Dominions 6 - Monster Gods - A New Player Guide

[@wildrover1076]

I like how in Dom a no nonsense video about one aspect is still one hour long.

[@booates]

tbf hes rambling a lot

[@I-ONLY-BUILD-MECHS-AND-DUSTERS]

Great video, the only thing missing is the explanation of what the other 3 god types excel at/suck at, although maybe that would be a 4 hour video.

[@cinifiend]

The Dom1 guys are usually used as rainbow pretenders. They get very cheap magic paths so that means you can get a very diverse set of magic without using up a lot of designer points, good if your nation lacks a certain type of magic your pretender can cover or if you want to do a lot of early site searching. It's very risky to use them in a battle though because they die easily, and they are also vulnerable to assassinations. The Dom2 guys are usually expanders as mentioned in this video, good early game, but fall off mid-late game because they can't use a lot of magic gear so end up sitting in your base. It's risky to use them mid-late game to solo take provinces as enemy thugs who are geared properly can easily catch up to them and kill them without a problem. Dom3 guys can be turned into very dangerous super combatants late game because they have a lot of gear slots, and they sometimes get some other nice benefits. They aren't as useful early game because you lack the magic items they need, even though they have good stats they need magic items to help them survive in a battle. They're usually taken as dormant or imprisoned since they aren't useful early game. Dom4 guys are your immobile pretenders, they are good if you want to go heavy into a scales build, or you plan to use them to sit around casting a lot of ritual spells. The downside being they can't move without magical assistance. They are useful when you're playing a nation that can naturally recruit or summon very strong super combatant commanders, so you're fine leaving them sitting around in your base researching. These are all just generally speaking by the way, there are many different play styles and strategies in this game.

[@CantusTropus]

​​@@cinifiend I also love how this changes based on what nation you play. One of the reasons I love EA Ur is that, because they are especially good at reviving a dead pretender, you can take a Dom 2 monster for expansion and still use it casually in the mid-lategame. It dying doesn't make a blind bit of difference!

[@RagerRagerRagerRager]

Lucid I have done 500+ hours with Berytos in Dominions 5. Awake expander Dracolich is utterly incredible for Berytos. Dragolich plus the lesser nerfs for poor amphibian means we finally have a reliable underwater expander. Don’t sleep on this, as a Berytos main we finally aren’t forced to go with the Gold Idol

[@LucidTactics]

Love that idea. Dracolich is tough as nails, definitely a top pretender. I was considering him for my LA Ulm game on that huge bozmos map.

[@desiretanaka5417]

Berytos is made for a Thelkine pretender :D

[@SebotageGaming-gl4zg]

But Lucid you forgot to mention the A10 Air Dragon with farshot x5. All you need is to set him to fire an keep distance. Later you can give him an amulet of resilience and have him behind an army. Hadouken!

[@LucidTactics]

That sounds really funny. Have you tried it?

[@LucidTactics]

Think natural weapons (aka breath) arent effected by it sadly. You can stack strength though.

[@SebotageGaming-gl4zg]

Yes I tried it works(Breath range and beating indies) The dragon is only combat speed 10 and windrunner doesnt work (so I guess double bugs) the Tien Chi dragon is a little faster so he can kite if you pick up swiftness in the bless. I have 2 short videos up showing them @@LucidTactics

[@benh4390]

As someone coming back to dominions after bouncing off earlier iterations this was an incredibly useful video. You talked through the theory, examples and then showing it in practice - fantastic way to teach the concept. Thanks for putting this together!

[@Karboomer]

Running Demiurge(Lion head on snake body) with cheap Dread(fear from Glamour spell tree) in my Pyrene game. Even 80 barb stacks bend to it. This cheap Dread bless is amazing.

[@fishbones1397]

Glamour has a good one in enchantment 3 that you missed. Shroud of Bewilderment is like an MR negates Awe but also makes the unit act randomly for the next action. I haven't really noticed the random actions much but negating attacks happens often especially if you have higher than 2 glamour and magic scales.

[@JoViljarHaugstulen]

The Glamour spells/bless are slightly better than defense when it comes to being harassed in that well the enemy is always going to have -x attack no matter how much harassment you suffer though of course the opponent is still likely to hit when you have 0 defense

[@LucidTactics]

yeah i was actually thinking about that while recording, but still youre basically always going to get hit all the time :D

[@zafraz1077]

Hey Lucid. Great Dom channel. I'm new to illwinter games, only a few months, but damn I love Doms and CoE5. I seem to can't find it but I think new players like me would love a bless tutorial. You cover quite a few in this vid that I would not think about so I think a dedicated video on it would be great. Hope you read this, cheers.

