This was really interesting. Thanks! Perun, maybe you could do a video on your _favorite_ nations? This video is about the most powerful - and it's pretty clear that you have a real fondness for Nazca - but other than that, are there nations that you just think are especially fun to play? They probably won't be weak nations, but... maybe they've just got a great pretender chassis? (That four-armed blue diva is really fun, I'd say.) Or perhaps they've got a great thug or super-combatant? Special sacreds? (MA Pangaea with a Quickness _and_ Swiftness bless is kind of fun, because those white centaurs just get incredibly fast!) Or something else that's kind of special you just like to play? Maybe you enjoy them all. Or maybe the nations in this video are your favorites. If so, no problem. I just thought I'd suggest it. Thanks for the videos!
Nations are not strong/weak in a void, it would have made more sense to me to distinguish by age more. Like you can't compare your picks against each other really, other than Nazca/Sceleria. Lemuria is not strong vs Nazca, Sceleria is not strong vs Ubar, etc. Dominions is really three games in one, each age is its own game (unless you do some just really crazy mod stuff :P ) Speaking of Ubar, they are new but I've been playing them in two games since their release. I highly suggest that you give them a second pass and take note of these things: 1) Jinn are not sacred, and so you can consider them to be sort of cap-only sacred-eq (with obvious counters) but they are not limited by holy points, so you can probably make more Jinn than other nations can make cap-only sacreds. Ubar is highly insentivised to take scales 2) when your pretender wakes up as Ubar (and they have to start at least dormant) a hidden feature is that your cap upgrades to having 3 commander points. So those Sultans suddenly become slow to recruit, or you can make 3 Houri seducers per turn, or you can make 3 mages every two turns. Many interesting possibilities 3) so here's the thing: Shaytan have corruption vs moral of 13. Corruption is like seduction but is not gender specific. Because Shaytan fly they can corrupt from anywhere and will return with their target (as long as it is smaller) to your cap. They have scale walls, so they can corrupt even into a fort you are sieging. If the corruption fails you still fight an assassination battle with a F2A2 mage with FAEB random. Pretend Sultans don't exist for a second and then look at Ubar through this lens
corruption is so nasty it just makes me feel awfuk. Like even if you fail your absolute monster of a unit still goes on an assassin trip and will most likely butcher the poor fool
Very odd to see such a well-respected RUclipsr also cover content that ISN'T Dominions 5. Awesome to see you both be a military analyst AND a D5 gan though :)
What I don't like about Ubar, and a lot of the other changes introduced in the past couple years (the quickness nerf for example) is they seem to push everybody towards the nations that can run imprisoned rainbow blesses. It seems to me like the clear best strategy in the current meta (if you don't want to just go full cancer with one of the nations on Perun's list) is pick a nation with strong utility sacreds (looking at Pangaea in particular) and grab a few stat blesses, then pick and choose among resistances and utilities like Magic Weapons and Spirit Sight to counter who you think will be the big linear threats. From future updates I'd love to see reworks of some of the less interesting and less powerful nations (looking at you, MA Xibalaba) instead of the introduction of even more powerful and frankly, gimmicky nations like Ubar. Would also like to see the Ti'en Ch'i line, the Bandar Log line, and the Irish Elf line get a little love.
@@TheArmored123 Depends on what bless you're facing, but if it's usual regen/blood bond you have a few tools. Simplest is to just spam earth grip or meld (Alt 1 and 2 respectively, former is E1). Blood bond is range 5 so even if the anakites are only held up briefly, they can get kicked out of each other's range and surrounded. Muuch warriors suck but they have a 3 resource variant, so it's entirely possible that anakites could be forced to face 100's + PD dump. In a line anakites will win, when each is surrounded they will not. Muuch spears do 14 pierce, more expensive anakites have 18 prot which will get dragged to 14.4 prot against piercing. When each anakite is taking at most 3 squares worth of those and have fortitude/regen/blood bond, they can probably tank it indefinitely. If you surround them, we're talking about something closer to 20 attacks rather than 9 even if they're hacking up a square of frogs pretty fast. That's a big difference when DRN is rolling close to target prot. Ashdod can play around this too, but if an Ashdod player gets cocky and just beelines cap/moves predictably he could easily see target have 200+ frogs between army and PD dump with his anakites spaced out via brief rooting spells. Also you're unlikely to actually see it in real games any longer but hardskin earth snake with regen ring can get ~33-35 prot in friendly dominion and regen > 20 hp/round, which would actually shut down anakites w/o strength of giants or other help. Don't think it works w/o the regen though unless you roll very lucky on fear checks.
Lemuria gets a nice little bonus in that the Acolytes (D1H1) freespawn from every fort with a lab (i think once per year?). It's not much but its free mage :) Ubar is imo one of strongest blood nations EA, maybe in all game. The gulah is only 23 slaves and has bonus +1 to hunts. So with a rod the gulah is blood 3 for bloodhunting.
I really do like how you specified the real 'under the hood' strength of Lemuria in a multiplayer setting (although I think it applies more or less equally to MA Ermor too, I do think you undersold them personally)... That you CAN beat them, but you won't want to. I would even take it one step further, I would say that assuming the Ermor/Lemuria player is competent, whoever defeats Ermor/Lemuria are not going to win the game. The winner of a game with MA Ermor or LA Lemuria in it is in my experience virtually without fault someone who sat back and watched someone else deal with Ermor or Lemuria. Except when Ermor or Lemuria wins, of course! And that somewhat paradoxically makes 'diplomacy' the key factor for Ermor and Lemuria, I feel, despite the fact that nobody wants to be friends with them. But you're not looking for friends, you're looking to prevent anyone from building the resolve and confidence to deal with you before you reach critical mass and/or a game-ruining death ritual.
Yeah, I think this is a good approach to it. Providing exact rankings is hard, but there's general consensus about what nations are the absolute best (Pangaea, Nazca, etc) and what ones are the absolute worst (EA Pelagia and Rlyeh, etc).
Well, solid analysis, 10/10, im buying the argument for why Lemuria is absolute cancer. The Nazca one for Condors are perhaps a little iffy. Im not certain its still possible to find people mad enough to sell Nazca air gems after that little stunt. Even if the bless got nerfed as well. Cant argue with the overall spot though. Likely Nazca will even work with scales.
