Dominions vs Conquest of Elysium

[Wisonny]

I bought Dominions 5 last year and have been enjoying it very much. I was actually going to buy Conquest of Elysium 4 next Steam Sale before I heard the news of the upcoming Conquest of Elysium 5 release. My main question is regarding what the main differences between the two series are. From looking at videos there are some similarities and some differences between the two.

Additionally, will having played Dominions 5 be useful in preparation for a Conquest of Elysium playthrough?

[Mormacil]

Quite different games. Dominions is a wargame with some 4x flavors. CoE is way closer to a rogue-like. Heavy on the RNG, you got very few commanders and basically use a main one to travel across several maps. They're not even set in exactly the same universe though they re-use each other's assets.

[Flap]

Well "Roguelike-ish" I would say. At its core it is still a stragegy game. But much ligther than Dominions, and with far less ground control...

But it is true that the fun part is to explore, discover dangerous wildlife, and levelling up your commanders to unlock crazy powers taken at random from a list.

There is far less controls in the battles than in Dominions (basically : spell selection an army composition. That's it)

[Stemm]

To me the fun of CoE is about learning how each faction works and then winning with them. Its a game more about theme/roleplay than deep strategy like Dominions. Both games are great, but quite different

[I>U]

They are exact opposite.

CoE didn't go far from tabletops, while Dominions, just like later Civ's, contesting that "4X" title. CoE's gameplay is built on simple universal mechanics, which get complex projections, while Dom has very complex foundation and.. quite ordinary meta-play.

Dominions throws you a manual-worth of starting options on your very first playthrough. Dare to pick something wrong and.. you are pretty much ok. For the first 100 turns.

Contrary, CoE punishes you next-to immediatly and you can fare well in your very first game, because the most meaningful choice here is your class.

CoE is faster, You can get decisive outcome within 20 minutes in 1v1 on S map. And if you won't get it, the only feature that isn't antagonistic with Dom will kick in - doomcounter and random events.

What people desribe as "rogue-likish" looks to me like "PvPvE". CoE is quite unique with that. Imagine playing some trumps on 36 cards. Last draw.. and the game ends with a draw. That would be your typical TBS with ENDLESS stalemates.

In CoE, you just grab a bigger deck (how about some Infernal invasion?) and yet another bigger (Hades, Horrors, another Hades invasion and yet another type of Hades invasion) if that wasn't been enough.

Even in CoE4 you have ~50% of game content hidden "in reserve" to surpise you. Of course, that doesn't sound great for people accustomed to play vs AI, but, do believe me, it works it's magic in a tiring and satisfying PvP session.

---------

Don't want to start anything here, but everyone above this post are wrong. That's just a common misconception that have become a trend to regard CoE as "not a strategy" or "lighter strategy".

Seriously, just try to play known metas right here. Elder Druid + flight + an Ent? Try to roll this Ent first, and don't forget to lose your druid on the very first assasin. You have famillars, right? But they got blown with the very first earthquake in the previous battle. You hold them in reserve? Then why that very reserve don't get attacked?

Trust me, you have a sea of moves in CoE's lategame (the "late" part is abstract here, right) and a thousand of things you need to guess - accurately or not - early in game. That is, when you play versus opponent who can guess and recognises the same moves.

Sorry, but that just made my hair stand when I read this.

[Izunyami]

Yea no, COE is lighter on the strategy aspect because there's far less control and you're reliant on RNG vastly more than anything. Plus, getting access to higher tier anything takes quite a long while, either due to lack of class resources near you or because of steep costs.

COE is a lighter strategic game that is more rogue-lite in the sense that it's very, very random and very, very punishing. And most classes start the first few game-years in exactly the same way. And with exactly the same units... although I think Illwinter is trying to fix that part of the thematics.

[I>U]

Dom uses the same open-dice rolls to resolve Most of the things. In fact, CoE probably has more fixed roll actions and non conditioned ones.

