Grand Strategy Noob plays Dominions 5

[BING XI LAO]

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.

So even with an imprisoned immobile pretender you still want blesses and magic paths huh? And some form of mobility, meaning cloud trapeze and teleport, so they have to have air or astral (are there other teleport spells I don't know of?)
Agartha's sacreds are the 10 encumbrance Blindfighters, some trainable priest-mages, summoned Tomb Oracles, and summoned Sepulchrals. All of those except Sepulchrals would benefit from Reinvigoration, but is 3x overkill? What about taking Hard Skin (+5 Prot) instead?
I went 3 cold to combine with the chill aura - and because the points gained from 3 cold can be put into other scales, so is it any loss to my country? Blindfighters seem to be tanky but low damage, which is why I thought a Chill Aura would be nice - but should I be looking at protective blesses because of the casters?

 

[Isiloon]

Started writing this post before you posted, but looks pretty similar!

I think this is ok, my opinion.

Your build is pretty decent IMO, I am not sure about how the cold aura stuff will work as well, because cold makes units fatigue faster - maybe someone else can chip in?

usually for Mplayer games, since they typically last for months, many people test pretender builds before sending in a pretender. You want to get ~10 provinces and ideally a 2nd fort by turn 12 as Dayyālu pointed out - this is the go-to benchmark.

Just make short games vs AI for 12ish turns to test through many builds and find the best one. Quite often what looks good on paper isn't good in practice.

An imprisoned immobile pretender, isn't that bad - it's all about having something to keep you in the game, once the late game starts. If you only have earth and water magic, someone with death/astral/blood will kick your ass late game.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I've copied yours into my little collection of saved Gods, but I have some questions about it..... of course.
- it's Awake rather than Dormant or Imprisoned. It's immobile so it can't sitesearch, and without some gems accumulated and researches completed, it can't do much for rituals/forging either at the start; but it can kickstart research, defend the capital, and provide the Chill Aura part of the bless.
Did you choose Awake because you'd be making use of Chill Aura Blindfighters in the fight year, or to get an extra 12 turns of research, or because you already had ''enough'' scales and paths, so another 150 points from Dormant to put towards other things wouldn't be particularly useful?

If you only have earth and water magic, someone with death/astral/blood will kick your ass late game.

LA Agartha does have Death 3 from their recruitables and the summoned Tomb Oracles, and can craft boosters; is that good enough to constitute ''having death'' so taking 6 points of Death on your Pretender would be redundant? Agartha aren't a blood nation, leaving Astral as the last choice out of Death/Blood/Astral. So would you generally always want some solid Astral pips on a LA Agartha Pretender?

 

[BING XI LAO]

About the luck bless from 8 astral, 1 Luck ..... Having a 75% change to dodge a killing blow - assuming it isn't limited to only happening once per unit, then I believe it'll happen three times on average! That sounds really broken, but the units in question may be in an inevitably losing situation, or crippled, etc, useless.... unless their role is to serve as blockers with a Chill Aura... This game is very cool. I particularly like how the pretender creation points can be shifted between so many things, instead of being per-category. But I don't like having 15 unspendable points left over
Also, the Fear icon looks suspiciously like the prosper face

Also, these Cold scales will seriously encumber the cold blooded Drakes that you get when a cave knight dies. Blessed units won't be encumbered as the chill aura gives them cold resistance though. Probably not the biggest issue though.

 

[Isiloon]

Yeah, cold aura probably isn't that good - you could get heat aura instead! I didnt really think about the drakes, because I wouldn't build them. I typically only build sacreds and mages... maybe archers, but that's my style and i never play Agartha

I picked it to get the cold aura immediately, again it would need play testing, it's easier to play 12 turns and see how you do than it is to think through every possibility that can happen when expanding.

your last pretender is more in line with what people would normally do, an awake immobile is pretty uncommon, so my pretender pick i showed you isn't amazing or anything, its just something I whipped up on the spot to show you roughly what a pretender should look like because your other 2 where WAY off.

death 3 is ok i guess, you really want ~5 in some path to get access to global enchants and big summons, death 3 only gives you that with empowerment... but you are right, it does give them some late game.

 

[Johannes]

Did they change something in Dom4->5 regarding Dominion, Domstrength of 4 should be fine if they didn't

 

[Isiloon]

you need 5 temples to raise max dom by 1, at dom 4, you will need 30 temples - which is not a realistic amount to build in a game, unless the map is much bigger than normal.

