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[Showbiz]

Should I buy it?

Steam reviews are really good (93% positive) and frequently praised for its depht and complexity.
I am not sure if it's rather fiddly than deep and immersive.

What was your expirience with the game?

https://store.steampowered.com/app/722060/Dominions_5__Warriors_of_the_Faith/




Screenshots

Map

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Battlefield

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[IWishIWereSarah]

There is a big thread about it in this forum : http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167436.0

And there are regularly multiplayer games organized, too : http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=172676.0

This is a nice game, and there are cool updates that add new factions sometimes. there are also mods that add factions you would expect (Lord of the rings or warhammer inspired, for example).

It's a cool game to play in multi, or in Single-player if you don't mind the stupid AI.
It has way more depth in multi-player, since the AI will not change its strategy much if you can find a counter (although its strategy will change with time, because of you magics and unlocks).

[Showbiz]

Oh darn, I've searched for a existing thread but failed miserably obviously.

[Vortex Rikers]

Dominions 3 is the only game that for over a decade+ has never been deleted from my hard drive. This honour extends to 4, and 5, as they're basically improvements rather than re-imaginings. It's brilliant, relatively easy to get into for a 4x game, and playing on and off for years and years I still feel I only have a above-basic grasp of it all, considering that there's easily 3000+ different units, and something like 900+ unique spells in this game.
Already a thread about it here; http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=167436.0
Careful you don't drown in the depth this game has to offer.

[Radsoc]

I got a couple of hundred hours in Dominions 4. Multiplayer is great with a deeper layer and flexibility of strategy than any other game. Emergent strategies are also a thing, the amount of possibilities makes it possible for people to discover new tactics that nobody intended specifically, but that as it turns out are possible and works. This is where the AI falls short. Typically one turn a day, unless you do a "blitz". Some games I played have lasted months. Single player is for picking and learning a nation (as well as the game itself) for MP IMO, but it's a working strategy game in SP as well, just not at its full potential for experienced players. As mentioned, I have a couple of hundred hours, but in that time I have mainly only played one of the nations available. Mechanics are potentially very different between nations, and strategies are for sure

Dominions 5 adds "simultaneity" to battles to make them more natural in a way. Each Dom iteration seems to have different focus, but if you learn one it's easy to learn the next.

[Il Palazzo]

If you never intend to play multiplayer, I'd say skip it. Otherwise it's one of the best things there is.

[E. Albright]

Some people like SP and play SP exclusively, so YMMV. Most don't though; the overlap between "people who like this kind of game" and "people who enjoy SP in this game" seems pretty small. The AI is a lot better than it used to be, and still gets worked on, but it will never be as unpredictably nasty as a clever human can be (even if it also won't do some of the unpredictably dumb things humans do).

I personally play SP more than MP, but I also do procedural mod gen (that's also a thing with this). However, I'll add the caveat that I don't think I've ever finished a SP game in Dom5; the end is a slog, and if I'm testing stuff I rarely play past early/mid-game. Even as someone who plays far more SP than most, I freely concede that there's some tiresome aspects to SP (although it can be satisfying, and if I'm not careful I can get spanked pretty badly).

[Frumple]

Don't have D5 yet, but I've finished a number of d3/4 SP games. Almost exclusively via dom push, heh. It is a slog, but especially on smaller maps it's not that difficult to end up winning basically unintentionally. Not paying attention to exactly how hard you're pushing temples while you're brawling with the AI and suddenly there's no black candles left.

Freespawn nations occasionally do roughly the same thing. You'll be moving crap around just to get it out of your capital or something and end up accidentallying the world.

[Il Palazzo]

I should amend my previous statement. Dominions 4 was the best thing. I've realised that the reason I don't play Dom5 nearly as often as 4, is that I don't really understand the battlefield now. Its larger size and simultaneous rounds make it much harder to painstakingly plan every single move. Where previously I could reasonably well predict what would happen during battles, round after round, now it's much less chess - much more chaos and playing by the gut.
Which is probably just me getting old and having trouble adapting.

