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[ChairmanPoo]

I got it for 5 in  a supersale nd I have to agree. If anything it's buggier and more confusing than 3

[chaoticag]

On the other hand I never quite managed to really get into 3 for whatever reason, and I think the additions for 4 made it more worthwhile, if only because the battlescape makes me feel like battles are less arbitrary. Though kinda curious what you do mean by more confusing? Like, overall, or in certain aspects?

[Graven]

I got this full price after reading the thread on SA twice start to end, since I love turn-based strategies and this seemed pretty different and interesting. I have zero experience with Dominions or previous CoE games.

Played a single game with High Priestess on the largest possible map and 6 easiest opponents, just to give myself time to experience as much as possible.

The pace I feel is pretty slow, mostly in movement - I may have made the mistake of having too few commanders, forcing me to spend ages trundling my 3 or 4 good ones around. Bear in mind one of my favourite option in WOG is having double movement, so I might be biased, but I just wasn't having much fun, especially towards the end.

There is surprisingly high diversity of units - more so considering summoning rituals.

The gameplay is ... well, absent. I kept thinking there is something I'm missing - no buldings, no unit control? But it seems this is the way it is, and it's basically watching someone else smash action figures against each other. I admit there's a ton of action figures, and I'd love to see all classes - some cool units have a really low chance of being summoned, and some of the classes sound amazing.

The only thing that's stopping me is, well, that's all it's going to be - seeing.

I'm trying to get a friend with whom I spent lots and lots of hours playing Heroes 3 and Disciples 2 to come try it, but it's been difficult, mostly for real-life reasons. Hopefully we have the time soon, it'll probably be a lot more fun.

All in all, I liked what I saw, but the simplicity of the gameplay was surprisingly disappointing. I'll try it again soon, since it's in no way actually bad.

[Frumple]

Eh, gameplay wise it's mostly strategy et al rather than tactical decisions (mostly; there's some stuff on the ground level with army composition, terrain, items, and choosing which spells to cast). Deciding where to go, how to use your resources, what's worth defending and not, so on, so forth. Illwinter mostly does that kind of thing... they tend to be pretty hands off so far as combat or fiddly construction or whatev' goes, and even with dominions (their bigger/more complicated game) all you do so far as that goes is set up formations and limited orders (charge forward, hold a couple turns, incentivise certain spells for a few turns, that sort of thing). There's a vaguely messed up amount of nuance involved there, but it's not your standard kind of direct control thing.

Vis a vis buildings, there are some permanent structure type things for some classes, though they're usually more modifying stuff that's already there than making new map features, but you're generally not flapping around building new towns, no. And not all classes have access to something like that, either.

It is kinda' slow, though. The games are actually intended to be relatively short, from what I understand,* but most of the classes don't have much that goes very fast and the way resource generation and seasons and whatnot function kinda' work counter to that t'boot. Some of the classes have an easier time with that... though I forget exactly which ones, ehehe.

Still, you'll probably find it taking less time as you get more familiar with things, get a better handle on expansion and what units move fastest, have to spend less time figuring out what you intend to do, and that sort of thing.

* Picking the largest map was pretty much guaranteed to make it a slog, basically, and the lowest difficulty AIs are... kinda' braindead, even for turn based strategy AI, to the point they pretty regularly get taken out by moose or somethin'. Smaller map and smarter AIs make for something where you're doing a lot less trudging around and a lot more other stuff. More commanders and more armies definitely can help, too.

[E. Albright]

I will say this: don't pin your hopes on MP for this. YMMV, but right after this came out I gave MP one go and that was it for me. It's... too slow. Miserably so. I still enjoy playing SP every now and again, but MP? Never again.

[Criptfeind]

I disagree a little bit, I've found that the most fun to be had for me at least in this game is playing it with a few friends against a couple of beefed up AI. Give the AI the more basic (IE: Shit.) races as we pick whatever catches our interest and summon fantastical monsters as we wade though thousands of helpless humans. There's also sometimes some cool moments, in one solo game I played one of the enemy AI ripped open a gate to hell and doomed the world. I tried and failed to stem the tide of demons at the portal, but it was too much for my mid tier armies. All the AIs died to endless armies of demons and I eventually was forced to retreat to the underworld with what undead troops could survive there. Eventually got ripped apart by ghosts.

That said, the game feels... I'm not sure if I'd say flawed per say, but shallow, like a coffee break strategy game only it takes longer then a coffee break to play. No unit control, completely brainless AI (I'm pretty sure higher difficulties are just a resource and eventually stat multiplier and the AI stays dumb as bricks at all levels.), not a hint of balance, no tactics and strategy such as it is seems very light. It mostly seems to boil down to avoid taking loosing fights if you can as you snag the most resources that you can without loosing your base. I'd say it's biggest issue is the lack of battle scripting. Without it battles are truly just a grind of one army against another and sorta loose their appeal after a couple of games, no tactical control and only lite strategy makes a very shallow game. All in all it's not something I could recommend for the asking price.

[Gigalith]

It depends what you're looking for.

