Once when I was playing as the Senator in the Fallen Empire age I walked by the haunted capitoleum with my starting army on turn 10 or so and was ambushed by an invisible Doom Horror, the Orchard of Souls, who immediately cast meteor shower and beaned itself in the head with a giant rock from space and died.

I only lost like two hastati.

i wish you could build a few more things.

>>1787574
Meteor shower is the worst spell in the game. I get they want "ha-HA!" moments with some spells like chain lightning but they only ever give that meteor shower spell to those who can't defend against it. Things that can cast, say, Blizzard are usually immune to it but since meteors do both fire and physical, you can have things like Yog-sothoth, who is literally immortal and immune to all physical damage still be killed by the fire from it using it because it has no accessory slots to give it a bottle of demon blood or something.

>>1787716
I wish that it was easier to work together such that you could have a team manipulating things. When you consider all the factions, there's quite a lot of things you can do.

>>1787570
I enjoy when certain units can take out hordes of other units, recently had a fight where like 200 skeletons were killed by a single remaining enemy leader before he died in a duel with my strongest necromancer. I'm always surprised when simple spells can change the outcome of battle. Sometimes mages I consider weakass can win because they made the enemy all be stunned and just beat them all to death while they couldn't move. I also underestimate the power of water elementals.

The game is fun if you want interesting factions and a way to quickly get cool battles but it is super random and if you don't like randomness you will hate this game. Generally it's like running around until you get the big good unit and slaughter the enemies then your unit dies and you're back to running around trying to put together an army before you lose.

I bought CoE4 and regretted it. I'd rather just play Dominions, even singleplayer

>>1787570
>playing Voice of El for the first time
>doing okay, among other things, cleared out those cultists even converted one to my side
>broke a few seals to see what would happen
>turns out there was another group of cultists somewhere and they opened up a gate to hell
>apocalypse happens and demons everywhere
>somewhere some NPC cardinal starts breaking seals in a panic, I don't know where he is so I can't stop him
>horsemen show up and cause havoc
>I managed to get up to the clouds and park someone there just in case
>final seal is broken, all heaven and hell breaks loose
>angels and demons everywhere, four horsemen all over the place, the land itself is turning barren from locust demons
>decide to hunker down in my starting fortress and hope for the best
>see lots of cool battles from the El reinforcements fighting both angels and demons
>eventually the final AI opponent is taken out by some angels and I win by default as I was preparing to send an expedition into hell
Turns out the NPC cardinal was in the capital on the other side of the map that I hadn't even reached yet. Was a pretty fun game, the El BGM playing during the apocalypse was the icing on the cake.

>>1787854
>>1787780
This game isn't Dominions or even like it.

In a new version of this game there needs to be a way to place guards over a portal and stop things from coming though like with neutral defenders that cover them sometimes.

>>1787896
Just drop troops over the portal.

>>1787894
If that was true CoE might actually be good.
Its pretty much dominions in drag. If it were just an adventure game set in the world of CoE it'd be great. But you still have to deal with provinces by a different name, indie attacks and AI raiding parties are still all there. You've got all these awesome plains to explore but none of it ties into the mechanics since the AI doesn't know how to interact with them so they just spend the whole wondering around elysium until they get killed by two (2) deer wondering into their capital. It gets to the point where I think the most popular mod is one that gives the AI a bunch of stuff on their cap just to stop them from dying so you can explore the map without the game suddenly ending out of nowhere.

>>1787570
it's a fun singleplayer exploration game, but it's pretty much unfinished / unplayable as intended. The enemy will either curbstomb you or die in 10 turns from start. On the rare chance niether of you die too early and he manages to get in any of the planes it's gg no re because unlike you they operate 50 armies with no problems. Once they get REAL mages they'll spiral out hard.

>>1788156
The capitol defense mod is indeed the only truly must-have mod. Everything else is "according to taste", but that one is vital for gameflow purposes.

>>1788156
CoE is an older series and Dom is a spinoff of it if anything. CoE isn't Dom, so stop comparing it.

>>1788223
>Well ackshually
You didn't actually object to anything I asserted, just pointed out some historic trivia. Dominions and CoE share a recipe, it is "like" dominions, and those shared mechanics don't capitalize on what is actually good about CoE (5 at least); that being the exploration. It'd be better as some kind adventure game, but its not that, which is unfortunate. That's why dominions is a cult success and coe is a novel curiosity at best.

>>1787570
Isn't this Dominion? I never touch both game before but heard a lot about Dominion and this looks like dominion.

>>1788257
Illwinter, the dev of both, is too lazy to make separate assets for their games.

Thanks anons for your stories and info on it, im thinking in buying CoE5 or Dom6 thats why i made the post, and i have only pirated CoE5 and played it a ton and im enjoying it too, so maybe i should try Dom6 too?