[nenjin]

I only play Dom single player, but I love it. It has so much flavor. Every nation, every era, every pretender, just feels like this cohesive set of ideas. Is the gameplay between them all that different? No. But it’s fun for me to explore each nation and combo and get in to it.

That said, without MP, the game does start to feel a little generic and repetitive because eventually you’ve got dozens of commander units at that stage the map, two dozen researchers, unimaginative AI, etc...but at its heart it’s a war game, not an RPG, so that is expected. But I’ve never regretted buying Dom 3, 4 or 5, despite never even wanting to try MP.

[a1s]

I only play Dom single player, but I love it.

Is it the waiting? Multiplayer games last for months on end, whereas a single player game can be done in an evening or two.

[Trolldefender99]

Maybe I missed something, but it seemed more like a battle simulator to me

Can't control battles, barely any buildings to build and really all I could do was build an army and attack. Even if it was against humans, it still seemed like a battle simulator.

Granted I only played 1 hour and 58 minutes (Dominions 4) since I wanted to refund it without going over the time. But I thought it was really basic at first glance, and there wasn't anything to build barely except an army. And again, the battles are 100% automated making it a battle simulator to me.

Maybe I missed something. But even if I was doing multiplayer, personally not my type of game. If you like building stuff and strategy there isn't much of that from what I saw. The only strategy it seemed was army composition and what province to take.

But again take it with a grain of salt...a little less than 2 hours isn't really much to see any game. But it felt super super basic and something I'd play on my mobile phone...again though gotta repeat, that its possible I missed a huge part of the game and battles are controllable (not that I could see) and a ton of stuff to build. Dunno. But that is my close to 2 hour experience of the game.

[nenjin]

I only play Dom single player, but I love it.

Is it the waiting? Multiplayer games last for months on end, whereas a single player game can be done in an evening or two.

That, for sure. When you can have your turn done in 10 mins and can end up waiting an hour to a couple of days for a new turn....

But also, Dom is about strats. Strats to wreck people. I just don't really feel like being subjected to someone's professional combo, tbh. I've read the Dom threads and people can be eeeeevvvvviiiilllll.

Maybe I missed something.

I mean, it is a 4x game. Conquering territory, upgrading provinces. Random events. Finding special heroes and units. Crafting cool magic items. It all eventually comes back to the battles, but there's a lot going in to those battles.

At a surface level you just recruit a crap ton of troops and throw them at the enemy. That's all SP really offers you because the AI just isn't that crafty. But when you play against players...the troops they pick, what they buff them with, the spells they choose to cast during battle, the way they build their super units and with what gear, the global spells they cast.....that's what gives battle all these other layers beyond just plopping troops down and letting them murder each other. It's what elevates the game from just being a big numbers game. And all that depth and complexity doesn't really come across in SP. Or if it does, you're never really put to the test against the AI.

I guess I like Dom because of its epic scale, the flavor, the themes and all the details. It's definitely a game from a different era of strategy games.

[a1s]

Battles are not controllable the way you want them to be controllable. There is some depth, however, in how you set up your forces and what orders you give them (in case of mages, down to the individual spells they should use,) but once you submit your turn- that's it, no more input.

Your criticism is on point with regards to this being a battle simulator, and all other aspects being subservient to that. You conquer territories to finance your army, you research spells to either improve your battle performance or summon troops, you build forts to recruit your faction's troops. The only thing that doesn't really feed into the battles is Dominion itself (and even that, IIRC, gives you +1 morale.) Some (me) would say that isn't a criticism at all: it's a pretty good battle simulator, with the way all the little pieces (archers/mages/flyers/resistances/global effects/etc.) interact. But I can see it being outside someone's interest zone.   

[Il Palazzo]

I tried to respond but the statement about there being no strategy broke me.
I think there must be some semantic disagreement about what strategy means or something. But I still can't even.