/jp/ Dominions 5

/jp/ Dominions 5

I. What are we playing?

Dominions 5 is a turn-based fantasy strategy game with gameplay somewhat similar to Civilization. We are playing a 2hu-modded multiplayer game via PBEM, Play-By-Email.

Why play by email?

- This way, we don't have to commit to a single fucklong game for 8 hours straight (that we will not be able to finish either way).
- This is exacerbated by my expectation that most people joining are beginners and will take much, much longer to do their turns until they learn the shortcuts (press '?' on literally any screen to find out all the available shortcuts for that screen)
- So that our privateer friends can join too.  (<- actually the top reason)


===================================

II. How to install:

1. Download Dominions 5:
Dominions 5: https://mega.nz/file/u6g2hTSY#JkX7mBt6lp9F0OLQELlCdD8UnUruKb9TI8geikVi8cQ

2. Then download the 2hu mod:
2hu Mod: https://mega.nz/file/Kqp2XTQA#6aF5yTce-FbdnnQ0B8JPY6_ff2m4aYznMG6jccKzATA

3. Run Dominions 5 (*important*), and at the main menu, click [Tools and Manuals] and, under "Other" (at the bottom), click [Open User Data Directory].

4. If you asked a CD-Key, use 1111-1111-1111-1111-111.

5. Extract the contents of the 2hu mod folder in the mods/ folder of the user data directory.
*note: your folder structure should look something like this:
- ../Dominions5/mods/MA_Touhou_1_1_5.dm (file)
- ../Dominions5/mods/MA Touhou/ (folder)

6. Go back into the game. Click [Mods] and then click the MA Touhou 1.1.5 mod. It should have a checkmark beside it.

If you don't trust links provided to you by an anon on /jp/, or if you are not running Windows, feel free to obtain a copy of Dominions 5: Warriors of the Faith v.5.48 by yourself. The version number could be important, so please make sure you get v.5.48, no matter if it is not the most recent version by this time.

As for the 2hu mod, this is the one we are using: http://dominionsmods.com/index.php?showtopic=3860 It is important that you use version 1.1.5. It is the latest version as of this writing and adds WBaWC characters. Even if it is updated since, we must continue using 1.1.5 althroughout the game.

===================================

III. First Steps - Creating your God

To create a God, starting from the main menu, go to  [Tools and Manuals] and then [Create a Pretender God]. It is important that you create your God in this way, as if you create your God from any other screen, it cannot be saved, and thus you cannot send it to me. For example, there is also a God creation when you try to start a game, but in the infinite wisdom of the devs, you cannot save your created God this way.

*Important: There is a password field at the top of the god creation panel. This is used for PBEM games so that other players can't access your faction when opening up the game. It's your choice whether you want to set a password on your God - the benefit is of course, it will make it impossible for other players to cheat (your faction at least), but it also introduces a risk of forgetting that password. If you lose your password, you're fucked. There is no "forgot my password" option at all. In any case, we're just playing a comfy little game so I think the honor system would suffice.

The game is actually extremely expansive and one of the most important things I need from you before we can begin, is for you to create your faction's God. You will likely want to know what options you have, and what they mean for you in the game, so I highly recommened playing a quick single-player game, don't bother about winning or losing and just get yourself familiar to stuff like:

- What is Early Ages, Middle Ages and Late Ages?
These are sort of game modes, which restrict which factions are available. Our 2hu mod only adds factions for Middle Ages so that will be the one we are using, and if you create a God, you need to set it as Middle Ages (you won't find a 2hu faction to make it for otherwise, anyway).

- What factions are there?
Factions in the 2hu mod are separated roughly by game release. i.e. Koumakan faction includes all EoSD characters, so Dai-chan and Cirno are in the same faction as Remi and Sakuya.