If I've made any contribution to the Dominions meta it may be "dont sell air gems to nazca unless you're really sure you know what you're doing. that said scales nazca works sorta, or hellbless with an adjusted build order for more early A1 searching. you only need to find a few sites to make it work.
You know, watching this really shows how much I don't really don't understand this game yet. These nations also look a lot stronger compared to the nations I've been enjoying (Mekone, Yomi, EA Ryleh...) Still gonna play them though.
I haven't played Scelaria or Lemuria and dont plan on it. it's not my idea of fun. Nazca was a fun experiment but i wouldn't repeat it. Meanwhile I've enjoyed EA Rlyeh and Pelagia a lot more, and the latter is pretty garbage.
@@Kaiser282 Mekone doesn't want to fort high income provinces due to their unrest mechanic. If you have a pretender setup for it you can use procession of the underworld/summon keres to break into nature, death, astral, and blood using gift of reason, which means you're going to want a pretender that can get you nature and death gems somewhat early. R'lyeh line gets slave mages and those can go on land by default, so they have a lot of potential power even before they can get aboleths above in EA. Doesn't hurt to have an expander pretender to leverage NAP/keep people off your land holdings while you build forts.
@@Kaiser282 I heard Yomi played right can be pretty strong, and playing the weaker nations is what stronger players do once they've won with the more powerful nations to spice things up.
@@basileusbasil4041 I just liked Yomi because Dai Oni. Those things are cool. The chaos is nice too. Being pretty strong in certain ways also has its bonuses. Idk I'm too new to say for sure but it feels like certain nations get a bad rep because they force people to play differently.
I was heartbroken when a Dominions Enhanced patch put Scelerian Cultists at 2 commander points each, but with everything else they have and the things DE adds, I can understand why they had to for multiplayer balance. It felt like a good way to make the nation less overwhelming, but thaumaturgs being so cheap you could just produce two priest levels for the price of two priests, with a real mage and communion slave attached. Fuck yeah Nazca. They get more broken every time I learn something new more about them. I can never play this extremely fun nation with my friends because I'd either stomp everyone or get surrounded and destroyed. As fantastic as they are, they don't deal with coalitions as easily as popkill nations designed to contend with them.
In a recent MP game (6 person, Peliwyr) the Sceleria player expanded well and had 9 forts up by t20 or so. Two of us rushed him out and if we hadn't I think we'd have lost.
"It felt like a good way to make the nation less overwhelming, but thaumaturgs being so cheap you could just produce two priest levels for the price of two priests, with a real mage and communion slave attached." That's fair, but for reanimation purposes there's a big difference between 90 gold for 6 skeletons/turn and 110 gold for 5 skeletons/turn.
I've been pondering the Dominions system of EA/MA/LA recently and it struck me that Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age would work SO well if depicted in such a manner. The foundations are already there - Dominions has both some Lovecraftian (the entirety of R'lyeh) and Howardian (Lemuria, Atlantis) elements. If expanded upon, the Dominions engine and mechanical systems could make for a fantastically immersive game set in the woefully under-explored (at least in terms of gaming and film) world of Conan. That is, the mythical past of said world (perhaps during the time of King Kull of Atlantis or even the Thurian Age), during the rule of Conan himself (that is, firmly within the Hyborian Age), and perhaps during or after the collapse of Aquilonia (hundreds of years after Conan's rule of said Roman/French-inspired nation - a time of great turmoil that would lay the groundwork for our ancient past, at least in terms of the Conan universe). Don't get me wrong, I like Dominions. I'd just like to see the brand expand into other settings as well, since I actually trust them to do a good job, unlike most other teams/companies I can think of.
Here are the top3. 3. LA Cthulhu: Cause Eldritch 2. Man: Cause Arthurian mythos and longbows are fun 1. EA Spartan Giants: Cause Spartan Giants Everyone else: They aren't the first 3 There we go. Most comprehensive tier list anyone needs.
@@DPuljiz Eriu is nowhere near as bad as Mekone and Pelagia. Not only do they get a sorcery path, that path can break them into death and the mages with it are actually capable of moving on land! Elfing and cloud trapeze are there as always with elf nations too. It's not enough to make them good or carry a sorry unit roster but it's enough to keep them floating above the bottom of the barrel. Similarly I don't think Asphodel is good, but also don't think it belongs with Pelagia etc. I would put Yomi low, even though they can cast wailing winds and such. Their basic units aren't good, but their freespawn factories are vulnerable unless you fort them, which is impractical given their propensity for cut income + unrest on top of that. Their thugs/SC are all fun and games until someone starts forging flamberge/demon slayer or casting anti-demon magic. Much worse than Eriu, though probably still better than Pelagia/Mekone because at least if you leave Yomi alone they CAN stack up freespawn and do all the death spell stuff. Another contender for being bad is LA Pythium. In LA nobody is scared of a foul vapors nation that struggles to avoid killing its own stuff and has nothing better than N1 or F1 outside capital. It's bad enough that I might even put them below LA R'lyeh. Edit: After posting this, Mekone got buffed and look more like they're on the low end of mid-tier now.
@@LordSasquatch63 MA Xibalba is underrated. It's not a high tier nation, but the rep it gets is nonsense. You can get to 20+ provinces t12 using scales expansion with it (barring crowded map/rushed) and it's not exactly packing a bad late game given wide range of native path access, native access to wailing winds, and efficient blood hunting in the age that is least common. Take dormant titan or whatever to survive years 2-3 and I don't see how this nation is actually worse than options like Marignon, Tien Chi, C'tis, Asphodel, Pelagia, or Abysia even in the confines of just MA. IMO a lot of say GC's criticism of it stems from him simply not figuring out how to expand well with them. But you can i.imgur.com/xr12zmw.jpg
@@DPuljiz LA R'lyeh isn't a strong nation, but it's nowhere near as weak as EA r'lyeh or asphodel or pelagia. They struggle due to the popkill, but they're still capable of being one of the most obnoxious nations in the game with cheap quality assassins, massed mind hunting etc.
god tier mages, twice born commanders across the board that can summon slaves and summon undead, summonable good sacreds. Idk what they were thinking when they made this nation.
