Dominions 5 released

They could double the appeal of this game by having a decent artist spend an afternoon doing proper map artwork. Maybe go wild and hire an actual animator on top :)
 
I enjoyed Dominions 4 for a bit. Not having control over your units in battle and being able to hire the strongest units right away made me lose interest faster. I am a builder and strategist at heart. That's why games like Eador, HoMM and Civilization appeal to me more. Dominions does have some cool concepts though. I may have to try out the 5th one.
 
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I played 3 and enjoyed it for awhile. There are a lot of cool factions with unique mechanics, and they play out very, very differently. On the other hand the game's randomness was what did it in for me. Winning and losing depend a lot on factors completely outside of player control, and games can be very easy or very hard depending on starting position. I played out most of the factions once and then moved on.
 
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@you;
There is a lot of difference since dom3. For example, dom4 added the repeat recruitment option now dom5 has added repeat forging, rituals and multi-turn movement on the map. Just these 3 things really make the game flow better.

Multi turn movement being where you can tell your commander to go to a distant province and he'll make his way there automatically over a multiple turns. Compared to having to move each commander 1 province per turn manually this is a great quality of life improvement.
@forgottenlor;
The random events are not entirely outside the players control if you tip your luck scales towards fortune.
@Hastar;
What units you have is based on your nation and the age you're playing in. Your units are just the people of the nation. Most of them will be humans with different equipment based on the lore.

The real best units come from magic, whether super units from Summoning or Construction or a mage unit learning new spells from something else like Evocation and going from a level 1 magic missile attack to a fireball.
@NewDArt;
When it comes to these illwinter games, rather than focus on what they don't do I prefer to focus on what they don't do. I mean, look where ambition took HoMaM.
 
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When it comes to these illwinter games, rather than focus on what they don't do I prefer to focus on what they don't do. I mean, look where ambition took HoMaM.

So, actually caring about how your game looks is focus to you?

Nah, I think they should treat their customers and their own game with a little more respect. It would take very, very little to make this game look at least twice as good - with the bonus of expanding the audience.
 
Yeah, I hear you. There have been minor improvements in the graphics and more are always welcome.

But with the old graphics comes old business model too.

For eg. If I decided to play Civ4 and get all the DLC the first thing I think when Civ5 comes out is how much has been removed from civ4+DLC that I have to buy later to get the full game. With dom5 I know I have the full game always.

Civ games probably have the biggest budget of any strategy game so that's the best graphics you can expect. But Dominions has a lot more units than Civ or any other big budget strategy game because even with the top budget they still can't do animated 3D models for 3000 different units or they would have by now.

The graphics aren't that bad anyway. I think the units look really good. They have way more than 16 colours to them. I think it has 32bit colour! Fantastic!
 
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To each his own. I'm not talking about unit visuals - though it would be trivial for experienced artists to create simplistic 3D models sharing a skeletal mesh that would look ten times better and have actual animations.

They don't have to create 3000 individual meshes - that would be extremely unwise.

I'm talking about a decent looking map - which you will find in even the cheapest indie strategy games around. Animating a few clouds and making a proper UI with tooltips and so on.

Again, we're talking about a trivial effort that would cost very, very little.

But I know their mantra and their insistence on looking like shit. Apparently, they don't want to make a very small effort in order to appeal to a larger audience.

That's cool - and I don't mind. It's not like there's a shortage of cool strategy games for me to play that actually look like someone cared.
 
" It's not like there's a shortage of cool strategy games for me to play that actually look like someone cared. "

They do care. Have a look at the documentation page. There is a huge manual and a table of everything in the game.

What would you play instead, though? I can't think of very many strategy games.

Actually, one of the weak points of dom5 is the maps. Most of the dom4 maps were done by the community and haven't been updated for dom5 yet, so there's only 3 maps at the moment plus the random generator. Though the maps are a little more readable now and change colour to show cold areas, show magic sites as icons, but things like farmland and hills have been moved to a less readable spot.

Also, its funny I mentioned how I hate the Civ style DLC because they're announced Civ6 as an expansion to 5.
 
