Grand Strategy Noob plays Dominions 5

[Galdred]

Actually, for disciples, dormant/Awakened/imprisoned is set by the pretender, and they come online in half the time.
So I should still take a thug disciple?

 

[Malakal]

Actually, for disciples, dormant/Awakened/imprisoned is set by the pretender, and they come online in half the time.
So I should still take a thug disciple?

Yes, I know. You have plenty of thugs as Helheim, a dragon seems solid though. Or a nerd researcher/rainbow.

 

[Johannes]

Since you only get the incarnate blesses online when the year ends, so the defense bonus can be really nice for expansion. Both Ulm and Ermor have good non-blessed troops, so you may not want to adjust your team too heavily to accommodate Helheim. Here you don't have to have a bless/build that Helheim could win a solo game with, no matter what they'll be helpful with their thugs, providing things the other nations here don't have (Ulm has stealth, but Helheim can Cloud Trapeze and so on), if you go heavier into scales Helheim doesn't still even need to use the normal troops, can send the provinces/gold to the other players.

Elemental resist blesss are also always nice, both for sacred troops and (disciple) thugs. Since they're just as often countered by magic, as by troops. But the same downside as with incarnate blesses on a dormant, they don't help you expand.

Titan of Love dormant for some combo of Defence / cold resist / winter walk (though Ulm already has both cold resist and winter walk natively, it helps the rest of the team deal with constant cold-3), and Regen, could work nicely. Compared to a statue, you also get a good SC out of it, though it can't teleport or trapeze. And leaves you with decent scales.

A Titan of the Sea dormant with the minor W buffs + fire/shock resist from E can do nicely, too.

An awake pretender could work too, like a Drakaina, who can expand on turn 3 when you forge an armor for it. For instantly available blesses, and disciples, for breakneck expansion.

For disciples, a Ghost King or Lich are nice compromises between magic diversity and combat power.


Really depends on the enemy teams and map, to decide between the various options, different things work vs different nations.

 

[Galdred]

Assuming a dormant pretender with minor bleses, what would be good expansion parties for Helheim?
I saw 6 huscarls, 1 helhirding, and 1 helkarl be recommended:
They can take out weak independent, but get crushed by stronger ones (woodmen, barbarians). Is it still a good compromise? Should I expand from the first turn, or wait for 1 turn of production and scouting ?

 

[Falksi]

I used to play dominoes with mi nan as a kid.

 

[Johannes]

Assuming a dormant pretender with minor bleses, what would be good expansion parties for Helheim?
I saw 6 huscarls, 1 helhirding, and 1 helkarl be recommended:
They can take out weak independent, but get crushed by stronger ones (woodmen, barbarians). Is it still a good compromise? Should I expand from the first turn, or wait for 1 turn of production and scouting ?

Just mass helhirdings and vanherses (which are cheaper than helkarl). They're better than huskarls for their cost at mostly everything - move faster, fight better (how much better, depends on the bless), and cost less resources. Only if you're maxing out helhirding recruitment should you consider getting something else.

Not sure what's always the best script vs different enemies, to attack closest, archers or whatever. Also casting air shield on the vanherse vs ranged enemies makes sense. And you can always combine two forces to go against a tougher province, it's not hard with the helhirdings being so fast.

 

[Galdred]

Assuming a dormant pretender with minor bleses, what would be good expansion parties for Helheim?
I saw 6 huscarls, 1 helhirding, and 1 helkarl be recommended:
They can take out weak independent, but get crushed by stronger ones (woodmen, barbarians). Is it still a good compromise? Should I expand from the first turn, or wait for 1 turn of production and scouting ?

Just mass helhirdings and vanherses (which are cheaper than helkarl). They're better than huskarls for their cost at mostly everything - move faster, fight better (how much better, depends on the bless), and cost less resources. Only if you're maxing out helhirding recruitment should you consider getting something else.

Not sure what's always the best script vs different enemies, to attack closest, archers or whatever. Also casting air shield on the vanherse vs ranged enemies makes sense. And you can always combine two forces to go against a tougher province, it's not hard with the helhirdings being so fast.

What about Valkyries? Are they usable?
I have more resources than gold at the beginning, and they have a "better" resource/gold ratio than Helhirdings.
Or is it ok to "waste" resources early on?
I can recruit 1 Vanherse, then 2 Valkyries +2 Helhirding, or 1 Vanherse + 3 Helhirdings+(and have 30 unused resources unless I also recruit a Hirdman).