I completely understand where you're coming from and the way you analyze power, in general to be honest. With that said I think you're forgetting 1 very important thing: how hard is it to counter what you're doing. Having an endless supply of undead units is great and all but there are a ton of Undead counters that make them pretty easy to deal with. Whether it's holy or death magic, it's pretty easy to counter individual strong undeads(say thugs) or hordes of weak undeads(say freespawn chaff). Other nations don't tend to have nearly as much scalability, but the scalability they do get is much harder to counter than hordes of undead, especially because they also get much easier(and of course earlier) access to a variety of army buffs, something undead nations are lacking due to poor magic diversity. Speaking of scalability, the major blood powerhouses can get as much if not more scalability than Sceleria/Lemuria by the mid-late game. Yes, they will start a bit slower but generally with stronger non blood early game tools, but eventually can overtake the undead nations in terms of scalability, and of a significantly better quality. You just can't compare devils, ice devils, storm demons and earth knights for example to whichever undead unit you're thinking about, and by the mid-late game you can summon those incredibly efficiently in terms of both cost and mage turns. Of course blood offers a lot more than just these troops, from actual chaff like imps and crossbreeding to their unique summons which are for the most part very heavy thugs if not outright SCs. Similarly troop numbers aren't everything. If you can scale in thugs/SCs/mobile mages for battlefield wipes, rather than armies you're still getting the job done and as long as you can muster enough siege chaff somehow to tear down walls than you're good to go.
Ea is the one everyone enjoys the most because it's the least broken/cancerous of the three ages ( before Ubar ), so it isn't talked about too much but is enjoyed.
As a Dom 4 player that have never touched Dom 5, this was very intreresting. But I wonder a bit. I played Sceleria in MP back in Dom 3 and used a similar strategy. You could not buy several comanders in the same fort, but you could buy indy priests with only a temple and they could also raise skeletons. I did win that game, but mostly due to luck and diplomacy. The skeletons did not play a big part. There are just too many things that can counter a near infinite amount of skeletons and I did not feel it was worth the micro. Skeleton horses did the real lifting while Soulless warriors raised by wandering priests after each battle supplied me with bullet sponges. I'm not sure if something has changed, but I dont think they are as strong as you make them out to be. They dont have any good way of raiding (other than sending ghouls if the enemy have only pd1). They have no stealth and no flyers. They also have terrible diversity and will be behind on magic gems as they cant site search most paths. You can take a rainbow to mitigate this a bit.
I'm also curious about Lemuria. In dom 4, Lemuria was my pick for a candidate as weakest nation in LA together with LA R'lyeh. I know they have gotten seveal buffs (Death gems from temples, Magic attuned researchers), but those things alone should not be able to make Lemuria a powerful nation. The big problem is really this: Lemuria is good at defending and hard to kill. But thats not enough to win a game. You also have to be able to project power outside of you own dominion. How exacly does Lemuria invade someone? Spectral hastati gets easy to counter by almost every nation with some research and they spawn in much smaller numbers than the MA Ermor freespawn and I dont remember any good freespawn sacreds. Also everyone is keen on not allowing your pop-killing dominion near them. Have MA Ermor been nerfed btw? I remember them being the strongest nation in MA by far if played right in Dom 4. Balanced only by the fact that every nation in the world is incentivised to gang up on you before you can get burden of time up and running.
@@chuckwood3426 All of these nations have been significantly impacted by changes through mechanics, buffs, or to the wider meta. I won't cover all of them but a few examples: Lemuria: Spectral weapons gained the ability to do half damage when the enemy passed their MR check, rather than being negated entirely. Immortal changes (a big one): Immortality is no longer dominion tied. This means that Lemuria can now use immortal mages and thugs outside off its dominion, and this revolutionised its ability to project power without much actual risk. Add the repel changes and the Lemurian thugs were born....and they're rough. With ASWD (communioned) and ethereal floating units, Lemuria has basic enough diversity before it starts summoning, is fiercely difficult to invade early, can project power very cost efficiently, and once they get a bit of research, they can roll on to even more greatness. They actually have research now, they're magic powered, they're immortal, and they're hard to stop unless you have the specific early counters to them before they magic up. MA Ermor was hit by a range of nerfs, mostly the new bless system: They lost the 3 'free' scale design points by being naturally death three rather than neutral. Their favourite blesses became incarnate (no more quad major bless lictors) They can still do a lot of what they used to do, but Sceleria can do most of those things (RM/fatigue plays, darkness etc) better and more frequently owing to Scelaria's larger economy and larger mage pool. I think my analysis on them mostly speaks for itself, other than to say that mobs of skeletons are absolutely capable of raiding and you produce several of them for free every turn by the mid game. Your diversity may not be great but you can broaden out of that if needed and tbh SD is such a potent combo anyway. When your skeletons are FW, MF under darkness they're gonna counter a lot of things. And you still have a human army there if you need it. I would pull the focus away from a billion skeletons in one army and put it more on what 50 groups of skeletons can accomplish to support a more diverse doomstack.
@@PerunAU Thank you for the info. I have some more questions. What are your thoughts about the strongest (according to win/loss statistics) nation in Dominions 4: EA Lanka.
@@130lukas not if they are cap only. They are in limited supply and must compete with things like white centaurs rather than be cost-effective vs general troops.
When the author talks about the number of condors (Conj 3) and hell blessing. Marignon be like Hurin is good. No joke. Suyaya if good to, but 850 for Royal Mallgui is overrated price. In expand its not logical investments/strategy (it puts you in danger of fort rush), At mid game its good. Etheral storm flyer sacred - its really awesome. And you got a mages. But late Suyaya be purged by priests purge-boxes if defender have some good defender units and priests. And you are left with excellent magicians but for 850. Nazka scale is out of control, its true. And if opponent left some time to Nazka, yeah he is prity doomed. But evry game plan/strategy have weak-point.
Don't know enough about Ubar but it's hard to argue with the top picks so far. I'm guessing we'll see stuff like Helheim and Fomoria tiered really highly by you, just not quite to this level. I'll be interested to see how you place the mid-tier nations, when comparing between ones that are strong early then fall off vs those that scale into the late game but have weak early games. The great nations do both, but when its one vs the other there are some philosophical and practical considerations.
At the start of the video you say you'll link to the other person's ranking video but there's no link. I assume you were talking about Cardjrable's efffort?
@@PerunAU I think RUclips may be censoring your comment on your own channel from my viewing. I would link it myself, but I _know_ RUclips will shadow-delete the comment.
