Dominions 5 Wiki

What we will cover here are the following topics(if you are interested in a specific topic then there are links in the table of contents):

Pretender Design : I will review what I consider some of the best pretender designs. Explain in detail why I choose those pretenders and hopefully convince you that they can be worthwhile choices. This will not include too much detail when it comes to the execution of strats but I will try to cover it to a certain degree.

Early Expansion : In this section I will cover what expansions I find to be the best. I will not go into every single kind of expansion but will instead talk exclusively about non-awake expansions. Awake expanders simply make expanding trivial and should therefore not be included in a detailed overview of various expansion options(in my opinion).

Research Goals : Here I will talk about what you want to research early, and why. This will be pretty in depth so if you are not a fan of theory and execution I would recommend skipping this part till a later date. I will also cover some situations and matchups where your starting research changes, explain why it changes and some situations where your pretender design also changes heavily due to matchups.

Magic : In this section I will talk in detail about the combat magic you have access to, talking a bit about what your communions give you access to. This section will go into more detail than the research goal part about the spells you will be casting in the mid game.
It will be split into rituals and combat spells talking in detail about the spells I think are worth casting, why they are worth casting and then talking in less detail about spells I do not believe are worth casting and why they are not worth casting…

Macro : This is how I look at your kingdom management. This is overall coordinated army creations, thinking ahead a few turns and having items ready when a thug pops out, thoughts behind site searching, when to stop and when to start recruitments and how much recruitment you have to do. Research economy, gem economy, gold economy, trading, diplomacy… are all aspects of macro in dominions. NEED TO REVIEW THIS HEAVILY AND ACTUALLY DEFINE MACRO

Micro : This is how I look at the execution of your overall strategy. How you script your mages, how you position your armies, how you move your armies, etc… This is by far the most complex aspect and there is no way of writing a definitive guide on how to do this correctly. All I can do is share my thoughts, to help you as a player maybe add said ideas to your set of skills. NEED TO REVIEW THIS HEAVILY AND ACTUALLY DEFINE MICRO

TODO: Add to macro - Item creation, communions, thugging, expanding. TODO: Add to micro - Army movements, raiding, unit commands. These are very important aspects when it comes to exploring Pythium as a nation and deserve to be looked at in detail.

NOTE: If you disagree with any of these, then feel free to message me on discord. It should be easy to find me and I am always willing to adapt my views if the reasoning is good enough.

Pythium is a very powerful nation in the midgame. They have very good researchers and early game troops, allowing them to handily fend off rushes by several nations. However they do have their weaknesses so ultimate pretender design is of course up to personal preference.

Here are some of the designs I like using and others that I consider viable given certain situations.

Note: The following segment needs work since I am doing this without access to the game or pretender design it is based mostly around memory… I will not go into too much detail yet.

• Drakon
  Magic paths: 67
  Scales:
  

An option mostly for blitzes, this will prevent several early game rush nations(mostly elf nations) from being very annoying in the early game, as well as give you really good earth and nature site searching. The big flaws for this design is that you will probably have to empower in earth to get matrixes or empower lars in astral for the access. Since I do believe crystal matrix access is very important for MA Pythium. Use this if you are in a match with few players and you don't feel confident about your understanding of the nation.

• Frost Father
  

Magic Paths: 33334141
Scales: …..
My preferred pretender is dormant relative rainbow. I will post gyazo links to the design and then explain the resoning behind said design.

https://gyazo.com/864202048ab6a472ac856f1bc4496153

The reasoning behind the bless is mostly mage related. It prevents mass aoe spells from killing your mages and communion slaves to a large degree. Will make you immune to several spells such as fire storm, fv(assuming you either go 10-15 pr or cast resist poison with N1 mages), most of the cloud spells, and reducing the effectiveness of air elementals vs your mages. The penetration can be replaced with far caster depending on preference. Unaging can also be removed for higher poison resist and some hp to regen 2 hp on communion slaves instead of 1.

I will talk about base expanding strategies with this pretender and these scales in mind.

• Freak Lord

Very interesting approach in that you can get into relatively good blood. It does sacrifice some aspects but does open up high blood by itself. If you are fine with slowly gathering blood slaves over the course of the game this pretender can break you into heliophagi, vampires, arch devils, and demon lords.

• Divine Emperor

Lack of hand slot makes this pretender relatively bad at getting to air boosters. However the 4 misc slots make him the best design for casting arcane nexus from a low level of astral. A very solid approach but not quite a frost father in regards to pure design bless on an elemental rainbow.

• Frost Father
• Divine Emperor
• Oracle

TODO : Add a video showing off expansion.

• Turn 1:
  • Here we start off with a normal Centurion or an Emerald Lord, and queue up a Theurg Acolyte. Our unit recruitment will be one standard, 20 or so retiarius, and then the rest of your resources into preferential picks. Remember to prophet your starting commander for a better expansion and spreading your scales early on.
• Turn 2:
  • Here we finish our recruitment by completing the Theurg Acolyte and another Centurion/Emerald Lord. We will do the same recruitment of units to get 3 expanding parties out. For the actual expansion, aim to expand with your prophet and his starting army, while grouping the standard with the retiri on the commander you recruited turn one for +2 morale which will definitely help a lot vs the early indies. This should get you new provinces during turn 2 for a total of 3 provinces at the start of turn 3 allowing you to start up some solid unit production very early on.