 

[coldcrow]

A few Valkyries can be good on hold/attack rear, but usually no one bothers when you have the raw power of helhirdings (who can also get to the rear quickly)

 

[Johannes]

Run more sloth if you have extra resources early as helheim

 

[Galdred]

Run more sloth if you have extra resources early as helheim

I could not. It is a disciple game, so I had to go with whatever the pretender felt like!

So my choices are between:
2 Helhirdings, 2 Valkyries, 1 Serf warrior
3 helhirdings, 1 huscarl or Hirdman
1 Helhirdings, 3 Valkyries, 1 Huscal
2 Helhirdings, 4 Huscarls

The latter may be the best? But then, I don't use much of my sacred unit cap.
the bless are:
Fateweaving, Barkskin, Fire and shock resistance (we started with an awake pretender).

My disciple is an Earth 4 Water 4 Great Ormr (we play wtih worthy heroes and balance mod).
What research goes best with Helheim?

 

[Optimist]

I could not. It is a disciple game, so I had to go with whatever the pretender felt like!

So my choices are between:
2 Helhirdings, 2 Valkyries, 1 Serf warrior
3 helhirdings, 1 huscarl or Hirdman
1 Helhirdings, 3 Valkyries, 1 Huscal
2 Helhirdings, 4 Huscarls

The latter may be the best? But then, I don't use much of my sacred unit cap.
the bless are:
Fateweaving, Barkskin, Fire and shock resistance (we started with an awake pretender).

My disciple is an Earth 4 Water 4 Great Ormr (we play wtih worthy heroes and balance mod).
What research goes best with Helheim?

Don't think I ever played with a balance mod, so these are suggestions for base Dom5.

Standard Dom5 wisdom used to be to use expansion parties of 5 helhirdings + vanherse to expand, so you might want to stick to recruiting them in the early stages. The bless is not that great for Helheim (you'd prefer glamoured stuff not to get hit at all, and I think Hel elves have some innate SR?), but the glamoured ponymen should chew through most indeps without too much issues.

Research is a bit of personal preference, but I'd advise you to start with Const 2 (for quills, your research will be pretty mediocre without them) -> Blood 1 (Reinvig/ Sabbath) -> Conj 3 (battlefield path boosters + elementals) -> Evo 5 (Thundertrikes and Storm). If there's a Niefel player around you might want to consider going for mass corpse constructs (so pump const for cc boosting items), just to annoy him, but otherwise you'll need Const 4 for boosters, Alt 7 for x Warriors and Blood 8 for vamps.

Don't be afraid to branch out into Blood and make sure that if you want to attack a neighbor of yours, abuse glamour to gank a few of his provinces at once and then converge for a bigger battle if needed.

 

[Galdred]

So here is my situation at turn 2:

My scout retreated after finding 48 barbarians and 3 chiefs to the East.

South are 30 archers and light infantries
SW in the lake are 30 wolf tribe archers and wolf tribe warriors.
East seems to be the only one under our dominion.

Commander 1 is a Helkarl with 10 huskarls and 15 serf warriors
Commander 2 is a Vanherse with 2 helhirdings and 4 huskarls.

Should I send both commanders to the East and the Serpent disciple to the lake against the wolf tribe?
Or can I afford to split my commanders and try to take both East and SE (barbarians do hit hard, so I don't know how it works against glamour)?

 

[Berekän]

I don't know if the barbarian cheese still works, but you were able to put your whole army back and bottom with hold & attack and a single decoy unit front and top. The regular barbarians would go after the decoy unit while the chiefs would go after the rest of your army, giving you an easy victory, might give you that province easily with a bunch of dudes.

 

[Fedora Master]

Man I love Dominions theorycrafting

 

[Infinitum]

What's with those magic paths on the commanders?

Anyhow, just leave the barbarians be for now. Even if you do beat them you're like to lose an entire expansion party, and it's not like anyone else can reach the province before you anyhow. With Helhirdings you want to expand with a Vanherse/Helkarl commander with 5 Helhirding on guard commander, scripting bless/bless/wait x1-2 -> Attack Rear which will snipe most indie commanders if you start in a far corner. Don't bother with Valkyries (or most other troops in the capital).