Dominion spread, for example, is literally the same mechanic as mercenary offers in CoE: each temple rolls base chance on priestly power. In CoE, each fortifications roll base chance multiplied on library\temple points\nothing. How is this different?

If you don't like things getting "random", then play less oportunistic classes. There is a very tight margin for Burgmeister vs Baron match-up. You can easily check that by abusing save-load even against AI. Non class-bound casters and Burg's constructs are the few things that make battles less predictable.

The only two things "roguelike" in CoE are how you don't know a thing about initial generation, forcing you to guess a lot (based on patterns, not on Holy Bible) and how the game is becoming "harder" with the time environment-wise.

It doesn't make CoE less of a strategy. It only makes it closer to tabletops (and thus, to rogue-likes as well).

[jimirichardson]

Since I personally don't play against the computer or even other players (I usually just control the players on the board) and use it more as a play set to tell myself a fun story, with an occasional side of seeing what cool stuff is hiding in the far corners of the game, I much prefer Conquest of elysium, since the terrain and the different planes and all that work much better than with a mostly strategy view map like in Dominions.

Honestly I'd love if Illwinter made an out and out RPG or Rouge-like for singleplayer.

[eddieballgame]

"Additionally, will having played Dominions 5 be useful in preparation for a Conquest of Elysium playthrough?"

Doubtful (imho), best way to prepare for CoE 5...play CoE 4.
Or watch some videos on YouTube.

[Izunyami]

Publicado originalmente por I>U:

Dom uses the same open-dice rolls to resolve Most of the things. In fact, CoE probably has more fixed roll actions and non conditioned ones.

Dominion spread, for example, is literally the same mechanic as mercenary offers in CoE: each temple rolls base chance on priestly power. In CoE, each fortifications roll base chance multiplied on library\temple points\nothing. How is this different?

If you don't like things getting "random", then play less oportunistic classes. There is a very tight margin for Burgmeister vs Baron match-up. You can easily check that by abusing save-load even against AI. Non class-bound casters and Burg's constructs are the few things that make battles less predictable.

The only two things "roguelike" in CoE are how you don't know a thing about initial generation, forcing you to guess a lot (based on patterns, not on Holy Bible) and how the game is becoming "harder" with the time environment-wise.

It doesn't make CoE less of a strategy. It only makes it closer to tabletops (and thus, to rogue-likes as well).

We get it. You like COE. You don't want to accept that COE is more random and less strategic. But no one is considering COE as an inferior product because of that other than you. Get over it.

>dominion spread and mercenaries
You're comparing two completely different mechanics, just because they have a % chance of occurring. You're really, really stretching. Dominion in Dominions is only relevant under certain circumstances and in most parts of the game, is consistent. Your territory has a positive dominion give you benefits, your enemy has negative dominion (to you) that only effects one or two of your units. Maybe. If you use prophets or pretenders offensively, which is only some builds.

Also, how are they different? Let's see... in Dominions, you can actively and freely build temples (for a modest amount of gold) and you'll always have access to that temple, it'll always be there 100% of the time, as long as you hold that province.

In CoE, you have to secure the temple/library tile.... which requires you to roll for that tile to exist at map generation, so there's a chance that there is no such tile or that said tile is so far away from you that it's effectively non-existent. Then you have to get the tile, which requires moving an army to said tile. Then you have to KEEP the tile, which is substantially harder to do in CoE versus Dominions.... because that's by design. Moving and maintaining armies at far distances is harder than in Dominions - you're more at risk of randomness taking your CoE tile (by event or by creep) than in Dominions where you can hire directly onto the tile or move an army that is probably only one turn away. Versus CoE where said tile is likely 10 turns away from the nearing recruitment center (that you can't control and, again, have to roll on, secure, and keep). And ALL of that just to have a slightly better chance of having access to not basic units. To have access to your class units, instead of the same SHARED 4 units. That's versus Dominions giving you your ''class'' units 100% of the time, always. Again, Dominions is more consistent on the STRATEGIC level.

