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As to whether it's actually complex in practice, you can play it as though it weren't, and you'll have the potential to survive in singleplayer, but you'll suck at the game and will do poorly in multiplayer. Rather than the manual, you might be better served looking at examples of actual play. There's some on YouTube but they're pretty much all single-player affairs by players of relatively low skill, aside from Sy. There are some written ones from Dom4, but as far as I know i'm the only one to have done a written one of Dom5 yet. Things of this nature should be found in the AAR subforum.
Scripting your armies to face the upcoming battle is important to counter strategies that the enemy may utilise such as flanking from the edge of battlefield or sending a group of flyers to assasinate your rearmost units. Unit type, their equipment, innate trait and stats can be deciding factor but so are the battle plans which define how you decide to utilise your units.
However you are indeed correct that the game is mostly about combat. There is very little empire management as there is only 3 types of buildings you can build: forts, laboratories and temples. However they all are extremely important and invesring on one can be a tough decision from time to time.
Forts allow you to recruit your national units (besides capital only units) in a province. They also allow you to recruit more commanders and regular units due to increased resource and recruit point amount as well as improving the gold production of the province slightly. However some nations have ability to recruit some of their national units even without forts. Provinces need to be connected to a fort in order to produce gold to your empire.
Laboratories are required to cast ritual spells and perform magic research to unlock new spells. However they are also needed to recruit mages. Magic sites need to be connected to a lab in order to produce magic gems which are required in ritual spells, item crafting and battle spells.
Temples will spread your dominion which has scale effects based on the scales you picked during pretender creation + possible changes from claimed thrones. Temples also spread your dominion and if you lose all dominion, you will lose the game. Temples are also required to recruit sacred units such as priests.
At least I would personally recommend the game. But I sugges tyou check out some youtube gameplay videos that show bit more than just the early game.
However, I will say that I love the lore and attention to detail the devs have put into the game. I've played a lot since 4, but I still feel like I've only scratched the surface of the simulation here.
So you would say that Dom5 isn't worth it for its singleplayer content?
Multiplayer also has diplomacy between players, which also makes multiplayer more enjoyable compared to singleplayer.
That said, even if you're normally a singleplayer gamer, I'd caution you not to discard the idea of multiplayer entirely. Many people who play Dominions multiplayer are not really multiplayer gamers in general, and I personally didn't play much multiplayer anything ever before Dominions. The reason is because Dominions MP doesn't work like typical video game MP, it's much more like playing chess or shogi or something online. It doesn't require heavy scheduling or socializing, and it doesn't (generally) group you with a bunch of morons or people with whom you can't find common ground.
Not just combat, but magic and items. There is a crap ton of spells and items in this game. Outside of combat the religious parts of the game are a lot of fun. It's fun for example, to try to win a game by pushing Dominion strength as opposed to pure conquest or capturing thrones.
Dominions is a logistician's game. While the battles are obviously the end, it is preparing for battles through all other areas of the game that is really its core of gameplay. Ultimately you want to reach the point where you do NOT have to study a battle replay, but just glance at the result and bask in the warm glow of a job well done (basically meaning you have optimized your scripts for that specific enemy army you just defeated... and now better get ready to counter whatever new they throw at you. Not as important in single-player, but if you fire up a game with customized pretenders for AI take over you might get a number of nasty surprises).
If you enjoyed higher-difficulty TOME runs, Dominions is pretty much a meta-strategic version of that kind of optimization. Except you have to account for literal thousands of potential counters to your "build."
Which is why people recommend multiplayer, because there are some things the AI will just never throw at you.
That said, Dominions 5 is basically like EU4 with all expansions worth of content. If anything, it's highly under-priced for the amount of actual gameplay content you receive (and no DLC milking here, but free patches for years, as well - or at least that has been the case since I started playing Dominions 2).
If I were to recommend it any higher I'd have to clear the orbital path availability with appropriate agencies.
lol I've won only twice, and that was on normal roguelike difficulty with supposedly overpowered classes. But I swear I'm trying!
So Dominions is pretty much a fantasy war simulator.
How much time does one match take on average?