Practice this in singleplayer to get at least a rough estimate how many non-twohander indies you can beat without casualties this way; if in doubt send more parties or avoid the province altogether. Barbarians in particular tend to send chiefs in with the main blob, which is bad news. Try to make one expansion party/turn. Conserving troops takes precedence over taking more provinces early; most income is shit in EA anyhow, and you can always use your helhird to Elf your opponents stuff in a few turns.

Unless something changed drastically in the balance mod the Ormr is a shit chassi, although 19 armor (with the earth bonus) and regeneration/fear might be enough against the archers. Might. Test it in SP. Remember disciples only get their bless and bonus hp in your dominion (although that bless is useless for it anyhow).

 

[Johannes]

I don't know if the barbarian cheese still works, but you were able to put your whole army back and bottom with hold & attack and a single decoy unit front and top. The regular barbarians would go after the decoy unit while the chiefs would go after the rest of your army, giving you an easy victory, might give you that province easily with a bunch of dudes.

That's just Dom4 stuff, the indep AI in 5 is generally much nastier, they target random units instead of always the closest.

 

[Galdred]

So I just send the Ormr and everyone to the lake in the middle?
My income won't let me raise a full expansion party every turn
More like 1 Vanherse and 2 helhirdings.
Should I alternate turns without any commander to get one party out every 2 turns? Or recruits all the Vanherses I can, and fill the helhirdings later on (when I'll start recruiting researchers)?
One of my teammate advised me to go Alteration first for Stoneskin and regen on the Ormr to take the Barbarian, instead of construction.
What do you think about it?

 

[Infinitum]

Ormr already has 15 armor in vanilla plus the earth magic bonus. Raising it from 19 to 20 or so total wont make a large difference. Regeneration is an N spell in Enchantments. Test and train expansion in SP before experimenting in MP. See if you can beat archer blobs with an Ormr alone, and if your starting Heim army can beat Wolf tribe consistently. If so split and double expand. Otherwise Blob and go fo the higher grossing province (grain > plains > most things > swamps > wastelands > undead provinces).

 

[Optimist]

So here is my situation at turn 2:

My scout retreated after finding 48 barbarians and 3 chiefs to the East.

South are 30 archers and light infantries
SW in the lake are 30 wolf tribe archers and wolf tribe warriors.
East seems to be the only one under our dominion.

Commander 1 is a Helkarl with 10 huskarls and 15 serf warriors
Commander 2 is a Vanherse with 2 helhirdings and 4 huskarls.

Should I send both commanders to the East and the Serpent disciple to the lake against the wolf tribe?
Or can I afford to split my commanders and try to take both East and SE (barbarians do hit hard, so I don't know how it works against glamour)?

I know it might be a bit late, and I'll mostly be adding to what Infinitum wrote, but what I'd do in this case:
- Yeah, Ormr is not a great combatant, but it has regen and fear, so with barkskin bless (and possibly some simple self-buffs) up it should be able to handle wolf tribals. What I'd do is wait until your dominion propagates to a weak-indie non-barbarian province (barbarians have high max damage potential, so they can oftentimes punch way above their weight) and then cap it with Ormr. The lake one would be a great start. What nobody mentioned - if these tribals really are at the bottom of the lake for some reason, their archers won't be able to fire underwater. Remember to only attack provinces with your candles with the pretender; he gets bonus HP and autobless in friendly dominion, and reduced HP in enemy dominion.
- Pass all the huskarls and serf warriors to a single commander that you'll prophetize. It doesn't have to be any of your pony commanders, as they'll usually have better stuff to do - but you might want to use one of those since they're already around and you won't waste turn recruiting more. Huskarls will absolutly murderize most of the indeps - including barbarians. Barb's low precision makes glamour all that more effective, and if you manage to snipe a few of them with a prophet you might cause an early rout. Set them all back, huskarls in front of serfs, order to wait & attack and order the commander to spam your smite. Still, if you want to be more careful (and, more importantly, have other provinces to expand into) you might want to avoid barbs for now.
- Wait until you have five vanherses and pass it to one of the ponymen. Tactics Infinitum mentioned are solid, grab five of them, set to guard commander, have commander cast bless and any group buffs you might have and attack rear. This can also work on human players, especially if they don't expect to run into a kill team of glamoured elves.

 

[MadMaxHellfire]

Man I love Dominions theorycrafting

it's the only fun part of playing the game.

 

[Galdred]

Does this tool provide accurate results? It would help a lot in getting estimates about what is doable.

