Dominions 5 Strategy: Remote Attacks - Army Killers

[@cheezemansam9567]

>Welcome back to what I hope will be a short guide video >38:48 Its a Dominions Guide all right.

[@raymondfindlay8070]

keep it up, slowly ill be convinced to play a multiplayer game one day. this game deserves so much more recognition!

[@PerunAU]

you should consider joining one of the many noob friendly games that get hosted. make contact if you'd ever like to try a game.

[@Doombot221]

Something niche I think is useful to note for murdering winter: the Niefelheim line of nations has Illwinter which snaps temp scales to cold. Combining Illwinter with murdering winter could be a powerful strategy from the way you described it

[@PerunAU]

It's brutal frankly. Especially when taking on human HP forces or similar. For bonus points, be fighting Xibalba, Ctis, or some other cold blooded nation when you do this, so their units are nuked by MW and then fatigue out rapidly in fights.

[@Doombot221]

@@PerunAU true, I just saw Lucid's recent Xiabalba vid and he was having a rough time with Nief's cold scales. In the late game I can imagine that would be a brutally effective tactic--especially since bats rely so heavily on numbers

[@ben8147]

@@Doombot221 Ozzies have solid HP, they could probably live through a murdering winter, then make sure your commanders either have solid HP or frost res

[@ben8147]

Not that it wouldn't kick the shit out of a unprepared bat stack

[@ben8147]

Not that it wouldn't kick the shit out of a unprepared bat stack

[@Warmagon]

Based on my limited D4 play, I think there are two additional things that might be relevant. The first is that there are certain operational advantages to remote army attacking spells that may give them utility not completely reflected in the gems cost. Consider an army leaving your fort+lab to go on the offensive somewhere. You load them up with gems and items and send them out and they invade somewhere and may approach a key province like a throne or capital in several turns. Remote attacks in support of this army can be done with gems and mages you didn't even necessarily have when you launched the offensive, and they can potentially hit the front lines instantly instead needing to spend several turns moving up to the spearhead. If you're concerned about a one key battle in the near term, you are potentially thus able to throw more resources into that battle by using a remote spell AND some battle magic that eats gems versus sending guys out with gems, and then sending out a second wave later on with more gems. Maybe using the gems on combat summons and buffs would be more gem effective, but without a lab you can't put more gems on mages in the field already. The second is that based on the turn sequence, there is only a single healing step that occurs very late in the turn order. So even if you aren't necessarily killing a ton of enemies with say Murdering Winter, if you are doing damage in other steps too, then you may be getting value out of the spell that doesn't show up immediately, IIRC. Very few 20 HP guys would die, but it would be a lot easier to kill them later on if half of them have around 10 damage on them when the battle starts.

[@flamedeluge1332]

Melancholia would have been a good counter against your Hatun Runa stacks in your Nazca campaign. Also notably a far number of communion slave mages have poor morale (like Bandar Log Yogis or MA T'ien Chi Imperial Geomancers). Doom/Baleful Star could be combined with a follow-up Bone Grinding. It also improves battlefield damage enchants like Foul Vapours or Acid Storm, because they trigger so many low-damage attacks, units get afflictions.

[@teakwondochest3287]

Flame Deluge why waste 20 e gems on freespawn

[@TheGahta]

@@teakwondochest3287 both are freespawn in nature so the decision is on availability

[@teekay851]

Wow nice, Baleful Star + Bone Grinding sounds nasty!

[@TerenceMichaelReeves]

Something worth mentioning, maybe, about Baleful Star is that it also gives a province misfortune scales. When combined with other spells, this can amplify their effect. For instance, melancholia+baleful star can unlock more severe events in a province with some chance - maybe not a large chance - but some chance of those events doing permanent or long-term damage to a province.

[@entropius]

Another note about these remote attacks: if they happen to pop a commander, you can potentially moveblock anyone they are leading (since unled troops can't move). So if you're engaging an army on the turn that it moves, Murdering Winter will pop some of the troops -- and leave others stuck in the same province they're coming from, meaning they won't be in the resulting fight.

[@catsareevil101]

Watching people panic as those spells come out is one of the funniest parts of late game! Unless you are the one to first learn they are online of course.

[@TheMelnTeam]

Wouldn't beckoning be pretty nasty when combined with dark skies? Won't pass many morale checks like that, so all that's left is a difficult MR check.

[@teakwondochest3287]

imo beckoning is only worth it when you have an excess amount of N gems (pangea) and you cast it on forests (which you usually have lots of as pangea)

[@JoJeck]

Surely human sized mages can be protected from flames from the sky and murdering winter by a) using a coral blade (gets +8 HP) or b) using an item giving fire or cold resistance even 5 resist is good 10 resist essentially counters the spell. So in the late game when these spells are used you need to build up a stock of cheap items using a hammer and they can be useful in battle anyway. Not all your mages need to be protected just the important ones casting key spells. Doing that can make casting those spells have much less impact than desired.

