About Dominions 5
Changes
Documentation

Dominions 5, New Features

Dominions 5 has many improvements compared to its predecessor and some parts of the game have been completely rewritten. Below is a list of some major things that are new in Dominions 5.

Bless Effects

A pretender god's bless effect can now vary wildly from one god to the next as you get to design the bless effect when creating the pretender. The magic paths and scales will restrict which bless effects are available and how many can be chosen. E.g. an arch mage with a low skill on many paths will be able to choose many different minor bless effects, while a pretender with only one high path skill can choose one powerful matching bless effect or a combination of lesser ones.

The more powerful blesses require an incarnate pretender, meaning he has to be awake and alive for the effect to be active. Some other bless effects are passive and constantly affect all sacred units, regardless of whether they are blessed. "Water Breathing" and "Larger" are example of passive blesses. Certain nations have exceptionally strong blesses and get extra design points for bless effects.

The pretender god's main path will also determine what type of holy spells his priests will receive. E.g. a fire god's priest will smite his enemies with burning flames, while the priests of an earth god will turn his enemies to stone.

Real Time Combat

Combat in Dominions 5 differs quite a bit from how it was in the previous Dominions games. Now all units do their actions simultaneously, so units will move at the same time as enemy arrows and spells are flying. With the simultaneous move it is no longer important who reaches whom first, the units reach each other simultaneously and it is random which one gets to strike first.

Large battles are now much quicker to watch as they do not take much longer to watch than the smaller ones, but the slow motion replay speed can be useful to take in all that is happening. For those that want all the details there are also detailed battle logs that can be viewed for each unit, so you can see where all the damage came from.


There is also a large number of new mechanics and unit traits that can affect a battle. E.g. shields can be damaged or broken if struck by a very hard blow, so using shields against giants with large axes may not be adviseable.

Combat spells take time to prepare and cast in Dominions 5, and more complicated spells have greater casting times. A battle enchantment that requires gems may take twice as long to cast as a fireball spell. Spells that are being prepared may be interrupted if the mage takes damage before they finish casting.

The battles are still fully automatic and player input comes from army setup and initial orders as usual.

Random Maps, Winter and Movement

The random map generation has been remade for Dominions 5, and in addition to a new aesthetic the maps have a winter overlay which will cover cold provinces. The movement system has been revised and it is now possible for very fast non-fliers to compete with slow fliers in terms of strategic mobility. Snow is also taken into account and will make it slower to walk through provinces.

In the early age names of neighboring provinces are known, but in mid and late age names one or two provinces farther away are revealed.

Recruitment Points and Fort Building

Recruitment points is a new resource in provinces. It comes from population, but can be improved by building a fort in the province. A low number of recruitment points can limit the number of units that can be built in a province, so both this attribute and resources should be taken into consideration when deciding where to build a fort.

Mounted troops have lower gold costs compared to dom4, but they have higher recruitment costs than infantry units. Thus densely populated provinces will be more important if you want to recruit knights and other elite units.

Fortifications are now built at the lowest level (usually a palisade). After it has finished construction, the fortification can be upgraded. The level of forts available is generally lower in the early age and higher in the late age. Some nations, like MA Ulm, can recruit architects or masons that can build higher level forts.

Higher level forts also enable faster commander recruitment. Regular commanders, scouts and low level priests require one commander point. Most mages and priests require two points, and the most powerful mages require four points. Provinces only have one command point available to start with, but upgrading from a palisade to a fortress will increase the value to two, and the most advanced nations are able to build citadels that provide three command points.

New Features

• Real time combat
• Per unit combat logs
• Design your pretender's bless effect
• Priest's banishment and smite spells will depend on what type of god he follows
• History playback when game is over, see how dominion spread and provinces changed owners
• New random maps with bridges and better looking terrains
• New resource system with recruitment points that encourages recruiting in highly populated areas
• Fortifications built by starting at the basic type, then upgrading it later
• New research queue, researching is now one school at a time
• New movement system
• Winter shown on map and affects movement
• Dominion overlay on map to clearly show its boundaries
• New retreat system, good leaders can prevent units from dispersing in all directions
• Updated user interface with information more clearly presented than before
• New 3d-engine with better looking terrain, huge performance increase for good graphics cards
• More reliable network, now works on less than perfect connections too
• Improved UI and AI
• New nations
• Many old nations have been reworked and updated
• More spells, magic items, special abilities, events, monsters, titles, thrones, ....

There are many more changes since Dominions 4 that haven't been mentioned here, but these are most of the major ones. Dominions 5 is available on steam for Linux, Windows and Mac OS X.




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