Dominions 5 is an organic game, meaning that it is hard to plan and stick to specific research goals as everything is highly situational and can change depending on who you are facing. However I believe that every nation has natural synergies to certain spells, I shall list all the research goals that I deem valuable for Therodos.

Construction is a no-brainer for Therodos, the Kabeiros forgers and Daktyl mastersmiths benefit the most from this school. The brand and shields acquired at construction 4 permits you to start thugging out your Melias to supplement your armies. Later at construction 6 and upwards, you gain access to the Staff of Elemental Mastery which prove to be a very powerful booster for your multi-path low level magic paths. The possibilities of gaining Golems (Pretender) provide another useful chassis to your Super Combatant needs.

Construction 2 provides you Owl Quills and Dwarven Hammers, you can gain a solid research boost by crafting montly quills at 2 air gems a piece by equipping a Dwarven Hammer to a Kabeiros Construction 4 provides you Frost and vine shields which are fundamental items to creating Melia thugs. Construction 6 gives you even more research boosts and equipment. You can now forge the Lightless Lantern with a Daktyl which will provide an even better research boost than the quills. Secondly you gain access to new shields: Gleaming Gold (Awe) and Lantern Shield (Will'O'Wisp) which are new tools for thugging out your units. Construction 7 gives you the option of summoning Golems. Golems are great Super Combatants with their low emcumberance and mindlessness. The forge bonuses and cheap magical items from Therodos synergizes well with this.

Alteration is the buffing school. It is needed in order to give your freespawns some leverage in power. The etherealness is great right out of the gate, adding on buffs such as protection, ironskin and liquid body helps them to gain even more standing power. Secondly, thanks to your Earth casters, alteration also provides you Maws of the Earth and other debuffs such as Curse of Stones. Maws of the Earth (Earth Meld as well) is a perfect spell for Therodos, your units are floating meaning that they will be unaffected by the Maws of the Earth so make sure to use this to your advantage.

Unlike most nations that research Enchantment for Flaming Arrows, that is not the case for Therodos. Enchantment provides a lot of utility to leverage your freespawns on the battlefield as well as a replacement for them by mid-end game. Foul Vapors synergizes well with Therodos' spectral poison-immune freespawns and spells such as Enliven Gargoyle, Claymen and Terracota Soldiers can be cast by your Daktyls and Kabeiros.

Conjuration is taken in order to gain access to Summon Earthpower early game. It is an important buff for your mages, as it provides not only +1 Earth but also Reinvigoration which helps you cast more before your mages pass out from the fatigue. Conjuration also helps by providing access to thugs chassis and summons. Eventually you will want to research Conjuration for the end game for Telkhines and elemental royalty. In battle the summon Elementals spells is powerful, ideally when you decide to you use. You want to go overkill to overwhelm the enemy. The Earth Elemental is particularly excellent at trampling human nations.

As a general strategy you should respect the following guidelines: - Establish as many coastal forts as you possibly can - Interact and conduct diplomacy with your neighbours to avoid getting ganged on - Recruit mages as often as possible off your capitol province - Investing in finding Death Sites or gems for summoning Spectral Philosophers is always a good investment

Your starting expansion army is very good, those handful of spectral infantries can expand underwater with ease and also head onto the surface without much harm. While it is highly possible to do turn 1 expansion with your starting army, it is safest to wait until the 2nd turn to know what indies you are facing. In the scenario where you have taken a powerful awake expansion God such as the Earth Serpent, you should go for a turn 1 expansion. [Except if you are planning to Turn 1 throne province expansion]

By the end of Year 1, you will want to have at least 12 provinces excluding your capital and at least one coastal fort. Coastal fortresses are CAPITAL to Therodos' success in the mid-game and thus end-game. You will NOT benefit from staying underwater, as any forts that are not coastal (a coastal fort is one province bordering a sea province) will not have anything to recruit except the Melia. Moreover due to your cap-only mages being slow to recruit, you essentially will have half of the battle mages your opponents will be fielding, therefore it is of upmost importance to get a coastal fortress up to start up your Forge factories and research.