[@TheMelnTeam]

Twist fate is also an option (rabbit foot charm). Usually you'd prefer to use water gems in this role to using astral but sometimes nations have limited stuff available (like if you're MA Marignon going into cold).

[@KermodeBear]

Excellent video, thanks!

[@mhenry53186]

Great video, as usual. Just a heads up, though - Wolven Winter and Murdering Winter can't be cast from underwater despite the "May Use Underwater [uwok]" labelling. Learned this the hard way. Bug report submitted to Illwinter.

[@rhoddryice5412]

What would be the equivalent of HIMARS?

[@Kellnaved]

Couldn´t we use Fires from Afar to attack an enemy Lab-Province to kill the mages there? Granted the range is very limited but aren´t there ways to improve that?

[@PerunAU]

Staff of flame focus at const 2 is my usual go to for extending the reach in this way.

[@Hapsasa]

Arcane lens also gives you an extra range in a misc slot

[@jhoxha]

Battle of the Somme dominions edition. It's interesting how once these spells come out the conflict becomes like trench warfare .

[@ClubbingSealCub]

Still waitin' on that 'fuck up some provinces' video. Although I can imagine it being 'spam hurricane lol'.

[@belgarat101]

bit late but Balefulstar combines well with FV or bloodletting drop to cause afflictions on big stacks

[@ah848]

Is Wolven Winter guaranteed to turn a province to Cold 3 before Murdering Winter goes off or is the spell order random?

[@PerunAU]

the synergy isn't that clean. wolven winter shifts temperature by 3 scales during the event phase, meaning it always occurs after murdering winter. it also means you may need to use ww twice to prep a province for murdering.

[@zorrozalai]

That's one reason why I like giant nations. They are immun to murdering winter and flames from the sky.

[@Bill_Garthright]

This is very interesting. Thanks. Admittedly, it's not what I wanted to hear. :) I was just planning to try Flames from Afar on the Ermor capital in my current single-player game (as MA Phlegra). Ermor is such a pain! I never know how to deal with them, since they kill off all of the population in the provinces surrounding them. And my entire army tends to get afflictions before I can finally get some supply items crafted. In this particular case, I've penned them up in the capital (except for where they can get into the water), but they keep sending out huge armies to just wander, apparently at random, through my empire. And I have a very hard time catching them - or defeating them when I finally do catch them. Well, it's not that bad. Nothing is really challenging me in this game. Right now, all I need to do is finish up taking a few more thrones and I'll be done. But I was hoping to knock back that huge stack of undead that Ermor has in their capital, so they don't send out another annoying army while I'm doing that. I might give it a try anyway, since I've got tons of fire gems. (If I could predict where their army will go, I'd probably just try a ton of fire elementals. But I can't.) And most of the spells you mention won't work on undead, right? (I'm only on Turn 42, and it would take forever to get to Evocation 9!) But this was very useful. Thanks!

[@franconnorton7087]

I fought MA Ermor as MA Man. My Mothers and daughters give a supply bonus and when communed up can cast the level 5 holy spell which turns all priests a level higher and Ma Man has 25 gold monks that can research so you have a lot on hand. Ermor was basically a Gem factory for me. Single player game so of course Human opponents would be harder but Man counters them hard.

[@Bill_Garthright]

@@franconnorton7087 Thanks for the info. I won this game by keeping Ermor penned up in their capital. Every so often, as I noted, they'd send a massive army wandering through my lands, and it was very hard to catch them, since they kept moving pretty much at random. But I could keep them from expanding by taking back each province as they moved on, so their dominion didn't destroy my provinces _everywhere._ I won the game by ignoring their capital and taking the thrones I needed. _However,_ they weren't next to a big body of water in this game. Luckily, there was very little water on that map, because I couldn't dislodge them from the water. Ermor can easily go into the water, and I don't know much about doing that, myself - certainly not early enough in the game to make a difference. I didn't think about communes improving Holy. That really didn't occur to me. Phlegra doesn't really have that option - not easily, at least - but I'll have to remember it in future games. Thanks! I'm still not sure what I'd do to get them out of the water, though. (Admittedly, I usually just ignore the water. Heh, heh.)

[@smonkey001]

Yes, human stacks late game just cant step outside of their dome at all. Late game is boring imo.

[@Kaiser282]

Honestly, cursing seems like a tactic when you want your soon to be enemy who's in a war to take more casualties without getting directly involved.

[@kaedenparten9126]

Thats what I was thinking too, indirectly influencing a war between two other nations