Dominions 5 is Actually Very Simple

[Energist]

TLDR
Dominions is simpler and more elegant than most other 4x games on the market. Why does it have the reputation of being the most complex and difficult to learn? I think that hinders this game's marketability.

***

I held off getting this game for years because of perceived complexity. Normally I like complex games, but the fanbase and marketing around this game painted a picture I wasn't keen on.

After about 50 hours of gameplay, now, I can confidently say that this game is far simpler to get into than most other strategy/4x games on the market.

Compared to Total War: Warhammer 3, there are about the same number of factions ( not exact I know). Each faction has, at times, a bewildering number of units.

There are far fewer economic/ infrastructural concerns ( Dom has only 3 buildings, only one of which is upgradeable) vs Total War's vast number of different buildings and upgrades, all doing something different.

Total War has a more integrated diplomacy system, trade system, and a more broad set of objectives. There are many more moving parts that all have to be understood fairly early on to avoid getting decimated.

Also, Total War has a much more complicated and difficult to parse interface. When it comes to battles, I have to pick every little position, take into account terrain effects, visibility, line of sight, etc. Dominions 5 battles are automated, and my decision making is far more limited in scope and degree.

I compare total war because it's the only other turn based with real time battle 4x I have experience with.

If we compare instead to any of Paradox's games, Dominions is incredibly simple by comparison.

Why then does everyone think Dominions is the "Dwarf Fortress" of strategy games? I feel like the labeling this game gets really hurts its market reach. This game is by far the simplest and easiest to learn to play of all the 4x games I own.

I'm not saying it isn't a deep game, just that it's actually a very intuitive and simple game to get started with. I've convinced a lot of friends to get 4x games over the years. Dominions has been the simplest and fastest to explain to people. Trying to teach someone the UI of Total War, Stellaris, CK2-3, Europa Universalis IV, etc. takes hours. In Dominions, I basically give them a template pretender, show them how to make units and off they go.

Obviously, much more info is needed to be good at this game, but the barrier to entry is significantly lower than almost every other game in the genre.

[Draken]

Both of Illwinters games have very simple gameplay loops and gameplay.

But for each of the the devil is in the detail. There are a ton of pretty complex mechanical things going on in the background and they do require a bit more effort to understand and utilize well.

You are right. It's very simple to get started with. Just hire some troops and commanders and send them out to conquer provinces. Hire some mages, do some research and then have the mages cast some spells on the battlefield or some rituals in labs.

The complexity comes in when you have one commander with the right gear run headfirst into hundreds of enemy troops and win.

Or when you extrapolate the exact number of defenders in an indy province and sent just the right amount of heavy cavalry to kill them.

Or when you plan out your research to forge an item that lets you boost your mage to summon another mage that lets you make another item to then boost a third mage to be able to put up the global you want.

Or when you put your slow melee units at the very front and your faster elephants the exact amount of tiles to the back that they will both hit the enemy at the same time.

You can have 500 hours in Dominions, watch a video of someone else playing and go: "Huh, I had no idea you could do that."

That is what people talk about when they mentioned Dominions being complex.

[Energist]

Originally posted by Draken:

Both of Illwinters games have very simple gameplay loops and gameplay.

But for each of the the devil is in the detail. There are a ton of pretty complex mechanical things going on in the background and they do require a bit more effort to understand and utilize well.

You are right. It's very simple to get started with. Just hire some troops and commanders and send them out to conquer provinces. Hire some mages, do some research and then have the mages cast some spells on the battlefield or some rituals in labs.

The complexity comes in when you have one commander with the right gear run headfirst into hundreds of enemy troops and win.

Or when you extrapolate the exact number of defenders in an indy province and sent just the right amount of heavy cavalry to kill them.

Or when you plan out your research to forge an item that lets you boost your mage to summon another mage that lets you make another item to then boost a third mage to be able to put up the global you want.

Or when you put your slow melee units at the very front and your faster elephants the exact amount of tiles to the back that they will both hit the enemy at the same time.

You can have 500 hours in Dominions, watch a video of someone else playing and go: "Huh, I had no idea you could do that."

That is what people talk about when they mentioned Dominions being complex.

Right. The number of meaningful interactions is very high. I'm still a total noob at this game.