>>1787716
Would be nice for being able to build like.. cult locations or military locales.

>>1788540
>pirated CoE5
from where? I tried to look but all I found were shady russian sites

>>1789071
I see... and its too bad at being a 2-player game? I would love to play it with my bf
>>1789113
I basically sold the soul of my pc going there and having enough faith in skidrow lol... yeah im mirsculously not infected

>>1789173
enjoy your miner, the soul of your pc is now eternally damned!

>>1787570
My greatest wish is that one day you will be able to keep playing after all the players are defeated. I wanna defend my rule of Elysium against the environment and invade other realms.

>>1788156
CoE isn’t anything like dominions nigga. It just isn’t. They’re completely different games. Dominions is more of a battle game like total war while CoE is more of a 4x roguelike. The only similarity is that Illwinter reuses sprites for both games.

What are the essential mods for this game?

>>1789354
There's a mod that creates a virtually unkillable passive faction so you can keep playing after everyone's killed off and go invade the planes.

>>1789360
>Dominions is more of a battle game like total war while CoE is more of a 4x roguelike
They're both 4x.
In both of them you explore.
In both of them you expand.
In both of them you exploit the resources gained from expanding and use them to exterminate your enemy.
You're mixing ought and is. I agree entirely that CoE OUGHT to be different to dominions. I reckon it OUGHT to be something like a roguelike, where your goal is to progress through the planes, overcoming trials to complete some goal (ideally a goal specific to the race type you picked). But because the win state is capturing all the enemy forts; you end up with a 4x instead of a roguelike with players using mods like >>1789497 to excise the 4x aspects and turn it into a bootleg sandbox.

>>1789113
rin-ru isn't shady...

>>1787570
It's worth it but the devs are really bad about making "sequels" that barely change anything and then asking full price for them. My advice is to only buy every third game in the series to avoid being ripped off, pirate the rest.

>>1787574
kek

>>1787570
have managed to beat it with a few classes.

I hate the fact that rituals have success chance on some classes
I hate the way scaling among classes is fucked up.

Otherwise cool little game with lots of things to explore.

Hey im back! I ended up buying CoE5 for me and my bf! And we started a coop game yesterday, pretty nice and everything is going well, i would bought dominions 6 but its extremely pricey

>>1790722
tits or gtfo

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>>1790757
Anon who said there were any females involved...

>>1788194 >>1788156
which specific mod do I want? I couldn't find "capital defense"

>>1790760
should have figured that the only way a multiplayer game of Coe5 would ever be played is as part of a gay relationship

>>1790948
There's a bystander mod and "Starting Defense Only" the prior is for letting you turn the game into a sandbox and the latter is if you want it to still be a 4x but at least want the AI to not move all their shit off cap, lose their cap to a deer attack, and then immediately get knocked out.
I haven't played CoE5 since about a week after its release, though.

>>1790722
Post programming socks + coe so I can use it to shitpost on /domg/

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>>1791079
>>1791230
Well i bothered my bf enough, i hope this counts as OP delivering... now im expecting my Dom6 Key

>>1791292
Also we won our first coop game ;D

>>1787896
Its always been like this anon
>Drop troops off at larger mines to stop neutrals from taking them
>Drop troops off on the big trees to stop neutrals from getting a free reflag, cockblocking neutral spawning
>Correct recruit a more mobile commander and get him a small retinue to go on a flagging spree

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>>1791292
based

>Can make unlimited swords, bows, and spears from a castle's armory
>Can make about 5 terracotta soldiers from an entire swamp
Teracotta solders need to work like gathering slaves and making statues needs to work like raising a battlefield.
>A normally 2 movement ballista can move 3 because it floats
>A golem made out of stone/silver/gold can move 3 spaces
>Statutes move 2 spaces a turn because...

>>1791369
That has nothing to do with the post you quoted. There are occasional portals to the netherworld/abyss/hell/plane of eternal fire and so on that are guarded by neutral entities. If you kill them, then things from the planes pour out and even if you put something of your own on top, they still come out and attack you instead of being blocked off from Elysium.

>>1791777
This is the type of game where you can get a Mole Kings Shovel
And then spend the AP to directly dig down to hell
Permafucking the MAP because the hell neutral AI is designed to react to a opening being formed. Unscripted doomsday events is peak gameplay, contrasting well against the fun "portal to Hades" and the "portal to hell" events.

Meanwhile if you overuse a scrying service... all you do is open a hole, and can get horrors walking into it. They don't even flood.

>nothing to do with
nah, it got plenty to do with.
If you can't guard a ancient forest to stop mob spawns, then don't take it. If you can't guard the portal to hell, don't open it.
Just like how its generally a bad idea to try an siege a T3 magic academy, even more so if the Old Wizard get lucky with his spell list and wall placement.

