Dominions 5- Warriors of the Faith

[Jarhead0331]

Do the hardcore Dominions cadre among you consider this list of changes and additions from the fourth title significant?

http://www.illwinter.com/dom5/

I've always wanted to jump into this, but I barely touched D3 and I don't think I ever even loaded D4. The list of changes looks sort of light and superficial to me.

[Yskonyn]

It remains to be seen how the simultaneous combat turns resolution will work out, but I guess its a big one.

The game has so many intricacies that its too soon to tell wether the tweaking and reworking of inner game mechanics are a pro or a con.
Lots of rebalancing has been put in. Some new nations and undoubtedly more to come with updates.
The devs have stated way back that they are not really interested in balancing out each and every nation, so disparaties will always remain especially for power players.

I just love Dominions and I'd like to show my support to the devs for keeping on doing this work of passion for us, so its a no-brainer for me, really.

[Nefaro]

Do the hardcore Dominions cadre among you consider this list of changes and additions from the fourth title significant?

http://www.illwinter.com/dom5/

I've always wanted to jump into this, but I barely touched D3 and I don't think I ever even loaded D4. The list of changes looks sort of light and superficial to me.

Das made a 3-part video series with the most noticeable changes from Dom4 to Dom5 here: 

https://youtu.be/2IdRjM1L-1w


From what I've seen thus far, they were all sensible changes.  Some were improvements I had specifically asked for in the past, which is great.  Some rather useless things were re-simplified - notably the extra fortress building options that nobody wanted to use.

The most apparent improvements are for the randomly generated map graphics and UI.  They look SO much better than the vomit colored maps of yore.  The fonts and panes have more clarity, and provide more readily available info too.  Just more sharp and efficient in general.

Lots of changes "under the hood" too.  Balancing across the board.  The AI reportedly performs a bit better, although it's still not going to make brilliant combos, I'm sure.

Although the price of Dom5 is rather intimidating right now, I had some Steam Wallet funds waiting around to take the sting out of it.  I'm definitely diving in.  :nerd:

[ghostryder]

The most interesting change will be the combat. Some think each new version is an expansion of the last- but as I have pointed out not really. In many ways Dom4 was a lot less than Dom3 as many of the changes -as I have pointed out earlier in this thread- made many nations mutt, as well as a lot of the armor and weapons.  and once again: the most tragic loss in Dom4 when compared to CBM is the lack of spell and item balance. Sadly, instead of taking a look at what CBM's done in this regard and incorporating some of it, the devs just went back to vanilla Dom3. So many useless spells, so many useless summons in particular, and so many useless items... quick, how many forgeable weapons can you name other than the brands? How many would you ever use? In fact, now that thugs and SCs are rarer, combat gear is a lot less useful in general and instead people just forge research and magic path boosters, skull talismans, water bottles... utility items, barely anything else.

too early to say but if the new version seems even less I'd half expect it.

[sum1won]

Do the hardcore Dominions cadre among you consider this list of changes and additions from the fourth title significant?

http://www.illwinter.com/dom5/

I've always wanted to jump into this, but I barely touched D3 and I don't think I ever even loaded D4. The list of changes looks sort of light and superficial to me.

As a beta-tester, I'm probably biased, but yes.  I would say that the changes to:

Battle System
Bless System
Mapmove system

make for a substantially different game.  Couple them to other changes, such as some of the ui changes, retreat changes, ai improvements, fort changes, map generation, history playback, queued movement commands, and you probably have as much of a difference in dom4->5 as there was from dom2->4 (eras, fort changes, disciples, thrones).

The most interesting change will be the combat. Some think each new version is an expansion of the last- but as I have pointed out not really. In many ways Dom4 was a lot less than Dom3 as many of the changes -as I have pointed out earlier in this thread- made many nations mutt, as well as a lot of the armor and weapons.  and once again: the most tragic loss in Dom4 when compared to CBM is the lack of spell and item balance. Sadly, instead of taking a look at what CBM's done in this regard and incorporating some of it, the devs just went back to vanilla Dom3. So many useless spells, so many useless summons in particular, and so many useless items... quick, how many forgeable weapons can you name other than the brands? How many would you ever use? In fact, now that thugs and SCs are rarer, combat gear is a lot less useful in general and instead people just forge research and magic path boosters, skull talismans, water bottles... utility items, barely anything else.

too early to say but if the new version seems even less I'd half expect it.

Dom5 changed the cost to a large number of summons - many of them are substantially cheaper, although some (specific blood summons) are more expensive.  Thugging is definitely more viable than in dom4.  Some items were also changed.  I suggest playing before poo-pooing.

As an aside, the devs did incorporate several fundamental changes from CBM in dom3->4 (notably changes to gem gens), although not the broad-spectrum rebalancing you are discussing.  Even if they had attempted to port those changes, many of them would have been mooted by the mechanical changes.  Issues arose from the different research tempo and sparser gem economy in dom4, which, combined with the increased lethality of critical hits and fatigue and changes to resistance, made most thugs and summons less viable and thereby restricted gameplay options.