I'm certainly not saying Dominions lacks depth. Just looking at it from the perspective of a new player. To me, this game is incredibly simple to get started with. There's really not a whole lot that has to be parsed to start taking provinces.

Ironically, it is the simplicity of its presentation that makes it so compelling to play. It's far easier to get a good mp game going with friends in this game than just about any other 4x I have.

More people would be able to enjoy this if it didn't have such an undeserved reputation of being "complicated"

Depth and Complexity are different IMO. Chess is simple, but incredibly deep. Other games are complex but equally shallow.

[David McMurdo]

I've got over one thousand hours across both Dominions 4 and 5 and I'm still convinced I'm not playing it correctly, mainly due to the many statements about the AI that routinely beats me being "too easy". It's pretty much as described above: I can can compose effective armies well enough, but I don't tend to go indepth when it comes to spell-casting and item creation, and it seems to be that such matters separate the novices from the masters.

Maybe one of you could give me some inspiration or something specific to try out. Right now I tend to play as early Archosphale (sp for sure) or late age Atlantis. Any advanced tips for those nations would be welcome.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Originally posted by David McMurdo:

can can compose effective armies well enough, but I don't tend to go indepth when it comes to spell-casting and item creation, and it seems to be that such matters separate the novices from the masters.

Pretty much.

Fundamentally, the game is at its core ABOUT mage tactics, the troops layer is and SHOULD be treated as just kinda a supplemental extra.. A lot of it is that troops in Dominions don't... DO anything? You decide where to put them and give them a broad behaviour profile like 'attack rear', wind them up and watch them go. After that they're just a bundle of stats and some passive traits like glamour, and as a result they're just not engaging enough to carry a player's interest,

I've played games both where my character build or my armies are mostly defined by what passive bonuses they have. It's dull as dishwater. "Gameplay is a series of interesting decisions," right? There's a limit to how much an element of the game can and should be emphasised when it has such limited scope for decisionmaking.

Like, you can, in theory, play this game while never recruiting troops, and a lot more easily than not making significant use of magic. Neither is easy in absolute terms, or a strong way to play, but playing a nation and recruiting only spellcasting commanders is a challenge run that you Can Do with some nations, and maybe even win. The same cannot be said for if you do not make significant use of magic.

As far as using Arco and Atlantis better, neither is really my wheelhouse but I'd recommend https://illwiki.com/dom5/magic-use-not-lola for getting a general overview of what good spells to focus on, according to your path access.

[Energist]

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Like, you can, in theory, play this game while never recruiting troops, and a lot more easily than not making significant use of magic. Neither is easy in absolute terms, or a strong way to play, but playing a nation and recruiting only spellcasting commanders is a challenge run that you Can Do with some nations, and maybe even win. The same cannot be said for if you do not make significant use of magic.

As far as using Arco and Atlantis better, neither is really my wheelhouse but I'd recommend https://illwiki.com/dom5/magic-use-not-lola for getting a general overview of what good spells to focus on, according to your path access.

From what I have read, dominions 6 is supposed to address the lopsidedness of magic a bit. Mundane units supposedly will be more powerful relatively speaking.

[Energist]

Originally posted by David McMurdo:

I've got over one thousand hours across both Dominions 4 and 5 and I'm still convinced I'm not playing it correctly, mainly due to the many statements about the AI that routinely beats me being "too easy". It's pretty much as described above: I can can compose effective armies well enough, but I don't tend to go indepth when it comes to spell-casting and item creation, and it seems to be that such matters separate the novices from the masters.

Maybe one of you could give me some inspiration or something specific to try out. Right now I tend to play as early Archosphale (sp for sure) or late age Atlantis. Any advanced tips for those nations would be welcome.

I think this is an issue in many games. People who abuse meta will always think a game is too easy. AI can't adapt. It can only play how it was designed, and once the design counter is understood by the power gamers, the AI will be trivial to them.

If you go into it without such knowledge, it can take a long long time to ever become better than the AI.

I can't speak to how Dominions AI stacks up to other games just yet, but I did have the AI assassinate a commander of mine while they were sieging one of my castles. That was impressive. Perhaps the randomness of all possibilities can, in theory, come together to create a challenging experience more than other titles.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Originally posted by Energist:

From what I have read, dominions 6 is supposed to address the lopsidedness of magic a bit. Mundane units supposedly will be more powerful relatively speaking.