I'm surprised that you didn't even mention Na'Ba. At least to me, the Queens of the Desert seem far stronger than Ubar, since they are not nearly as reliant on their capital and thus scale much better. The nation also has far better magic diversity and some of their summons are just straight up improved versions of Ubar's capital only commanders.
Ubar is 100% ridiculous. If you don't build your god and nation to hard-countered, they eat you up on their first war, and then they start shitting out seducers / corruptors plus sultans end of year one and they start wrecking everyone's shit. 4 games I've played with Ubar, 4 games they've eaten someone before end of year one and then proceeded to either win the game or get global coalition'd. Also, 6 rec points seem like a lot, but Ubar gets 3 rec points after their god awakening. Regarding scalability, once you get a few Ghulah, each Ghulah can summon another Ghulah, so you can get a very powerful blood economy going for very cheap that can also enter battles and pull big death and blood communions. That, and the fact that they have 50% regen makes them excellent slaves.
They number you get scales less aggresively. it worked out as me getting about 15 per turn instead of 20. they also made my favoured hellbless for nazca impossible.
So having watched this several times now and put a lot of thought into this, I do think you are selling Ubar short. The principle reason for this is that Gulah's are the most value for cost blood summon in the game (pre nerf La Ulm vampires and Dominion 4's EA Lanka's Dakini's were comparable, but both have been nerfed heavily since their glory days). Full stop. To explain, they can be summoned with blood one for 23 blood slaves and can blood hunt as a blood two. They have a 1.66 gold per month upkeep, which is only 20 gold a year. As such while they are slow to get initially due to limited national blood hunting and blood mage turns, once they get going they can snowball very, very, very hard as Ghulah's blood hunt and summon more Ghulah's which blood hunt and summon yet more Ghulah's ad (almost) infinitem. The only hiccup in this is that you need to reach blood five and have some blood hunters to start. The first problem is not to big of a concern as you (should) have magic three and cheap cost efficient research monkeys in the form of the Kahin, that will get you where you need to be while your scary cap only stuff keeps you alive. Similarly while inefficient Shayten's will eventually solve the second problem, though you are reliant on your cap only stuff to keep you alive until the Ghulah's come on line. But once everything comes on line it is off to the races as the Ghulah's reproduce at an exponential rate. The only thing comparable to their snowballing capabilities is pre nerf LA Ulm's infinite vampire swarm. So Gulah's can be massed in truly absurd quantities given time. This is important as each Ghulah is a blood one, death one, assassin, with 50% regen, and a wounded form with more health and the same regen rate. The paths plue regen allow Ghulah's to do Niefelheim's turbo communion infinite skelispam. The individual Ghula's can serve as turbo communion batteries surpassed only by Skratti while their sisters replace the Gigya. Each component of the skelli producing engine is individually weaker than it's Niefel counterpart, but once Ghulah production is in full swing, they are far easier to mass than either Skrati or Gigya so Ubar arguably does it better past a certain point. Compounding this all of the Ghula's are stealthy so you can elf people with infinite skeli spam communions. But wait there's more! Each Ghulah is an assassin so they can cast leech or summon imps in assassinations, almost guaranteeing that whatever they are assassinating dies, all for one or two blood slaves. This makes Ubar's forts hell to take and that the enemy must be constantly patrolling unless they want to wake up one morning missing half their mage corp. Next each Ghulah researches for nine point, 12 in magic three, while costing only 1.66 gold per month which is 20 gold per year. So they are hyper cost efficient researchers and once you have snowballed with the Ghulah's you will have enough of them to have them replace your normal researchers which will make you research faster for less money. Lastly the Ghulah's can summon forth hordes of Ghul's if for some reason you need an actual non skeli spam, thug, or super combatant army, as well as throw down high level combat blood and death thanks to the big sabbaths, which can be very helpful from time to time. This essentially means that Ghulah's single handedly solve your scaling issues, and indeed allow you to scale very, very, well. The only thing you need to scale is time to get off of the ground, which your scary Cap only units and super combatants almost guarantee you will get. Supplementing this you have seducers/corrupters, thugs, super combatants, and big elemental paths for a wide range of threat vectors that almost no nation can counter all of. Accordingly Ubar has a terrifying early game due to the scary cap only stuff, an ok mid game as it consolidates and starts Ghulah production, and an almost unstoppable late game as it drowns the world in an onslaught of blood, death, and fire. So while I think Ubar is weaker than Nazca I think they can beat Sceleria (I am not familiar enough with Lemuria to voice an opinion).
Blood slaves often don't turn up in assassinations even if you have a lot on the commander, but if your blood econ is strong you can make a few lifelong protections which handles most assassination targets. Might want to add a little damage beyond that so you don't lose to timeout though.
putting the tier list I saw here because I've been told comments are more visible. ruclips.net/video/ibEmlFhzwjM/видео.html my goal will be do somthing like this for MA but with some methodology changes.
So wish you would still do dominions content!!💖
@@superresistant0 he said he might return for dom 6
This was really interesting. Thanks!
Perun, maybe you could do a video on your _favorite_ nations? This video is about the most powerful - and it's pretty clear that you have a real fondness for Nazca - but other than that, are there nations that you just think are especially fun to play?
They probably won't be weak nations, but... maybe they've just got a great pretender chassis? (That four-armed blue diva is really fun, I'd say.) Or perhaps they've got a great thug or super-combatant? Special sacreds? (MA Pangaea with a Quickness _and_ Swiftness bless is kind of fun, because those white centaurs just get incredibly fast!) Or something else that's kind of special you just like to play?
Maybe you enjoy them all. Or maybe the nations in this video are your favorites. If so, no problem. I just thought I'd suggest it.
Thanks for the videos!
