This is an old revision of the document!
This guide was first featured on Maerlande's website. As such any updates to the guide will happen there first and hopefully make it here.
*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.
*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.*
You want to ask these questions.
General Review
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.
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:
Troop Review
Late Age Erytheia Example: The units for Erytheia are an interesting mix. There are three 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.
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:
Mage Review
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.