Grand Strategy Noob plays Dominions 5

[BING XI LAO]

Just started playing Dominions 5.

-I've been putting Mushussus (Enkidu's cap-only beasts) further back in formation and told them to hold-and-attack, because they're harder to replace than other troops. The rest of my armies are just these bronze-clad enkidu infantry that I leave on default. Anything I should do differently there?

-Killed 70 of my own troops in an easy battle by putting them with Bog Beasts, which give off a poison cloud. Lesson learned.

-I have more and more mages/priests and my Great Sage pretender sitting in my capital researching rather aimlessly, and sometimes summoning some random things. What should I research as a priority? Enkidu's mages are earth/water/nature, does this mean they're all about buffs and summons? Should I be generating entire armies of summons and sending them off under a couple of mages, with a mundane commander+troops as well? Should I simply keep building up the researcher horde? Should I send them off in a big group of magic and see what they do in a battle?

-I have loads of different summons I can pick, how do I determine which is best?

-Is it important to have experienced commanders? Does that mean I should always get some armour for them?

-Where does healing of afflictions come from in this game, and is it important to get it?

-Is there a faction that can mass mages just to zap people early on with lightning bolts, or do mages generally sit at home researching, walk around site-searching, and accompany armies?

-When I conquer a province, the enemy (easy AI for now) tends to run in behind and capture the one I just left. Should I shell out for province guards every time, or have a sweepline of a few armies when I conquer?

-What do I do with gold? Is it best to simply spend it all as quickly as possible on armies and send them out?

Anyway, not even sure where to start with this, I barely even know what the right questions are, never mind answers.

P.S. To what extent do I need to git gud before I can play in a PBEM?

 

[coldcrow]

Just started playing Dominions 5.

-I've been putting Mushussus (Enkidu's cap-only beasts) further back in formation and told them to hold-and-attack, because they're harder to replace than other troops. The rest of my armies are just these bronze-clad enkidu infantry that I leave on default. Anything I should do differently there?

I don't know about Enkidu. Just use common sense and have a look at relevant stats. Combat speed is important in governign how fast a unit traverses the battlefield (timing issues). Ranged in the back, high def-prot shieldwall front, cavalry flankers etc. Learn by error.

-Killed 70 of my own troops in an easy battle by putting them with Bog Beasts, which give off a poison cloud. Lesson learned.

-I have more and more mages/priests and my Great Sage pretender sitting in my capital researching rather aimlessly, and sometimes summoning some random things. What should I research as a priority? Enkidu's mages are earth/water/nature, does this mean they're all about buffs and summons? Should I be generating entire armies of summons and sending them off under a couple of mages, with a mundane commander+troops as well? Should I simply keep building up the researcher horde? Should I send them off in a big group of magic and see what they do in a battle?

Spells come primarily in Rituals (cast on worldmap) and combat spells. Combat spells can be roughly divided into: direct damage, buffs, debuffs, summons, various combinations of them and battlefield enchantments.
Spells are a force multiplier if used correctly and magic becomes more and more important as the game progresses. You should employ mages to get used to the various spells. Experiment with sensible dispatchments (1 battlemage for every 10 research points or sth. - this is only an incentive for you to use them mages)

-I have loads of different summons I can pick, how do I determine which is best?

Summon them, look at them, use them and learn.

-Is it important to have experienced commanders? Does that mean I should always get some armour for them?

Only if: The commander is an expensive mage (4 recruitment point) and is in harms way. The other use for standard gear is to build thugs (elite units which can kill standard enemy troops efficiently or Super Combattants, which can tackle whole armies with little support)
Also most importantly and this is not only for commanders: Get used to lose troops and commanders in this game.
There are also a crapton of specialized items with carious effects like: research buff, gem generating, ritual buffs, movement buff, stealth etcetc

-Where does healing of afflictions come from in this game, and is it important to get it?

Affliction healing is rare. There is a healer ability which can heal a one or a few units per month, a few expensive items can do it, and very few spells.

-Is there a faction that can mass mages just to zap people early on with lightning bolts, or do mages generally sit at home researching, walk around site-searching, and accompany armies?

Every type of magic has direct damage spells. Most are under Evocation. If you want to do zapping get some nation with good air mages (Air 2-3), research evocation tree and rain lightning on everyone.

-When I conquer a province, the enemy (easy AI for now) tends to run in behind and capture the one I just left. Should I shell out for province guards every time, or have a sweepline of a few armies when I conquer?