Nations are not strong/weak in a void, it would have made more sense to me to distinguish by age more. Like you can't compare your picks against each other really, other than Nazca/Sceleria. Lemuria is not strong vs Nazca, Sceleria is not strong vs Ubar, etc. Dominions is really three games in one, each age is its own game (unless you do some just really crazy mod stuff :P )
Speaking of Ubar, they are new but I've been playing them in two games since their release. I highly suggest that you give them a second pass and take note of these things:
1) Jinn are not sacred, and so you can consider them to be sort of cap-only sacred-eq (with obvious counters) but they are not limited by holy points, so you can probably make more Jinn than other nations can make cap-only sacreds. Ubar is highly insentivised to take scales
2) when your pretender wakes up as Ubar (and they have to start at least dormant) a hidden feature is that your cap upgrades to having 3 commander points. So those Sultans suddenly become slow to recruit, or you can make 3 Houri seducers per turn, or you can make 3 mages every two turns. Many interesting possibilities
3) so here's the thing: Shaytan have corruption vs moral of 13. Corruption is like seduction but is not gender specific. Because Shaytan fly they can corrupt from anywhere and will return with their target (as long as it is smaller) to your cap. They have scale walls, so they can corrupt even into a fort you are sieging. If the corruption fails you still fight an assassination battle with a F2A2 mage with FAEB random. Pretend Sultans don't exist for a second and then look at Ubar through this lens
ohhhh that'd be very interesting.
corruption is so nasty it just makes me feel awfuk. Like even if you fail your absolute monster of a unit still goes on an assassin trip and will most likely butcher the poor fool
@@Sassy_WitchYeah seduction having either you loose the unit or you fight and loose the unit is really harsh
Very odd to see such a well-respected RUclipsr also cover content that ISN'T Dominions 5.
Awesome to see you both be a military analyst AND a D5 gan though :)
What I don't like about Ubar, and a lot of the other changes introduced in the past couple years (the quickness nerf for example) is they seem to push everybody towards the nations that can run imprisoned rainbow blesses. It seems to me like the clear best strategy in the current meta (if you don't want to just go full cancer with one of the nations on Perun's list) is pick a nation with strong utility sacreds (looking at Pangaea in particular) and grab a few stat blesses, then pick and choose among resistances and utilities like Magic Weapons and Spirit Sight to counter who you think will be the big linear threats. From future updates I'd love to see reworks of some of the less interesting and less powerful nations (looking at you, MA Xibalaba) instead of the introduction of even more powerful and frankly, gimmicky nations like Ubar. Would also like to see the Ti'en Ch'i line, the Bandar Log line, and the Irish Elf line get a little love.
I just want some Irish elves in the late game.
Or the oceania line :(
This makes the fact that I have killed an ashdod rush as Ma Xib even better.
How?
@@TheArmored123 Depends on what bless you're facing, but if it's usual regen/blood bond you have a few tools. Simplest is to just spam earth grip or meld (Alt 1 and 2 respectively, former is E1). Blood bond is range 5 so even if the anakites are only held up briefly, they can get kicked out of each other's range and surrounded. Muuch warriors suck but they have a 3 resource variant, so it's entirely possible that anakites could be forced to face 100's + PD dump. In a line anakites will win, when each is surrounded they will not.
Muuch spears do 14 pierce, more expensive anakites have 18 prot which will get dragged to 14.4 prot against piercing. When each anakite is taking at most 3 squares worth of those and have fortitude/regen/blood bond, they can probably tank it indefinitely. If you surround them, we're talking about something closer to 20 attacks rather than 9 even if they're hacking up a square of frogs pretty fast. That's a big difference when DRN is rolling close to target prot.
Ashdod can play around this too, but if an Ashdod player gets cocky and just beelines cap/moves predictably he could easily see target have 200+ frogs between army and PD dump with his anakites spaced out via brief rooting spells.
Also you're unlikely to actually see it in real games any longer but hardskin earth snake with regen ring can get ~33-35 prot in friendly dominion and regen > 20 hp/round, which would actually shut down anakites w/o strength of giants or other help. Don't think it works w/o the regen though unless you roll very lucky on fear checks.
Lemuria gets a nice little bonus in that the Acolytes (D1H1) freespawn from every fort with a lab (i think once per year?). It's not much but its free mage :)
Ubar is imo one of strongest blood nations EA, maybe in all game. The gulah is only 23 slaves and has bonus +1 to hunts. So with a rod the gulah is blood 3 for bloodhunting.
I really do like how you specified the real 'under the hood' strength of Lemuria in a multiplayer setting (although I think it applies more or less equally to MA Ermor too, I do think you undersold them personally)... That you CAN beat them, but you won't want to. I would even take it one step further, I would say that assuming the Ermor/Lemuria player is competent, whoever defeats Ermor/Lemuria are not going to win the game. The winner of a game with MA Ermor or LA Lemuria in it is in my experience virtually without fault someone who sat back and watched someone else deal with Ermor or Lemuria. Except when Ermor or Lemuria wins, of course! And that somewhat paradoxically makes 'diplomacy' the key factor for Ermor and Lemuria, I feel, despite the fact that nobody wants to be friends with them. But you're not looking for friends, you're looking to prevent anyone from building the resolve and confidence to deal with you before you reach critical mass and/or a game-ruining death ritual.
Fascinating insights and one of the reasons why I read these comments, as someone that's never played a multiplayer game of Dominions.
Yeah, I think this is a good approach to it. Providing exact rankings is hard, but there's general consensus about what nations are the absolute best (Pangaea, Nazca, etc) and what ones are the absolute worst (EA Pelagia and Rlyeh, etc).
I love my psychic trouts so much, but maaaaan are they bad. Makes me sad : (
@@HatchAngel I am a defender of the brain zapping fishies personally. One of the first nations I ever played.
Well, solid analysis, 10/10, im buying the argument for why Lemuria is absolute cancer. The Nazca one for Condors are perhaps a little iffy. Im not certain its still possible to find people mad enough to sell Nazca air gems after that little stunt. Even if the bless got nerfed as well. Cant argue with the overall spot though. Likely Nazca will even work with scales.
If I've made any contribution to the Dominions meta it may be "dont sell air gems to nazca unless you're really sure you know what you're doing. that said scales nazca works sorta, or hellbless with an adjusted build order for more early A1 searching. you only need to find a few sites to make it work.
You know, watching this really shows how much I don't really don't understand this game yet.
These nations also look a lot stronger compared to the nations I've been enjoying (Mekone, Yomi, EA Ryleh...)
Still gonna play them though.
I haven't played Scelaria or Lemuria and dont plan on it. it's not my idea of fun. Nazca was a fun experiment but i wouldn't repeat it.
Meanwhile I've enjoyed EA Rlyeh and Pelagia a lot more, and the latter is pretty garbage.