Yes, I heard the same and worried it would be bad for the game, until I spoke to some testers and their opinion was that this is a mistake that's gotten out of hand.

To paraphrase one of them, troops are more prominent in that you can afford more of them, and a lot of pretenders/sacreds are a little weaker proprtionately due to changes to the meta blesses and nonsacred troop recruitment increasing while sacred recruitment staying the same, but it's honestly not that impactful. You can get maybe 30% more nonsacred troops, but 13 vanheres aren't going to struggle to kill 75 militia anymore than 10 did 50, and meanwhile the new mid-tier evocations are, if anything, more than 30% more powerful, so mage dominance is going to stay about the same. That did a lot to reassure me.

The game SHOULD be lopsided towards the importance of magic. Magic is the part of the game with the depth and breadth of decisionmaking to be fun and engaging for a player.

[Energist]

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Originally posted by Energist:

From what I have read, dominions 6 is supposed to address the lopsidedness of magic a bit. Mundane units supposedly will be more powerful relatively speaking.

Yes, I heard the same and worried it would be bad for the game, until I spoke to some testers and their opinion was that this is a mistake that's gotten out of hand.

To paraphrase one of them, troops are more prominent in that you can afford more of them, and a lot of pretenders/sacreds are a little weaker proprtionately due to changes to the meta blesses and nonsacred troop recruitment increasing while sacred recruitment staying the same, but it's honestly not that impactful. You can get maybe 30% more nonsacred troops, but 13 vanheres aren't going to struggle to kill 75 militia anymore than 10 did 50, and meanwhile the new mid-tier evocations are, if anything, more than 30% more powerful, so mage dominance is going to stay about the same. That did a lot to reassure me.

The game SHOULD be lopsided towards the importance of magic. Magic is the part of the game with the depth and breadth of decisionmaking to be fun and engaging for a player.

I wouldn't mind magic being so impactful if I had more control over it. For example, I figured out the hard way that my mage summoning fire elementals will kill more of my troops than the enemies. Friendly fire isn't so bad until I realize I can't actually choose what spells he will cast or when other than the opening... My options to avoid this are to A) Not have mages that can cast fire elementals, B) position the mages such that if they summon fire elementals, the elementals are unlikely to get in the way. Neither of these are reasonable solutions IMO. Borderline hackish.

I love the variety of spells, but I do kind of which I had more control over what is happening, or atleast more ways to avoid silly and unintended occurrences like that. Stronger magic, in a way, removes control rather than adds it. Once the first 5 spells are cast, I'm at the mercy of some die rolls entirely.

The only real control I have is what units I choose and where I put them. I feel like I have more impact in that than in my mages, who basically just cast whatever they want, when they feel like it.

I suppose this leads into one of my criticisms about the game. It's not just not complex, but actually too rudimentary in the wrong ways, in some cases. The battle AI isn't smart, so I have to pick where units will start, but I can't tell them what to do really. I can just suggest things to them. Mages, I can give them 5 spells each, but then for the other 80% of the battle, if they want to spam fire elementals that will set my entire back lines on fire, I just have to accept that.

I appreciate the more laid back approach. fine tuning positions and what not in Total War gets tiring, but here, the simplicity leads to a different problem. Chaos.

It would be nice if I could target specific squads with specific spells. or pick where an effect will land. It would be nice to have the Conquest of Elysium spell memorization approach so I can eliminate spells entirely.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

To be blunt, "my mages killed more of my troops than the enemies by summoning fire elementals" sounds like a you problem more than an issue with the game. The only way fire elementals can kill your own troops is through their heat aura's - this is slow, and can be pretty much stopped cold by painting fireres on your troops. Plus, mages can't summon fire elementals unless they're holding gems, so just... don't give them extra gems if you don't want them to summon fire elementals? You totally can position them so they don't get in the way, that's easy.

You can't control what mages will do during a long battle, but you can have reasonable expectations of what they'll do. People have done deep dives on the casting AI, and it definitely has preferences. Death mages will tend to default to casting Horde of Skeletons if they can, astral mages will default to point buffing with Luck/Body Ethereal and then spamming Mind Burn/Soul Slay/Paralyze if they can, etc. Learning these preferences and factoring them into your battle scripts is just... learning the game.

