Dominions 6 Developing a National Strategy Part 1: Troops and Synergies.

So there are lots of really good new player guides out there right now, but I wanted to do a deep dive aimed at newer players with a little bit of experience who want to start working on figuring out how to start fitting the various bits of a nation together into a coherent strategy. I'm using Fomoria as my exemplar but my hope is that there is advice here that you can use to develop a strategy for a number of different nations.
I'm hoping to turn this into a single player LP.
I also have an MP game as Man going that will likely be making it up onto the channel in one form or another.

[@myrrhaj6481]

so excited about the new wave of dominions content on YT with the release of 6

[@3232sbr]

Thanks for the video! I have a couple 100 hours in Dom 4&5, so I know what the buttons do but have been looking all over for a video like this to help learn the game on a deeper level.

[@imperialus1]

I'm glad it is helpful. Just finishing up editing part 2 right now. Should be up in a few hours.

[@littlegreen6355]

Thanks for an excellent stream! Appreciate your personal take, analysing a race and how to form your strategy. I like your more advanced thoughts compared to totally-new-player-guides. I appreciated to learn a /to me/ new nation. I saw that Nemedian Warriors are good and price-worthy, Fir Bolg Druids are cheap researchers and Fomorian Druid is a great battle mage. And the Fomorian movement powers are very valuable; sailing and going under water. I'd like to say that ChazzyBurgers streams are IMHO much better for new/medium-experienced players than the three mentioned. LucidTactics has deep multiplayer experienced and IconGaming is as always the charming and enjoyable presentator. DasTactics jumps from game to to game as per usual, never going beyond the surface. But I never saw as good guides/info-streams as ChazzyBurger - please have a look yourself. :)

[@imperialus1]

Oh the ones I mentioned were the initial rush of new player streams. I'm not super familiar with ChazzyBurgers since... well most of what he talks about is stuff I already know, though I have skimmed through a few of them and he seems to do a very good job of summarizing some of the more complex concepts in relatively bite sized pieces. I tend to ramble a bit more.

[@littlegreen6355]

@@imperialus1 I like your way now that I know the basics!! :) Never had any problem with rambling if it's mostly intelligent, charming or fun rambling.

[@EveloGrave]

Looking forward to watching this. I play Disciple games with my friend frequently and we never play the same faction twice (which irks me I want to play Atlantis) so just judging how to play any faction will be useful.

[@imperialus1]

Atlantis is an interesting nation. Oddly enough I'd say it (pretty much across ages) has a lot in common with Fomoria with a combination of cheap spammable 'younglings' taking the place of the Firbolg along side larger (size 4) expensive high damage troops that have a tough time hitting things. One of the cool things they share with Fomoria to keep in mind is that mixing your smaller Atlantians with the Shamblers (and other larger units) works really well since 2 atlantians can share a square with 1 Shambler. They also have a very powerful mage corps, though by LA you really need to use your Forgiving Fathers in communions if you want to do big magic in anything other than Water and Death.

[@Mewobiba]

Great video! I will note though that Fomorian Militia are very useful; they provide siege strength for 4.6 gold per point, which is among the best ratios of the era (though not as good as agarthans or jotnar).

[@Nihilis1]

Good video keep up the good work

[@imperialus1]

Thanks. I'm hoping to have Part 2 up either tomorrow or Monday where I jump into pretender design.

[@zebio]

Good to see ya back! I'm not a big fan of the giant nations as I prefer my C'tis like Death spammers but its always fun dealing with things like Niefelheim

[@imperialus1]

I tend to agree with you on giant troops. I don't care for the tradeoffs you get with giant units. But with Fomoria I think it is worth it, since the big stoopid giants do what they need to do and buy time for your mages to do the killing. Plus the Nemedians can do some real lifting in the early game. One aspect of the game I do really enjoy however is super-combatant play, and that'll probably become evident in Part 2. It's one of the strategies I particularly enjoy with Single Player since the AI doesn't tend to laser focus on anti SC strategies as much, so you can build monsters that just wade through massive hordes like Godzilla without dealing with a tailored response. Fomoria does this well.

[@Madhattersinjeans]

@@imperialus1 On thugging it seems like it's a bit harder to do in Dominions 6. All the good items got shifted up a construction level and with bigger armies I don't see the thugs doing nearly as well as they did in say Dom 5. Superthugs perhaps, but regular thugs will probably see less play i'm afraid.

