Dominions 4 nation tiers?

[76109108007942031]

I recently got this game after playing Dominions 3 for a while, and decided I wanted to try the multiplayer (since that was the main thing I was missing in 3). I decided to take the advice of someone I found on Google and play one faction a lot, then when I get a good handle of said faction move into the multiplayer.

However I am unsure of how good each faction is. I don't really want an overpowered faction since I don't want to be that guy who only wins because he's playing the overpowered faction, but I don't want to start with a bad faction either.

At first I wanted to play as LA Agartha, since I liked the cave-dwelling theme of the Agartha units and the Late Age is my favourite era. However, I did some googling and apparently Agartha is considered to be pretty weak due to their unit roster (this information might be outdated though). Some further searching said that Mictlan, Abysia, Himmon and Tien Chi are the strongest. From my time in 3 I found Caelum to be pretty weak as well, although that might be because I was new to the game and didn't know how to use flying units properly.

So I guess my question is, which factions would be considered the strongest, weakest, or the middle ground? Or is Dominions 4 one of those games where all the factions are just as strong as each other in the right hands, with varying levels of complexity (which would be a pretty amazing feat, to balance this many factions in a single game).

[elvorand]

Check that list:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dlrvyEqLFYIaXRc49TheMmfdoP8jEh1m5rZJHJAzDWQ/edit#gid=1649923223

But I really think that there are no bad nation but bad players who lead nations

[76109108007942031]

Originally posted by elvorand:

Check that list:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dlrvyEqLFYIaXRc49TheMmfdoP8jEh1m5rZJHJAzDWQ/edit#gid=1649923223

But I really think that there are no bad nation but bad players who lead nations

Thank you, this is pretty much what I was looking for.

[Shinuyama]

Yeah, none of that sounds right at all. Abysia is one of the weakest nations in the game in any era. Mictlan is wildly variable depending on player strength. Hinnom is incredibly weak despite having good tools due to insane goldcost of giants. TC strength is variable based on player skill, from very strong (fantomen won the largest duels tournament with EA TC) to hilariously weak, as it relies on leveraging scattered paths.

this has the only compiled list of wins/losses:https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1dlrvyEqLFYIaXRc49TheMmfdoP8jEh1m5rZJHJAzDWQ/edit

Scroll to the bottom tabs to see the collated data. It's collated by era (EA, MA, LA) etc.

The numbers are skewed by noobs games and also metas leading to ganks, though, so nation strength isn't perfectly represented. For example, Bery is much lower t han it should be as a lot of bery players die in earlygame and don't therefore produce the Real Ultimate Power that bery's mage lineup grants it.

In terms of LA Agartha, it's a strong LA nation. Top third at least. It's no Ragha, but it gets w/f, D, and cheap xbows.

[Mormacil]

No Dom4 isn't fully balanced at all. And there are some clear good and bad factions but there is a very meaty middle. And player experience still rules the day, a veteran with a weak faction can still run circles against a noob using EA Xibalba.

Further the balance shifted quite a bit between Dom3 and Dom4. Hinnom is pretty much middle ground these days. Blood is still super strong late game but there some other nations that are clearly better then them most of the time.

Among the weakest you'll find R'lyeh in late age. It might be the only real aquatic faction but it's freespawn and struggles to get onto land to win. They're hard to kill but it's even harder to win.

Agartha has weak units in the Early Era but that doesn't make it a weak faction at all. They're naked cyclopses with ancient weaponry. Fighting on even ground they lose. But in caves they're servicable against non darkvision troops. But their real strength is their summons of which they have plenty. Agartha late age has decent units.

What is strong though kinda depends on the meta you're playing in. A blitz with timed turns and little scripting obviously favors straight forward blessed sacreds and punishes a nation that heavily uses communions to win the day. No diplo games favor nations that peak early so you can beat any rushers as you can't secure a NAP of any kind etc.

Given the wide variety of nations, I suggest you pick three nations you like and we'll rate them.

[76109108007942031]

@Shinuyama: Thanks for the speedy reply, I can't remember exactly how old the data I found was but I don't think it was new. Heck, at one point I realised I was looking at a guide for Dominions 3, so I'm not even sure if I was looking at the right game. The information might be a bit skewed, but I'd like to use it to at least get an idea of what direction to go towards.

@Morcamil: The 3 factions I am most interested in during the Late Age are Agartha, Marignon and Ulm. The rest look decent to, but those are the three that I think I would enjoy the most. Of the three I am mainly leaning towards Agartha and Marignon, but the Ulm infantry looked decent to me.

[Mormacil]

Ulm's power is their mages and magic. Their Black Priests have access to some of the most effective evocations in the game. The Illuminated One will provide you with stealthy S1 mages out of your ears. With communions they can do all sorts of nasty things and move almost freely through enemy lands with their stealth. And late game you got more Vampires then you can have a use for.

Honestly they're all good picks and would enable you to win.

[76109108007942031]

Originally posted by Mormacil:

Ulm's power is their mages and magic. Their Black Priests have access to some of the most effective evocations in the game. The Illuminated One will provide you with stealthy S1 mages out of your ears. With communions they can do all sorts of nasty things and move almost freely through enemy lands with their stealth. And late game you got more Vampires then you can have a use for.

Honestly they're all good picks and would enable you to win.

Thanks, I'll probably try all three of them and see which ones I get the most enjoyment out of then. My main concern was that I'd skewer the balance in a multiplayer game by picking a bad faction, and giving my neighbours "free territory" or acting as dead weight in a disciple game.

[Mormacil]

Start with regular games after testing expansion in SP. Aim for 12 provinces at the end of year one. Use the Dom4 Inspector tool (found here on the forum) and read up on some primers to be aware of some of the differences. Main one for sure: gems are much rarer, most gengems are gone. This makes stuff like Wish much more expensive and therefor less useful.