@@Kaiser282 Mekone doesn't want to fort high income provinces due to their unrest mechanic. If you have a pretender setup for it you can use procession of the underworld/summon keres to break into nature, death, astral, and blood using gift of reason, which means you're going to want a pretender that can get you nature and death gems somewhat early.
R'lyeh line gets slave mages and those can go on land by default, so they have a lot of potential power even before they can get aboleths above in EA. Doesn't hurt to have an expander pretender to leverage NAP/keep people off your land holdings while you build forts.
@@Kaiser282 I heard Yomi played right can be pretty strong, and playing the weaker nations is what stronger players do once they've won with the more powerful nations to spice things up.
@@basileusbasil4041 I just liked Yomi because Dai Oni. Those things are cool.
The chaos is nice too. Being pretty strong in certain ways also has its bonuses. Idk I'm too new to say for sure but it feels like certain nations get a bad rep because they force people to play differently.
@@Kaiser282 EA R'lyeh can't natively forge Amulets of the Fish, so they need the paths on their pretender or trade for them. It's quite the hassle.
I was heartbroken when a Dominions Enhanced patch put Scelerian Cultists at 2 commander points each, but with everything else they have and the things DE adds, I can understand why they had to for multiplayer balance. It felt like a good way to make the nation less overwhelming, but thaumaturgs being so cheap you could just produce two priest levels for the price of two priests, with a real mage and communion slave attached.
Fuck yeah Nazca. They get more broken every time I learn something new more about them. I can never play this extremely fun nation with my friends because I'd either stomp everyone or get surrounded and destroyed. As fantastic as they are, they don't deal with coalitions as easily as popkill nations designed to contend with them.
In a recent MP game (6 person, Peliwyr) the Sceleria player expanded well and had 9 forts up by t20 or so. Two of us rushed him out and if we hadn't I think we'd have lost.
"It felt like a good way to make the nation less overwhelming, but thaumaturgs being so cheap you could just produce two priest levels for the price of two priests, with a real mage and communion slave attached."
That's fair, but for reanimation purposes there's a big difference between 90 gold for 6 skeletons/turn and 110 gold for 5 skeletons/turn.
I've been pondering the Dominions system of EA/MA/LA recently and it struck me that Robert E. Howard's Hyborian Age would work SO well if depicted in such a manner. The foundations are already there - Dominions has both some Lovecraftian (the entirety of R'lyeh) and Howardian (Lemuria, Atlantis) elements.
If expanded upon, the Dominions engine and mechanical systems could make for a fantastically immersive game set in the woefully under-explored (at least in terms of gaming and film) world of Conan. That is, the mythical past of said world (perhaps during the time of King Kull of Atlantis or even the Thurian Age), during the rule of Conan himself (that is, firmly within the Hyborian Age), and perhaps during or after the collapse of Aquilonia (hundreds of years after Conan's rule of said Roman/French-inspired nation - a time of great turmoil that would lay the groundwork for our ancient past, at least in terms of the Conan universe).
Don't get me wrong, I like Dominions. I'd just like to see the brand expand into other settings as well, since I actually trust them to do a good job, unlike most other teams/companies I can think of.
Here are the top3.
3. LA Cthulhu: Cause Eldritch
2. Man: Cause Arthurian mythos and longbows are fun
1. EA Spartan Giants: Cause Spartan Giants
Everyone else: They aren't the first 3
There we go. Most comprehensive tier list anyone needs.
I'm interested in seeing who your worst are
From the Thumbnail I guess Asphodel and Pelagia . LA R'lyeh is pretty crap too. Other contenders might be Mekone and Eriu
@@DPuljiz Eriu is nowhere near as bad as Mekone and Pelagia. Not only do they get a sorcery path, that path can break them into death and the mages with it are actually capable of moving on land! Elfing and cloud trapeze are there as always with elf nations too. It's not enough to make them good or carry a sorry unit roster but it's enough to keep them floating above the bottom of the barrel. Similarly I don't think Asphodel is good, but also don't think it belongs with Pelagia etc.
I would put Yomi low, even though they can cast wailing winds and such. Their basic units aren't good, but their freespawn factories are vulnerable unless you fort them, which is impractical given their propensity for cut income + unrest on top of that. Their thugs/SC are all fun and games until someone starts forging flamberge/demon slayer or casting anti-demon magic. Much worse than Eriu, though probably still better than Pelagia/Mekone because at least if you leave Yomi alone they CAN stack up freespawn and do all the death spell stuff.
Another contender for being bad is LA Pythium. In LA nobody is scared of a foul vapors nation that struggles to avoid killing its own stuff and has nothing better than N1 or F1 outside capital. It's bad enough that I might even put them below LA R'lyeh.
Edit: After posting this, Mekone got buffed and look more like they're on the low end of mid-tier now.
@ TheMelnTeam MA Xibalba pretty bad too. I think Eriu isnt quite bottom tier, but it suffers in comparison to the other elf nations
@@LordSasquatch63 MA Xibalba is underrated. It's not a high tier nation, but the rep it gets is nonsense. You can get to 20+ provinces t12 using scales expansion with it (barring crowded map/rushed) and it's not exactly packing a bad late game given wide range of native path access, native access to wailing winds, and efficient blood hunting in the age that is least common. Take dormant titan or whatever to survive years 2-3 and I don't see how this nation is actually worse than options like Marignon, Tien Chi, C'tis, Asphodel, Pelagia, or Abysia even in the confines of just MA. IMO a lot of say GC's criticism of it stems from him simply not figuring out how to expand well with them. But you can i.imgur.com/xr12zmw.jpg
@@DPuljiz LA R'lyeh isn't a strong nation, but it's nowhere near as weak as EA r'lyeh or asphodel or pelagia. They struggle due to the popkill, but they're still capable of being one of the most obnoxious nations in the game with cheap quality assassins, massed mind hunting etc.
Who else comes back to Perun's Dom5 videos every few months?
Hopefully I can pick up the pace again soon!
For that thumbnail alone I'm watching this video.
god tier mages, twice born commanders across the board that can summon slaves and summon undead, summonable good sacreds. Idk what they were thinking when they made this nation.