I was seeking a coffeebreak "roguelike" strategy game from the start, so it's just what I'm looking for. (It's now one of my favorite games, BTW) The unbalance doesn't bug me as such--it's supposed to be hilariously random. Which, as an aside, is probably why you don't want to start a game on an Enormous map--a mistake I've made a few times. The game works better in smaller doses.

Also, I had played the ancient prequel, CoEII, quite a bit, so I kinda knew what to expect. This isn't the grand cathedral of Dominions. This is the bar.

EDIT: Particularly don't start on an Enormous map with one of those classes that require masses of normal terrain. (I.e. the Dryad Queen) It's just too much.

The greater AI difficulties just give it a resource boost. I'd suggest Butler (?), because with too few resources the AI usually gets creamed by the wildlife.

[E. Albright]

CoE 5 is out. The three new factions are Scourge Lords (whose description paints them as Bedouin-inspired armies led by Dark-Sun-despoiler-style mages), Kobold Kings (quasi-elemental little swarming dragon-kin pests), and Cloud Lords (Caelian cloud-dwellers). Have only very briefly played so far, mostly drowning my birdmen by flying them too far from solid clouds and having them rest on unstable ones over water. It looks like exactly what you'd expect: CoE but moreso - combat maps in particular are significantly more varied even if they haven't fundamentally changed. Same dry unreliable-narrator wit in the unit descriptions. More complete changelist here: http://www.illwinter.com/coe5/whatsnew.html

[EuchreJack]

$25 seems a bit high.  COE is great fun, but more a snack than a meal of a game.

[Micro102]

I'm hesitant about CoE games. They seem so heavily based on who can find the enemy's fortress first. It's not rare for my fortress to be sniped while I'm clearing areas because the Ai just happened to find me early, and when I keep a defensive force behind I drag behind the AI in terms of resources.

[Nelia Hawk]

I'm hesitant about CoE games. They seem so heavily based on who can find the enemy's fortress first. It's not rare for my fortress to be sniped while I'm clearing areas because the Ai just happened to find me early, and when I keep a defensive force behind I drag behind the AI in terms of resources.

than again i often see ai die in the first few turns too and out of 6 ai most of the game its just 3 i play with, because the other 3 died in the first 20 turns or so. (i wish i could create a game ans just spectate it to see how the ai dies that quick often)

but i also had games where i was "stuck" on my fortress the first turns because i want to wait till i got more an army to deal with whats around me and 50 turns later i see an enemy army of 150 appear.

if i compare this game to i.e. age of wonders, even civ or stellaris... than you usually have a bit of room to expand early, where in CoE your starting area seems completely random... (and i guess its wanted like that to create different stories)

maybe the starter base should have 10 crossbowman that cant be moved and that heal up by 1 each turn up to 10 incase they die. i feel that would make the start a bit more forgiving. also might help the ai out too.
or maybe the starter bases should have 2 "arrow towers" near the gate for some defence. (2 ballista is probbaly too much, 10 crossbowman might already be too much... maybe 5 spearman+5archers?(or whatever equivalent the classes have))

games usually have some sort of "militia" or "turrets" to defend a base... this one doesnt if you dont wait till you have 50 gold for some archers to keep on the starter fort.

but i guess that is just how this game works with its randomness... i.e. in dominions you can also usually expand a bit without much of a problem.

[nenjin]

but i guess that is just how this game works with its randomness... i.e. in dominions you can also usually expand a bit without much of a problem.

Really depends on the map size, which is why I make larger than normal custom maps, so I can have a good number of turns before I'm anywhere near another Pretender's dominion.

[E. Albright]

With Dominions it's not just map size that can make things cramped. The map meta that emerged in early Dom4 was "NSEW wrap, plus the more interconnected and the fewer bottlenecks the better", which led to functional map size shrinking b/c in a node-based map, having a higher number of connections (or degree, if we're using graph theory terms) per node means the shortest path between any two points on the map is lowered and what at first seems like a map with a lot of room to expand quickly starts to feel crowded. That at least isn't an issue in CoE - bigger maps translate directly to more elbow room.

I could see Illwinter being sympathetic to having initial bases having a static guard - they added static garrisons to forts in Dom5 - but that they didn't add anything like that does suggest they want to keep it smaller-scale and less mechanically complex still.

I will say that the number of new items letting you launch invasions of some of the harder-to-reach planes does kinda make me want to load up a game with Bystander mod on and set my ultimate goal as invading both heaven and hell...

[...and I see the Steam workshop already has a mod that starts you with two nerfed ballista towers in your capital, so there's that for homeguarding...]

[Cthulhu]

I always make huge COE maps, and yeah I remember the one Dom4 pbem game I played was in a fully interconnected map.  Seemed big but in practice we were immediately all over each other.  Bad times.

[Micro102]

All this talk about CoE made me load up CoE4 again, and I ended up turtling with dwarves while two big AI swarmed around my mines with massive armies. And then I realized.... My ballista have a range of 16 for their siege attack. Does this mean that if I have so many units in my fort that the siege weapons are more than 16 tiles away from the enemy, that they won't fire?

I hope not, because that would make the inability to place units manually inexcusable.