Illwinter's Strategy Games

[bhavv]

I recently just got into these games a few days ago. I had Conquest of Elysium 3 in my steam library for ages from a sale, but only just decided to learn how to play (when I first got it, I gave up from being unable to figure out how to group my units).

Conquest of Elysium 3

Dominions 4

Both of them are as perfect as strategy games can probably get, both in terms of gameplay depth, challenge, re playability, and the challenge the AI poses on higher difficulties. I also read about people playing Dominions 4 over multiplayer, but Im not into multiplayer for 4x games as I prefer playing them single player.

Conquest of Elysium 3 is more closer to a combination of Civ and the old Warlords TBS games. You simply reqruit units mainly using gold and iron which you earn from capturing various structures already on the map (such as farms, mines, coastal villages, hamlets, cities, towers and castles). The main challenge is keeping control over your captured sources, while also dealing with the enemy factions. Overall a very simple structure, but with a much deeper and rich strategic depth.

If that isnt enough, then Dominions 4 is even more strategy focused, almost like the Dwarf Fortress of TBS 4x games. It takes a lot of design and art influence from CoE3, but puts it into a risk style map, except also with a deity for each faction, both of which there are over 50 to choose from, plus a research based magic system and mages, priests plus regular combat troops. Screenshots dont really show the depth and quality of the game too well, but I have a video of setting up and starting a new game uploading atm which I will link after its done.

 

[tesb]

i really love dominions 4. if you can get over the abysmal graphics it the best implementation of magic in a strategy game.

what dominions lacks however is a good diplomacy system (or any diplomacy system) and some sort of civilization advancement within a game session. while you research better magic your troops stay the same and you can recruit your full roster at the start of the game.

 

[bhavv]

I feel more like I have to get over abysmal gameplay to enjoy strategy games with great graphics nowadays.

I'll take abysmal graphics with great gameplay instead.

I'm enjoying the late age 'Man' faction in Dominion 4, mainly because I can set research to -3 points, and their mage's research is immune to drain plus it adds magic resistance.

Ive not figured out much of the magic system yet, just mostly using the kickass knights, wardens and guardians, and I figured out from the manual how setting up castles gain resources from, and improve production in adjacent domains without castles, whereas at first I was trying to build a castle in every domain which was a waste of gold and negatively harming my economy.

So this time I'm building castles in the circled domains and trying to capture all the surrounding ones:

Spoiler :

And heres a gameplay video of setting up and the first few turns on the above game (still publishing):


Link to video.

 

[tesb]

My favorite strategy:

LA Marignon

Pretender God: The blood fountain with at least blood magic 8 and nature magic 8 (so you get the buffs from blessing, i.e. +8hp and reflect damage).

Early game: Spam flaggelants, you can build them in any province with a temple (no castle needed) and support them with inquisitors or high inquisitors who just channel blessing or divine blessing. this means that the hp of the flaggelants is nearly doubled and they reflect all damage that is done to them, which means most units will kill themselves when they attack your swarm of flaggelants. it is very easy to conquer provinces this way and flagellants can easily be spammed.

Mid Game: have one or two cities who spam goetic adepts and research construction 2. once you have construction 2 you need to upgrade your pretender god with one fire magic. to that end you should trade in some gems you do not need for fire gems. start producing soul contracts from now on.
Never equip the soul contract on your pretender but always on some goetic adept (blood contracts can attract horros). You should also have a few provinces that collects maidens for blood magic so you can build soul contract every 1 or 2 turns.
You should now get a lot of devils

Mid-Late Game:
You need leaders that can command your devils so you can either research conjuration 3 for revive bane (although you need a source of death gems for that) or you research blood magic

Late Game:
Research blood magic and get Bind Arch Devil. Congratulation you now have a flying army of devils (3 province movement) that you get in huge numbers as well as a swarm of flaggelants to pave the way.

Every now and then you will loose a goetic adept to an horror, but this should have little impact on your devil production.


edit:
here is a good site with all ingame information:
https://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/

 

[Maniacal]

I've really picked them up but always wanted too, I absolutely adore the styles most of the maps seem to use.

 

[bhavv]

I don't even understand what was said two posts up. I just picked the fountain because it seemed well suited to maxing order / luck / production / growth due to having 4 base dominion, and it has a 33% chance to negate bad luck on top.

Water magic isn't really a good choice for man, but it is one of the areas their own mages lack and I didn't have enough points to open up another magic tree, so +3 defence and +2 magic resist, and also +1.5 magic resist from -3 drain (which LA Man is immune to anyway).

I did find water and astral sites after turning site frequency up to 75 though, so I'll see what I can do. Flooding every water and coastal province seems rather OP if most of my provinces are inland, so it harms everyone else with much reduced resources.

 

[tesb]

I don't even understand what was said two posts up

You will understand once you tried more factions and have more experience with the game