Illwinter's strategy game
Dominions 6 released today. Frankly, it wasn't on my radar at all, but it was a pleasant surprise given all the fun I've had in the past with Dominions 5. To celebrate, I thought I would put out a playthrough, mainly for those curious about what has changed and the state of the game on release.
This will be written primarily as a comparison to Dom5 (it's a complicated game, and I'll have to assume a broad familiarity with Dominions from the reader to avoid getting bogged down with every detail).
This first post is mostly going to be very boring setup.
Right off the bat, the game title screen looks basically the same. The ugly as sin 3D background, the same loading screen, same UI, etc. I'm not complaining; I'd expect nothing less! Or nothing more, I should say.
However, the map creation immediately piques my interest:
What's this? Not only are there new options for the shape of a random world, there's this "Underground Layout" business. I'm aware that Illwinter has another strategy game ("Conquest of Elysium" I think it's called) which has additional planes that the main terrestrial map connects to (though I've never played it). It seems they've added this feature to Dominions as well, at least for a new underground plane (which is welcome given how terrible the randomly generated cave terrain tended to be in Dom5).
For this game, I selected the donut world and the third underground layout from the right.
For the AI player selection, I go with 5 random land nations and 2 random water nations. For myself, I select EA Yomi:
This is probably the nation I played the most in Dom5 (I also played it in the most recent Bay12 MP match), so it seemed a natural choice for my first try in Dom6. It's also something of a "cave" nation, which seems appropriate given the new plane. Nothing much seems to have changed, except that temples are now 300g for Yomi to build (I seem to remember them being 200g).
There are a few ways to play Yomi, but I'll base my strategy this game around one of its powerful "thug" units, the Dai Oni:
In dom5, with the right bless these cute little guys are perfectly capable of clearing an independent province on their own, offering a very "greedy" expansion strategy that's high-risk (but can potentially acquire many provinces with zero losses and relatively little long-term expense). I'd like to get at least two of them going as quickly as possible to do this, though I immediately notice that the gold cost has been increased relative to dom5 (which concerns me given Yomi's general poverty). Later they can cast powerful supporting spells if need be, but are mainly useful in melee. For actual armies, I'll probably rely primarily on the zero-upkeep oni Yomi gets gets for "free" from building temples, but the tiny little goblins with pikes are also surprisingly good (though they'll be weaker in this version due the the unit size changes, as now only 5 can fit in a square instead of 6 in Dom5).
Between the Dai Oni gold cost, temple gold cost, and goblin size change it seems Yomi has gotten somewhat weaker in Dom6, but maybe that's a premature judgement.
Next, pretender god creation! But before even looking at the options for the pretender god itself, I'm much more curious about what's changed with the 'bless' mechanics (a buff applied to a nation's special 'sacred' troops, in my case just the Dai Oni and weaker Oni Sugo commander).
The mechanics for bless creation have changed significantly. Instead of having the bless points themselves be tied to a specific magic path, they're all in one pool now (and it seems all magic paths above 1 contribute bless points). For example, Fire x4 + Air x2 would give you (3+1=4) bless points, and all 4 points could be used for any fire or air effect that you otherwise meet the path requirements for. This means it's now possible to take more bless effects from the same category than before, by taking bless points from other paths to "subsidize" it (like if you really wanted a ton of water blesses or something, you could take other cheaper paths and use their points on water blesses).
There have also been a few changes to the bless effects themselves (most notably a new set for the new "glamour" magic path). The major/minor elemental resistances have been condensed into one effect, some effects have been shuffled around, and a few new effects added.
Fire
Air
Water
Earth
Astral
Death
Nature
Glamour
Blood
There's nothing new in Earth, Astral, or Nature that I can see, but the other paths got new stuff:
Righteous Wrath (Fire x4):
Blessed units will become filled with righteous fury if another sacred unit is killed in its vicinity (range 2). The furious one will get increased strength attack skill and morale for a short while (Att +3, Str +3, Morale +6).
Anything relying on your units dying seems quite bad. For Yomi, this is completely useless.
Unbearable Splendour (Fire x8, Astral x4):
Blessed units are surrounded by an aura of Unbearable Splendour. Anyone trying to strike them must pass a MR check or be permanently blinded.
This doesn't strike me as ever being worth 12 bless points (plus the additional expense of requiring a x8 path, especially in fire).
Awareness (Air x3):
Blessed units have an uncanny awareness of their surroundings and almost feel the air move around them (unsurroundable +2).
This one immediately got my attention. It's cheap and seems amazing for certain thugs, including Dai Oni. I'm not sure if this is crazy overpowered, or just ok (though to be fair I've never paid close attention to the "unsurroundable" attribute's impact on actual results, which seems quite subtle and may not be as important as I think).
