Dominions V

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Feb 06, 2019 8:29 pm

MA Man is one of the best introductory nations. It's troops are mostly elite versions of generic troops you might want to know how to use in any game, and its magic is pretty simple. MA Ulm is also simple to play, but it's much more specialized and the lessons it teaches are less generally applicable.

Niles · Post by **Niles** » Wed Feb 06, 2019 10:18 pm

At first glance it looks like the MA Man leans pretty heavily on their ability to form communions w/ Nature, and I don't feel confident scripting those.

Any other suggestions?

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Feb 06, 2019 11:49 pm

MA Ulm all the way for starters. You've got the different kinds of basic melee infantry (long piercing pikes, bludgeoning hammers, slashing axes, anti-shield morningstars) and their mages are pretty simple to script while allowing for some complexity since you've got air/astral randoms and can do communions if needed with crystal matrixes, plus discount forging allows to better try around with trinkets.

GreatGreyShrike · Post by **GreatGreyShrike** » Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:20 pm

MA C'tis is one of my favourite suggestions for learning the game. Their magic is simple but strong. They can just drop a bunch of research into Enchantment and be mostly fine, maybe supplement a little with Evocation and other battle magic later on. Every major battle you get Marshmasters to spam out skeletons with Horde of Skeletons, and back that up by putting up a Foul Vapors (which poisons everything - but skeletons and poison-resistant lizards don't care). You can mix in a Quagmire cast to make the battlefield count as a swamp, though this is less important, and later on add in some Evocation Shadow Blasts for tough targets.

They have a special ability dominion that they get more money for free, and also disease non-lizards in their dominion, including enemy armies that are attacking you. The disadvantageous bit hurts experienced players much more than new players (the bit where you have trouble using non-lizard recruitables might not matter if you just don't bother doing that)

The lizards mostly rely on having a decent infantry setup to fight early wars. The Elite Slave Warrior hits like a truck but are sort of fragile, so you might position a bunch of Heavy Infantry in front to soak up arrows and attacks, and one or two wings of Elite Slave Warriors slightly behind them on the sides to sweep in and crush the enemy. This works well enough as a basic army before you get magic up and running.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu Feb 07, 2019 3:52 pm

GreatGreyShrike wrote:MA C'tis is one of my favourite suggestions for learning the game. Their magic is simple but strong. They can just drop a bunch of research into Enchantment and be mostly fine, maybe supplement a little with Evocation and other battle magic later on. Every major battle you get Marshmasters to spam out skeletons with Horde of Skeletons, and back that up by putting up a Foul Vapors (which poisons everything - but skeletons and poison-resistant lizards don't care).

Warning, in Dominions 5 poison-resistant lizards are no longer completely immune to foul vapors since the damage resistance formulas were changed. Technically skeletons may be damaged too but since their poison resistance is much higher it would take some really unlucky RNG for that to happen. However damage 5 vs resistance 5-7 has a non-dismissable chance of inflicting some damage while before it would be outright immunity.

GreatGreyShrike · Post by **GreatGreyShrike** » Thu Feb 07, 2019 5:48 pm

It's true that you do take some friendly damage. Marshmasters have 10 resist which is usually enough, and they'll probably be your entire battle mage corps. Losing a few troops is unfortunate but Foul Vapors being on the battlefield at all means that you're probably doing most of your melee fighting with skeletons at that point anyways, and the only role for your troops is to hold the line for long enough to let the skeletons deploy. You can mitigate the friendly fire with more enchantment magic, luckily enough - poison ward and, later, serpent's blessing are right there in the same school of magic, and if you get really late in the game Mass Regeneration is there also. Also if Life After Death is running on your side then having your own guys die of poison may be actively advantageous.

There's basically awesome stuff in Enchantment for Ctis from 5-7, so sticking a lot of research points there is defensible.

5 - Hordes of Skeletons, Pale Riders, Foul Vapors, Quagmire.
6 - Rigor Mortis, Relief,
7 - Serpent's Blessing, Gift of Health, Life After Death.