This is the available faction list:
- Hakurei (the only one not really based on a game, includes Reimu, Marisa and the 3 fairies)
- Chireiden (SA)
- Hakugyokurou (PCB)
- Shinreibyou (TD)
- Koumakan (EoSD)
- Eientei (IN)
- Myouren (UFO)
- Kishinjou (DDC)
- Moriya (MoF)
- Yume (LoLK)
- Ushirodo (HSFiS)
- Reichouen (WBaWC)

Each one has a unique playstyle and gimmick, and some even have special God sprites you can choose from (e.g. Koumakan has Remi as a God choice, Moriya has Kanako and Sumako, Kishinjou has Shining Needle Castle, etc). In general, though, most 'hus are just common units and commanders.

- Research: All research is just spells, not actual technology. In general, the setting is sort of faux-medieval fantasy. You know the type. When you open the research tab, you'll be presented with a list of categories of magic. Right click on each one to check which spells get unlocked at which level of research, and you can even right click on the spells inside to check what those spells do.

When picking a faction, make sure to check their research tab, because every faction has access to special spells only available to them. (e.g. Shinreibyou has a spell that summons Miko, Moriya has a spell that summons Hisoutensoku, Koumakan has a spell that spreads scarlet mist, etc.)

- Magic spells: There are eight elements or "paths" that any character, including your God, can have. These and the level of these will dictate what spells (once you've researched them) your God and all characters you control, can cast in and outside of battle. This is important to know immediately because once you create a God, you need to set their initial magic paths (e.g. You're creating Kanako, and you gave her Lv. 5 Wind and Lv.4 Earth magics)

In general, I would describe each path as below:

- Fire: Powerful attack spells, of course, inflicting burn damage. AoE heavy. Yes, there is friendly fire, so be careful.
- Wind: Also powerful attack spells with lightning element. Summons ghosts and stuff.
- Water: Offensive spells often inflict fatigue in the form of ice, but not powerful damage-wise. Lots of spells usable exclusively underwater (under the sea, that is). Actually, they're generally the only spells that can be cast underwater.
- Earth: Rocks and stuff. Powerful high-level global buffs to economy. A lot of craftable items and most of the Construction tab use this.
- Astral: Not very many spells use this, and it's a pretty rare path to find on a unit. Has good combinations with other paths that unlock really powerful spells and items.
- Death: Undead and stuff. Good options for summons, items and buffs.
- Nature: Heals and buffs, also summoning trees and such. Great support spells and items.
- Blood: A special path with its own research tree. Rarely, if ever, mixes with other paths. Revolves mostly around demon summoning. (Koumakan has lots of special spells using this)

- Blessings: Now that you know about magic paths, you need to know about blessings - something you need to set for yourself when creating a God. When you give a God Lv.4 or more of a magic path, you get the ability select blessings. Blessings are buffs that your "sacred units" (more on that later) get when a priest casts the 'blessing' spell on them. This is unique to each path, and higher levels unlock better blessings, so my suggestion is to browse through all the available blessings by setting all your paths to 4.

There is also a special setting that lets you select blessings without having a single path at level 4. That is if you have a set of either: Fire + Wind + Water + Earth at level 3 or Astral + Death + Nature + Blood at level 3, or literally every path at level 3. That will allow you to select blessings for that set of unlocked paths. It will also work if you decide to level one or more past 3, for example, Lv. 4 fire, lv. 3 Air, Water, Earth, will still unlock blessings for all 4 elements.

- Sacred units: For every faction, there is often at least 1 sacred normal unit and a bunch of sacred characters/commanders, which will benefit from the blessings you pick for your faction when you create your God. For example, Moriya has Battle Mikos and Kappa Propeller as their normal sacred units, and their Wind Priestess commander is also sacred. You can tell if a unit is sacred when you open their character sheet (just right click on the unit sprite), and see an unlit candle stand (hover over it and make sure the tooltip says "sacred", because the "priest" ability also looks like a candle stand, only it is lit aflame).

As a sidenote, you may only train as many sacred units as your domain strength (discussed below) every turn.