[Staythecourse]

Originally posted by Sir Illic:

@Morcamil: The 3 factions I am most interested in during the Late Age are Agartha, Marignon and Ulm. The rest look decent to, but those are the three that I think I would enjoy the most. Of the three I am mainly leaning towards Agartha and Marignon, but the Ulm infantry looked decent to me.

LA Ulm is arguably the strongest nation in the LA, with the only real competitors being Ragha and Xibalba, which have different strengths. Their infantry are solid, and they also have Ghoul Guardians to shut down early sacred rushes and Rangers to mass when resources are thin early game, covering all bases. They are best known though for 2 main things. First, having the fastest research and biggest balls of mages in the early and midgames thanks to having good mages recruitable without a fort in an age when forts generally cost 1000g and 5 turns. Second, is their national vampire summon, which is zero research and zero upkeep, and can "reproduce" by hunting for blood and summoning more of themselves, building up to an unstoppable ball. Note they can't summon vampires with their own mages, and so must build a pretender to summon the first one.

LA Agartha is solidly upper middle. They used to be terrible yes, but there was a "cave" patch some time ago that fixed that. Now they have solid mages, solid summons, really nasty steel crossbows, and the possibility of cheese strats with their recruit anywhere sacred. Their big problem is seriously terrible mobility, as all useful mages and most troops are map move 1, plus zero teleport or other mobility options.

LA Marignon is arguably the weakest nation in the LA. Lemuria and LA R'lyeh are terrible too, but in unusual ways. R'lyeh drives players insane with micromanagement but is not actually hugely weak if the player somehow retains sanity. Lemuria finds it almost impossible to win, but is also almost impossible to actually defeat. Marignon is just straight up bad in the "defeated early" sense. They have a hard time expanding and fighting early due to no shields and the late age being full of crossbows everywhere. Their mages are hard to leverage. They do have strong blood access and neat national summons though if they actually manage to get to the lategame in a strong position.

We've had a thread on tiers before where lots of people hashed out their opinions: http://steamcommunity.com/app/259060/discussions/0/360670708794171729/

Consider reading it, or even bumping it if you have more to contribute.

[76109108007942031]

@Morcamil and Staythecourse
Thanks for the faction reviews, I think I'll stick with Agartha for now since they don't seem that bad, but not too strong either. Plus like I said, I really like the cave-dweller theme. I'll also look through the thread on tiers and the Dom4 Inspector.

[ulizez89]

I would advise against using a single nation, this isn't a team game, so no one is going to get mad because you didn't use jinx the way the meta says it should be played =P and games take so long to finish that you'll get bored of using a similar strat in every game. Beside, you'll never know your adversaries until you walk a bit in their shoes.

Also, Sy would like to differ on the "weakness" of LA Agartha =P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0f3po6nfPM&t=2s&list=PLG9FZ5QOwlJgX9f1AiMtyDPtdDHzUoz4a&index=1

[76109108007942031]

Originally posted by ulizez89:

I would advise against using a single nation, this isn't a team game, so no one is going to get mad because you didn't use jinx the way the meta says it should be played =P and games take so long to finish that you'll get bored of using a similar strat in every game. Beside, you'll never know your adversaries until you walk a bit in their shoes.

Also, Sy would like to differ on the "weakness" of LA Agartha =P https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0f3po6nfPM&t=2s&list=PLG9FZ5QOwlJgX9f1AiMtyDPtdDHzUoz4a&index=1

It was a tip for new players that I saw, to get really good with a single faction and then use it in online play. I've just played RTS games in the past where I entered the multiplayer before I learned the meta and got everyone upset because I wasn't good enough to fight off my neighbours, giving them easy points, which is why I wanted to get really good with a single faction.

[ulizez89]

Originally posted by Sir Illic:

It was a tip for new players that I saw, to get really good with a single faction and then use it in online play. I've just played RTS games in the past where I entered the multiplayer before I learned the meta and got everyone upset because I wasn't good enough to fight off my neighbours, giving them easy points, which is why I wanted to get really good with a single faction.

Dom4 is a very unbalanced game by nature, both in nations, maps, starting provinces, indie neighbors, etc. So don't worry that much about being in the same level as everyone else, most won't care. Just check that you enter a newbie friendly game (there are always a ton of those, or just create your own!), mainly because is not fun to get reck before year 2 =P

And, to my knowledge, if the really good players want a high level game, they invite manually all participant so we don't have to worry about ruining a high level game with our newbieness.

[76109108007942031]

Originally posted by ulizez89:

Originally posted by Sir Illic:

It was a tip for new players that I saw, to get really good with a single faction and then use it in online play. I've just played RTS games in the past where I entered the multiplayer before I learned the meta and got everyone upset because I wasn't good enough to fight off my neighbours, giving them easy points, which is why I wanted to get really good with a single faction.

Dom4 is a very unbalanced game by nature, both in nations, maps, starting provinces, indie neighbors, etc. So don't worry that much about being in the same level as everyone else, most won't care. Just check that you enter a newbie friendly game (there are always a ton of those, or just create your own!), mainly because is not fun to get reck before year 2 =P

And, to my knowledge, if the really good players want a high level game, they invite manually all participant so we don't have to worry about ruining a high level game with our newbieness.

Oh nice, I wasn't aware of high level games manually inviting players, I guess that makes all my previous worries a bit unreasonable :P

[ulizez89]

Originally posted by Sir Illic:

Oh nice, I wasn't aware of high level games manually inviting players, I guess that makes all my previous worries a bit unreasonable :P

I would like to emphasize the "to my knowledge" part, since I'm far from being considered a good player.