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So partially trill is going for seeing how your strategy worked, just as in watching good football match, and partially - from finding working strategy for every nation and most of battles.
Did you noticed that battle is not totally automatic? You can make strategy placement of troops, and every army have (only one though) global order. Additionaly every commander can have up to five orders that will be mostly executed in first five turns of game - and one common order too. "Mostly" is good aspect for me too - it goes for spells, and means that sometimes commanders decides to ignore specific too powerful orders if they think that simpler ones will be enough.
Also, in strategical part there is vast field of decisions. You decides what items to create/equip to whom, which magical areas study first, what to build, who do what (for typical mage, for example, it's always possible guard province, patrol it, research spell, cast overland one, forge magical items, empower, seek for magic sites - or simply go with army. And there are always more specific tasks for specific cases).
Yes, I love this game. :)
Do you play mostly in Singleplayer? I can't say I have much interested in multiplayer stuff (I generally play games as a way to relax alone, in sweet solitude!).
I know the AI can't put up the same fight as a human opponent, but does the depth you describe sit well in singeplayer games?
An easy example would be cavalry unit positioned on the edge of the battlefield and set it to target rearmost enemies. In the start of the battle, the cavalry can go past the lines of infrantry and try to murder commanders who were put on the rear of the battlefield to avoid the dangers of frontline, which ironically enough lead to their death. After all commanders are dead, all the regular troops will rout, resulting in a -4 attack and defence skill penalty and they try to leave the battlefield without fighting the enemy if possible (enemy is not blocking their retreat).
However, the cavalry flanking can be avoided by simply putting some infrantry to target the aproaching cavalry units, effectively stopping them on their tracks or setting a squad of infrantry even further behind the lines and tell them to hold before attacking, causing the cavalry to rush towards them.
However the entire countering mechanic comes even more important once magic comes to play: You might want to cast a buff that gives resistance against fire or use units that are naturally resilient against fire when your opponent is throwing fireballs at you. You could also use spells such as mind blast that can only target enemies that arennät mindless, meaning you can wipe out enemy mage that is controlling hordes of infrantry as the mage is the only non-mindless enemy unit.
In single player it works similar to what you suggest, but there is a fair amount of variability between facing one nation or another. Maybe you're facing Pangaea and you have a lot of earth magic, so you line up your army and cast Blade Wind a bunch of times and throw spinning metal blades at all the lightly armored troops you'd expect from beast men from the forests. That same army may get decimated by Xibalba, a nation of bat people, who fly over your front line and murder all your mages.
In multiplayer you can expect greater challenge. The position of your armies, composition, knowledge of your enemy's capabilities, and spell placement and timing are everything. You're playing as early age Caelum, air-aligned winged humans who blast their enemies with thunder and lightning and then swoop in with lances, except that the army of squishy human mages and line infantry have moved out of the province you were seeking to take and they have been replaced by a Celestial General, a titan of war, who drops from the sky and is wearing armor that makes him effectively invulnerable to said lances and lightning, and he murders a hundred of your bird men with a snake-bladder on a stick. Your army is deep in enemy territory, due to their ability to fly, and they have no where to run after that. They're all hunted down and killed to the man. That's not just a story, that is an actual battle I was engaged in (As the Celestial General, luckily).
And that's just scratching the surface. If you know he has said titan, than you have to plan for that, and he in turn plans for your planning, and so on.
On the strategic map you do a lot of parrying and posturing in MP, especially when at war, and then there is the diplomacy. Moving troops suggestively and then bluffing or making honest threats are often how you keep your borders secure while you make gains elsewhere.
It is also less accessible and arguably worse overall, but if you want depth it has that in absolute spades.
It's also a superb co-operative game if that's something you enjoy.
Oh, I'm not at all surprised it has more depth than a total war game. As much fun as I've had with them over the years, they have about as much depth as a puddle.
I'm curious as to what you mean by "worse overall" though.