Weightlessness (Air x5, Earth x1)
Blessed units and their equipment becomes almost weightless. They ignore most of the weight of heavy armors as well as gains [sic] the 'floating' trait. Encumbrance from armors is halved, but spellcasting is still difficult. Mounts with weightless riders will not receive the encumbrance penalty for having a rider.
Seems quite expensive for what it does (armor encumbrance in melee has never struck me as terribly important, and this is only a 50% reduction). The 'floating' effect is notable, though, having numerous quirky but useful side effects.
Slowing Weapons (Water x5)
Attacks from blessed units will make those hit apathetic and slow unless they resist the effect (Slow 50%, Att -2, Def -2).
My first thought is that this strikes me as comparable to but better than the "withering weapons" death bless. Seems pretty good.
Vitriol Weapons (Water x6 + Fire x2
The weapons of blessed units are coated in vitriol. Those hit will suffer from acidic burns and their armors might become damaged (7 AP acid damage).
Seems extremely weak for 8 bless points, but maybe the armor damage effect is better than I think.
Mending Bones (Death x3)
All sacred undead units will heal battle afflictions over time outside of battle. Mending Bones does not work on those who suffer from old age.
Cheaper 'recuperation' for undead only. If it worked on demons I'd instantly pick this for Yomi, but I doubt it does.
Glamour stuff!
Undreaming (Glamour x1)
All sacred units will be more resistant versus sleep effects (+4 MR vs sleep). The chance of waking up each combat round is also doubled.
Useless, but very cheap?
Heroism (Glamour x1)
All sacred units will gain +50% more experience.
Seems ok for the price, but only for 'thug' users.
Quiet stride (Glamour x2)
All stealthy sacred units move with exceptional stealth. The stealth value of sneaking sacreds is increased by +20.
Elves...
True Sight (Glamour x3)
All sacred units can see through illusions and glamour. They also ignore certain glamour effects such as Mirror Image, Blur and Invisibility. They are still affected by darkness.
Spirit sight seems much better, but this is slightly cheaper.
Blur (Glamour x3)
Blessed units will become blurred and difficult to see and attack in melee. Attacking units have their attack skill reduced by 2. Attackers with true sight or spirit sight ignore the Blurred condition as do blind ones.
An economical (but conditional) +2 defense. Seems ok.
Obfuscate (Glamour x6)
All sacred units are stealthy. Already stealthy sacreds will become even more difficult to find (stealth +40).
We're all elves now.
Awe (Glamour x6 + Fire x2)
Blessed units will have Awe (+3). Anyone trying to strike them must pass a morale check first.
Was Fire x7 in Dom5, and also only gave Awe +1 IIRC. Getting +3 instead might be kind of busted. Basically a required pick if trying to take independent provinces with a solo Dai Oni.
Displacement (Glamour x7)
Blessed units appear beside their actual position and are very difficult to hit in melee. Attacking units have their attack skill reduced by 5. Attackers with true sight or spirit sight ignore the Displaced condition as do blind ones.
Defense +5, yeesh. Kind of feeling this makes spirit sight an auto-pick in MP, or at least true sight. Yomi's best units are all demons, which thankfully get spirit sight for free.
Dread (Glamour x7)
Blessed units are shrouded in nightmares. Nearby enemies will see these nightmares as if they were real and likely flee from battle. Units that can see invisible [sic] can see through the illusions and are not affected. (Fear +5, true sight negates)
Cheaper fear than you can get from Death, but I feel like I'd always prefer Displacement over this.
Luck (Glamour x8, requires +2 Luck scales)
It's just luck, formerly in Astral, I forgot to copy the description
With that infodump out of the way, here's my pretender:
A boring 'rainbow' enchantress, but I want to see if there are new magic sites, craftable items, etc. Awe is the most important part of the bless, which happily also means taking the new glamour path. These effects are all defensive, but a Dai Oni is hardly lacking in the "offense" department.
IIRC my taking 'Drain' scales as Yomi raised some eyebrows in the last Bay12 MP game. I think it works well, provided we can still craft owl quills and skull mentors (the awake god will research our way to Construction 4 while we basically recruit nothing but Dai Oni at first).
One notable change over Dom5 is that I'm limited to +/-2 in all scales (except 'Turmoil', due to Yomi getting +1 to maximum turmoil indicated on a prior screen). The Oni Kunshu pretender gives +1 to turmoil limit as well, but this is tragically pointless as it remains capped at 3.
Finally, we're ready to start playing the game. Well, except for the game settings screen:
"Diplomacy is binding"? Interesting! We'll see how the AI handles this.
"Artifact yearning"? What? No clue on this one. It says it triggers at Construction 9, maybe we'll push for that.
"Legendary spell research" apparently means that all level 9 spells need to be researched individually, instead of getting all of them at once.
I dump a bunch of thrones in, maybe we'll see something new. And with that, setup is complete...
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Topic: Dominions 6 Release Day Playthrough [Singleplayer, EA Yomi] (Read 4260 times)