In the end, of course, dom4 wound up with a combined content/balance mod (summod+magic enhanced) that ultimately was comparable to CBM, and saw widespread use in certain communities.

[Moreb]

If anyone cares to get into the series cheap, they have Dominion's 4 on sale for 7 Krackel bars now that 5 is out.

And to commemorate the new release, a sing song

[Yskonyn]

Caelum finally getting size 3 units is all the change I could ask for! 

On a more serious note: I have played for a bit yesterday and already the different cost of units and spells were immediately apparent.
It will take some time to gauge the changes, but there is no doubt Dom 5 has received and extensive balancing review.

I am a bit bummed that the manual is in such a bad shape. Its copy paste in large parts from Dom 4 even in some areas that have changed in Dom 5, so lots of errors are present.
At least they are frank about its state, but with Bruce Geryk (writer of the Dom manuals) even pointing out that videos have gradually been replacing manuals I sure do not hope that this will mean Dom 5 won't really see a fleshed out manual.
The Mod Inspector will certainly be updated for Dom 5 and so gives us up-to-date access to all the unit and spell stats and costs, but me like me that nice phat manual as well. :)

Das is doing a fantastic job on his YT channel to explain the game, btw. Be sure to check it out if you are looking for a tutorial and instructional playthrough.

[JasonPratt]

Incidentally, AoW:SM showed resolution options up to 1080 and beyond, when I did a test install off GoG a few minutes ago; although considering my Surface Pro 3 is goofy about resolutions less than its native super-high-def-whatever I prefer to run it in windowed mode. This is Win 8.1.

[Nefaro]

The faction Bless changes are YUGE.

There are many mechanic changes and, unfortunately, I can't tell what was kept from Dom4 and what was changed.  The manual is sparse and unfinished.  Much of the Dom4 info was ripped out of it, due to the changes, so I have no idea what's going on with some of the little details that I used to be familiar with.

Such as trying to figure out if one of the old Scales side effects, for allowing leaders to survive into old age longer, was still there and which scale & level it needed to be.  Not a thing about it in the manual anymore, so I guess there were changes but no details.

Gonna be awhile before re-figuring that stuff out!  But there are some much needed improvements.  Logical things such as being able to check out all the leaders, units, starting gem buildings, spell lists, etc, etc for the faction you picked.  Before and during making your Pretender.   O0  Getting to much needed info easier is always good.

With their engine update, or switch, myself and some others are getting the occasional 3D gfx artifact flash, though.  My laptop hard-crashed once when it was going nuts in the background, behind some menus.  I picked up Dom5 for the purpose of running it on my notebook, so I'll be bummed if it does this some more.

[Nefaro]

The occasional gfx flicker is fixed, but Dom5 still seems to have a lot of bugs under the hood. 

Tried out a 3-way bless game with EA Fomoria.  My designated prophet went from Holy-1 to Holy-3 on the campaign map.  I only remember becoming a prophet would give +1 to a designated priest's Holy rating, not +2.  Oh well, I'm not gonna complain since I now only need one priest to cast a single Bless, on the whole army, per battle.

First battle.. a bless is cast.  But it only ends up providing one of my three chosen Bless buffs.  The shock damage one, when attacked, to both friendly and enemy, but not the accompanying shock and fire resist bless or the additional one I had also taken.  WTF is this?  Checked my prophet-priest general while in the battle replay and he's only showing his original non-prophet Holy-1 rating.  Not the Holy-3 he shows outside of battle.   ???

Maybe I'm missing something here.. perhaps they changed it.  After going to the latest patch's bug thread, to see if something like this came up, I lost hope after seeing the hordes of bug reports.   :hide:  Maybe I should go do some more COE4 while all that is getting sorted.  :-"

[ghostryder]

Dom4 and Conquest of Elysium 4 are both on sale near $12 which is a steal JH if you take to the game. My preference is still Dom3 and that's just $5. Dom3 with CBM helps Dominions 3 a lot by not just balancing nations, but also improving a lot of spells and items which had been hitherto useless.  Dom4 does not have that, obviously, and it seems that the biggest rebalancing mod I can find (Summod) is nowhere near the level of intervention in the game that CBM achieved. In Dom3, and early Dom4, a lot of supercombatant pretender chassis did not have any magic paths by default. Now, they all do, which makes them even more crazy since they are still the cheapest options and now get magic to buff themselves. Once again, I must stress: base Dom3 and Dom4 were actually a lot better for balance in this regard than post-pretender overhaul Dom4. Simply put Dom 4's pretender balance is wacky.