Morsigil, thank you. Could such scenarios happen in singleplayer too? Maybe once I've learned the game a bit I can explore multiplayer more, but for now I'm more interested in a singeplayer experience.
That being said the AI is definitely worse than a human opponent, since it can't prepare counters against armies it has faced. For example if you make a thug (strong commander with magic items that let it slaughter dosens of enemies), the AI doesn't know how to prepare a proper thug counters, such as spells that would be designed to take out the thug.
Also: The game does not have diplomacy in singleplayer, so if you want that, you need to play multiplayer.
Oh, you like Malazan BotF? You definitely need to play this game then. It has T'lan Imass in it!
Well, technically they are called Unfrozen. But they are ancient zombie neanderthals with magical flint greatswords, and IIRC Kristoffer, one of the devs, has admitted that they are indeed T'lan Imass under a different name. The only thing that's missing is that they can't turn to dust for flying/stealth unless you mod that in.
Oh my...
Well Total War Warhammer 2 for instance has a much better narrative campaign, much much better graphics, sound, multiplayer server support, roleplaying elements, GUI, a much bigger community of players, better in game help, better cinematics, bigger differences between factions through special mechanics etc.
If someone said they liked strategy games and fantasy settings and I had no further information from them I would definitely recommend Warhammer Total War 2 before I would recommend Dominions 5. If I worked for a games review media source I'd almost certainly give WHTW2 a higher score than Dominions 4 too (I haven't honestly played enough Dom5 yet to give it a fair review).
This is not to say that I enjoy Warhammer Total War 2 more than Dominions 5. I don't. I love Dominions and have been playing and making mods since Dominions 3. Dominions 5 is a much deeper experience than WHTW2, it arguably has more charm, it has way, way, waaaay more content, it's much easier to mod, it arguably has better AI, it's a much better competitive multiplayer game, it's much less demanding on your PC, it has more mechanics and options for different playstyles, and numerous other advantages.
There is also hundreds of different magic sites that are usually hidden. These magic sites are found by searching the province with a mage that has the required path level to find the site. Magic sites generally give magic gems which are used in ritual spells, item crafting and somecombat spells, but some of them allow recruitting or summoning certain units, make certain ritual spells cheaper to cast or may even give you a free fortress.
Dominion: Your dominion is extremely important. It will give all the provinces under your dominion the dominion effect you designed at the pretender creation screen (+ possibe throne and magic site effects). Also your troops gain bonus morale when fightning inside your own dominion and your pretender automatically blessed inside your own dominion as well. If you lose all of your dominion, your god will be vanguished and you lose the game.
Strategic map has also some important tactical features: the terrain (forests, swamps, deserts, etc. including snow from cold scales) will affect unit movement costs, while units that have survivality in these terrains don't get the movement penalty (and also consume less supplies in those provinces). There is also stealthy units, that can move throught enemy territories without getting spotted, unless there is strong army patrolling the province. Also rivers will block movement across them unless the units of the army are ambitian, can swim or the lake is frozen from both sides (both provinces split by the lake have cold scales).
Also I would suggest you check out the Dominions5 manual which you can find by simply googling "Dominions5 manual". It is a long read but explains plenty of the mechanics.
I see. So you're saying that WTW2 has all the polish, the budget, the visuals, the raw appeal of a triple A strategy game, but Dominions has the true character and depth?
Yes, this exact scenario could, with the caveat that there would be less magical opposition and more troops. The AI isn't great at recruiting mages, though with Dominions 5 they have gotten better and recruit a relative variety of leaders.
As a hobby, Dominions 5 is much better. If you do enjoy the game itself, which is (don't get me wrong) a solid 8/10 at least, then there's just so, so much of it. It's almost endless in scope and content.
But with a random person I'd recommend WHTW2 over Dominions 5.
The good thing is that the flaws of Dominions 5 are largely all on display if you watch some gameplay videos of it, whereas a game like WHTW2 can make a very good first impression but not turn out after a few hours to actually be a game you enjoy.