Dominions 5: Pretender Design and Analysis Part 1

As you will see if you look at my history, I wrote this guide for Dominions 4 many years ago.  Here is my update for Dominions 5.  Enjoy!

Here's the story.  You joined a game and you got a nation.  NOW WHAT?  Maybe you got a nation in a draft and haven't a gory clue about it.  Of course you can go chat up people on forums or discord and ask for help.  Or you can do your own work.

Step 1: Review what your nation has.

This part has held up as viable since Dominions 3.  10+ years.

Start up a test game with the correct mods required by your game.  Just take a default pretender and look over your troops.

Due to interface improvements you can also do most of this by "create pretender god" and using the live tooltips.  But I still prefer a test game.  It has a few more options to dig into detail.

General Review

You want to ask these questions.

1. What kind of sacred units do I get?
2. Are they capital only?
3. What kind of sacred commanders and magi do I get?
4. Are they capital only?
5. Do I have any other capital only units?
6. Do they have special abilities?
7. Do I have capital only commanders or magi?
8. What are my common magic paths? Is this capital dependent?
9. What magic randoms will I get and how can they synergize?
10. What sort of researchers do I get? Sacred?  Low cost?  Recruit anywhere?
11. Do I have slow to recruit elite commanders and are they important to me?
12. What is my capital gem production?

Example: Late Age Erytheia

This is my task tonight.  I have never played the nation. In the next part I used numbered list but I did not keep each question to the same number.  If that bothers your latent obsessive compulsive.... I propose you edit it to taste.  It's like cooking.  Use a LITTLE heat, but save the rest for toppings.

1. The sacred are average in price and function and not capital restricted.  The biggest issue is terrible combat move of 5 and very high encumbrance on land.  But almost all Erytheia units have a second water shape.  A comparison may help.  The Soldiers of the Setting Sun are 30 gold and 36 resources each.  For that you get excellent protection, 3 attacks per square (size 2), a magic weapon, 13 hit points, but on land the very challenging 5 move. A reasonable comparison is the Jaguar Warrior with second form for 26 gold and 4 resources.  Just on resources it is much easier to create large numbers on demand without many design points spent on production.  They are also fast and have effective 30 hit points with the second shape.  And in the second shape they get 6 attacks per square.  This does not recommend a large bless to me.  Some minor blesses could be quite helpful.
2. None of the sacred magi look like good options for thugs so another reason to avoid spending large design points on a bless.
3. The troop sacred units are not capital only and you have some capital only sacred magi and some not but those are restricted to coastal forts.
4. The princes and princesses are odd units with insanity and from research some complicated events that can occur.  There is no easy answer but it's pretty clear you want them.  Deep analysis of the royalty isn't something that can be done from a quick review.  I am just going to play the game and figure it out.
5.  Alternatively, the daduchos look very excellent and deserving of a light mage bless.  The research points per gold is very high with an average of 10gold/RP (typical random magic).  That compares very favourably with 9.2 gold/RP for Tungaliks which I had handy to compare.  Then you get a good chance of level 2 in numerous paths and a slight chance of level 3 magic.  They are also sacred so upkeep costs are manageable.  I understand they are available in any coastal fort.  Your land forts will be limited to mystics which are a good mage but not sacred and not as broad in magic.
6. Erytheia has a selection of water only units and magi.  The key thing to note is the only source of nature magic on the pearl magi as a 25% random.  To use that nature on land will require forging or summoning from the conjuration school.  Nature is not critical to the nation but the ability to summon Naiads would help diversify significantly.  And for that you simply need water 3 nature 1 which can be done easily with booster items.
7. The available magic paths are very broad but not very tall.  This nation has a lot of random magic on its magi.  Fire, Water and Astral are the strongest. There is a good chance of Earth and Air at level 2.  And a small chance of Nature.  Death magic is completely missing.
8. The research is very good.  You have two magi with inspiring research: mystics and daduchos.
9. The royalty are 4 commander points so you won't be buying them fast.
10. The capital makes 2 fire gems, one water gem and one pearl.

Troops Review

Now you need to look carefully at the statistics of your national units.  The main thing for pretender design in this section is planning your scales, most importantly production.  If your main troops are low gold and high production things like turmoil and production become viable.  Things to watch for include:

1. Do my units get good att, def, or str stats?
2. Do I have precision bonus?
3. Do I have cost effective archers? (10 gold or less and low resource. Or crossbows (armour piercing).
4. Do I get high power ranged attacks?  (long or composite bows.  Strong javelins.  High strength sticks and stones.)
5. Do I have high protection units (15+) and what defence do they have?
6. Do I have units with extra high enc?  (eg. Atlantis)
7. Do I have other bonuses? (recuperation, stealth, tower shields, fast move)

Late Age Erytheia Example: 

The units for Erytheia are an interesting mix.  There are 3 general types: amphibious units from coastal forts that have two shapes (merpeople legs in water), regular land units from coast and inland forts, and aquatic only units from sea forts.  This makes it a bit tricky to do my favourite review by starting a game since you'd have to expand inland and to water to see all the options.  So it is easier to do the review from the pretender design screen and the nation overview.

