Dominions 4 Teasers

[DSMatticus]

That is interesting. If it's like my understanding of Dom3's BV, damage is reflected pre-defenses. Tanky units (or units made tanky by spells) get to reflect many times more damage than naked units before exploding. But if you happen to have massable sacreds (which is probably at odds with having tanky sacreds), you can make giants and battle evokers cry unless (and maybe even if) they build up their MR. And... that is about all I get out of it. If the minor bless is still strength, that sounds fairly crappy compared to slapping E9 on your tanks or F9/W9 on your massables.

[Shatner]

Jaguar Warriors (THE sacred for THE blood nation) have an alternate form they'll assume (the werejaguar) after suffering fatal damage, which means that no single hit can kill them (just cause them to switch forms). That means that evocations, lance strikes, and hits by giants can cause all sorts of pain to the offender while being non-fatal to the jaguar warrior.

That'd certainly make me think twice before spamming Blade Wind against EA or LA Mictlan.

[Username17]

Damage wraps over to the new form, so if you hit them hard enough, you can kill a Jaguar Warrior in one blow. The Jaguar Warrior has 12 Hit Points, the Werejaguar form has 18. You "just" have to deal 30 points of damage after their defenses.

Now an important note is that having two forms that have two hit point totals, the new Nature Bless is going to kick in twice. So with a Blood/Nature double bless, the Werejaguar form is not only going to have 3 attacks doing 19,17,17 damage, they are also going to have 42+ total hit points and damage sharing. The Colossal Head has never looked so sexy.

-Username17

[K]

From what I saw it isn't BV as we know it, because the blessed unit still takes the damage - it's just also taken by the damage dealer. I might be mistaken, or BV might have been nerfed overall, but that was my takeaway.

Yeah, Edi confirmed it already. The original Blood Vengeance has been renamed Damage Reversal. BV has both the attacker and defender receive damage.

Interesting. It sounds like a poor man's Astral Shield now since it still has a (+X) tag at the end to denote the save you make.

I think it now falls into the "awesome" category instead of the "holy shit" category. I was watching the playthrough posted online and it didn't look like he was losing many flagellants, so the offensive potential for even naked units looks high.

[K]

Looks like there is some more new stuff. List time:

1. New things to build in a province. These include Roads, Gate House, Underground Storage, and Supply Storage.

All I know so far is that Roads increase resources.

2. Some love for low-level Nature magic. I don't know what Fascination does, but just the hint of a decent low-level Nature spell that can be used in combat is very exciting (Fuck you Vine Arrow. Fuck you to Hell).

3. A lot more summons. I can only imagine what Fire Ants, Yeti, Killer Mantis, Leogryphs, or all the others do, but it sounds fun.

4. Gnome Lore costs three gems and has a range of three.

[K]

5. The research calculation is different now. I saw a Titan of Heaven pretender with Air 9, Earth 7, Nature 6 and a Skull Mentor and was doing 67 research.

[Zinegata]

Research is now something like 3 + (2 x Per Path), so even a Nature 1 mage does 5 research. But research costs - especially for high-level spells - is now apparently even higher.

Magic scales have been "nerfed", because you now get +1 research per magic scale. Lots of people are already thinking going Drain 1 as a default pick.

New stuff to build in addition to forts is kinda interesting.

Also, there's talk that the ability to set tax rates will be removed entirely.

Edit: One last tidbit: You can now recruit some units - e.g. flagellants - even without a fort.

[Korwin]

Magic scales have been "nerfed", because you now get +1 research per magic scale. Lots of people are already thinking going Drain 1 as a default pick.

What?

[Username17]

Magic scales have been "nerfed", because you now get +1 research per magic scale. Lots of people are already thinking going Drain 1 as a default pick.

What?

Drain is worse the more of it you have, and magic is less good the more of it you have, because of proportions. A unit that would make 10 RP gets a 10% bonus from Magic 1, and a 10% penalty from Drain 1, but moving from Drain 1 to Drain 2 is an 11% penalty and moving from Magic 1 to Magic 2 is only a 9% bonus.

But the bottom line is that with larger research base values, Drain and Magic are simply smaller. Let's say you're researching with Pans. In the old system, each Pan had a base of Research 8, so taking Drain 1 required you to spend 14.3% more Pan-turns researching to get to each milestone. Magic 1 on the other hand required you to spend 11.1% less Pen-turns to get each milestone. In the new system, the base Pan research level is 15, so Drain 1 increases your Pan-turn requirements by only 7.14%, while Magic 1 reduces your Pan-turn requirements by only 6.25%.

So the research shift from Magic 1 to Drain 1 is much smaller than it used to be, so I would expect many more people to field Drain 1 or Magic neutral empires than you'd see in Dominions 2 or 3. I'm not sure I'd go so far as to call Drain 1 a "default pick", but it seems pretty defensible for the most part.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

Looks like EA Machaka is in, and it's going to be a reasonably complex faction.

MA Machaka has somewhat more choices.

LA Machaka is fully planned out, but probably will get added in a patch after Dom4 is actually released.

[Avoraciopoctules]

https://www.youtube.com/user/Pewpewchewchew/videos

This channel has some preview videos for one of the new nations.

[K]

https://www.youtube.com/user/Pewpewchewchew/videos

This channel has some preview videos for one of the new nations.

I've already pointed out the interesting bits revealed in those videos if people don't want to spend a few hours watching them. The guy is a bit tedious, pretty ignorant about Dominions, and doesn't know how to turn off the combat sounds and so you get painful elephant screeching.

