Dominions 6

[Ratcatcher]

Oh c'mon Na'Ba was a thing already and they are commanded by wymminz and their most powerful mages are wymminz. This (Feminie) is hardly news.

If any, their roster is entirely female? I could be wrong. This means you don't get to expand using phallocentric javellins, patri-archers or Camel oppressors, you have a proper roster of strong indipindy wymminz to draw from.


...yes I bought this.


Ahem, they may want to tone down Awaken Woods, just a tad. Try it, it's free it's just a single N gem.

[Dead]

$45 for a glorified patch is excessive.

[Nemesis]

$45 for a glorified patch is excessive.

$37 until January 24

[Decline]

> Shitty troon game comes out
YAS LARIAN SLAY QWEEN TAKE ALL MY MONEY OH MY GOD ALL THE PEOPLE ARE BLACK IN MY GAME

> Good game comes out
ewww 30$?!?! what is this, i just wanted to buy a game not a whole company

moar liek TROONHQ amirite?

anyway who's up for a quick game via the lobby?

It would be different if I hadn't already bought this game 3 times. It's a $45 DLC.

The worst thing is that Ilwinter spend so much time putting women and furries into the game that they didn't have time to put in a 'Load Pretender' button.

I am not joking.

The shortcut is Ctrl+L.

You can thank me later.

[Ratcatcher]

You can thank me later.

I won't, because I know the ultimate secret.

The most important hotkey in Dominions is "?"

Pressing question mark on any screen will give you a full list of hotkeys for that particular section of the interface. I noticed the load Pretender button was missing but since the shortcut is there and works, I suppose it's just a minor UI bug.


Considerashuns (after a few test gaymes)

-Glamour magic si kinda kewl. Basically a bunch of nations can now have Elves. Even if they aren't Elves.

Na'Ba has natural 65 stealth sacred, take the blessing for the +20 boost, you have super annoying thugs and sacred you can deploy year 1 and need magic weapons or specific artifacts to be dealt with. Good luck getting enough patrol str to keep everything safe + you have glamoured (usually regenerating) giants to deal with.

-R'Lyeh still unplayable. Unless you gimp your dominion to liek, 1 or smth. 1% popkill per candle, they naturally spawn in deep sea (-0,4%), the population protection mechanic is a good idea but it saves only a few thousand. Otoh, they lost access to D mages and all it entails. Lovecraft is sad.

-Pangea is currently strong af. It was bretty gud before but it's even better now. Versatile as ever and N magic got some major if situational nukes.

-Cannot wait for Marignon Flagellant memes.

[Emphyrio]

You can thank me later.

I won't, because I know the ultimate secret.

The most important hotkey in Dominions is "?"

Pressing question mark on any screen will give you a full list of hotkeys for that particular section of the interface. I noticed the load Pretender button was missing but since the shortcut is there and works, I suppose it's just a minor UI bug.


Considerashuns (after a few test gaymes)

-Glamour magic si kinda kewl. Basically a bunch of nations can now have Elves. Even if they aren't Elves.

Na'Ba has natural 65 stealth sacred, take the blessing for the +20 boost, you have super annoying thugs and sacred you can deploy year 1 and need magic weapons or specific artifacts to be dealt with. Good luck getting enough patrol str to keep everything safe + you have glamoured (usually regenerating) giants to deal with.

-R'Lyeh still unplayable. Unless you gimp your dominion to liek, 1 or smth. 1% popkill per candle, they naturally spawn in deep sea (-0,4%), the population protection mechanic is a good idea but it saves only a few thousand. Otoh, they lost access to D mages and all it entails. Lovecraft is sad.

-Pangea is currently strong af. It was bretty gud before but it's even better now. Versatile as ever and N magic got some major if situational nukes.

-Cannot wait for Marignon Flagellant memes.

sounds awful

[Dead]

they lost access to D mages and all it entails. Lovecraft is sad.

Did they gain anything in return?