You should ideally be recruiting Daktyls every turn with a couple of Kouretes (if your gold permits) and save up gold for more forts. Ideally you want a Daktyl with 1 in Death to be ready to summon Spectral Philosophers as you get the gems and another to sitesearch. Meanwhile for your research needs, you should be bee-lining for Construction 2 at the very least to give you access to your precious Dwarven Hammers and also Owl Quills to help out the abysmal research of Therodos. [At least until you can start summoning your Philosophers.

Towards the end of Year 1, you should prepare your sitesearchers. Make sure you have a Daktyl and a Hekateride ready by the start of Year 2 to go site-searching. You WILL NEED those magical gems by mid-game as people start researching to counter your spectral infantry. So do make use of the diverse paths that Therodos has and find those magic sites.

Multiplayer Games Tips: If you are playing Multiplayer, you should ideally make peace with your neighbours and perhaps trade for more Death gems, as you will most likely have an excess of Water and Earth gems. Therodos wants to get as many death gems as possible and thus philosophers to catch up on research.

Mid-game Strategy: By mid-game you should start to analyze your gems and your situation and plan your research accordingly. If you are somehow still at peace, you could bee-line straight for Construction 4 or 6 in order to get your Melia-thug-factories going. Otherwise it may be wise to head towards Alteration 5 to gain Maws of the Earth and other various buffs to bolster the survivability of your spectral troops. It is also noteworthy to try mention that Therodos can cast Mother Oak if they get a 4N Hekateride, since you are already heading for Alteration 5. It is not a bad idea to attempt to get this nice global.

Ideally for mid-game, you would want at least 3 coastal forts with high dominion spawning freespawn enough for you to disregard large losses. One advantage of freespawns is that even if a battle was a stalemate, you essentially lose 0 gold if all your commanders survive. So even though you lost a battle, you are still inflicting economical damage to your enemy. With your harmful dominion and ermorian scales, it will be a pain for anyone to siege your forts. As Therodian forts are not palisades but castles which take quite a big army to siege. Coupled with your dying dominion and death scales, no army can confortably siege your lands without nature mages or supply boosting items.

Now is the time for Therodos to plan and use their stockpiled gems, Enchantment and Conjuration gives you a lot of options to summon a frontline that can take some punishment. Take time and summon units that would help bolster your main armies, do not forget that you have buffs from alteration to help you out. Moreover at Alteration 3 and Construction 4, it is a prime time for you to deploy your Melia thugs. Ideally you will want to be forging like crazy with your Kabeiros to make use of their cheap 2gem items.

As late game approaches, you should have all the Throne provinces you conquered forted up and also with a high dominion which makes it unattractive to siege. Your spectral infantry is pretty much used as Chaff and most of your armies will have summoned units that you planned for to replace your troops by for late game.

Due to the insane amount of variables for late-game, I believe that Therodos should look onto those spells and keep their focus on building Super Commanders and gain control of the Thrones. By now, your lands should be dead and very unattractive to siege so therefore you should be heading the thrones with your kitted out combatants and casters. Spells worth casting for Therodos: Elemental Royalty - Water and Earth Royalty at W5 and E5 respectively. Therodos has a good shot of getting the Elemental royalties of Earth and Water, the high paths provided by the Daktyl and Hekaride permits Therodos to forge their way to Earth 5 and Water 5. The elemental royalty can be kitted out as both Super Combatants and Battlefield mages capable of wiping out whole armies.

Summon Telkhine - W5, A2 and 69 Water Gems As discussed previously in the Unit Review, you will eventually get to summoning your nationals which are very powerful units and are very versatile in which-ever role needs to get filled. This spell is accessible by Therodos mainly by the Pretender or National Heroes. Otherwise you will have to empower and forge boosters to reach the spell requirements. + + + + / Example: A Hekateride with 2W and A1 will need boosters to get access to the national spell. With the Water Bracelet and the Robe of the Sea, she is now at W4. Next we need one more level in Water and one in Air in order to be able to summon Telkhines. Our options are either empowerment or trading with other options. If your pretender has taken Astral and can forge Rings of Wizardry you can bypass empowerment and trading and gain access to your National summon. Another option is to use the Staff of Elemental Mastery which requires A4E4 or W4F4

Golems - S3, E2 at Construction 7 for 30 Astral Pearls. S2 Only accessible if you have invested in Astral and Earth for your pretender. Golems are viable and strong super combatant chassis that can be outkitted with the items forged by Therodos for cheap. Alternatively, giving an Earth Coin and an Starshine Skullcap to the Golem puts him at S4 letting him cast Turn 1 Astral Tempest on your enemy with 4 Astral Pears. The option to teleport with a Starshine Skullcap provides him extra mobility over armies and should not be ignored.