All of the heavy infantry of Erytheia have formation fighter.  This increases the number per square and therefore the number of attacks per square.  It tends to make melee troops significantly more effective.  And the melee troops of Erytheia are high resource cost so that suggests production scale.

A couple quick things are apparent.  The combat move on land of the amphibious coastal units is slow.  This is a concern for melee troops since it will take a long time being shot by late age crossbows to get into engagement.  The heavy pikemen and sacreds are combat move 5.  That's very slow.  For ranged troops they have some decent light infantry with javelins.  I find it useful to buy light infantry or light armoured ranged to use up spare resources after buying heavy infantry.   I adjust that as I expand and gain more resources.  It is also easier to buy low resource troops when you simply need numbers for siege or patrol.  They have a odd weak crossbow that works in the water.  The crossbows do not compare favourably with independent crossbows in having one less damage and a range of 25 compared to 40.  You are better off on land simply buying independent crossbows which are common.  But in the water any ranged units are helpful.

The aquatic troops are more or less common tritons and do the job fine but can not leave the water.  

Gold costs are average with some high resource units.  This suggests going with good scales and using mixed formations for expansion.  It is late age and depending on the map and opponents getting in the water quickly will be a big help.

Mage Review

The magi you can buy largely determine your mid and end game potential.  Troops are still important but the core of your ability to project power will be summons, forging, and battle magic.  Globals are important as well and to cast them will need planning such as forging boosters or high path on an elite mage or pretender.

Here are some questions to ask about your magi:

1. What is my primary magic?  Most nations have one best path.
2. What is my secondary magic path?
3. Do those two paths synergize?  For example take fire and earth for magma magic.
4. What kind of tertiary paths do I have?
5. In the tertiary paths am I stuck with level 1's or do I have a good shot at level 2's.  I define a good shot as a 50% random of 4 options.  10% randoms with more than one path are near junk.
6. What boosters can I forge with my national magi?
7. What boosters will I really need to project power?  Example: Erytheia has good fire magic but no death magic.  The ability for forge skulls of fire for +1 fire magic is very helpful.
8. What cross path summons, forgings, and battle magic fit my nation?  Example: Erytheia has a number of excellent national summons using things like F3S1, F3N2, E3A1.  But getting that third level in the paths is not easy with the randoms on the magi.  This suggests broad magic access on the pretender.  Generic mage summons like Naiads are probably important.
9. Am I missing any critical magic paths that I will be crippled without.  The most common one here is a lack of astral.
10. What about my priests?  Do I have recruitable holy 3 priests?  
11. Are any of my magi tough enough to be thugs too?  Self buffing thugs are extremely powerful since they need very little equipment.  
12. Do I have movement problems?  Some magi are very slow on the map.
13. Do I have age problems?  Abysia is by far the worst case here.  A method to manage it may be required. Example: many people recommend Unaging bless for Erytheia.  It's inexpensive and may be very helpful.

Late Age Erytheia Example:  

I discussed some of this in the first section.  This nation has some of the most variable random magic in the game with, for example, the Princes and Princesses have 8 @ 25% randoms.  I'm not going to do the probabilities here but that does give the potential to get level 3 magic in a number of paths.  However, it will take either luck or buying very many.  The daduchos have 3 @ 50% randoms in air, water, and earth so you will have quite a lot of air 2, water 2, and earth 2 magi.  Those all have good battle magic utility and forging option.  However, the small chance of level 3 does suggest two things: a rainbow pretender for forging and summoning, and summoning diversity magi particularly Naiads or Kokythiads.  The details of how to boost magic to high levels is available on other guides Dominions 4 Boosting and Access Guide.

Erytheia does not have an obvious primary path.  It has easy level 1 access in fire, air, water, earth and astral.  And good access to level 2 in air, water, earth, and astral from random magic.  Level 3 access is possible but quite rare (2 @ 25% random) on Princes and Princesses.  And there is a reliable but uncommon chance to get level 1 nature combined with water magic.  Otoh, there are a great many cross path options for particularly forging items.  There is no death magic available.  That is not a major issue but can be very easily fixed with the pretender.  And as noted above, a few crosspath items could help greatly.

For priests, Erytheia has the Nomarch at level 2 for 75 gold.  It is a decent leader so could be an option to lead sacreds if you planned that direction.  It has some extra traits that may have niche use but not worth any effort at the pretender design stage.  The Princes and Princesses are holy 2 and once you recruit the first of each you get a king and queen from event that get holy 3.  That opens up some options for throne claiming.

Part 2 to follow soon.