You'll need some magic booster items or communions to deploy some of the higher level stuff, but it's worth doing.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Fri Feb 08, 2019 12:33 pm

On the flip side Foul vapours got a lot better from Dom4 > 5 due to changes in how aoe effects are processed in the real time engine. It seems that the effects trigger more often, which due to DRN means you can see quite large poison doses relatively quickly.

In terms of a beginner nation I think there are a couple of stages of learning. Right at the start where you are just learning the basic mechanics of combat, how recruitment and fort management works and the bare bones of spell effects I don't think the nation you are playing makes a whole lot of difference. As long as it isn't something wacky like a freespawn nation or UW then anything you learn will be applicable. You are likely to lose anyway so just picking up as much as you can along the way is the key.

Once you have some mechanics knowledge and are moving to actually figuring out how different troops work and the basics of using your mages the suggestions of Man, Ulm or C'tis are fine. They will give you a solid foundation for how to use different troops and some idea of the strengths and weaknesses of different paths. After that maybe a more complex mage-based nation such as something Communion-heavy or with wide paths like T'ien Ch'i or Bogarus. Then maybe something with Blood? At that point you really need to start playing against humans if you want to learn more about advanced tactics, unless of course you are happy just learning to stomp the AI in more and more elaborate ways.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Wed Feb 13, 2019 5:50 am

New patch!

Lots of changes, but the stuff that stands out more is:
-Can now increase dominion strength over 10 during a game with temples and thrones, gaining full benefits. Mictlan is very happy.
-Order scales buffed with extra income and resources (and Growth scales lost a bit of income), now we should stop seeing so many players just going turnoil+luck.
-Some blesses cheaper, others more expensive. In particular magic weapon's cost doubled! Was there so many people taking it? In the other hand Larger bless didn't only become cheaper, no longer demands an incarnate pretender! Here's hoping we see more of it around.
-Blood globals strength for dispel purposes is now counted as half, about time.
-Horde of skeletons makes less skeletons and Rigor Mortis more expensive gem-wise combined means a significant hit for Death mages.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Thu Feb 14, 2019 9:19 am

A lot of Pretender costs got tweaked, particularly to push Monsters up into the same cost bracket as Titans. With a Thrice Horned Boar or Drakon now at 200-250 points and a Titan of Growth at 180 with the Titan having more starting paths and Dom we might see Titan builds starting to show up more. The path increases for Luck and Fortitude also make it a fair bit more expensive to pick these up when starting from a path of 1, which might also make Monsters looking for these blesses less economical.

One big thing with the new patch is the introduction of "half scaling", where a spell gains extra effects for every 2 levels you are above the requirement. This has been used on a number of summon spells that previously scaled 1-for-1 and combined with a reduction in the base cost of the spell, effectively making them more efficient for many low level casters and less for one uber-caster.

Overall it looks like Rainbows were the winners from this patch. Their costs weren't increased, they got some new options for Rainbow blesess with Frost Weapons and Larger being made cheaper, and they weren't going for the big blesses that got made more expensive anyhow.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat May 18, 2019 12:41 pm

New patch!

LA Ulm got nerfed (Sanguine Heritage now summons one of 8 unique vampire counts, many of which are more niche or just straight worse than the old generic vampire counts). Conversely, the Shinuyama line of nations got soem serious buffs, especially Shinuyama itself:

Bakemono are now size one, which is useless for Yomi (all of their goblins are undisciplined) but interesting for Shinuyama (who can now pack 6 light infantry into a square, if they want)

Yomi gets a 5 gem Araburu-kami (light thug chasis with no paths, but good stats, prot 20, sacred and awe) at Conjuration 7 which is probably too late for it to do any good, but might be amazing if you get even one or two as freespawn.