• Turn 3: Bring your first expansion party back and change recruitment to one mage per turn. Here there are many different things you could recruit. Some of my favorite recruitments for this part include:
  • A few emerald guards to get a very simple expansion party out that can take out some of the weaker provinces.
  • Hastatus. This expansion variant is very good if you can start a palisade with either the turn 2 or turn 3 expansion force. This is not quite as good as emerald guards since you will probably need 2 turns of recruitment unless you add retiarius.
  • More retarius in case you have high cav or high barb provinces in your cap circle.

At this point you want to aim at starting your first palisade as soon as possible.

• Turn 4: This is when your second created expansion party should be about to come back to your capital for reinforcements. Pretty much a repeat of turn 4. You should have completed most of your cap circle setting you up for the switch at the start of turn 5.

• Turn 5: Here you want to start recruiting serpent cataphracts alongside 1 standard. A group of 8-12 serpent cataphracts can take almost any indie province as well beat bumps with other players due to their immense strength in the early game. Every other turn you should be making an expansion party and sending that party out to clear the more difficult indies that you have spotted.
• Turn 6: Finish up recruiting a commander for your cataphract expansion, keep an eye out on your gold and attempt to get up as many forts as you can to prepare for mid game research boost as well as setting up raiding.

NOTE: Keep an eye out for fort completion, you want to have 1 Theurg acolyte move to the fort when there is 1 turn until it is completed in order to make a temple and then a lab to start pumping out more mages.

These turns are your buildup as you prepare for the mid game, you want to aim for at least 5 forts which will give you a very solid point to grow from, if you successfully got 20 provinces then you can easily afford to go 6-7 forts. Get up scouts from indie provinces to get a grasp of your surroundings and find a target that you can take on in the early-mid game. Opening up for your pretender popping out at 12 to site search mountains, forests, wastes, and swamps.

This might be the most important section to understanding why we do what we do and how to discover your powerspikes in relation to your neighbors. Nothing here is set in stone, but these are your early research goals with situations when you want to go for them.

• Alteration 3: For luck.
• Thaumaturgy 2: For communion master and mind burn.
• Conj 6: For Lars, Harbingers, and Great Eagles.
• Const 4: For Matrixes and several other items.(Get this after Lars unless you are going const 6 rush).
• Const 6: For Banner of the Northern Star and several other items.

• Alteration 3: Sets you up for luck, allowing you to make very effective raiding forces and have a solid frontline in early fights. Stop here if you know your first target has a magic weapon bless.
• Alteration 4: Unlocks body etherial, allowing your raiding forces to clear insane amounts of pd without any losses. Raiding groups with luck and body etherial are a huge menace for many nations and can be very hard to counter if the enemy is not prepared to deal with it.
• Evocation 1: Allows your theurg acolytes to cast a combat spell that can be used while outside of a communion, meaning they do not start blinking…

Here you have two main approaches which are both very strong, depending on whether they have cold resist or not.

• Approach 1: Bring along a solid army of javelin throwers while casting freezing mists to shred their army to pieces, or bring along a communion mage wall to buff, holding the enemy in place while your magic destroys them.
  • The communion wall approach can be very hard to execute and might need you to commit your god if you have not gotten lars or an e1/s1 indie.
  • Troop approach requires evo 3 and thaum 1 only, alt 3 can help if you want to buff your units with luck.
  • The communion slave approach requires alt 4, evo 3, ench 3, thauma 1 and an earth caster inside a communion.

• Approach 2: Aim for luck fluffed frontline with mind burn communion/LotNS.
  • Easier to accomplish and can have devastating effects early on when the enemy is not prepared.
  • Alt 3 for luck fluffing your frontline.
  • Thaumaturgy 2 for mind burn.
  • Construction 6 for banner of the northern star. (Can be skipped if needed but it makes your mages able to cast mind burn outside of communions, which in turn makes your mind burn casting very effective and prevents you from needing to bring along slaves that might die too early).

A list of giant nations in the Middle Ages

This is usually a very swingy type of matchup. Pythium usually struggles vs giant nations in the early game while that turns around very quickly in the mid game. As such diplomacy and raiding can be very good ways of delaying a giant nation until you have your core research up. Depending on the which nation you are facing it drastically changes your starting research though soul slay is always a very important early research rush.

• Approach 1: This is where you will do early raiding, knowing that if you attack him before he attacks you it will get you several extra turns of research most of the time.
  • Get early alteration 3, then start rushing up thaumaturgy 5.
  • Once you get thaumaturgy 5, group up your s1 mages with 8-10 communion slaves, luck buff your frontline and spam soul slay. Protect your backline from attack rear commands and you should be very good.
  • Evocation 3 for magic duel if the giant nation has astral magic and might be going up to antimagic.

• Approach 2: Awake researcher, rush thaumaturgy 5… You just need to be able to kill the hellbless units coming around turn 10.. Mostly applicable if you know your closest nation is Ashdod and that you are the weakest nation to a rush out of all his neighbors.