[Ratcatcher]

sounds awful

No, sounds pretty good actually. Maybe numbers need to be tweaked, because tbh 85 stealth regenerating, mirror imaged, displaced thugs on year 1 is scary. One of those costs you 675g and two turns from your capital tho. If you go alteration for the needed buffs (unless you luck out on the initial research roll) means that yes, you can deploy those, but they will mainly morale rout the enemy due to the low lethality of the chassis. Which puts them at risk, they are simple thugs, not Super Combatants. Boost PD over 15-20 in a province you wish to guard and you'll keep those at bay for 1 year or more. Use guard commander scripts. Same old. You (Na'Ba) are also gimping your research to do that.

As for giants being strong year 1. Well. Should I introduce you to the jews Ashdod?

R'Lyeh is a bummer, I agree. The dominion effect they get is much better than before, it still isn't enough to cover for popkill, your mages going mad, half of the built in mechanics being tied to horrors and void (which causes you to either ignore them or lose tons of Commanders).

Pangea is very fin atm. Some spell need rebalancing and they actually toned down full bless rushes quite a bit. You won't have masses of 80+ regenerating, wound sharing, blood frenzied White Centaurs coming at you in the early game. No wait, you'll get those, but they won't halve all the incoming S/P/B damage because you cannot affor E anymore. Which is still a huge plus. You can pretty much build for scales or a mix of both and it performs very well, for what I've seen.

What the fuck do you have against Flagellant memes?


Edit:

Did they gain anything in return?

Glamour magic. Which is fitting I guess but... eh... It's more geared towards thugging and buffing troops. A couple interesting "false damage" spells, that go through armor and cannot be regenerated. Which is kewl and dandy but... Is it what they needed?

[Dead]

In Dom5 LA R'lyeh had you struggle against yourself, which was uniquely interesting to play sometimes. It looks like Illwinter mitigated this aspect, without giving them better tools to be competitive. Getting death magic replaced with glamour sounds extremely gay. It makes sense regarding the fundamental theme of glamour magic, but the spells themselves mostly would suit fairy-themed nations better.

[Ratcatcher]

I wholeheartedly agree, it should either be Illusory (to keep the nomenclature different from the other schools) or something like Phantasmal. Dunno. Not engrish so I cannot contribute. Glamour is definitely ghey, usually associated with fairy beings as you said, and I bet my future lunch tomorrow, it's a stylistic suggestion they got from that troon @Emphyrio was talking about. Put a chick dick in it, make it lame and gay.

[Emphyrio]

@Ratcatcher one of the biggest changes was supposed to be mounts. What are your impressions of cavalry now?

[Ratcatcher]

The only cav I rly used are the Na'Ba camel(toes). Which were pretty decent recruit everywhere mounted archers even before. Mount and rider can be damaged separately and some effect specify that they affect both, so it must not always be the case, altho I dunno if that's because some of the mount stats are never actually used and buffing them would be moot or because you'll need to take care of buffing both, as I said, I didn't really play much with them.

Diz I can tell for certain tho, Nazcan Mummies on palanquins are considered mounted too. And they are listed as riding 4 mounts. Lmao.

[Ratcatcher]

Update. Sorry for doubleposting but it's unrelated to what I wrote immediately above.

R'Lyeh sucks less than I previously thought, at high dominion. The effect they get scales with the amount of chaff you manage to accumulate and it affects your mages tho. They become weird ethereal beings, stop getting any madder, retain all paths, can even gain some Glamour in the process. Also no upkeep. Interdasting.

Currently testing Pyconie. LA little horny men. Hign protec. Mean xbows. Large memetic potential.

[Dead]

I don't understand why Illwinter thought it necessary to make Starspawns able to roll earth magic but not death magic. That makes no sense thematically, and I doubt Starspawns being able to roll death magic would've made LA R'lyeh too strong. I'm going to refrain from commenting further until I get the game. I really don't like this decision though.

[Irenaeus]

First patch!

[Decline]

Alright, lets get serious about this.

Dom6 contains a (flawed) lobby system so for the first time in the history of Dominions all you need to play the game is just the game itself. Progress!

See below for the lobby name and password:

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So, post your username in this thread so we can start setting up games!

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If you're just starting out, here's a good introductory series

[Ratcatcher]

@asf told me in private he's gonna start playing Dominions (like a good Christian), once his homosexual phase is over.

[Irenaeus]

Irenaeus BRT (UTC-3)

[Emphyrio]

Truth?

An almost strictly worse game than its predecessor, which is impressive given the tiny amount that's changed.