Vengeful Water - W7, Global Enchantment at Thaumaturgy 7, 70 Water Gems This is accessible to Therodos if you have Rings of Wizardry and had a lucky roll on a W4 Hekateride. With the Water Bracelet, Robe of the Sea and the Ring, she will be directly at W7. Otherwise the other option of getting to it would be to summon a Water Queen and have her cast the global enchantment with the boosters.

Dominion: Your only option is either preventing them from coming onto the lands and an aggresive use of priests to preach the dominion away is what must be done on the early game.

Spectral Infantry: They fall out of use as the game progresses forward, great expanders and decent fighters out of the gate as well as freespawns. However as the game progresses forward research to deal with them is easier unlocked and accessed.

Spells such as Dust-to-dust, Solar Rays and Banishment are all counters to the spectral infantry. Otherwise a major Fire or Death bless, or equipment that provides magical damage are also a good counter in the early game.

Thugs: Unless Therodos has a source of Astral mages (either through the pretender or finding one), the thugs are vulnerable to being sniped by rituals. The lack of Astral on Therodos is an apparent weakness that prevents them from accessing the late game.

Attacking Therodos: Taking on Therodos' lands and capital are going to be hard if he is already established. As the Dominion kill effect progresses forward, the lands become barren and supplies are scarce. You either preach away the dominion early and invest in priests, or bring nature mages and supply generating items for those long sieges.

Economic Warfare: Therodos is always gold-hungry and their dominion kill does not help them as the game progresses forward. Their only option is to invest into summons, raids and economic ritual spells are all viable tactics to impede on Therodos' transition into the late-game.

the population kill incentives you to take negative scales as you cannot counteract the effect of the Dominion with Growth scales.

The dominon needs to be at least 9, as the more candles your fortress has the more spectral infantry will spawn in that province. It also provides you minor Awe on your pretender which helps out for early expansion against independents.

Turmoil 3 is a no-brainer, the dominion kill will deplete your provinces of population and thus render order useless.

Sloth 3 is beneficial to your spectral philosophers and also synergizes well with the population kill. Eventually when population reduces to abysmal numbers, the resources gained from a province will suffer as well.

Despite Cold 3 synergizing well with your nation, depending on your opponents in that game, it may be beneficial to head for Hot 3. Being underwater at start essentially leaves you unaffected by the penalty. But since your dominion kills everything why not add on a Cold 3 or Hot 3 scale to deter opponents from invading you? My personal experience in invading dominion kill nations with an extreme temperature scale is very unpleasant. You will need you gear yourself with a lot of Nature food producing items or gems in order to avoid starvation, moreover fighting in such lands are exhausting to troops with not appropriate fire or cold resistance.

The luck 3 scale is taken to counteract the turmoil 3, it will result in booms everyonce in a while. The events can provide a lot for Therodos. The national heroes are pretty terrific. You also have a lot of cross path spellcasters who can use the gems you get from the events. And more importantly it will provide you gold to build your precious coastal forts.

I personally believe that taking Magic 3 is best for Therodos, it gives you a lot of good events comboed with T3/L3 scales. It turns your spectral philosophers into research beasts. On the other hand, I also believe that Drain 1-2 is viable in shorter games or in other situations. As the Drain does give your spectral troops some additional magic resistance and also synergizes with your negative dominion. The former makes your troops more resistant to banishment and other spells and the latter makes it really annoying to invade you. However unlike Ermor, you have human mages and the drain will tax them quite heavily during battles. Drain 3 is definitely a no-no due to the fact that it unlocks horrible events that will result in gem loss. Some of the events unlocked by drain 3 take off a percentage of your laboratory gems, which in midgame can be equel to quite a lot.

Shamelessly copied from https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=673767607 credits go to iSeenUB4.