You have to split your forces. Learn which kind of opposition you can beat in the most efficient way. Use some good shock squads and form 1-2 mop up squads to deal with weak AI incursions. Learn the turn resolution sequence (Magic movement comes before standard movement)
Most importantly: Use scouts. Lots of them. Plant them in every province which you deem interesting to observe. For that use scouts from provinces you conquer, not your national scouts.

-What do I do with gold? Is it best to simply spend it all as quickly as possible on armies and send them out?

Spend it at your most efficient troops, commanders, and infrastructure (fortresses, temples, laboratories). Especially in the beginning try to conquer as ruthlessly as possible in many directions, and most importantly get more fortresses up quickly - those are your recruitment centres.
As the game progresses you switch from buying standard troops to only your absolute best and mages. For troops purposes you will start to summon more and more units.
For that and for many of the best spells you need magic gems. Those you get only by using the search for magic sites command by a mage. He will spend his turn finding sites corresponding to his power level in the various magic paths (up to power 4). Those sites usually generate gems, some have unique effects.

Anyway, not even sure where to start with this, I barely even know what the right questions are, never mind answers.

Don't play PBEM right now. You will need to have a bit more understanding of the basics. One thing you shouldn't forget (the manual states this somewhere): This is NOT a 4X TBS, it is a wargame. Everything you do is to get stronger so you can kill more and better. That is why holding mages back on research for the best part of the game might work vs the AI, but will fail horribly vs humans.
An example: 2 lowly nature 1 mages (some bear tribe shamans or whatever) behind small groups of wolves. Wolves on hold&attack and mages cast protection twice (level 3 alteration spell /nature 1) this will give the wolves a +8 protection increase bringing them on par with a standard human troop. Mind you, they will still suck, but I think you see where this is going.
Have fun.

P.S. To what extent do I need to git gud before I can play in a PBEM?

PS: You can press '?' on any screen of the game to get a list of applicable hotkeys. Very important.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

P.S. To what extent do I need to git gud before I can play in a PBEM?

Get your early expansion down and pick some mid-game options to focus on, das it.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I started another game, this time as Late Era Ktonians. My pretender is an imprisoned golden pillar, and I put most of my points into domain bonuses.

-Ktonia has melee infantry and crossbowmen. I assume swordsmen are the default choice, so when should I get crossbowmen?
-Ktonian Reanimators add 10 Production Points to the province they're in. Does this stack?
-Ktonian infantry, both swordsmen and crossbows, come in three variants with different amounts of armour. The heavily armoured versions cost the same gold and rec points, but more production - so they're the reward for having multiple Reanimators and until them you make the lightly armoured ones? Also I suppose they're implicitly more gold-efficient.
-Is it important to have armour on ranged troops like crossbowmen?
-What sort of battle orders should ranged troops have?

-Ktonia has a ''Drake Lord'' Commander with 120 leadership instead of 80. Are these guys particularly desirable if the enemy is using assassins a lot, because they are beefier in a fight?
-Does it matter whether I have three 80 leadership commanders with 240 troops, or two 120 leadership guys with 240 troops?

 

[BING XI LAO]

P.S. To what extent do I need to git gud before I can play in a PBEM?

Get your early expansion down and pick some mid-game options to focus on, das it.

Could you give some examples of midgame options to focus on - I guess one would be higher-level summon spam? Would another be outfitting a strong-chassis Pretender in very advanced equipment that has regeneration etc?

 

[mondblut]

-Does it matter whether I have three 80 leadership commanders with 240 troops, or two 120 leadership guys with 240 troops?

I think leadership is mapped to morale bonus, so, the 120 commanders will give your troops +3 morale, and the 80s only +2. Or was it +2 and +1, beats me.

And here is your go-to page to explore your summons and everything else: https://larzm42.github.io/dom5inspector/

 

[HeatEXTEND]

Could you give some examples of midgame options to focus on

It depends on your nation/pretender: Certain buffs that complement your troops, evocation spam, thugging, map spells, certain items, it just depends. Point is it's good to have a plan beforehand so you don't lose yourself in options without actually getting anything done. And don't worry about getting stomped by experienced players, it is pretty much unavoidable
Also, diplomacy is a big part of doing well in multiplayer, better get your sales-face on

 

[Isiloon]

you can combine the poison-cloud guys with some undeads, but I dont think Enkidus get access to undead.

Alternatively you could think of it as a source of damage and you just need to protect them - for this you could use Cornucopia - swarm/creeping doom, Howl are good...

Vinemen and Claymen are okay, but waste of gems IMO - you could summon a bunch of air elementals which are pretty good and kick ass with trample-spam and poison...

Being honest I've never managed to effectively use poison cloud units because the nations that get them dont get good meat shields.