- Domain-wide buffs: These are the second-to-bottom choices in your God creation screen. These give a global buff to ALL territiories who have converted to your faith (shown in the map as inside a yellow border). Left clicking increases the buff by 1 and right clicking reduces it by one. Most can go in the negatives. The choices are, from left to right:

- Domain strength: How powerful your faith spreads. Goes from 1 - 10. Higher domain allows you to train more sacred units per turn. e.g. Moriya has 4 domain strength, so they can train 4 battle mikos per turn, per provice (each province has a different counter).

- Chaos/Order: Goes from -3 to +3. Negative numbers mean Chaos, positive numbers mean Order. Important to note: Recruitment points are heavily affected by this. That's basically the "manpower" available to recruit units from. Chaos also increases the chance of random events every turn, while Order reduces it. Look at Fortune/Misfortune to see what that does.

- Sloth/Productivity: Goes from -3 to +3. Mostly decreases/increases the resources, i.e. Iron, available per turn. Heavily armed and armored units use lots of Iron. Generally, you want to balance this with Recruitment Points, but some factions, like Reichouen, have wacky gimmicks that turn this on its head.

- Cold/Hot: Goes from -3 to +3. Faith in your God can literally change the climate, literally. You generally want to keep this at 0, since both Hot and Cold will alter the weather and give major debuffs to "Supplies", i.e. the food available in a single province, but some factions like Chireiden, have special gimmicks that make them start at +2 Hot (because Hell) and changing the weather either way gives them worse and worse debuffs.

- Death/Growth: Goes from -3 to +3. Literally controls your population count. Per-turn gold income is affected by your total population. 0 means your population in your provinces don't grow. Positive growth increases it per turn and negative growth, i.e. Death, decreases it per turn. It's pretty slow in general, but you'll definitely feel the difference late game between playing a faction with Growth vs a faction with Death, in your gold income that is.

- Misfortune/Fortune: Goes from -3 to +3. Dictates the chances of random events that occur in your empire being good or bad, or absolutely fucking terrible. Good events include digging treasure, increasing taxes, free growth and income, free heroes, units and even unlocking "Hero" units - named 'hus that can join eventually (you don't need fortune to get them, but since it's random chance, you might need to wait longer). These heroes include Sakuya and Flan for Koumakan, Saki for Reichouen, Seiga for Shinreibyou, etc. Bad events include natural disasters, units getting cursed, bandits attacking, assassins coming to kill your characters, etc.

- Drain/Magic: Goes from -3 to +3. Magic increases the research points you can earn for each character researching, and reduces it for Drain. Also, high levels of drain increases your units' magic resistance.

After reading all of that, you must be wondering: why the fuck would I pick chaos, death, misfortune, or change my faction's climate? They're clearly just debuffs. Well, that's because when designing your God, you spend "Design Points". Every point you spend towards their Magic, and towards positive buffs, the more Design points you use, and you cannot save a God with negative design points. So what do you do? You compromise by reducing order, growth, fortune, or change the climate so you can have the Design points you need to unlock just 1 more level of that magic path you want. Or just plunging specific buffs entirely so you can maximize others, e.g. going full Sloth so you can max Growth, or whatever.

But what if I told you there's another way?

- Awake/Dormant/Imprisoned: These are your bottom-most options. Normally, all Gods are "awake". That is, at the start of the game, they already exist inside your Capital. HOWEVER, you can trade this fact for increasing amounts of Design Points.

- Dormant: Your god will appear after 1 year (12 turns), and in exchange, you get +150 design points

- Imprisoned: Your god will appear somewhere around 3 years in (36 turns, give or take 6 turns), and in exchange you get +350 design points.

Pretty tempting, if you ask me.

- Lastly, when you're picking the character sprite of your God, make sure to right click the images! There, you can see the character sheet of the sprite you're choosing. Kanako has different base stats from Suwako or Hecatia - this includes the minimum magic paths they come with (iirc, Kanako starts with Lv.1 Wind, Lv.1 Earth, so in the God creation screen, you can't reduce her Wind and Earth magic path below 1)

===================================

IV. How to play by email

Before everything, please make a throwaway email account for this game. I will obviously be able to see your email address since I am the host.
To join, please email: professor[dot]easy11[at]gmail[dot]com with the following information:
- The faction you want to play
- If you've already made a God, please attach its data in the email too.**

Originally, we were supposed to use Llamaserver as an automated go-between for our PBEM game, but testing revealed some difficulties with using it and as a plan B, we will instead be using a shared dropbox for our saves, and I will personally take up the responsibility for hosting the PBEM game.