Shinuyama alone gets the Omukade (size 6 tanky centipede with fear at Conj 4 for 6 gems and easy paths) and the Jorogumo (basically a really expensive Uba, but with +1 to DN and who shapechanges into small squad of spiders instead of a cat)

Both Shinuyama and Jomon get the Tanuki (N2E1 + 150% FWEN stealthy heretic), the Bakeneko (stealthy D1 or F1 for 8 gems) and the Nujina (N2E1 +50% WE assassin with fear), but both of these cost quite a few nature gems. Even the assassin isn't great, because both nations already have high quality gold recruit assassins. Summon Okami is niche use but okay as it gets you 10+ magicpower wolf bodyguards for 6 gems at Conj 3. You usually won't need that, but if you do have someone trying to kill your mage core, it's there.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Sat May 18, 2019 3:46 pm

Also Shinuyama's recruitable flute vampire guys (I forget the name) now have Invulnerable-15. With that, their sleep aura, and their drain life attack, one to two of those plus a dai-bakemono bodyguard are an effective expansion force.

Also, the bakemono got made cheaper for mountain provinces (5gp shortbows, 7gp superior light infantry) and the size reduction also reduced their resource cost.

Axebird · Post by **Axebird** » Sat May 18, 2019 7:00 pm

Grek wrote:Yomi gets a 5 gem Araburu-kami (light thug chasis with no paths, but good stats, prot 20, sacred and awe) at Conjuration 7 which is probably too late for it to do any good, but might be amazing if you get even one or two as freespawn.

Araburu-kami are units, not commanders, sadly.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Sat May 18, 2019 8:47 pm

Well, point still stands, just more so - they're only going to be impactful if they're in the freespawn pool. Otherwise they show up too late in the game to really matter.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Fri Aug 30, 2019 10:55 am

Dominions 5 is now 55% off at Gamersgate:

https://uk.gamersgate.com/DD-DOMINIONS- ... -the-faith

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Tue Dec 10, 2019 3:01 am

So Illwinter released two whole new crazy nations with lots of abilities in the most recent patch and no comments here so far?

One has everything in their cap being a sacred priest including the troops that can auto-bless themselves and you can recruit one extra sacred per temple. And that's just the tip of the crazy iceberg because everything in their cap is cap-only. In non-fort provinces they can recruit foreign priests that can in turn summon barbarians based on turnoil scale. But wait, the nation's dominion automatically bumps Order to 3 regardless of what you took at pretender creation (can still get a decent amount of barbarians). Also foreign blood mages when there's no blood in the capital. And if you build a fort barbarian summoning drops to zero basically, but instead get other troops depending on the type of province, with 4 types. Mountains get those new furries with some nice mages, forests gets crossbows and knights and satyr slaves and centaur slaves and centaur slave chariots and giant bearded women that can summon lions but no mages, wastelands you can recruit Hinnom's giants (including commander mage-thug versions) that aren't cannibals anymore(awesome) but in the other hand get homesickness (sucks) and anywhere else you get tiny hobbits and E1 mages that regularly get attacked by indie giant eagles (that's why they didn't fly all the way to Mordor, giant eagles are dicks). So it's almost like 6 nations in one where you get free Order 3 scales.

Then there's the new desert queens that got djinns and a bunch of half-giants and half-djinn-half-giants and some pretty nice foreign recruit-only mages and half price labs and 8 gold archers that aren't too shabby in melee and their big djinn commanders can hide some of their troops.

Oh, and both nations have their dominion hide province ownership so diplomacy during expansion should be fun when somebody else just walks inside their land.

Plus elves all around are now vulnerable to cold iron, except arrows don't count as having enough iron.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Tue Dec 10, 2019 5:05 am

Yeah, Ind and Na'Ba are pretty fascinating nations.

A couple things to add/correct:
1) MA Ind has guaranteed Order 3... in their capital. Outside of their capital, it's whatever your scales are. And since the number of barbarians you can freespawn a province/rnd is tied to your turmoil scales, you're incentivized to go turmoil and be a bastion of piety and order in a sea of cannibal heathens, because the Prester John myth is subtle like that.

2) Ind can only prophetize their cap-only H3 king, who has a unique prophet shape of the Prester King, which is kinda nifty but odd.

3) In plains, instead of the bird-assaulted hobbits, you can also get amazons. These have explicitly superior (though very slightly more expensive) versions of the male knights/infantry you can get from the forests. The F1S1+FS sorceress would stand out if you didn't have superior astral mage-priest lab rats available in your Abbot Sages.

