Dominions 5 - Warriors of the Faith, the latest deep 4x turn based strategy game is now out

QuoteThere is no AI diplomacy

Technically, AI recognize war and sometimes it will declare war against you.

But the "no diplomacy" ai kind of resemble the shit you get in multiplayer, when everyone breaks the non-aggresion-pact and gangbang on you because you are ur and thats free land.

Quoting: Colombo

Quoting: TheSHEEEPIt is a great game, no doubt.
However, as an owner of Dom3, Dom4 and CoE4 (Conquest of Elysium), I feel kinda ripped off here.

Dom5 is more of a slightly expanded Dom4 with not-too-many changes. And such a price for that seems way out of line.
Especially considering they haven't touched the series' biggest shortcomings - no AI diplomacy making single player almost entirely useless and the UI is still just terrible.

I think they should offer owners of the previous games some deal as other developers have.
If you're new to the series, though, the price should actually be worth it.

This is just crazy talk. Dom4 and Dom5 have HUGE changes.

1. New bless system significantly change game. You don't have just 2 bless effects per parth, you have 7 bless effects per path and you can point-buy those that you want, greatly personalize and specialize your bless.

This together with pretender getting bless effect in their dominion, some strong bless effects working only if your pretender is alive and new (minor) banish change, which now get part of the path effects is HUGE change that significantly change gameplay and adds load of new possible builds.

2. The new combat system, which is now "realtime" instead of "turn-based" in the sense that both sides act at the same time (each unit based on initiative) and not one side and after that second side... this greatly change how turns are played, remove annoying positioning which decided who will get first attack... supposedly boost cavalry (which is good, because it was a bit weaker). This connected with other combat changes (rebalance of weapon length, rebalance of critical hits, rebalance of fatigue) changes how troops fight and push it from meta "hire those who have longest weapon". Also, there is significant buff to archers, where bows benefit from increased strength. So giant archers are now better, because the gold that you pay for the giant chassis will now reflect its greater DMG.

3. New fort and recruitment system also changes dynamics. Suddenly, you don't need to build fort at once, but you first build palisade and then add another level. As you need, cheaper and safer. But a lot of mages that were earlier recruitable without fort take longer to recruit, while fort-only commanders are much easier to recruit.

4. New movement system. Now you can move more than one province at once. Even in enemy territory. Raiding with cavalry or fast units is now much easier. This is significant change in dynamics.

I'm sorry, but no, those are not HUGE changes.
Expansion material, nothing more.
All these do is change the meta, the base gameplay is entirely the same.
They have essentially released the same game the third time in a row with meta changes, and as I said still did not touch the most glaringly obvious shortcomings.

I see no reason demand full price for this from owners of the previous two games.
Do an overhaul of the 3D graphics (Jesus, those trees!), an overhaul of the UI, add basic AI diplomacy and I'd be more than happy to buy the same game again.
But just for meta changes? Hell, no.


Last edited by TheSHEEEP on 1 December 2017 at 7:49 am UTC

Bought it immediately as I always do. Day one. Dominions is my 2nd favorite strategy series right after Europa Universalis. So deep and varied. One can get lost in this game for hundreds or thousands of hours.

Quoting: razing32

Quoting: soulsource

Quoting: razing32Dominions 4 always got stuck for me when the AI did its turn.
I poke a bit at Dominions 3 since it works and seems to have more nations to play.

That's likely a deadlock in the multithreaded AI. One can disable that feature with a command lime switch.

Would one care to share said command ? :)

Sorry for no reply. I posted yesterday from my alarm clock (aka: smartphone) when going to bed (that's also my excuse for running commands on a lime...). As Colombo already wrote, the command line switch is "--multiai 0". Took me a while to figure that one out.

Quoting: denyasis

Quoting: Mountain Man

Quoting: TheSHEEEP...the series' biggest shortcomings - no AI diplomacy making single player almost entirely useless

Oh dear... perhaps I should remove it from my wishlist.

I play only single player and I enjoy it immensely. There is no AI diplomacy. Its a bit of a glaring omission, I'll be honest. On the other hand, I get the sense that most AI diplomacy is there to make the game easier. Every 4x I've played the Diplomacy aspect is easily exploitable and mainly serves to benefit solely the player as the AI can't compete.

Hope that helps you decide if you may want it or not.

Interesting point. I hadn't thought of it that way.