[@MCSorry]

If it's something you think you would benefit from, the Immersion discord server provides mentorship to new players and aims to facilitate entry into the multiplayer scene.

[@LiciTheCrawler]

Golden lion is one of my favorites. It starts with invulrn 25 which is nice for expansion, has fear, 3 attack, slash and pierce resistance.

[@Jrob1589]

Seconding love for the golden lion pretender!!

[@moleman7632]

A Couple of the classic monsters you missed: the Myrmecoleon (E-F but has some pop-kill that makes it kill the population of a province, so you want to keep it moving or have it sit in a dead province), the Man-Eater (E-B with the same pop-kill as the other but this one can fly), the Wyrm (W-E with built in regen and can go underwater), Golden Lion (N-F and has 25 Invulnerability and built in pierce and slash resistance) Also the Linnormr does not change shape, the Svartelf Mastersmith changes into a linnormr.

[@Raccoonpolice99]

loving the dom 6 content, learning alot as a newb!

[@Bill_Garthright]

Blessing on an expander god doesn't apply unless it's in its own dominion, right? It likely _will_ be, as gods spread dominion. But since this is for beginners, I thought I'd mention that. (And maybe I've got it wrong, I don't know. I never used expanders in Dom 5.)

[@lurkjurk5774]

Another very good and informative video! Would you by chance plan to do guides on the other pretender types such as titans?

[@blackleon1708]

Ah, yes, brief explanation for decisions before game is what I want. Maybe you can do that for factions?

[@blackleon1708]

I mean it's borderline impossible for a noob to differentiate between them, something that can also be said about gods. But here we are, with hour long video get them deciphered.

[@atomiccheddar]

Thank you for these guides. I have been playing Conquest of Elysium and I have a general idea on how spells and combat works, but your guides really helped with understanding the over arching strategy. +1 Subscriber!

[@LucidTactics]

Thanks!!

[@Wonko-bj4jx]

Yes, would love to hear your thoughts on Andramania

[@hieron9366]

No love for Man-Eater makes me sad. Other than that - good video!

[@Propietario283]

Topic of afflictions are probably deserves some attention. And diseases maybe.

[@ronaldo0grande]

You forgot to mantion that the skeleton dragon has 15 fear! That means that fear irradiates for 15 additional squares. Plus +3 in moral check (each +5fears is 1+ more in 10 moral check) so the entire squad need to pass in moral check against 13 that is a lot. Specially if add with item with fear or magic. Speaking about fear magic, the cause that we have individual rout sometimes is:"Units hit by magic fear effects may also break individually if they fail an easy morale check". In other words, individual rout is just with casting magic and that is not the case here.

[@AllureinVR]

The ghost king died to 30 militia

[@ososimiospub6406]

9:33 Barbarians do it, a lot of my earth serpents died that way on Dominions 4

[@amidalaprin4846]

Genuinely, barbarians are maybe the only independent army that's given me trouble so far. You really gotta be careful

[@evanmurphy9965]

This is very useful for helping me get into the game ^^ i was hoping you could explain how "thugs" work at some point in detail.

[@Sassy_Witch]

If I were a Pretender I would be an eepy one just nappin all the time uwu

[@ClubbingSealCub]

IMPRISONMENT

[@MCSorry]

I can hear the sound of hundreds of priests Calling God: "WAKE UP! WAKE UP! WAKE UP!"

[@Sassy_Witch]

sorry I'm beyond imprissoned. Just uhhh get some nice scales or something@@MCSorry

[@TheMelnTeam]

You can get AI to offscript personal regen on the turn you research it by just scripting "hold or cast spells". Useful if you want a tough-ish province more safely a turn sooner. Personal mistform helps tremendously in expansion, but there's a problem; every attack that hits has a 1% chance to pop it. For nasty elves with a vine shield later on, odds are pretty good that they clear PD and other unprepared stuff. For a pretender w/o other layers of defense + fast killing/fear, getting 70 hits onto it already puts you at > 50% chance for a mundane weapon to pop it. A pretender relying on mist form to not die in expansion is likely to take more than that, so you have to hope it doesn't happen too early in a fight. Also, w/o regen a mistform guy taking 1 damage hits a bunch still gets significantly afflicted. Probably fine in DE where all pretenders have recup, but w/o that it's yet another annoying thing that will tend to lower your normal movement capability or worse hand +5 encumbrance on the pretender more or less permanently. Mistform is a devastating spell to put on troops in many fights, but IMO not a great expansion tool.