4) Those cannibals you are freespawning are basically bone tribe and those are indies you both fear and sometimes actually wanna recruit for berserker face-wrecking purposes. That you sometimes get barbarian cavalry or dual-wielding berserkers or barbarian archers is a definite perk.

5) Ind explicitly has a -2 on their dominion conflict checks, which means your candles will be noticeably easier to push aside. Now, you'll have no shortage of priests, but you'll still need to be careful mid-late game when the turf war of faith really heats up.

6) MA Na'Ba is effectively the all-stealth nation. Other than Ashdod giant commanders, literally every commander (and most of the troops) they can recruit has stealth if not also glamour. Their cap-only commander (a flying, glamoured, ethereal, F3A3E1+1.1FAESN) can even hide 25 size units of troops in her army like she had a gossamer cloth. And, yeah, like Ind, they also have hidden dominion (conspicuously absent the dominion conflict penalty).

7) Na'Ba's capital increases growth AND has a site that generates 100gp/turn.

8) They also have foreign, stealthy mounted camel archer commanders with tax collector. Since they scream to be used to lead raids, this might be the one unit in the game that can actually make good use of tax collector since you'll decloak in enemy terrain, grab a province, and still get the gold from it despite not being able to trace a route back to a fort. Niche but nice.

9) Those same camel archers (foreign-rec commanders and troops) all auto-summon a falcon. You normally don't much care but those things each have a lance-like attack called 'dive attack' which ain't bad. That combined with being size-1 units with a defense of 16(!) means they can do a surprisingly good job confounding and delaying.

10) Na'Ba only has half-price labs in wastelands has half-price labs everywhere. I'm an idiot. They also have foreign-recruit, stealthy F1A1E1+FAES hermits for 125gp, each of which auto-summon an ethereal, heat aura hyena in battle. You can effectively spend 1000gp to throw up 4 labs on random provinces and produce one solid, mid-tier mage/turn. That's cheaper than a +1 Commander Point fort would cost you, and a lot faster, though you are leaving unforted labs around your infield.

11) Their main battle tanks mages are glamoured, sacred F2A2E1+FES giants. That's almost Bakemono Sorcerer levels of recruit-anywhere paths with the perk of not being older than dirt.

12) They have a bunch of inexpensive, sacred Jinn/Efreet summons.

13) They're one of the nations that get access to the new Bronze Colossus pretender. I have no idea if 330 points (350 plus a 20pt discount for Na'Ba) is worth it for a Dom4 E2A1 pretender which cannot be taken awake (dormant or imprisoned only), but considering it has resist everything 15+, blunt/slash/pierce resistance, 25 protection, inanimate, mindless, amphibian, innate spellcaster, 0 encumbrance, and full slots, it is nigh-unkillable absent an anti-golem silver bullet.

14) Access to two national combat spells, one of which (A2F1) hits a large area with MR-negates fatigue damage which all of their units are immune to courtesy of wasteland survival, the other of which (F3A1) does damage comparable to bane fire with a fatigue and AOE immolation kicker.

As maglag said, pretty interesting new content.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Tue Dec 10, 2019 6:51 am

Speaking of Na'Ba's great spells, seems like Na'Ba can summon Satan Shaytan which in turn has the corruption ability (aka seduction agains all genders), but that's also a blood spell and the nation has no recruitable blood mages.

They also have the Houri who's a sexy chocolate genie lady that can seduce even commanders inside a sieged fort but that one demands nature which isn't a native path either. In the other hand the spell itself costs only air gems and only needs nature level of 1 so if you build up a random pile of nature gems from whatever over the game, may be worth it to empower an air mage on it just for this.

Shatner wrote: 4) Those cannibals you are freespawning are basically bone tribe and those are indies you both fear and sometimes actually wanna recruit for berserker face-wrecking purposes. That you sometimes get barbarian cavalry or dual-wielding berserkers or barbarian archers is a definite perk.

