymore, and I don't know that there's an answer for multiplayer other than starting with the neutrals down or starting people with extra provinces.

Anyone who has ethereal troops (ghosts or high astral bless) can very reliably stomp vastly bigger neutral armies. Though I suppose that doesn't qualify as "most".

With LA Ulm I found that a long backline of rangers covered with some shield infantry can beat neutrals with small losses (usually to friendly fire).

[Shatner]

I found the 10-20 greatsword infantry (zweihanders?) win consistently against neutrals, heavy cavalry included. They're too resource-heavy to mass immediately, but they make a good 2nd+ expansion party.

I'll have to try the ranger expansion force. My experience with ranged troops so far has been pretty spotty but I'm still trying to familiarize myself with the new system.

Also, a D5 Vampire Queen can solo most indie provinces, I was pleasantly surprised to find. Bonus points if you start with Alteration-1 pre-researched since it unlocks Skeletal Body, which gives her the one form of weapon resistance she doesn't have natively. Between that, regen, life drain, and invulnerable-25, indies just can't kill her before she sucks them dry or scares them off (D5+ granting her fear).

Given the potency of indies as well as the incarnate blesses, I'm wondering if awake pretenders are going to be a lot more prevalent than in games past.

[Shatner]

Dinked around with MA Asphodel last night.

New content/mechanics

They've really doubled down on the ALL THE FORESTS mentality. Specifically, your forts are underwhelming and cost double (yes, 900gp for a palisade), but your temples and labs cost half (200gp and 250gp, respectively) when constructed in a forest. That combined with the forest recruitment (same as in Dom4) means you can have a no-wall fort for 450gp and two mage/priest-turns.

There's a new N3D2 national ritual (35 gems) that will summon a mid-tier fort in the mage's province, but it can only be cast in a forest or underwater. As Asphodel, you probably have other things you want to do with your nature gems, but it is a nice addition nonetheless.

There's also an anonymous remote attack spell (N4D2, 15 gems) that can only target forests that says it spawns a bunch of manikins to take it over. I haven't tested it yet so I can't speak further to it.

Thorn items (Thorn Spear, Thorn Staff) have a cost reduction. There could be others but I may have missed them.


Gameplay Differences

Unlike EA/MA Pangaea, you neither want nor need Turmoil. Between Order becoming more important (recruitment points) and Growth offering more gold, you should be marginally richer than you were in Dom4. Magic and Growth scales are compulsory anyway, so Luck is recommended, especially given how gem-hungry you are.

You almost certainly want an awake pretender to help your expansion, because you need those forests and you need them YESTERDAY. A carrion dragon can blind expand on turn 1 reliably, especially since it now has an AoE-1 tail swipe like the other dragons had. Since Magic scales are compulsory, you'll start with a goodie basket of random research. Depending on how it falls, you could have access to some helpful buffs or forging options early.

You're recruiting mages more slowly since those lab+temple forest provinces are producing one centaur mage-priest every other turn. Your centaur warriors and black centaurs are murder machines, and the passive reinvigoration all units has means they don't seem to fatigue out like they used to.

All of your non-manikins are fast, in and out of combat, so in theory that means they've got a decent chance of getting the first strike against conventional troops. However, archers are in kind of a weird place in Dom5 and you weren't especially happy spending 25gp for 'em back in Dom4, so they're hard to justify here.

Speaking of fast, the new movement system means Asphodel is EXTREMELY mobile. Pretty much everything you recruit, summon, or freespawn can move around like other nation's cavalry. It's a little like playing a flying nation in Dom4 given that you can cross two open provinces and attack a third. Note that your manikins are poor amphibians so you can expand underwater and can cross rivers without issue. Your black harpies can seriously cross 6+ provinces in a single move. To the extent that you care about what your black harpies do, they can do it farther.

None of your carrion commanders (Centaur, Dryad, Pan) are changed from Dom4, which means there is (still) literally no reason to ever cast Carrion Lady. Since these guys are explicitly Reanimator Priests now, the Amulet of the Dead might boost your manikin production (I still need to test that). If it does, that little 5 death gem item would double the output of your Carrion Centaurs (and it now lets you spam Animate Skeleton in combat).

Your manikins aren't any different from Dom4, and you have almost no 80+ leadership commanders, meaning you can't put the darn things in a line formation. HOWEVER, the Attack Rear command seems MUCH more effective in Dom5 than it was in Dom4, so a flank of manikin horses and wolves has a darn good chance of racing to the back and murdering underprotected commanders. Works very well against indies but I expect Dom5 players are going to be better about protecting their flanks or guarding their commanders, because this trick is available to anyone with reasonably fast, non-undisciplined troops.

I honestly have no idea what to do bless-wise with this nation. All of your mages are sacred, so reinvigoration is good. You're overpaying if you get regeneration, especially since it won't help the undead side of your roster (nor will the Death-bless version of regeneration help the living side). You already have recuperation, forest survival, no meaningful worries from old age (only affects some of your Dryad Hags), and superior morale or leadership would be a waste since many of your troops are mindless/berserk. I just shrugged and went with bonus HP and extra undead leadership. You could go for something big like Ethereal (you've certainly got Magic scales) or Quickness or Enlarged/Invulnerable/Weapon Resistant but your nation is going to have little-to-no ability to capitalize on those magic paths. Asphodel is pretty much all Nature and Death, with teenie amounts of Water and Earth on commanders you can only recruit out of the forts you're not going to build.

Lastly, the Evo-3, N2 spell Sleep Cloud now lasts 6 rounds and puts all creatures inside to sleep if they fail the MR check. Sleep is a special status where they stand there and do nothing until hurt or until they pass a 10% chance of waking on their own. It doesn't affect your manikins so it really beefs up your front line effectiveness, especially since the fatigue damage from sleep vines don't seem to count as 'damage' for this effect.