[David McMurdo]

Originally posted by Energist:

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Yes, I heard the same and worried it would be bad for the game, until I spoke to some testers and their opinion was that this is a mistake that's gotten out of hand.

To paraphrase one of them, troops are more prominent in that you can afford more of them, and a lot of pretenders/sacreds are a little weaker proprtionately due to changes to the meta blesses and nonsacred troop recruitment increasing while sacred recruitment staying the same, but it's honestly not that impactful. You can get maybe 30% more nonsacred troops, but 13 vanheres aren't going to struggle to kill 75 militia anymore than 10 did 50, and meanwhile the new mid-tier evocations are, if anything, more than 30% more powerful, so mage dominance is going to stay about the same. That did a lot to reassure me.

The game SHOULD be lopsided towards the importance of magic. Magic is the part of the game with the depth and breadth of decisionmaking to be fun and engaging for a player.

I suppose this leads into one of my criticisms about the game. It's not just not complex, but actually too rudimentary in the wrong ways, in some cases. The battle AI isn't smart, so I have to pick where units will start, but I can't tell them what to do really. I can just suggest things to them. Mages, I can give them 5 spells each, but then for the other 80% of the battle, if they want to spam fire elementals that will set my entire back lines on fire, I just have to accept that.

I appreciate the more laid back approach. fine tuning positions and what not in Total War gets tiring, but here, the simplicity leads to a different problem. Chaos.

I guess it depends on why you play these games. I tend to role-play to an extent, so the fact that I can't dictate my character's actions down to the last detail works for me. If I'm someone issuing orders, there's only so much instruction I can give those under me: the rest of the way I have to trust their judgement.

On that subject, I do wonder who the player is exactly. You might think it would be the god of the nation, but the player is still active even when the god is dead. Maybe the developers didn't think about it, but for role-play purposes I do.

[Energist]

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

To be blunt, "my mages killed more of my troops than the enemies by summoning fire elementals" sounds like a you problem more than an issue with the game. The only way fire elementals can kill your own troops is through their heat aura's - this is slow, and can be pretty much stopped cold by painting fireres on your troops. Plus, mages can't summon fire elementals unless they're holding gems, so just... don't give them extra gems if you don't want them to summon fire elementals? You totally can position them so they don't get in the way, that's easy.

Yeah, I know there are solutions. They just come across as a bit hackish. Having to put fire res on my troops because my own mages will nuke them otherwise is an oddity. I have to protect from my own mages as much or moreso than the enemy mages. Not entirely sensible. All of the solutions to this problem could be made redundant if I could just say " cast this over there" or " don't cast this at all."

You can't control what mages will do during a long battle, but you can have reasonable expectations of what they'll do. People have done deep dives on the casting AI, and it definitely has preferences. Death mages will tend to default to casting Horde of Skeletons if they can, astral mages will default to point buffing with Luck/Body Ethereal and then spamming Mind Burn/Soul Slay/Paralyze if they can, etc. Learning these preferences and factoring them into your battle scripts is just... learning the game.

To be fair, those are meta level pieces of info. Every game has that, for sure. I think Dominions does a great job ensuring that new players can incrementally learn meta details over time. That's something other games with much less of a "complex" reputation get wrong.

I'm somewhere in the middle on it. In Total War, the solution to my hero units nuking my own men is just to reposition them mid battle. Here, I have to remove the hero unit entirely, or give my men some bandages, grog, and tell them to tough it out. lol.

[Energist]

Originally posted by David McMurdo:

Originally posted by Energist:

I suppose this leads into one of my criticisms about the game. It's not just not complex, but actually too rudimentary in the wrong ways, in some cases. The battle AI isn't smart, so I have to pick where units will start, but I can't tell them what to do really. I can just suggest things to them. Mages, I can give them 5 spells each, but then for the other 80% of the battle, if they want to spam fire elementals that will set my entire back lines on fire, I just have to accept that.

I appreciate the more laid back approach. fine tuning positions and what not in Total War gets tiring, but here, the simplicity leads to a different problem. Chaos.

I guess it depends on why you play these games. I tend to role-play to an extent, so the fact that I can't dictate my character's actions down to the last detail works for me. If I'm someone issuing orders, there's only so much instruction I can give those under me: the rest of the way I have to trust their judgement.