 

[BING XI LAO]

For 'thugging' is the Level 7 Construction, 3 Astral 2 Earth spell ''Golem Construction'' one of the good options? Seems like they have a couple useful self buffs from the 2 Astral points they have, they have some inherent immunities and resistances, good HP.... obviously I can't judge as a total noob.

 

[Dayyālu]

For 'thugging' is the Level 7 Construction, 3 Astral 2 Earth spell ''Golem Construction'' one of the good options? Seems like they have a couple useful self buffs from the 2 Astral points they have, they have some inherent immunities and resistances, good HP.... obviously I can't judge as a total noob.

Yes. Golems are good Thug options.

Frost Brand, Vine Shield, good cheap armour (Armor of the Knights if you got Con6) and them misc items for utility and fighting specific foes (Cold resist, Fire resist, reinvig, etc....). Boots of the Messenger or Flying Boots for mobility.

About PBEMs, get in as soon as you have a rough understanding how the game. Can you expand 12 provinces in 10 turns? Then you can beat half of the noobs. Get in a noob game on Dom5mods , and remember that diplomacy is king.

Hell, I almost won my first game ever going in blind.

 

[BING XI LAO]

You know the Agarthan Cave Knight? When one dies, the drake lives on and keeps fighting. Agarthans also have Drake Lords, which is basically the Commander version of the Cave Knight.

I've lost many Drake Lords this game but only once has the dead Lord's drake become a commander in its own right: behold! It even assumed the name of its erstwhile rider.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Also, if I have some nerdy mage get horror-marked, are there any reasonable (is cheap) precautions that can be taken to protect them?

Edit: man, this game has everything. A flying ship jsut liek the one from the first Elric of Melnibone. A spell that gives vision of the whole map - and has another spell specifically to counter it. Very, very cool!

 

[Dayyālu]

Also, if I have some nerdy mage get horror-marked, are there any reasonable (is cheap) precautions that can be taken to protect them?

Bodyguards or Bottles of Living Water are usually useful to avoid assassinations. They are also cheap and reasonable ways to protect nerdy mages. Another way is to make them stealthy.

On the other hand, notice carefully that I haven't said "effective". Horror Marks are a random yet deadly thing. No way to remove 'em, no way to protect effectively against them. Hope the mage wasn't important.

 

[HeatEXTEND]

man, this game

it's goddamn amazing.

 

[Isiloon]

giving your mage body guards protects against horrors I believe, another trick is giving them blood slaves because they appear in the battle and provide a bit of a meat shield as well as some ability to zap the horror with insta-kill spells.

if you get into a situation like, you have a godzilla pretender decked out with 200 gems worth of artifacts - possibly the only thing your opponent can do is horror mark spam and hope eventually one of the doom horrors will come knocking to remove your godzilla from the game.

He might script all his mages to horror mark instead of trying to do damage, effectively sacrificing them all to give your guy cancer.

Doom horrors are extremely rare, i've only seen them attack once (without astral corruption up) however with AC they are quite common and Doom horrors are considered to be the strongest entities in the game with a few possible contenders, however Doom horrors were added to the game (in Dominions 3 I believe) specifically as a last resort counter to 'invincible' super units.

If you haven't seen it already, this is one of the most useful tools/websites for dominions - https://larzm42.github.io/dom5inspector/ - you can look up the mighty doom horrors in the editor to see all their exclusive 'fuck you' abilities

you can search for all the spells/items/monsters/events and even load mods into it and it will show you what's in the mod. Pretty invaluable tool if you're theory-crafting paths on your pretender to make sure you+nation get access to specific items/spells through boosters and what not, without relying on luck getting paths from indies.

 

[BING XI LAO]

If I want to make an awake Pretender that can conquer indies by itself in the first dozen or so turns, how do I make it less likely to be abruptly dumpstered by some guys with polearms or a dumpy little priest cursing it before a bunch of lizardmen poke 3 wounds into it?
Is Chill/Fire Aura good on an awake expander?
Awake expanders feel really unreliable in my hands because I don't know what sort of indies should be avoided/should attack with meatshields. If I have a Wyrm or an Earth Serpent should I prioritise using them on sea provinces?

I might prefer to just go with a rainbow/scales imprisoned pretender but I would like to play MP at some point, without a 'RUSH ME!' sticker on my back.

 

[Isiloon]

If I want to make an awake Pretender that can conquer indies by itself in the first dozen or so turns, how do I make it less likely to be abruptly dumpstered by some guys with polearms or a dumpy little priest cursing it before a bunch of lizardmen poke 3 wounds into it?