I completely understand where you're coming from and the way you analyze power, in general to be honest. With that said I think you're forgetting 1 very important thing: how hard is it to counter what you're doing. Having an endless supply of undead units is great and all but there are a ton of Undead counters that make them pretty easy to deal with. Whether it's holy or death magic, it's pretty easy to counter individual strong undeads(say thugs) or hordes of weak undeads(say freespawn chaff). Other nations don't tend to have nearly as much scalability, but the scalability they do get is much harder to counter than hordes of undead, especially because they also get much easier(and of course earlier) access to a variety of army buffs, something undead nations are lacking due to poor magic diversity. Speaking of scalability, the major blood powerhouses can get as much if not more scalability than Sceleria/Lemuria by the mid-late game. Yes, they will start a bit slower but generally with stronger non blood early game tools, but eventually can overtake the undead nations in terms of scalability, and of a significantly better quality. You just can't compare devils, ice devils, storm demons and earth knights for example to whichever undead unit you're thinking about, and by the mid-late game you can summon those incredibly efficiently in terms of both cost and mage turns. Of course blood offers a lot more than just these troops, from actual chaff like imps and crossbreeding to their unique summons which are for the most part very heavy thugs if not outright SCs. Similarly troop numbers aren't everything. If you can scale in thugs/SCs/mobile mages for battlefield wipes, rather than armies you're still getting the job done and as long as you can muster enough siege chaff somehow to tear down walls than you're good to go.
It's sad everyone ignores EA
The first tier list was EA
Ea is the one everyone enjoys the most because it's the least broken/cancerous of the three ages ( before Ubar ), so it isn't talked about too much but is enjoyed.
BasileusBasil plus i can play a jewish giant nation without the hate since hinnom has a lot of self handicaps (except for glorious chariots of course)
As a Dom 4 player that have never touched Dom 5, this was very intreresting. But I wonder a bit. I played Sceleria in MP back in Dom 3 and used a similar strategy. You could not buy several comanders in the same fort, but you could buy indy priests with only a temple and they could also raise skeletons. I did win that game, but mostly due to luck and diplomacy. The skeletons did not play a big part. There are just too many things that can counter a near infinite amount of skeletons and I did not feel it was worth the micro. Skeleton horses did the real lifting while Soulless warriors raised by wandering priests after each battle supplied me with bullet sponges.
I'm not sure if something has changed, but I dont think they are as strong as you make them out to be. They dont have any good way of raiding (other than sending ghouls if the enemy have only pd1). They have no stealth and no flyers. They also have terrible diversity and will be behind on magic gems as they cant site search most paths. You can take a rainbow to mitigate this a bit.
I'm also curious about Lemuria. In dom 4, Lemuria was my pick for a candidate as weakest nation in LA together with LA R'lyeh. I know they have gotten seveal buffs (Death gems from temples, Magic attuned researchers), but those things alone should not be able to make Lemuria a powerful nation.
The big problem is really this: Lemuria is good at defending and hard to kill. But thats not enough to win a game. You also have to be able to project power outside of you own dominion. How exacly does Lemuria invade someone? Spectral hastati gets easy to counter by almost every nation with some research and they spawn in much smaller numbers than the MA Ermor freespawn and I dont remember any good freespawn sacreds. Also everyone is keen on not allowing your pop-killing dominion near them.
Have MA Ermor been nerfed btw? I remember them being the strongest nation in MA by far if played right in Dom 4. Balanced only by the fact that every nation in the world is incentivised to gang up on you before you can get burden of time up and running.
@@chuckwood3426 All of these nations have been significantly impacted by changes through mechanics, buffs, or to the wider meta.
I won't cover all of them but a few examples:
Lemuria:
Spectral weapons gained the ability to do half damage when the enemy passed their MR check, rather than being negated entirely.
Immortal changes (a big one): Immortality is no longer dominion tied. This means that Lemuria can now use immortal mages and thugs outside off its dominion, and this revolutionised its ability to project power without much actual risk. Add the repel changes and the Lemurian thugs were born....and they're rough.
With ASWD (communioned) and ethereal floating units, Lemuria has basic enough diversity before it starts summoning, is fiercely difficult to invade early, can project power very cost efficiently, and once they get a bit of research, they can roll on to even more greatness.
They actually have research now, they're magic powered, they're immortal, and they're hard to stop unless you have the specific early counters to them before they magic up.
MA Ermor was hit by a range of nerfs, mostly the new bless system: They lost the 3 'free' scale design points by being naturally death three rather than neutral. Their favourite blesses became incarnate (no more quad major bless lictors)
They can still do a lot of what they used to do, but Sceleria can do most of those things (RM/fatigue plays, darkness etc) better and more frequently owing to Scelaria's larger economy and larger mage pool.
I think my analysis on them mostly speaks for itself, other than to say that mobs of skeletons are absolutely capable of raiding and you produce several of them for free every turn by the mid game.
Your diversity may not be great but you can broaden out of that if needed and tbh SD is such a potent combo anyway. When your skeletons are FW, MF under darkness they're gonna counter a lot of things.
And you still have a human army there if you need it. I would pull the focus away from a billion skeletons in one army and put it more on what 50 groups of skeletons can accomplish to support a more diverse doomstack.
@@PerunAU Thank you for the info.
I have some more questions. What are your thoughts about the strongest (according to win/loss statistics) nation in Dominions 4: EA Lanka.
I don't think Jinn Warriors are able to run over someone in the early game. Most sacreds end them.
But the question is cost effectiveness is it not?
@@130lukas not if they are cap only. They are in limited supply and must compete with things like white centaurs rather than be cost-effective vs general troops.
Missing your dominions content :)
When the author talks about the number of condors (Conj 3) and hell blessing. Marignon be like
Hurin is good. No joke.
Suyaya if good to, but 850 for Royal Mallgui is overrated price.
In expand its not logical investments/strategy (it puts you in danger of fort rush),
At mid game its good. Etheral storm flyer sacred - its really awesome. And you got a mages.
But late Suyaya be purged by priests purge-boxes if defender have some good defender units and priests. And you are left with excellent magicians but for 850.
Nazka scale is out of control, its true. And if opponent left some time to Nazka, yeah he is prity doomed.
But evry game plan/strategy have weak-point.
what? Perun used to play dominions 5 before the war broke out? Damn
EA Agartha also scales well. But their recruit anywhere sacreds aren't good enough to become a top nation. Could be a honorable mention?
Don't know enough about Ubar but it's hard to argue with the top picks so far. I'm guessing we'll see stuff like Helheim and Fomoria tiered really highly by you, just not quite to this level.