"Dominions 6 is scaled up compared to Dominions 5 and armies are larger."
A net negative. The tedium of scripting your armies is equally scaled up.

"the addition of a new magic path"
Incredibly underwhelming. Just make magic paths moddable. Right now it's unbalanced and boring.

"the separation of mounts and riders"
Now I have to read two separate tabs to see the stats of a unit.

"new nations"
A 40$ mod for dominions 5

"a number of changes intended to ease gameplay"
Some good changes were made here (ability to box select commanders when setting formations, additional information in some UI, among others). And some bizarre ones, for example, if you have map edge scrolling turned on, you cannot click the UI without scrolling the map. Also, how many hours of time was wasted changing all these icons? They're just as low-quality as Dominions 5.

Level 9 spells
These spells now require each one to be researched individually. There was opportunity here to make these spells more impactful to justify the research cost, but instead they just got ultra nerfed.

Caves
Most people hate oceans. This is worse.

Ultimately, I don't think this release was worth breaking all the mods and tools the community made for the previous game. But unfortunately, if you want to join the large multiplayer community, you will be forced to play this version.

[Ratcatcher]

No. There are always people complaining on each iteration. Frankly, from what I've played so far, this is the biggest improvement in any Dom ever and I started playing with 3. The fact some consider a core mechanic like scripting armies as tedium should tell you everything really but I'll give you my opinion.


Glamour is actually prettey good in and by itself, very thematic. The biggest issue you feel is some of its effects (see wailing winds) were previously associated with completely different schools, so it feels "cheap" as an addition. But it shouldn't be seen as such, it's a rebalance of the system to put other schools (see water) on par with the rest. If one wanted to criticize the new system this is precisely where it failed btw. Water feels more on par except for those nations that most need it. Because what they needed was an easier access to the dry land, not better infrastructurre rebalance and/or combat magic. Ffs, there are more spells to erase water provinces now than there ever were.

The separation of mount and rider causes mounts to still influence combat, riders to keep fighting when dismounted and influences retreat. Now cavalry has a much better chance to retreat unless dismounted.

The new deployment screen alone is so much better it's not even funny.

Level 9 spells being researched individually is an option you can check or uncheck for each game you play. What are they smoking? Simply try both options and see what works best. Imho, it's a good fix.

Considering the history of Illwinter and their sustained practice of mantaining their games for half a decade or more, I'm pretty sure the rebalancing work is far from done and arguing what level 9 spell are currently too weak to be researched individually is pointless. If water nation are still left wanting, a community mod will fix it, not ideal but it's enough for me.

If you don't feel like paying full price for the game, no one is going to judge you for it. Thinking about it economically, each iteration of Dominion is technically only a small improvement of a niche product. The audience knows this. By buying it later (if ever) you will always get more value for your money, a better balanced game and a smaller price tag
Those that buy on release do so out of trust and hoping that, by doing so there will also be a Dominions 7, in the future.

[Emphyrio]

Based on the mod inspector (not always reliable), LA Marignon has gotten a significant power boost. 3 new types of mages, royal navigators are no longer cap only, chartmakers are no longer coast only and had their paths improved, imp trainer commander who starts with a few imps at the beginning of battles and has undead leadership(great!), and a crossbow sacred. Still no knights, which I was really hoping for, but oh well. Did any other nations get significant changes like this? (I see EA Tien also got improved mages. Good- they needed them)

How are the new nations? Dom 5's new nations were pretty high quality, but the new nations in Dom 6 look kinda like Dom 2 legacy nations in how basic they appear.

[Emphyrio]

Who wants to do an HQ game of Dom 5 instead?

[Dead]

We will look back on Dom6 and see clearly that it was the beginning of the trannification of the series.

[Ratcatcher]

How are the new nations? Dom 5's new nations were pretty high quality, but the new nations in Dom 6 look kinda like Dom 2 legacy nations in how basic they appear.

I only tried Pyconie and they are unique enough. High defense, high prot tough little guys, they enjoy a nice spike in power when point buffing comes online as they can easily fit more models inside one tile, can increase their sacred hires by building temples.