I tend to get pretenders with some death magic, you research alteration 1 in the first turn with them and self-cast skeletal body. Then you should be able to solo any indies that do only piercing damage, which is militia, archers, xbowmen, deer/bear/wolf/lion tribes and few others.

Never attack Lizardmen with a pretender lul, there is no solution to this except 'dont send 1 guy to fight lizardmen'

Is Chill/Fire Aura good on an awake expander?

I heard they stack, never tried this myself because it's too slow for my taste.

I dont know who to attack

Avoid barbarians, heavy infantry, lizardmen, amazons (jade/nightmare/pegasus), mutants/dark vines, non-archer cavalry, anything that looks bigger than a normal unit - e.g. cavemen...
At the start of the game, you only really want to fight miltia/light infantry/archers and X-tribe guys, but even there you need at least 2 of one of these defense mechanisms

20+ protection... awe+fear... damage resistance... ethereal... invisibility... petrification....

might be a few i'm missing

I want to MPlayer but not get rekt

Almost 100% good players will see you making some mistake and figure out you're a noobie and try to free their hands to eat you before someone else can. Most people lost most games because in 10+ player games with 1 winner that's inevitable, question is how long can you last and if you make it into top3 consistently you're doing well.

Rainbow isnt good on every nation, you should figure out what you find most fun and just keep playing that till you get good. For me, free-troops is my favorite thing and blood magic, so my favorite 2 nations is Lanka and Pangaea, I play them both pretty well I think.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Is this a reasonable awake Expander? It's for LA Agartha (will just stick to one nation for now, there is enough to learn). She doesn't have any of ''20+ protection... awe+fear... damage resistance... ethereal... invisibility... petrification.... '', but after not very long I can make her some Blacksteel armours because Agartha has a cap income of 1 Earth gem. And she has the nice regen/recuperation/trample thing going.

How much value do you get from choosing an expander that can go into the sea?
Is a recuperation bless worth it just for the Pretender?
Is it worth to take a nature path your nation doesn't have (Nature in this case)?
How good is Turmoil+Luck?
If your nation has good mages, that means the research loss from Drain is proportionally lower, so is it fine to go to Drain 3 because of that?
Growth is the most valuable scale, right?

 

[Isiloon]

She has regeneration which should be in the list.

No it's not a reasonable pretender, 4 dominion is suicide, 5 is absolutely minimum, usually 6-8 is a good amount depending on context. If you have 4 dominion you will have no chance of winning because other people's dominions will squeeze yours out of the game, if you end up with none of candles in any province you automatically lose the game, your units disappear and your provinces turn independent.

9-10 dominion from the start of the game, is usually for domkill nations that use dominion as a weapon, e.g. MA Ermor, LA Rlyeh, Asphodel and some others.

Having a lot of dominion, isn't as important as having more dominion than your neighbors.

Drain 3 IMO is really bad, you are right that having big researchers means it doesn't affect you as much, but recuperation isn't great bless and you definitely shouldn't get a bless with a focus on your pretender. I dont think that getting an expander pretender on a nation like Agartha is good either, since they can expand fine without it.

 

[BING XI LAO]

Cool, thanks! Edit: So a weak dominion can't be salvaged by having priests stand around preaching - or is that in itself crippling because they could be doing other things?

 

[BING XI LAO]

Would this be a fairly standard imprisoned immobile Scales pretender? Or would I want to go with some sort of dormant mobile pretender who can move around, use items, etc?

 

[luj1]

Playing this game is like going through a fevered nightmare

 

[Isiloon]

Would this be a fairly standard imprisoned immobile Scales pretender? Or would I want to go with some sort of dormant mobile pretender who can move around, use items, etc?

I think that pretender sucks as well, how about you pick a nation/age and I'll make a pretender for it and explain why I chose what I did, so you can see what kind of rationale should go into it.

 

[thesheeep]

Cool, thanks! Edit: So a weak dominion can't be salvaged by having priests stand around preaching - or is that in itself crippling because they could be doing other things?

A weak dominion can't be salvaged.
Even if it was possible to do so with sick amounts of good priests (and that means at the very least level 2 priests, level 1 is just useless), those priests cost money to produce and upkeep and every fort that produces a priest does not produce a mage or whatever else you need, so...

Your second pretender is IMO bad because it is in itself useless, grants you no blesses and just some good scales. And it cannot even move around to grab some thrones (immobile, and not enough magic to teleport). You are basically playing a nation without a pretender - and that's just not something one should do.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I think that pretender sucks as well, how about you pick a nation/age and I'll make a pretender for it and explain why I chose what I did, so you can see what kind of rationale should go into it.

LA Agartha is the one I've been playing mainly, but any would do.