>>1791808
Ancient forests aren't the same thing. If I have to guard the portal then the neutrals guarding it should get attacked too and it should eventually be forced open at some point in the game.

>>1791808
>If you can't guard a ancient forest to stop mob spawns, then don't take it.
just fucking burn it

>>1791840
5 lightning guardians isn't enough to stop Asmodean, Belzebub, or a smaller force of elemental Giants.
Or a actual flood of Primal animals.

Its suppose to be one of the exotic alternatives of a player caused doomsday scenario, which the Pale Ones can with the effort of spending 10-15 turns can do at ANY TIME. Or El faction can do for the price of what... 1000 idols?

>>1791292
>playing as El
based molested by priest enjoyer

>>1793050
The seals will come open, and everyone is gonna suffer.

Why can't Illwinter fucks just add the ability for magic items to be dropped on a tile? A tile can count how many halves of a bear's ass is on it and whether they're from small, medium, or large bears, but making a temporary loot structure like AoW is apparently too hard.

>>1797837
Have you ever interacted with either of the two main devs? They are EXTREMELY autistic. I would imagine a QoL feature like that doesn't fit into the backwards-ass "roguelike" conception they have of CoE, even though the ability to save destroys that.

>>1797837
The same devs made it a viable tactic in Dominions to create cursed items, shove it on a character, have that character go into battle with an enemy entirely because they autopickup cursed items and equip them.

>>1791292
thats a guy

>>1797837
So you are forced to do long term army management.
Most of the anti QOL features boil down to that, its often the exactly right call.

>>1797850
Extremely good strat to be honest
>>1798096
Thanks anon, my BF will be happy to hear that lol

>>1798260
Oh it is indeed a good strat, but it wouldn't be viable if this game had QoL options like "Do not pick up items automatically" or "Stockpile them"

>>1787570
Just finished my first Game as Illusionist against 5 AIs. They basically threw their armies at me until they ran out of commanders and lost. Is this normal? Is it an AI difficulty thing?

>>1800967
What would you have the AI do?

Keep in mind illusionist's whole thing is having a larger army than would be suggested at a glance. Personally the AI usually avoids my armies unless it "knows" it will absolutely win(which sometimes results in it getting destroyed by RNG). Ask yourself also if you would ever try attrition tactics. Fighting a losing battle but killing the enemy commander is a viable tactic. Late game for me usually either involves AI running around with their doomstacks or the AI having spent like 50 turns only buying hundreds of forces at their citadels because they never had money for the commanders they wanted or something. If you get down to 1 commander, keeping him in your base isn't going to save you, you'll just lose the tiles that give you resources.

Going back to the original question, what do you think an intelligent playstyle would be? Having played a lot I don't think the AI plays that poorly. It's subject to the same bullshit that the player is and doesn't get to savescum, so sometimes it seems like it's playing worse than it could be but it's really trying not to be killed by horrors off screen. The problem with AIs in any game though is that players think "The AI always attacks and loses, so dumb" or "The AI basically never attacks, too passive" like what is it supposed to do, set up ambushes outside your base all the time until you grow to expect them? The only really dumb thing I'd say the AI does is fixate on a tile it wants to the point of coming back to it if it's taken and splitting their doomstacks to guard it, thus making both a capturable tile and a defeatable army. Some people complain because they think the AI moves all their commanders from their starting citadel, but even for the player, what are you gonna do when you start with a few spearmen and archers and 2 commanders? Excluding a few factions, there's no way your main or sub commander alone would protect against an elephant next to you coming over.

>>1791369
A just hire a pyromancer asap

>>1800967
The AI seem to struggle a lot with prioritizing moving from midgame to endgame
Its good at prioritizing scouting and flagging, but its often very bad at prioritizing defending..

Also the dwarf AI
Nothing like it, and gives a very distinct flavor.

>>1801097
>Also the dwarf AI
>Nothing like it, and gives a very distinct flavor.
isn't it intentionally retarded? as in completely uncapable of leaving early game because they don't do mages / summons.

>>1787570
Download a mod that disables planar invasions, ESPECIALLY from hell and hades. It's pretty unforgivable from the devs that virtually every game on a larger map will eventually be totally ruined by some retarded invasion garbage.

>>1801913
But that's exactly how it's in Dominions too. Eventually some fuckhead will cast cancer globals.

>>1801913
Nothing wrong with Planar invasions...... IF the AI didn't ignore them. That is my main problem with them.
Most of them aren't even that bad, outside of the Primal one IF the green sorcerers get rad spells or artifacts. Or the statue to Hades being unscryable..