The final installment in his Dominions 4 preview series has one final interesting bit: Gelatinous Cubes! Apparently, it's a summons that is not in Conjuration.

[Username17]

Probably function like the Gelatinous Cubes in Conquest of Elysium. Those can swallow smaller creatures that they trample into, and while they have something swallowed, they digest it and gain hit points for doing so.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

This is probably a more interesting preview thread:

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/ind ... =1497&st=0

An LP by Sombre, featuring the nation of Ur. In it he has already featured stuff like:

1) River borders, which are only passable in winter when the water freezes over.

2) Pretenders for some nations can die without losing any paths.

3) Previews of some o the new Pretender Chassis

4) PDs are now based on the original indies in the province - so you can have a monkey PD.

5) Slow recruit non-commanders

6) National troops and commanders that are recruitable without a fort, and appearing only in specific terrain.

7) Previews on a bunch of special abilities - like one that turns an H1 Priest into one that counts as H3 for the purpose of re-summoning a God.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Interesting. Ur pretenders don't lose magic when they get revived, so a dormant Shedu is basically a disposable self-buffing trample bomb.

[K]

Some things from that thread....

1. The rivers thing is going to be crazy because the rivers actually only freeze in Cold. This means that Heat nations like Abysia will never get to cross rivers in their Dominion, Cold nations like Neifleheim will, and anyone with access to Water magic can freeze provinces with Wolven Winter to make rivers passable.

Sailing nations and amphibians can also supposedly cross rivers.

2. Ur has high-end mages and longbowmen recruitable without a fort, all using Ur's basic unit that is a reskinned caveman. I don't know how this is not incredibly unbalanced unless it's the new standard for everyone.

These Ur mages have a research penalty, but it seems pretty small (maybe a -2).

3. Research formula is supposedly confirmed at 5 + Magic +/-Scale. This does not explain the enemy pretender I saw earlier (maybe AI bonuses were figured in).

4. Order reduces unrest now to a small degree. Province defense as well.

5. Water/Fire/Air now give resistances to their respective elements. Not sure how I feel about that.

6. Death minor Bless is getting a buffer of negative HPs that you can go into during a battle (die if you end the battle at negative HPs).

So Death/Nature Blesses are now going to be a thing.

[Avoraciopoctules]

Wasn't the research equation 5 + (2 x total magic) +/- Scales?

Death's Undying HP buffer is super-good for undead, who won't die at the end of the battle if their HP is into the Undying negatives. With Regeneration, a living unit can heal back to positive HP before the end of the battle and ultimately survive.

[K]

7. Some pretenders have a feature called "Innate Spellcaster" that lets them cast spells while attacking or being attacked.

[K]

Wasn't the research equation 5 + (2 x total magic) +/- Scales?

Yeh. Typo.

[Username17]

The rivers thing is going to be crazy because the rivers actually only freeze in Cold. This means that Heat nations like Abysia will never get to cross rivers in their Dominion, Cold nations like Neifleheim will, and anyone with access to Water magic can freeze provinces with Wolven Winter to make rivers passable.

From what they said earlier, there are also Mountain Pass borders that can only be crossed in Heat. So Abysian lands have impassable rivers, while Caelumite lands have impassable mountains.

Certainly interesting, but I'm not sure how much of a big deal it's going to be. Other than making Wolven Winter into a much more strategically interesting spell that can cut off or attach some provinces.

-Username17

[K]

The rivers thing is going to be crazy because the rivers actually only freeze in Cold. This means that Heat nations like Abysia will never get to cross rivers in their Dominion, Cold nations like Neifleheim will, and anyone with access to Water magic can freeze provinces with Wolven Winter to make rivers passable.

From what they said earlier, there are also Mountain Pass borders that can only be crossed in Heat. So Abysian lands have impassable rivers, while Caelumite lands have impassable mountains.

Certainly interesting, but I'm not sure how much of a big deal it's going to be. Other than making Wolven Winter into a much more strategically interesting spell that can cut off or attach some provinces.

-Username17

It makes Heat and Water magic a weird synergy because it lets you control access to a number of provinces since there is no spell to make provinces hotter aside from a high-end global (Second Sun).

It also makes certain nations really want certain starting locations, so expect a lot more arguing about maps. I mean, starting as Abysia in an section of the map with a lot of rivers is going to suck really bad.

[K]

How do people feel about Thrones?

At first I thought it was a great idea, but in hindsight it seems like an invitation for people to make flying SC pretenders that attempt to win the game by turn 7.

Maybe they need a game option to have thrones, but not make them a victory condition?

[Avoraciopoctules]

Anything that reduces the odds of a tedious and grinding lategame is cool in my book. I already play victory point games exclusively (unless it's a 1 versus 1 blitz match that'll be over in a day), and Dom 4 improves on that by improving VP defenders and forcing you to spend extra turns claiming them.

[K]

Looks like the Prince of Death's flavor text says that he get undead that are "better than the undead summoned by mortal necromancers." Hopefully that's a unique stat buff, but it's probably just some XP stars.

Reanimating looks changed too. One priest I saw had an option to summon 5 ghouls, or 16 soulless, or 5 longdead, or 1 horseman.

[K]

Throne of Fire gives +3 Att to blessed troops, 3 fire gems, Domspread 1, and lets you recruit Adepts of Pyriphlegeton (Fire 3 casters).

So some Thrones are gamechanging while others are meh. Pray that the map-gods put you near a good one.