And how is the map generator? I saw some videos and the maps looked kinda small.
Does terrain play a role in the game aside from movement cost?
Aside from the standard here are a variety of community maps to choose from. As for the map generator, it has made a lot of progress since previous versions of the game. You can choose the size relative to the number of nations, the type of terrain and so forth.
Speaking of the terrain, it does indeed have effects. Different terrain types have a different likelihood of specific kinds of magical sites being within them, and can affect the level of resources, supplies, pupulation and as a result income and recruitment points.
Additionally, mountains are only crossable by units without mountain survival when both sides are warm temperature wise, while rivers can only be crossed by non swimming units when both sides are cold.
Really depends on a number of variables. First of all, SP or MP? Map size? Victory conditions? For that matter, game conditions in general?
I couldn't really say what the "standard" length is, I'm afraid.
A dedicated SP game on Enormous (25 provinces per player) and all factions in EA (31 of them) is... let me carry the one... 775 unique provinces. There goes a better part of your week even if you play 12 hours/day or so ;)
MP maps are much smaller. You won't get anywhere the number of factions in play, and I think most people run on 15 provinces per player (Medium). Though obviously there's nothing to stop you from playing different size, or just a custom map altogether.
Absolutely. Even disregarding temperature scale modifying terrain depending on the season (got your snow boots?), certain ritual spells require specific terrain type, or work differently depending on terrain type. But the big thing is units with terrain-type-survival trait. Aside from being able to move more than one province due to lower movement penalty (and that is a pretty solid thing already), Mountain Survival for instance allows crossing otherwise-impassable-on-foot mountains. As you can imagine that can be of a huge strategic value also to people born outside of the Barca family. Swamp survival means your units won't take a stat hit for fighting a battle in swamp.
The elephant in the room, though, is the difference each terrain type brings strategically. Income, resources, magic site frequency... it's all dependent.
Aside from the obvious and elaborate difference between land/underwater provinces, as well ;)
For the most part not really. Terrain DOES affect the resources you get for recruiting units in a particular province, and the magic sites you can find there, and certain nations get certain kinds of recruitable units that only show up in that terrain. There are a few magical rituals which can only be cast in specific terrains, and a few in-battle spells that are terrain-dependent (Howl is stronger in forests).
But for the most part, terrain has no tactical effects, and its primary effect on the strategic map is indeed movement cost.
RE: standard game length, I've heard of people completing a game in a single day, but I think they must be playing on small maps vs. only one opponent. When I play a game in Dominions (single player mode, which is my preferred mode) I generally expect it to last about a month, which is to say several weekends totalling perhaps 30-50 hours. If I played the game to completion instead of merely to a dominant position it would probably take longer.
Playing Dom4-5, I have often wished there were more developmental avenues in the game which were not just valuable for their extrinsic conquest value. That being the case, on Steam my playtime with the series is second only to EU3-4. (I'd have to guess that, if TES or some other RPG series I have owned for many years were all on Steam, this might not be so.) For me, there has been plenty grand strategic goals to pursue and, moreover, to learn how to pursue while fending off all and sundry other civilizations. I fully believe that the game really shines in the hands of other players, but the AI can keep it interesting for a good many hours before you totally dominate it, and insisting on "grand strategic goals" which do not immediately advance the war helps them keep their edge a bit.
It is, after all, your game and your mindset approaching it that make this difference. Make the kind of god which you want to control the fate of the world and the nation whose lore ethos you most prefer to support her for this game. Pick what summons, globals, items, etc., you want your realm to have based on your nation's flavor or on how far, technically, you can push that nation's magical industrial complex (this game is really more about this: even the most powerful specialist needs others' high skills to combine to really reach the high ends) for unusual goals. Then, fight to achieve these goals and take the cosmic championship both. Your interactions with other nations will mostly be belligerent (unless you decide to play multiple nations together as a disciple game), but there is plenty of game to explore in a developmental spirit before you have actually to kill them. I do it all the time, and there are so many dimensions to the game that even though I mainly like 4-5 nations, I have yet either to get tired of playing them through numerous scenarios or to really enthuse about conquest for conquest's sake.