They're not 100% freespawn since they still cost some upkeep (the lions from the huntresses are gold-free) but still cheaper than bone tribe. Plus some kinds of terrain can spawn yet more types, I've noticed mountains can get shielded barbarians and forests can gets dual-wielders with better weapons.

A mid-late Ind army should truly be a sight to behold in terms of random factor.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Dec 10, 2019 8:51 am

Honestly, the big spooky thing about Na'Ba is that it combines:

Turbo communions (makarrib are sacred S1 giants; your national paths make crystal matrices easy)
Super casters (F3A3E1H1 + 110% FAESN in cap, F2A2E1 + 100% FAS everywhere else)
Elf-giants (your Jann Guard are literally elves with avvite stats, and your summoned Jinn Warriors are stormflying ethereal elves with avvite stats)
Cheap thugs (Jann Emir is a giant elf with one of Phoenix Pyre, Mistform or Ironskin; Jinn commanders can Cloud Trapeze in to cast Phoenix Power, Summon Fire Elemental x4)
Effective foreign recruit infantry (camel riders are enough to expand or raid with and desert warriors let you mass archers for flaming arrows)
Foreign recruit national scouts (or you can spring 45 gold more to get a pillaging tax collecting inspirational commander)
Cheap summons (Hinn a one gem each and are ethereal, unseen cavalry speed animals with heat auras) AND
Useful national battle magic (evo 4 for an improved version of Curse of the Desert, evo 6 for an improved version of Banefire; both can be cast by any of your good national mages.)

all in one nation. And a Great White Bull with Reinvig x2 and Regen is not only gets you an expansion pretender, it plays into all of that by buffing your communions, thugs, casters and sacreds.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Dec 10, 2019 9:08 am

Thanks for the post/info.
Some time gone by, since I last opened Dom5.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Wed Dec 11, 2019 9:09 pm

maglag wrote:They also have the Houri who's a sexy chocolate genie lady that can seduce even commanders inside a sieged fort but that one demands nature which isn't a native path either. In the other hand the spell itself costs only air gems and only needs nature level of 1 so if you build up a random pile of nature gems from whatever over the game, may be worth it to empower an air mage on it just for this.

Na'Ba can recruit Malikah from the capital: F3A3E1H1 + 110% FAESN. Which means that 1 in 5 are going to have the needed Air-Nature paths to summon Houri. Since Contact Houri is Conj-6, you'll have recruited enough of these capstone mages to have most likely gotten your nature random when that research goal is reached.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu Dec 12, 2019 4:57 am

Derp, you're right.

Also I'm in a mp game with Ind (and Na'Ba too) and just got hit with an event in my cap where there's a giant wall of fancy text basically going "you should totally worship Ind's pretender, he's totally the best, here's one of their envoys as sign of Ind's infinite generosity" followed by losing 2 Dom but gaining an Ind Bishop commander.

Red_Rob · Post by **Red_Rob** » Thu Dec 12, 2019 11:14 am

Yeah, that event seems odd to me thematically. I get the flavour, but the Bishop General you get is a H2 which means he worships your God and can even grant your Gods blessings. I'd expect him to be a good General, so you want to use him, but a Heretic as he preaches the supremacy of Ind's Pretender to those that will listen. It would even fit well with Ind's Dominion Conflict penalty, you send out Heretic Commanders to lower enemy Dom to counteract your own Dom's weaknesses.

Also is it just me or are some of the Na'Ba national spells pretty insane? The Jinn for 15 gems is a top-tier thug, comes with ethereal, glamour, flying, stealth, inbuilt Mistform/Mirror Image/Fire Shield/PPyre access on top of resists, Magic Power and Invisibility until they take a hit(!). Jinn Warriors are pretty pricy at 5 gems each but come with everything you want in a late-game unit. Ifrit and Shaytan are a nice option to dip into if you go Blood, whilst Houri look pretty undercosted for what you get.