I'll be interested to see how you place the mid-tier nations, when comparing between ones that are strong early then fall off vs those that scale into the late game but have weak early games. The great nations do both, but when its one vs the other there are some philosophical and practical considerations.
Ubar is too cap heavy to scale well.
I really like how you pronounce the latin C properly.
At the start of the video you say you'll link to the other person's ranking video but there's no link. I assume you were talking about Cardjrable's efffort?
I put it in comments because ive been told people see those more often
@@PerunAU I think RUclips may be censoring your comment on your own channel from my viewing. I would link it myself, but I _know_ RUclips will shadow-delete the comment.
@@flamedeluge1332 I can still see it but i've moved it to the description just in case.
@@PerunAU Try logging out of your account and looking at the video comments?
55:22 Imagine an army of pink galahs swarming your enemies. Aus meme nation when Midwinter?
Great video! I have subscribed to your channel. What map are you showing on this video? It looks nice.
Can anyone say which map is used when discussing scelaria?
Oooh some good content coming, sick.
Btw you better give my boys and girls at Uruk good mark else I'm gonna get outraged, fyi ;P
I'm surprised that you didn't even mention Na'Ba. At least to me, the Queens of the Desert seem far stronger than Ubar, since they are not nearly as reliant on their capital and thus scale much better. The nation also has far better magic diversity and some of their summons are just straight up improved versions of Ubar's capital only commanders.
Ubar is 100% ridiculous. If you don't build your god and nation to hard-countered, they eat you up on their first war, and then they start shitting out seducers / corruptors plus sultans end of year one and they start wrecking everyone's shit. 4 games I've played with Ubar, 4 games they've eaten someone before end of year one and then proceeded to either win the game or get global coalition'd.
Also, 6 rec points seem like a lot, but Ubar gets 3 rec points after their god awakening.
Regarding scalability, once you get a few Ghulah, each Ghulah can summon another Ghulah, so you can get a very powerful blood economy going for very cheap that can also enter battles and pull big death and blood communions. That, and the fact that they have 50% regen makes them excellent slaves.
What was the nerf to condors?
They number you get scales less aggresively. it worked out as me getting about 15 per turn instead of 20.
they also made my favoured hellbless for nazca impossible.
@@PerunAU ah good to know. Thanks for another great video Perun! Looking forward to more, and hope things are doing okay where you are :)
Esoteric Belarussian lore
So having watched this several times now and put a lot of thought into this, I do think you are selling Ubar short.
The principle reason for this is that Gulah's are the most value for cost blood summon in the game (pre nerf La Ulm vampires and Dominion 4's EA Lanka's Dakini's were comparable, but both have been nerfed heavily since their glory days). Full stop.
To explain, they can be summoned with blood one for 23 blood slaves and can blood hunt as a blood two. They have a 1.66 gold per month upkeep, which is only 20 gold a year. As such while they are slow to get initially due to limited national blood hunting and blood mage turns, once they get going they can snowball very, very, very hard as Ghulah's blood hunt and summon more Ghulah's which blood hunt and summon yet more Ghulah's ad (almost) infinitem.
The only hiccup in this is that you need to reach blood five and have some blood hunters to start. The first problem is not to big of a concern as you (should) have magic three and cheap cost efficient research monkeys in the form of the Kahin, that will get you where you need to be while your scary cap only stuff keeps you alive. Similarly while inefficient Shayten's will eventually solve the second problem, though you are reliant on your cap only stuff to keep you alive until the Ghulah's come on line. But once everything comes on line it is off to the races as the Ghulah's reproduce at an exponential rate. The only thing comparable to their snowballing capabilities is pre nerf LA Ulm's infinite vampire swarm. So Gulah's can be massed in truly absurd quantities given time.
This is important as each Ghulah is a blood one, death one, assassin, with 50% regen, and a wounded form with more health and the same regen rate.
The paths plue regen allow Ghulah's to do Niefelheim's turbo communion infinite skelispam. The individual Ghula's can serve as turbo communion batteries surpassed only by Skratti while their sisters replace the Gigya. Each component of the skelli producing engine is individually weaker than it's Niefel counterpart, but once Ghulah production is in full swing, they are far easier to mass than either Skrati or Gigya so Ubar arguably does it better past a certain point. Compounding this all of the Ghula's are stealthy so you can elf people with infinite skeli spam communions.
But wait there's more! Each Ghulah is an assassin so they can cast leech or summon imps in assassinations, almost guaranteeing that whatever they are assassinating dies, all for one or two blood slaves. This makes Ubar's forts hell to take and that the enemy must be constantly patrolling unless they want to wake up one morning missing half their mage corp.
Next each Ghulah researches for nine point, 12 in magic three, while costing only 1.66 gold per month which is 20 gold per year. So they are hyper cost efficient researchers and once you have snowballed with the Ghulah's you will have enough of them to have them replace your normal researchers which will make you research faster for less money.
Lastly the Ghulah's can summon forth hordes of Ghul's if for some reason you need an actual non skeli spam, thug, or super combatant army, as well as throw down high level combat blood and death thanks to the big sabbaths, which can be very helpful from time to time.
This essentially means that Ghulah's single handedly solve your scaling issues, and indeed allow you to scale very, very, well. The only thing you need to scale is time to get off of the ground, which your scary Cap only units and super combatants almost guarantee you will get. Supplementing this you have seducers/corrupters, thugs, super combatants, and big elemental paths for a wide range of threat vectors that almost no nation can counter all of.
Accordingly Ubar has a terrifying early game due to the scary cap only stuff, an ok mid game as it consolidates and starts Ghulah production, and an almost unstoppable late game as it drowns the world in an onslaught of blood, death, and fire.
So while I think Ubar is weaker than Nazca I think they can beat Sceleria (I am not familiar enough with Lemuria to voice an opinion).
Blood slaves often don't turn up in assassinations even if you have a lot on the commander, but if your blood econ is strong you can make a few lifelong protections which handles most assassination targets. Might want to add a little damage beyond that so you don't lose to timeout though.
You keep calling Lemuria Sceleria.
and in a sense im right....but yes i do. repeatedly. and it's not the only error of that type
Nazca? I prefer daytona
putting the tier list I saw here because I've been told comments are more visible.
ruclips.net/video/ibEmlFhzwjM/видео.html
my goal will be do somthing like this for MA but with some methodology changes.