[@imperialus1]

@@Madhattersinjeans Yeah, I think it is one of those things where we might need to wait and see how the meta evolves. I tend to agree with you, but SC's were never super viable in Multiplayer anyhow. I think one of the problems that people tend to run into with thugs is that they try to make them too generalized. A thug needs to be treated almost like a special forces operator. Someone with a very specific skillset designed to kill a very specific something. You can't just charge them into a line of chaff and hope for the best. Unfortunately for thugs, the list of commands outside of spell scripting is quite limited...

[@rbfishcs123]

this could easily become a 40 part series, each part lasting anywhere from 2 to 3 hours long, with a 10 hour prologue.

[@Kris_Lighthawk]

Glamor is quite useful for thugs and SC, the main reason being "Shroud of Bewilderment" which is very useful at reducing incoming attacks (it is basically a MR awe that will also confuse enemies for their next attack) It is glamor 2, so a gem is needed to cast it with glamor 1 mages. As you mentioned yourself with glamor/death you also get "Horrible Visage", which is also quite good

[@imperialus1]

Yeah, been playing around with it a bit more and Glamour is very potent for SC Fomorian Kings. I have actually been giving them the glamour hat, even though it is a pretty big hit to head prot. The tradeoff seems worthwhile.

[@malibelizec2543]

Is it worthwile to take recuperation just for the kings?

[@imperialus1]

@@malibelizec2543 Potentially. Though I would probably use the nature paths on my pretender to craft healing items instead.

[@warppooted]

Sick cover picture

[@imperialus1]

Thanks! I think it's really cool too. I gotta give credit to Midjourny though. My artistic skills are basically stuck at stickfigures on whiteboards.

[@meowmeow9326]

considering you said that you may want to put the smaller troops on skrimish so that your bigger ones can filter in between them - in dom 6 now, bigger tropps will displace smaller troops; they will push through your own smaller troops now. just wanted to mention this in case you didnt know

[@imperialus1]

Oh that is a useful bit of information for sure.

[@Self-replicating_whatnot]

Is Fomoria G.O.A.T?

[@imperialus1]

Fomoria is a very powerful nation for sure. That said, anyone who tells you that there is one 'greatest' nation in Dominions is lying though. Fomoria is going to struggle in the early game if they end up fighting nations that have extremely strong troops either sacred or otherwise. Ulm will wreck your face, as will Vanheim if you end up in an early war with them. On the other hand, nations like that tend to peak by around turn 20, kinda like the high school football star who is managing a gas station now. Turn 20-30 is when Fomoria starts massing druids and your research gets to the point that you are flinging a not insignificant number of lighting bolts across the field. Then you have the nations that focus on communions or blood magic who don't really start to come into their own until turn 50+ when they get a critical mass of communion slaves or their blood economy up and running... They are the high school kid who spends all his time working on getting a 95% in AP Bio followed by the next 10 years working on becoming a neurosurgeon.

[@Self-replicating_whatnot]

@@imperialus1 That was a pun you silly :P

[@MrMo0x]

Yo, wailing wind is now a glamour/air spell

[@imperialus1]

Thank you! Still figuring out where some of the spells landed after the glamour shakeup.

[@Terminarch]

Dropped this game hard after my first good run ended in one fight. I had half the thrones already and closing on the last which were all grouped up. I had a silly amount of golems and we were going to utterly steamroll a much weaker force of mostly archers. My dragon pretender just decided to fly directly into the middle of the enemy force at the start... miles ahead of the golems. Annihilated in seconds. Also my only magic leader there, so immediately lost the army as well. The entire point in having a wall of living stone is to be BEHIND THE WALL! I rage-quit and uninstalled. Harsh? Perhaps. My fault? Probably. But I was fucking pissed. Is it really an unreal expectation that the default behavior of my literally singularly most important unit and a MAGE of all things would cast some spells from the far side of the map?? Plus I did watch earlier fights and that never happened. The flight tag description says something about ambushing archers, is that what happened? I had a lot more fun with my first run, necromancy. Until 3 nations all aggroed at the same time and they all had priests >.> ...that ethereal tag is really good though.

[@imperialus1]