You can pretty much play them with an awake expander, go heavy on scales and rely on troops + mages or give them a heavy bless, they have decent sacred melee, ranged and mages. Far from a basic nation and very unique, should also hold its own in the endgame due to E/S crosspaths being one of the best possible and leaning on communions.

Feminie looks uninteresting, if not for the strong wymminz angle. Mages are powerful but eh, LA has many multi path mages that can do fancy stuff and being heavy on research and light on troops makes for a strong, if uninsteresting gameplay. They will probably try to be amongst the first to phase away human troops, in a decent MP game.

The doggos are the goodest of bois and I personally resent you speaking badly about them. Repent.


Most of the improvement are hard to put on paper (especially since I like to use what little time I have to play this thing). I tend to focus on a single nation at a time and do not follow the meta or get info from other sources beside my own testing and games. I currently tried Na'Ba, Pyconie, MA Pangea, LA R'Lyeh, LA C'Tis and some gaymes with the new LA nations altho being new I will refrain from expressing judgment about them, there are probably dozen strategies and possibilities I missed, this is Dominions.

In general, I like how this iteration plays much better than any previous one. Expansion is much harder and unreliable with any nation I currently tried, I hardly manage to get more than 11-14 provinces by the end of year one.
I'm shifting to a different paradigm in which I expand slower, consolidate more of my initial armies, even invest in 10 PD as soon as I take a province, because expansion is slower but money more abundant and that particualr PD threshold both reduces unrest and prevents a number of bad events from happening (like dogs or villains attacking your province. You can still get barbarians or the giant iirc).

I noticed a general reduction of power of a number of mages across the board, eg Na'Ba Malikahs start with F3A2G2 and their random, instead of F3A3E1. G2 is very nice, especially on a thuggable chassis but the loss of a potential A4 mage makes the whole nation a lot weaker. Time will tell how the balance will settle about this across the board but I'm not preoccupied, the mechanical changes I very much like, numbers can easily be tweaked by patches or mods.

[Emphyrio]

Slower expansion would be another bad change.

[Ratcatcher]

Another. I'm yet to find a single one I don't like and the only ones complaining are people not playing the game.

Why? You miss Xibalba owning 24 provinces by the end of year one? You should try the game before judging. They only slowed your advancement on the map, this makes mechanics like 'Dominion hides province ownership' actually meaningful, for at least a portion of the game. The economy factor of each province has been increased, before you could hope to get 70 gold from a rich farmland, now those are the numbers you get from a wasteland and the richest indy provinces can net you 200 per turn alone.
Slower, more meaningful expansion, I'm all for it. It also gives variety to those nations that have a less-than-stellar beginings but can easily take care of provinces other nations leave for later, eg Pythium/Sceleria or anything Roman can now invest in a stack of gladiators, before you'd only recruit those if rushed by a player in year one. LA C'Tis can expand using empoisoners. Laugh at those 120 strong heavy infantry armies while you assassinate their commanders and rout them with a scout. Variety is good. Slower expansion allows more variety.

Just pirate the frickin' game and play it for yourself. Even the SP is so much better it's not even funny.



edit @Tweed, no more excuses, you need to start playing Dominions now:

[Emphyrio]

I don't like expansion phase because fighting passive indies isn't fun. Lengthening the fighting passive indies stage makes the game worse.

If you think I should try the game before judging, the sale is still going for another hour and I'll happily pm you my steam id.

[Ratcatcher]

What it means in practice is your first war will start before the indies are completely wiped out. Usually. Because you need less provinces for a decent army. And probably the provinces you cleared are softer than the indy ones.

I like Dominions because of how vast, unpredictable and full of variables it is (on top of a gajillion other reason). I hate when the meta settles in, a couple no-life autists give the exact formula about how many specific troops you need to produce each turn to guarantee an expansion party with a given nation and the rest of the monke players just follow suit. If they managed to make that portion of the game less predictable and formulaic I'm all for it.
Too soon to say if they succeeded tho, maybe I just failed all my builds until now, you know this is a possibility, I know this is a possibility and my cats know it too. They suggest I forge more fish and cat's-eye amulets.

[Dead]

What strategic depth did we gain from separate mounts?

[Emphyrio]

@Ratcatcher I will hold you personally responsible if this is shit

What strategic depth did we gain from separate mounts?