On that subject, I do wonder who the player is exactly. You might think it would be the god of the nation, but the player is still active even when the god is dead. Maybe the developers didn't think about it, but for role-play purposes I do.

I think the role play aspects are the defining feature of Dominions. I appreciate the flavor and text. I'm admittedly still trying to understand what can make someone play this for 2,000 hours, for example. I don't necessarily need to get that much out of the game to enjoy it. I'm definitely going to get Dom 6, and I bought Conquest of Elysium.

That it's not as complex as I thought is a double edged sword. On one hand, I'm happy about it because it means it's easier to pick up and play. Plus, I was able to get friends to play it with me which is good. On the other hand, the lack of more control and fine tuning does kind of limit the sense of engagement. I often feel kind of out of control. As if I'm just there to give suggestions. Vague suggestions.

It's a trade off. I think Dominions has a really careful balance that I'm most appreciative of, but I wouldn't mind magic either being toned down or having more strategic control of it in Dom 6 . It would be great to limit what spells can be cast, and to choose which squads to target for the 5 spells I can choose. Those two changes alone would be huge.

Even if a mage will cast a spell I want, I can't be sure they will target the right area/unit/ etc.

Perhaps mages could have a memory stat that determines how many spells they can "know" on the field of battle. Then I can choose those spells.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

Originally posted by Energist:

Yeah, I know there are solutions. They just come across as a bit hackish. Having to put fire res on my troops because my own mages will nuke them otherwise is an oddity. I have to protect from my own mages as much or moreso than the enemy mages. Not entirely sensible. All of the solutions to this problem could be made redundant if I could just say " cast this over there" or " don't cast this at all."

I suppose the difference is that I regard most games aversion to friendly fire as patronisingly handhold-y. Battle is chaos. ♥♥♥♥ goes wrong. Blue-on-blue incidents are common. If you're calling fire from the sky in an environment where melee combat is still common, yeah, you're going to burn some of your own people.

So what? You're not a caring father to your men. You're a cynical pretender to godhood, lashing a nation forward as a vehicle to pursue your dreams of ultimate power.

[Energist]

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

Originally posted by Energist:

Yeah, I know there are solutions. They just come across as a bit hackish. Having to put fire res on my troops because my own mages will nuke them otherwise is an oddity. I have to protect from my own mages as much or moreso than the enemy mages. Not entirely sensible. All of the solutions to this problem could be made redundant if I could just say " cast this over there" or " don't cast this at all."

I suppose the difference is that I regard most games aversion to friendly fire as patronisingly handhold-y. Battle is chaos. ♥♥♥♥ goes wrong. Blue-on-blue incidents are common. If you're calling fire from the sky in an environment where melee combat is still common, yeah, you're going to burn some of your own people.

So what? You're not a caring father to your men. You're a cynical pretender to godhood, lashing a nation forward as a vehicle to pursue your dreams of ultimate power.

lol. That is a colorful way to view it. Ultimately, the point to all the strategic action is to win the war. to do that means empowering and strengthening one's army. Not destroying it. Any competent army would take actions to reduce friendly fire. I'm not advocating for the removal of friendly fire damage, but more control over how it's avoided would be sensible.

[David McMurdo]

Originally posted by Energist:

Originally posted by Ddraig Lleuad:

I suppose the difference is that I regard most games aversion to friendly fire as patronisingly handhold-y. Battle is chaos. ♥♥♥♥ goes wrong. Blue-on-blue incidents are common. If you're calling fire from the sky in an environment where melee combat is still common, yeah, you're going to burn some of your own people.

So what? You're not a caring father to your men. You're a cynical pretender to godhood, lashing a nation forward as a vehicle to pursue your dreams of ultimate power.

lol. That is a colorful way to view it. Ultimately, the point to all the strategic action is to win the war. to do that means empowering and strengthening one's army. Not destroying it. Any competent army would take actions to reduce friendly fire. I'm not advocating for the removal of friendly fire damage, but more control over how it's avoided would be sensible.

I always thought this could be easily rectified with the addition of another checkbox in a unit's tactical options, one that simply tells them whether or not they should engage in friendly fire. I don't think it would actually be that difficult to implement based on how the game calculates things.