 

[Galdred]

So here is my situation at turn 2:

My scout retreated after finding 48 barbarians and 3 chiefs to the East.

South are 30 archers and light infantries
SW in the lake are 30 wolf tribe archers and wolf tribe warriors.
East seems to be the only one under our dominion.

Commander 1 is a Helkarl with 10 huskarls and 15 serf warriors
Commander 2 is a Vanherse with 2 helhirdings and 4 huskarls.

Should I send both commanders to the East and the Serpent disciple to the lake against the wolf tribe?
Or can I afford to split my commanders and try to take both East and SE (barbarians do hit hard, so I don't know how it works against glamour)?

I know it might be a bit late, and I'll mostly be adding to what Infinitum wrote, but what I'd do in this case:
- Yeah, Ormr is not a great combatant, but it has regen and fear, so with barkskin bless (and possibly some simple self-buffs) up it should be able to handle wolf tribals. What I'd do is wait until your dominion propagates to a weak-indie non-barbarian province (barbarians have high max damage potential, so they can oftentimes punch way above their weight) and then cap it with Ormr. The lake one would be a great start. What nobody mentioned - if these tribals really are at the bottom of the lake for some reason, their archers won't be able to fire underwater. Remember to only attack provinces with your candles with the pretender; he gets bonus HP and autobless in friendly dominion, and reduced HP in enemy dominion.
- Pass all the huskarls and serf warriors to a single commander that you'll prophetize. It doesn't have to be any of your pony commanders, as they'll usually have better stuff to do - but you might want to use one of those since they're already around and you won't waste turn recruiting more. Huskarls will absolutly murderize most of the indeps - including barbarians. Barb's low precision makes glamour all that more effective, and if you manage to snipe a few of them with a prophet you might cause an early rout. Set them all back, huskarls in front of serfs, order to wait & attack and order the commander to spam your smite. Still, if you want to be more careful (and, more importantly, have other provinces to expand into) you might want to avoid barbs for now.
- Wait until you have five vanherses and pass it to one of the ponymen. Tactics Infinitum mentioned are solid, grab five of them, set to guard commander, have commander cast bless and any group buffs you might have and attack rear. This can also work on human players, especially if they don't expect to run into a kill team of glamoured elves.

Thank you!

I tested it on a SP game, and glamoured huskarls and helhirdings destroy barbarians (the starting army + T1 recruits could beat 42+3, while my Ormr would kill 2 and die).
So one extra (reduced because of lack of funds early) expansion party should do the trick against 48+3.

I cannot prophetize, as it is a disciple game (the disciples are automatically prophets).

How good are wolf tribe compared to regular bowmen + light infantry?
Do the tribes have a similar power level? My Ormr was able to kill 40 bone tribes without too much of a problem, so does it mean he should be able to solo the wolf tribe?
But I will wait for the dominion to spread indeed.
Should I send the Ormr support the expansion party or research in the mean time?

 

[Infinitum]

The tribes vary quite a bit in armament. Check the mod inspector if you're uncertain (https://larzm42.github.io/dom5inspector/). Wolf Tribes wear dual daggers, striking twich for 12 piercing damage. Piercing damage removes 20% armor before calculating damage, so in practice your Ormr would need to beat a few dozen succesful attack rolls dealing 12 damage vs 15-16 armor per turn for a good few turns before fear kicks in, regenerating 16 hp per turn. Not to mention there's like to be one or more barbarian chieftains wailing at you. Risky.

Leaving it researching is a bit of a waste of a monster chassi, but not awful if you have no safe alternatives. You want Construction 4 asap for skull mentors, and your recruited commanders out conuering provinces.

 

[Galdred]

I took the province to the South with everyone but one commander I left behind for research.
Tribes also have barbarian chieftains?
I thought they had shamans and troops only
That makes it relatively risky indeed (edit: but they'll have a sizeable portion of archers, that cannot really harm me, especially with Air shield, no?).
I will move everyone but the Ormr to the Barbarians to the East, and I will search site in the newly acquired wasteland to get my dominion to spread to the wolf tribe.
Should I send in a few slave warriors with or huskarls to split the opponents in 2 groups? I find it hard to use my Ormr with supporting troops, as it typically joins the battle after the supporting troops have won or been routed.

What does the construction spell fortify armour do(grants toughened armour)? It may be a balance mod spell?

 

[Baptismbyfire]

How is the AI in this game for singleplayer?