I get where you are coming from. Scripting armies (especially big ones) is a whole other can of worms and it is the part of the game that I still struggle the most with, even with a couple thousand hours in the series. I'd say that 90% of the time when I lose, it is because I effed up my scripting for a critical battle. Getting stack wiped during a throne rush on turn 85 three or four (real time) months into a game is... demoralizing for sure. That said, I have screwed up my scripting often enough that I might be able to offer some insight as to what went wrong for you. Based on your description, a couple things... Though I am going to assume you are talking about Claymen unit that you get from the level 3 enchantment spell rather than the Golem you get from the Level 6 Construction spell since the Claymen are units, whereas the Golems are very expensive summonable mages and you certainly wouldn't have 'a wall' of them. 1) Bringing your pretender out of your Dominion into enemy territory is a recipe for trouble. It's generally better to think of them as a defensive unit since they get 10% bonus HP and +1 Strength and +1/2 Magic Resistance for every candle of dominion in the province they are fighting in. If you are fighting in enemy dominion they get that as a penalty. So if the battle was taking place in an enemy province with 4 black candles then your dragon would have had -40% HP, -4 Str and -2 MR. Same rule applies to your prophet as well, so be careful how you use them too. 2) It is really important to include mage support in your army. Think of it as though you are planning the Normandy invasion, but you left the battleships and airplanes at home. You need the troops, but especially as the game progresses the purpose of all your clay men would have transition from killing enemy units into holding a line while your mages do the killing. 3) You can give your commander units up to 5 orders that they will carry out at the beginning of a battle. So if you had say the Earth Dragon he could self buff himself with a bunch of earth magic before flying in and attacking. You can also give them a general order to follow once they finish their script of 5 orders. So, for example if you scripted a few spells to improve your dragon's defense and then ordered him to fire closest he would cast his spells and then fly forward until he was in range of his breath weapon and start laying waste. If you left him unscripted the AI probably saw all the archers and thought to itself that the easiest way to kill them would be to get right up in their face. Oftentimes the purpose of scripting is as much about preventing your commanders from doing what you don't want them to even more-so than trying to get them to do what you want. For the most part though I've just kinda accepted that scripting is going to be an area that I'm weaker in. The real hardcore players will download the debug mod, the Arena map and set up specific battles where they test their scripting and force compositions to try and gain an advantage against whoever they are fighting. I've got two young kids and a full time job though, so that level of theory-crafting is too much for me.

[@Terminarch]

@@imperialus1 Not claymen, no. Construction rituals. They're not actually called golems, but there's a tree variant (makes multiple) and a stone variant decently early. Same spell category as mechanical men. Stone guys are called Crushers, a full month each but pretty cheap overall and they are not commanders so they stack just fine. Also they're only lvl 4 Construction. The higher tier commander variants didn't seem worth the trouble honestly... 1) I didn't know penalties were that severe, but the point on expected behaviors still stands. If I'm supposed to treat him as some great liability then the game should as well. 2) I brought several mages along as well as physical ranged support, but he WAS the only mage that could cross a certain very unfortunate river. It was either split up or walk around very far needlessly aggroing other factions right at the victory lap. Plus he could cast the golem rituals anyway and I had both a sacred unit and mage, so I could fortify out by the thrones and build up as I wait for an opportunity. 3) That's just straight up something I didn't know. Cheers for that!

[@podgelucey5236]

Does anybody recommend any youtubers that are doing letsplays on domains 6 atm

[@meowmeow9326]

mound fiend = 3d 2priest

[@imperialus1]

Thanks that's the one I was looking for. Still need to get up to D4 in order to craft a skull face and crack into real big death though. Hadn't given the death boosting too much thought since with Luck 2 there is a pretty reasonable chance of picking up the Last Parthelonian who has D4, and if worst comes to worst you can just empower a sorceress. Technically the Queen of the Nemedians hero also gets you up to N2 as well, but since N was included on the Matrona as a base path it made more sense to bump it up especially since N2 will get you a lot, but N4 gets you everything. I might try to do a 'remake' of General Confusions old Path boosting video at some point here since I think it is a very useful 'mid tier' skill for a player to pick up. Less complex than communions and opens up a lot more variety in terms of rituals and the like.

[@TheAxebeard]

"Ahhh..." "Uhhhhh"

[@captainchaos5922]

Some feedback: try not to say “uh” every 20 seconds lol. It’s hard to listen to. Otherwise, this was a fine watch.

[@imperialus1]

Oh I know. It is a terrible habit. The irony is I teach, so I spend a significant amount of time speaking publicly and when I listen to recordings of me speaking in a setting like that I very rarely use gap words, but get me taking in front of a computer screen and it's a real struggle. Online teaching was rough believe me. I think it's because I am so used to having immediate feedback/reaction/interruptions from a class full of teenagers so my brain is subconsciously hunting for that.

[@HelmutKohlrabi]

God this game is ugly with filtered textures. It's just one of those games series where I hope the dev is gonna disable texture filtering at some point.

[@ft-ml8fc]

I think it's an ignorant oversight. AFAIK the development behind Dominions is limited and is mostly two guys. Some of the texture filtering is more egregious on seemingly older sprites as the series is actually very old for gaming franchise standards. There's been modding support for image scaling in 6 to fix some design flaws, but I don't think a major overhaul will happen soon.