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I'm on the fence about 5, just because it seems like a handful of useful, but not essential changes for $35. I will say that Dom is one of the best strategy series around if you can stomach the graphics. It feels very random and overwhelming at first. I was really awful at it for a long time because there's a bunch of mechanics that require reading the actual manual, which was nearly 300 pages for Dom 3, to understand.
 
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" It's not like there's a shortage of cool strategy games for me to play that actually look like someone cared. "

They do care. Have a look at the documentation page. There is a huge manual and a table of everything in the game.

What would you play instead, though? I can't think of very many strategy games.

Actually, one of the weak points of dom5 is the maps. Most of the dom4 maps were done by the community and haven't been updated for dom5 yet, so there's only 3 maps at the moment plus the random generator. Though the maps are a little more readable now and change colour to show cold areas, show magic sites as icons, but things like farmland and hills have been moved to a less readable spot.

Also, its funny I mentioned how I hate the Civ style DLC because they're announced Civ6 as an expansion to 5.

It doesn't LOOK like they care, was my point.

Oh, there are several great games in this genre. I've yet to really delve into Endless Legend - but I've got all the DLC and I think it's a great game in terms of features and implementation. I like the emphasis on strategy over war, in particular.

Age of Wonders 3 is also very, very good - though it's a bit too focused on battles.

I must be one of the only people who likes Heroes VII, too :)

I like Civ 6 - but I honestly don't think the formula has changed much at all since Civ 2. So, every time a new one gets released - I tend to play it once to get that "Civ" feeling again - but I'm not excited about replays, because it's essentially the same experience over and over.

One thing all these games have in common is that they look like someone cared about them - and interacting with them feels tangible and you get a real sense of physicality about units and buildings.

The reason I tend to stay away from games like Europa Universalis and Dominions is that they utterly lack this vital aspect. They feel more like spreadsheets than games to me.
 
I couldn't get in to Endless Legend, but I wanted to like it. I don't think I'll ever give it the proper chance it deserves because it should have drawn me in within the first few minutes. Dungeon of the Endless was instantly entertaining and kept me coming back easy enough.

I like the early game in that Stardock fantasy one Fallen Enchantress. Walk around collecting loot and doing quests like its an RPG. Same with their space one the early game gathering asteroids is more fun than the late game where it becomes a slog to deal with everything. In Dom early game I always like to get 2 levels in Construction and craft some new equipment for my heroes as though I'm playing an RPG. Level them up a bit, research some new spells for them. Then you can face your hero against a whole army and test your build.

I liked age of wonders 3 but didn't play it that much. It's hard to put my finger on whats missing but I think its to do with the discovery on the map. There's not enough fun things to discover in the world. I think homam was more entertaining in that respect where you'd click on some fairy or something and have no idea what it would do. I like a bit of chaos.

Never played Heroes7 because of all the hate but I'd be very interested in 8 if the series ever comes back to life. I think Heroes is a way better example of a developer not caring than Dom, but I'm sure its in the hands of the publishers who provide enough money to develop good graphics but not enough time to make a polished game that people will be happy with.

Eador I can hardly remember now but I did instantly like it and thought it had some interesting new ways of doing things, but got over it super quickly.

There's others I've played briefly like crusader kings, but I don't feel like there's very many strategy games out there at all that suit me. I need a bit of rogue-like, sandbox, RPG and lots of combat and even though the graphics are bad in Dom there are battles with 100s of different units and they all have RPG stats and gear where in crusader kings battles are pretty much auto resolved.

Which brings us back to Ageofwonders3 because playing out the tactical battles in that got old very quickly and I think I prefer just watching the units fight on their own. You can still give them basic behaviors and formations before the battle and place them on the field and even tell them what order to cast their spells. Plus individual control as in a turn based game isn't really viable when you have so many units in a battle so I think in many ways dom has the best combat of any strategy game.

I mean, maybe my tactics just suck, but even in Total War I really just march them all in after placing them how I want on the field and giving them behaviors. Works fine. I don't think the direct realtime control adds that much, just a longer time messing around before the first blow is struck.
 
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