I haven't dived into Dom5 so i can't offer anything about it. most steam negative reviews are along the lines it's more like a DLC and not worth a full game tag which you always get- but if there are bugs the wait may be a while---Life for life is still bugged in Dom4 as an example- so it'll perhaps be never for some things. I do plan on diving into Dom5 in the future when I have a decent block of time.

[solops]

I loved Dom3. Dom 4 was OK, but not worth the money. Dom5 looks more like a patch than DLC to me and I am not forking over the cash for it unless it is discounted very heavily. I would pay something for better graphics, though. In the meantime D3 or even D4 are just fine.

[Philippe]

That's pretty much how I feel about it.

I passed on Dominions 2 because it was too incremental.  I bit the bullet on Dominions 3, and yes, I liked it, but it wasn't all that different. Dominions 4 and 5 look awfully similar to 3. 

The game system is fun, but it's going to take a major graphic overhaul to lure me back in.  I'm a tad put off by how similar these paid iterations seem to be to each other.

[ghostryder]

Dom's problem is it really isn't deep...it's wide. instead of fiddling around with how bless works or pretender's cast spells or whatnot--that always seem to put things even more out of wack balance wise more attention to making the game 'deep' would be of more benefit. Anyone who plays large maps like me knows how it is when you got tons of gold but nothing to spend it on because build options are shallow. Do this with a GUI overhaul and graphics where you can at least identify what a unit is without clicking on it is what is needed- and the build options could make many unplayable combos playable again if done race by race---but the devs actually are going in the opposite direction. The GUI remains Fubar, units can't be recognized and build options are getting even more shallow. Throw in the imbalances that nerf many race/pretender options --- and it's just getting pointless to upgrade to a new version. Especially if you play multiplayer where a veteran player is going to exploit the hell out of the imbalances. And single player is rather dull because of the weak A.I.

But it's their game so they'll do what they want and just tell me to go play civ. 

[Nefaro]

New patch's notes:

It sounds like something minor, but I'm glad they finally gave us mouse wheel zoom for battle replays.   Been wanting that for a long time.
<:-)  Also hope the default random map gen settings provide more choke points.  Had been messing with the custom settings before.

Dominions 5.11
JANUARY 21   - JOHAN
A new nation appears, Mekone is a nation of giants that have unfinished business with the Gods. The random map creation has also been improved together with new features for the map editor. There are also new modding commands, some new contents for other nations, battle AI improvements, performance improvements and a whole bunch of bug fixes and minor tweaks.

General

New nation: Mekone
New god epithets
New Hero for EA Ermor
New spell: Sow Dragon Teeth
New item: Boots of water walking
MA Man recruitment cost tweaks
Attack rear now less reliable
Leper effects only results in one message per province
Battle performance improvement
Huge battles start in slow motion
'x' for super slow motion
Skip turn (n) speeds up more and returns to old playback speed
Raise/lower camera in battle with mouse wheel
Champion's Skull 10 -> 5 death gems
Battle AI slightly more willing to use gems at all
Sun awe more effective during Second Sun and Solar Brilliance
Events cannot occur if affected nation isn't in play
Limit number of units for commanders in events automatically
Fatigue 25 -> 50 for dmg
Took too little damage from communions
Smoother text scaling for income boxes
Too many combat recordings could crash the game
Network clients can change team nbr and pretender/disciple settings
Fix for multimove out of besieged castle
Fix for random gods with 3 in sorcery/element
Fix for communion damage
Fix for battle teleport
Fix for Hunter of Heroes crashing the game
Awe works against trample
Charge bonus is strength limited
Improved message for farstrike spells
Cannot view battlelogs outside combat
Communion fix (Masters casting slave)
Skirmisher trait for Ulm and Mekone
Fix for ranged target prediction
Unholy Weapons now affect pretenders too
Fix for Erytheian princesses and unaging
Fix for Throne of Creation
Shock damage could stun even when no damage was inflicted
Blood slaves started on walls
Fix for host time skew
Stupid units no longer attack themselves
Spellcasters in drawn out single combat will advance eventually
Fix for Mace of Eruption weapon info
Event unrest has a random variation
Chorus communion restricted properly
Prevent events causing negative population
God Vessels unwishable
Network showed disabled nations
Immortal now works when dying from some more unusual circumstances
Higher chance to remove some afflictions when reforming body
Fix for resource computation on multi turn commanders
Ardmon's Soul Trap didn't work
Hall of Fame size didn't wrap around properly
Wait now counts as Defend regarding siege strength
Typos fixed
New events
Stat fixes


Map Related Changes

Can set team start positions in map editor
Can hide flags in map editor
Tweaked filters in map editor
Better island and small sea creation for random maps
Use swapfiles during random map generation (less memory usage)
C'tis doesn't mind starting next to many rivers, others do
Mapeditor: Ctrl-b = load border pic and autocalculate areas
New map command: #teamstart
randommap progress bar improvement