If this was on a nation with weak troops like Berytos I wouldn't be worried, but this is a nation with literal giant elves and rec-anywhere thugs. I foresee some nerfs in Na'Ba's future.

maglag · Post by **maglag** » Thu Dec 12, 2019 11:36 pm

Red_Rob wrote:Yeah, that event seems odd to me thematically. I get the flavour, but the Bishop General you get is a H2 which means he worships your God and can even grant your Gods blessings. I'd expect him to be a good General, so you want to use him, but a Heretic as he preaches the supremacy of Ind's Pretender to those that will listen. It would even fit well with Ind's Dominion Conflict penalty, you send out Heretic Commanders to lower enemy Dom to counteract your own Dom's weaknesses.

Yeah, a custom heretic Bishop would probably be more thematic.

Although in the other hand it's amusing to think our god actually managed to convert Ind's Bishop after a lenghty debtate.

Red_Rob wrote: Also is it just me or are some of the Na'Ba national spells pretty insane? The Jinn for 15 gems is a top-tier thug, comes with ethereal, glamour, flying, stealth, inbuilt Mistform/Mirror Image/Fire Shield/PPyre access on top of resists, Magic Power and Invisibility until they take a hit(!). Jinn Warriors are pretty pricy at 5 gems each but come with everything you want in a late-game unit. Ifrit and Shaytan are a nice option to dip into if you go Blood, whilst Houri look pretty undercosted for what you get.

If this was on a nation with weak troops like Berytos I wouldn't be worried, but this is a nation with literal giant elves and rec-anywhere thugs. I foresee some nerfs in Na'Ba's future.

Illwinter has a tradition of making new nations kinda OP on release. Remember the first Hinnom? Or Xibalba? Or Nazca with their original supaya spam?

I guess we kinda got a lull recently with Mekone and whatnot, but I would say Illwinter slipped again this time.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Jan 05, 2020 7:58 pm

Anybody feel like offering some advice on a mod nation or two?

http://dominionsmods.com/index.php?showtopic=3860

I'm trying to get a handle on two of these touhou nations, the one with the immortal rabbit people and the one with the gadgeteer kappas.

Eientei seems like they have a really cool gemgen setup where you use ritual magic to build recruitment sites that also make a net profit in gems starting turn 11 after casting. And getting immortal mages that aren't vampires is really cool. But first we have to get established enough to actually afford them. Those giant mutant rabbit cavalry seem decent, but I'm not sure if it's enough for a really potent expansion if I'm comparing them to Ragha griffons. The glamour hammer elites also look pretty squishy, and I'm not sure what a good non-cap army should look like.

Moriya has 75 gold magical cannon squad soldiers, 25 gold rifle soldiers, and 418 resource tank commanders (who can be equipped with elemental shells through crafting). Your mechanics can Summon Allies field fortifications, but you can't take them with you as an invasion and they do cost upkeep. Unfortunately, your soldiers have an aversion to real armor. Cavalry don't wear helms, and even your cap-only sacreds are more of a light infantry. How do I hold the line for my very scary ranged units? In playtesting, I noticed a lot of casualties came from cannon friendly fire. I can solve that with a resistance bless out of cap, maybe, but without battle mikos I worry I'll have to spend a lot of time shuttling in indie infantry chaff.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Mon Mar 09, 2020 7:26 pm

A new update of note came out recently! The highlights are:

A modest overhaul of the Jotun nations' lineups (EA Niefelheim, MA Jotunheim, LA Utgård) as well as the introduction of a new splinter nation: LA Vaettiheim, a nation of goblins and Gygja
An visual overhaul on the Jotun nations, with some really nice new sprites
Some new and tweaked spells for the Jotun nations, Jotuns now have 5 shock vulnerability (no more fire vulnerability)
Some modest nerfs to MA Na'Ba and Ragha
Some rebalancing for MA Ind (They can now use multiple foreign-recruit priests to muster heathens in the same province but that action raises unrest and their unrest lowering ability has been reduced)
Twiceborn's cost scales by size (5x death gems per size, so 10 for a human, 30 for a titan) but new chassis have been added based on the size and type of caster
The Plague Doctor commander has been added to LA Marignon: a stealthy disease healer (with a 20% chance of N1) that can take a special action to spread disease in the province it's in.