You will spend a large part of your income, preaching away enemy dominion and surviving, and you'd be better off taking points off of scales and putting into dominion - otherwise whatever you get from the scales, will be vastly outweighed by how much resources you'd need to allocate to dom spreading.

 

[Farewell into the night]

I suck at dominions, but I win battles.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I suck at dominions, but I win battles.

Tell me your fave strats please! Formations, troop type, spells, etc

 

[Dayyālu]

I suck at dominions, but I win battles.

Tell me your fave strats please! Formations, troop type, spells, etc

Hit me on Steam, we can DISCUSS if thou wish

Name's the same and it's faster than re-typing everything, plus we can play a blitz or two

 

[sqeecoo]

Hey man, nice to have a new guy to crush play with! My recommendation is to watch one of the better LPs to get a feel for how the game is supposed to be played, then pick a nation (the next codex game will likely be Late Age - LA, so LA Agartha is a good choice right there), learn the basics, practice expansion until you can get at least 12 provinces easily in year one, and then join a game! Also feel free to ask for advice, people are generally very happy to help. I learned most of what I know through advice from other players, and there's still oh so much I barely understand about this game, it's incredibly deep.

As for the LPs, as it happens perhaps the best player on youtube, Sy, has an excellent LP as LA Agartha. It's from dominions 4 so pretender design is a bit different, but like 90% of what he says still totally applies and there's a LOT to learn from the series even for experienced players. Watch it, like, twice, that's the best way I know to get a sense of the game being properly played. Here ya go:

 

[Isiloon]

while we are on the topic of dom5 noob questions, has anyone got experienced setting up direct connect blitz games, without hamachi etc?

i cant figure out how to do the port forwarding thing

 

[thesheeep]

while we are on the topic of dom5 noob questions, has anyone got experienced setting up direct connect blitz games, without hamachi etc?

i cant figure out how to do the port forwarding thing

You can usually find guides for port forwarding for each (family of) routers.

 

[Isiloon]

so its something you have to config not just on your PC but also router?

sorry if dumb question, i dont know shit about networking

 

[thesheeep]

Isiloon It is actually something you have to configure ONLY on your router. Your PC doesn't have much to do with it other than being used to access the router.
Just search for "port forwarding <your router>", chances are good you'll get a simple step-by-step instruction.

 

[coldcrow]

Ports are standardized gates for network packets. Apps usually send and listen at ports (http uses 80 for example). If you have a router the WAN sees only this machine - the router has to forward packets to the correct ports on your PC. Thats where you configure stuff in your plastic modems configs. Usually ppl have palstic modems. If you have a dedicated router machine, then you wouldn't ask anyawys.
If you don't want to bother just set a DMZ, meaning your router ceases any firewalling function and anything can reach the specified DMZ IP. Plastic routers firewalls suck anyways. ANYWAYWS,

 

[BING XI LAO]

So I get the idea of the awake monster expander and the imprisoned scales/rainbow. But can someone give me an example or two of a dormant pretender? Are they used generally for when you want incarnate blesses but don't want to go full meme with trashed scales on an awakened? Or what about participating in the first war, but not being an indy-stomping expander?

With immortal pretenders are they good for sending out alone versus enemy army, cast spells like Earthquake etc, die, and do it again a few months later?

 

[coldcrow]

dude, why tf are you so insistent on us handholding you? Are you a toddler or are you so busy that you can't spre the time to either find out stuff by playing or readind guides? In any case, step the fuck up, you suck.

 

[mondblut]

With immortal pretenders are they good for sending out alone versus enemy army, cast spells like Earthquake etc, die, and do it again a few months later?

Providing they don't come back headless, mute, blinded, feebleminded and crippled.

Just do the monodrop.

 

[BING XI LAO]

dude, why tf are you so insistent on us handholding you? Are you a toddler or are you so busy that you can't spre the time to either find out stuff by playing or readind guides? In any case, step the fuck up, you suck.

Heyyyyyyyy. Where can I find some guidessssss????

 

[Isiloon]

Steam and Googling/youtubing "dominions 5 guides" with first few results.

The best way to learn is join as many mplayer games as you can, you will die a lot but you will see how other people played and after you die people will probably be willing to share what they did and how.

 

[Nutria]

Yeah, one thing that's great about Dominions is that the community will actually politely explain to you what their strategy was after they beat you.

 

[Lagole Gon]

Maybe we can do Dominions 5 MP game for n00bs.

 

[Nutria]

I'd be up for that. I've played multiplayer once so I'm just starting to scratch the surface.

 

[BING XI LAO]

I also.