Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension - Kill Six Billion Gods

Lord_Asmodeus

Dominions 4 Thrones of Ascension is 40% off on Steam!

http://store.steampowered.com/app/259060/

What is Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension? I'm glad you asked, now shut up while I tell you

It's a mythical fantasy turn based 4x strategy game where you take on the role of Pretender God. You see, the world is ruled by the Pantokrator, The One True God, He Who Brought Order From Chaos... or at least it was. Till he disappeared. Now all the divine titans, monstrous primordial beasts, gribbly otherworldly horrors and demonic monsters that he kept in line or imprisoned forever decide that they'd like a try at that whole "One True God" thing. Only problem is it seems every other Prince of the Undead and Sacred Golden Calf had the same idea, so you've got to murder all those chumps and/or claim the titular Thrones of Ascension and rise to take your place as the new Pantokrator. The good news is you're not alone in this fight, you've got a bunch of expendable superstitious mooks loyal worshipers to help forge mighty armies to fight in your name, take new lands from godless heathens and the followers of other Pretender Gods and claim the Thrones.

There are three ages from which you can choose nations, some nations exist in all three ages and some exist in only one or two. Early age is the ancient world, with lots of magic and relatively weak troops and units. Late age is the opposite, with weaker magic and much stronger troops. The Middle age is between the two. Nations take after mostly either real world mythic or obscure fantasy roots, usually a combination of the two. There are no elves or orcs or dwarves. There are goblins, but they're Japanese and they usually work for oni ogres. The game can be very complex and in depth and can be hard to get a handle on. To be truly great you need to plan ahead and have a concrete plan for what you want to do. When reading guides for the game a phrase I repeatedly ran into was that the game "gives new players plenty of rope with which to hang themselves" and even as a fairly new player I can tell you that's totally true. There are tons of options and ways to customize your pretender god and the bonuses they give your nation, and if you don't plan ahead properly it can really screw you over. This is less of a problem in single player especially at normal or lower difficulty, but in multiplayer especially against more experienced players and in single player against harder AI it's absolutely true.

However, the game is also super fun! I've only just recently started my first multiplayer game and wouldn't say no to another one, there's a ton to learn about the game and a ton to like about it. It's also highly moddable and has a very active modding community, so if you like that sort of thing this game has it in spades.

One small word of warning though. While the game is amazing and perfect in every way...

The graphics aren't exactly "next gen"









Here's a desura thread with links to a number of previews

http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-thrones-of-ascensions/forum/thread/dominions-4-reviews-previews

Here's the first video in a Let's Play that is very newb friendly and helps to teach the basics of the game, even though the LPer admits he's not an expert at the game, he is quite knowledgable and it's a good intro to the game. So much so, that you may notice that it's the video that Illwinter used on the Dominions 4 Steam Page!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PLM7yEwbhGUooISDlRy9rcQ0__senFxmHc&v=FMIQfYIkrjA

Here are some useful links for learning about the game

Nation Evaluation Primer

Pretender God Design Primer

And a guide on how to boost magic paths (this is actually very important especially for long-term planning with a nation and with pretender creation)

An Inspector which lets you look at all the units, spells, and items in the game it can be sorted through by a number of factors like nation, magical paths and schools, item type, etc. It can also be an important tool for planning ahead.

Llamaserver is a resource used for multiplayer games. This game can take awhile to play especially online (or so I hear :P) so most multiplayer games are Play-By-Email and Llamaserver is a site for setting up and playing play-by-email Dominions games. Here's the FAQ

So That's a little introduction to what Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension is, in case you were interested, and why else would you be here, in this thread? But please, ask me questions and I'll try to answer them (I'm pretty new to the game myself, I've had it for awhile but haven't played it a whole lot, and have only started my first multiplayer game a few days ago) and if you've played this game before feel free to talk about it here.

Please.

SLyM

I really like the way this game handles rolls for random chance, it makes everything possible but just very, very unlikely most of the time

Lord_Asmodeus

I like that there are nations where picking the absolute shittiest scales possible is a legitimate thing to do, and the whole strategy is just to spread your dominion to other players to ruin their territories because your awful scales don't affect you but they absolutely destroy whatever plan they had. Like you're just a bunch of toxic, miserable hellpeople who love living in terrible places so you make everywhere terrible.

SLyM

The downside to that strategy is that you can't use mercenaries or many summons because they'll just die off

Lord_Asmodeus

Unless you've got good national summons which fit in, and Undead are always good for that kind of thing. I think Demons might be more susceptible though.

The Yomi never seemed that great because of their disorder thing, but I always wanted to get them to work. Same with Lanka.

Lord_Asmodeus

So, I'd like to start up a Penny Arcade multiplayer Play-by-Email game, if we can get enough players. I'll take suggestions on whether we should start in Early, Middle, or Late Age (I'm open to all options)

I'll be starting up the game on Llamaserver here is the FAQ I personally am not super experienced, so if you're interested in playing but haven't played it much/for very long don't worry that's totally fine.

I'd prefer at least 5 or so players but if I can't get that many I'm fine starting it with less people.

So, if anyone is interested in playing a game of multiplayer Dominions 4, here's a fine opportunity.

The Ender

Dom 3:

AI is currently spamming Fire Snakes, and just Goddamn. I feel like this should be something punishable, but Hell if I know how to punish it. Clockwork Horrors seem to be able to stem the tide for now, but he has more snakes than I can possibly field of Clockwork Horrors.

Also a different AI is currently picking-off my high level Priests with Wild Hunt.

If there a spell somewhere that's like, "pwn the fire summons," ?

Lord_Asmodeus

I would think Earth/Water stuff would help against them, specially summons. Maybe if you have some fire you could get some stuff that's immune to the Fire Snakes. I think the Clockwork/Statue stuff is usually pretty good against them so if you've got that already I guess I'd just suggest trying to step up production of those or try to assassinate the fire snake summoners.

As for wild hunt I've never dealt with it but IIRC it only works in forests right? So I'd suggest getting your mages out of forests.

Kharnastus

hey, anyone up for some dominions?

Lord_Asmodeus

Kharnastus wrote: »

hey, anyone up for some dominions?

If you're interested, and there doesn't end up being enough support here in dear old SE++, there's also a Dominions 4 thread in G&T that you might consider checking out.