>CoE has more fixed roll actions
Yes. In battles. Except not really, because you have less control over battles. Dominions allows you to script commanders and units to an extent, giving you some control. CoE is 100% unscripted and auto-run. But this is a TACTICAL point ultimately. Not a strategic point.
Also, on the strategic level (strategy =/= tactics, these are different terms), Dominions is vastly more consistent. You ALWAYS have access to every unit in your nation, you don't have to roll for it every month. It's also vastly cheaper to summon national units in Dominions versus CoE where summoning class units is expensive (thus will occur less often) with many classes have a chance to out-right fail.
This inconsistency makes it less strategic by nature. You can't strategize things when randomness and lack of control go that far out of the player's hands. That doesn't make the game inferior, it makes it different.

CoE is a game of theme and risk management... which is the basis of the rogue-like genre, hence why EVERYONE BUT YOU is calling it basically a rogue-lite take. CoE is even less of a strategic game because CoE's gameplay takes primarily on the tactical level. There is very little you can do on the strategic level, and the things you CAN do on the strategic level only occur once every 5-10 turns.
Dominions is a game of strategy, to its' almost purest essence since 90% of the gameplay takes place on the ACTUAL strategic level.

You have a fundamental misunderstanding of what ''strategy'' actually means. You also seem to have an issue with a game you like not being a ''strategy'' game, as if that somehow makes it inferior.

CoE is as much a strategy game as Call of Duty is; it isn't.

[Flap]

Why do people need to be so emotional about classification, and when giving its felling about a game we like ?

[LordKarasuman]

Between Dominions and Conquest of Elysium, what you can expect is that certain lore sharing mean that you can have a reasonable expectation of partial shared elements between nations of Dominions and their CoE counterparts. For instance, if you've played Yomi in Dom 5, you probably wouldn't be surprised by freespawn with Bakemono in CoE, etc.

Otherwise, they play pretty differently. Dominions is more of standard 4x while Conquest of Elysium is a 4x that plays pretty closely to a Roguelike at the start before becoming a rich, if somewhat simplified strategy game later on. There's stuff that happens under the hood in CoE that's probably similar to Dominions by virtue of being from the same dev but otherwise your Dominion 5 experience can't possibly translate 1-for-1 to CoE.

[FireShark]

Publicado originalmente por jimirichardson:

Honestly I'd love if Illwinter made an out and out RPG or Rouge-like for singleplayer.

Me as well. I believe I asked for an adventure mode in the wishlist thread.

A whole separate game would be great too.

[Necroscourge]

It's a question of scale. Dominions is about gods raising gigantic armies that march across the world where CoE is about singular great heroes managing their own personal faction in the world. Same sprites, a lot of the same concepts, but that change in scale makes the gameplay much different.

Dominions is about regions, CoE is about tiles, etc. Basically if you are looking at Dominions and thinking "That game looks too busy for me" then you might end up liking CoE instead.

[eddieballgame]

Some...entertaining views on what constitutes a game of strategy.
Reminds me of those folks who think Backgammon is a game of luck.
There is plenty of 'strategy' in CoE4, which varies (extremely) on what race one chooses & certainly where one is placed at the beginning.
Sure, there is the dreaded (enjoyable for some/me) 'rng' to include the random maps/age ( There are options to create/edit maps, though I have no experience with that.) which can have a huge impact on one's 'strategy' going forward.
That exists in many games of strategy, to include Dom 4 & 5, etc.
Personally, I have never looked at CoE4 as a 'rogue-lite'...it certainly doesn't fit my definition of one.
Some of the most fun multiplayer games I have been involved with have been as teammates vs the AI. (lan parties)
Much 'coordinated strategy' is required & much fun is had by all.
The bottom line for me is...it is a blast to play single player & more so multiplayer.
It plays fast & one's results will, almost always, be determined on how well one plays/strategizes. (minus the fickle 'rng', of course)