>>1801865
Its not "intentionally retarded", it just suffers a lot of the ideas behind the AI that don't pan out
>Focus on main commander , which won't ever leave the base
>No resource management, aka can't afford to properly flag the mines on lower difficulties
>Doesn't understand what the rune smith do
>Scout forces too weak to actually flag anything, essentially praying somebody else will do the clearing and then don't leave troops
So: Eventually the tier 3 Dvala will have the fucking electric gates and more lines of ballista than there is range. And its going to spawn 3-4 fucking commanders each turn, that has its only job to go out and die
But most likely it won't have alchemical ballistas, because that requires keeping the runesmith alive

Picked up 4 on the summer sale.
it's interesting, but somehow I was expecting something more complicated.

Settlement management is pretty hands off I guess? Do they evolve on their own?
I've seen a monk Commander that converts swamp to farmland, and one mage that can burn forests down.
Am I supposed to find other spells/commanders that mulch forests to swamp or something?

Also are there any mods that let battles end in a draw? Feels silly that every engagement has to end in a complete bloodbath.

>>1802218
>Settlement management is pretty hands off I guess? Do they evolve on their own?
No. This isn't a 4x, it's just a land grabbing and battle game. You can use certain classes like the Baron to upgrade certain settlements. Settlements are generally just a resource point however.

>I've seen a monk Commander that converts swamp to farmland, and one mage that can burn forests down. Am I supposed to find other spells/commanders that mulch forests to swamp or something?
If you want to terraform, yes, but generally classes can only do so much to the world. Witches can turn farms back into swamps, Hoburgers can turn farms into hoburg villages, Enchanters can upgrade the output of villages and mines, the Baron can tun small towns into fortified castle villages, upgraded monks can turn something(farms?) into monasteries that count as temples, etc. There are classes that can do things with forests too but I don't think any one of them can grow them. You can generally upgrade the main kind of captured tiles you use in some way.

>Also are there any mods that let battles end in a draw? Feels silly that every engagement has to end in a complete bloodbath.
I dislike this in 4xes but I don't think it's possible.

You can try playing Age of Wonder 3 (or 4?) with the ability to make new towns turned off if you want something similar but with draws(retreat or avoid damage for several turns) and slightly more complexity and more terraforming.
In CoE, in theory the land can undergo lots of changes but this rarely happens. I think the most world altering faction is Warlock, who can make new fortresses, portals, temporary structures, volcanoes, burn up forests, and make permanent storms that generate storm elementals. The classes all play very differently and using certain spells (confusion and charm) you can capture other class's commanders and use their abilities as well.

>>1787570
This feels like the only modern turn based game that has both multi-turn movements and the ability to end turn when you press end turn instead of forcing you do do every possible action.

>>1802469
And anyone with fire magic can make Forest into "Not Forest". Always good to tell the druid to fuck off.

>>1787570
i played it for like 20 minutes as kobolds, watched a dumb normal animal run around attacking my shit, couldn't defend because theres no PD and i couldn't catch it. got bored and never played it again. am i really missing out on anything?

>>1789547
that isn't what 4x means at all, by that definition command and conquer and minecraft are 4x games

>>1805423
Kobolds are pretty boring imo, once you 've turned all mines in the map into kobold hatcheries there's not really anything else to do. Kobolds depend heavily on free spawn, they don't have any infantry capable of holding their own against decent armies without either literally hundreds of casualties and/or abusing poison arrows.

This means you end up holed up in mountains with tiny gold income because you can't defend anywhere, and nobody can really break your 1000 kobold +ai dragon defence.

Best best with CoE is to treat boredom as a endgame condition and roll a different class. They're different enough that they're basically different games

are there any special fortresses in hades like inferno has or is it all just a 1 for 1 copy of cities/libraries/towers like elysium?

>>1805424
I prefer the term Civlike myself

>>1805606
Civ-likes, moo-likes, and mom-likes are all different genres.

>>1805592
It's mostly 1 for 1 but that means there's also a capital if there's one in Elysium, also Orcus is somewhere in a structure. The recruitable locations let you recruit special ghost units though, if that's all you wanted.

>>1805424
What do you mean, did I get one of the Xs wrong?

>>1805515
>they don't have any infantry capable of holding their own against decent armies without either literally hundreds of casualties and/or abusing poison arrows.
Aren't you supposed to employ single-colour armies with the corresponding casters so you can abuse their immunity to their elemental spell damage?

>>1805515
Besides poison arrows, wyvern knights are also okay if you can get a lot of them. White kobold winged archers are also pretty good. Besides being able to dodge with their flying abilities, it's fairly easy to get an army of kobolds into the sky and supplement them with cloud people or just be harder to take out with hard to access citadels. Yes, you lose a lot of them but that's life for kobolds.

>>1787570
Yes its worth it. Necromancers are literal gods of death. Warlocks are gods of the elements, witches are a legitimate bane to all things human, and high cultist are eldritch horror made manifest. There is no other game comparable to it. Just to emphasize warlocks, they don't need to fear wildlife as one of their upgrade paths effectively renders ancient forests void, and another lets you perpetually own any portion of the map permanently.