[@sheepthief2785]

WHY did they get rid of corpse eater??????????????????

[@reddragon4482]

Could you do a Rl'yeh playthrough as the Uttervast lol? It looks so cool, I'm just wondering how to make it work to the best way possible lol.

[@LucidTactics]

That does sound fun!

[@reddragon4482]

Been enjoying the channel, back playing dominions 5 as Ulm atm. @@LucidTactics

[@LucidTactics]

Love me some ulm. @@reddragon4482

[@reddragon4482]

They probably are the best race to start out on but i'm pretty much a noob compared to most players. It's just hard getting my head around how to set mages and stuff up or what I should be researching. I have formations and stuff pretty much nailed so far. Do mages of particular races have a set auto cast they go for or do they just cast whatever they have available? it's a bit of a head melt lol.@@LucidTactics

[@catfoodbob1]

Have ya looked at the bronze collosus as a pretender that works well as super combatant. i think it might be able to walk but not sure, but its resistances mean it probably wont be even harmed by most mundane attempts .

[@derrickbonsell]

I'd be curious to see Dominion 1 type pretenders at some point, they must not be very popular because I don't see any videos on them for either 5 or 6.

[@melvinsheaddacquiri7635]

They're actually quite popular, but there's not much to explain about them: you use the fact that they have access to a lot of cheap magic skill levels to get a varied & effective bless and then when your pretender wakes up/escapes you have a very solid caster

[@throeawae2130]

just look up "rainbow bless" and you'll see them plenty

[@LucidTactics]

Yeah they were the most popular pretender in dom5. I'll make sure to cover them at some point!

[@Dayrell-sr9tj]

After watching your vids, im still unsure how trample works. I know sizes affect things but i dont know how damage works. I cant grasp my mind around it.

[@AcidMonkie]

Would love a guide on how to kill SC's. In a game as Caelum (almost exclusive A access) vs a Dragon with breath attacks (10E8N), and can't seem to kill it!

[@LucidTactics]

Twist fate amulet, Mirror Image, Quickness, mistform, Great Sword of Sharpness -> attack. Maybe deploy 2-4 of those guys. They are cheap with only 10 gems of gear each. (might also need resistences - not sure bout that part)

[@AcidMonkie]

Thanks, will try it out! It's the acid breath dragon, so I need to look up if poison resistance works for that (I havne't seen acid resistance).@@LucidTactics

[@hashpipe710]

I am struggling with destroying the pretender god "god block" I have sent near 1.2k worth of troops to kill this thing, and they just can't seem to take it down. frustrated and ready to put the game on the shelf. is there something I am missing? He averages 200 kills per battle and my troops seem to get stuck retreating through the siege wall keeping the rest of the army from being effective. I am playing as Ulm early age

[@LucidTactics]

Yes! So that is a pretender with a ton of HP and a ton of protection. That will make it immune to normal human troops. You have some options though that you can mix and match. Get very high damage non human troops. (Ogres, Giants, Trolls) If they do slash/pierce, Buff these high damage troops with earth spells that give armor piercing (steel slice warriors, weapons of sharpness etc) Buff those troops with strength buffs (strength of giants) Make 'thugs' take some of your commanders and give them weapons with the (armor piercing) or armor negating tag. (Great sword of sharpness, eye catcher etc). Then put strength, quickness, and protection buffs on that thug and send them in. Might take you a little trial and error especially if the pretender is protected by an army, but its very very possible. Oh a final option is mass water and/or air elementals.

[@hashpipe710]

Thank you so much for this comprehensive response to my desperate plea for help! I really appreciate it. I was very frustrated when I posted this! The learning curve in this game is huge, and I love it. But I couldn't find anything on the topic with google. Is there a resource you would recommend for newer players to the series? @@LucidTactics

[@MeiEnjoyer]

No flipper dog?

[@divvu1014]

Awww c'mon. No mention of the Elephain Train? It's pricey af and basically just a meme. But even if you're a new player, you can select the thing do whatever with the remaining points, click on a random province inside your dominion on turn one, and just keep going on and on for all of year one. Hell, you could park it on the cap of some nations and they'd have some problems getting rid of it cleanly, 6-7 months into the game.

[@aidanjohnson1827]

AWOKE

[@NikELbErGErBergel]

Edit: nvm ty for explaining it whats a "thug" every tutorial mentions them

[@praeceps9988]

Are you sure invulnerability doesn't stack with protection? I could have sworn I've seen it stack but that may have been due to a mod

[@LucidTactics]

Invul stacks with armor but not natural protection