To make and send a god, please read the **To make and send a god below. Send it to my email and I will reply to you if I have received the email and I will invite you to the shared dropbox. It might be that the faction you've picked has already been taken, so we will do first-come-first-served. Whoever emails me their nation pick first (God not required yet), will reserve that nation for them.

Finally, wait for the game to start.

When the game starts:
- I will email everyone who joined when the game has started or if there is a new turn, and will upload the save file at the dropbox.
- Download the savefile from the dropbox.
- Paste it inside your savedgames\ folder from, as usual, [Tools & Manuals] and then select [Open User Data Directory].
- Play your nation's turn. Make sure to press End Turn.
!! Please do not try to play the nations which are not yours. Let us all play nice and have fun.
!! Also, do not click [Host]. That is the command to advance the turns, and you might lose your commands if you click on that. You will then have to redownload the turn from the dropbox and do it over. I, as your host, will be the one to hit that button once everyone's turns are in.
- Once again, go to [Tools & Manuals] and then select [Open User Data Directory]
- Under inside our save folder, (savedgames\jpPBEM1), find your nation file's.sh and upload it to the shared dropbox. To know which .sh file yours is, please check **To make and send a god. The God file and your nation's .sh file have the same naming convention.
- Wait for the next turn. I will email everyone when a new turn is available, so please check your email once a day at least.*
- Repeat

*Turn rotation:
- There is no set turn rotation. All players take their turns "at the same time". So when a new turn is available, you can always do your turn anytime.
- The results of the commands you give will be resolved by the game engine when the new turn is generated.
- To start, I will wait a maximum of 48 hours, or two days, to receive everyone's turn. If yours doesn't arrive by then, I will be forced to advance the game to the next turn. Of course, we, the players, can discuss among ourselves what deadline we want to keep as we play on. Sometimes, being unavailable is just unavoidable.

**To make and send a god:
- Make sure you create your God from the [Tools & Manuals] menu -> [Create a Pretender God] option.
- Again, go to [Tools & Manuals] and then select [Open User Data Directory], at the bottom of the panel.
- In the window that opens, enter the folder: savedgames\newlords to find the file.
- There, you will find a list of .2h files representing all the Gods for every faction you made.
- To find the God you want, the pattern of the filename is [modnat_<nation id>_<number>]
- The nation IDs are as follows:
150 - Chireiden (SA)
151 - Hakugyokurou (PCB)
152 - Shinreibyou (TD)
153 - Hakurei
154 - Koumakan (EoSD)
155 - Eientei (IN)
156 - Myouren (UFO)
157 - Kishinjou (DDC)
158 - Moriya (MoF)
159 - Yume (LoLK)
160 - Ushirodo (HSFiS)
161 - Reichouen (WBaWC)
- Number refers to the what number of God you've made for the faction, starting from a base 0. (first God you made = 0, second God you made = 1, etc)
- For example, if your faction is Shinreibyou, and the God you made is the first and only God for the faction, the file you want to send is modnat_152_0.sh. Another example, you picked Reichouen, and the God you want is the 3rd you've made, it's modnat_161_2.sh
- Attach this .sh file to your email.
===================================

IV. Tips

1. The game is extremely detailed in terms of its unit designs, such that in case you're not too sure about something, you might guess right just by applying some common sense (e.g. Waggysaggy is stronger underwater vs. overland, etc). Just give the detailed descriptions a read and make sure to hover over or left/right click everything you may be curious about. There's popups galore a-la 2000's and you will probably eventually find detailed explanations of every little mechanic. If not, just ask away.

2. You gain "magic gems" mostly from searching the map with mages - characters with specialties in magic. Characters will find "magic sites" which generate gems of that type (or more) per turn of the type of magic that they know. Better mages can find powerful magic sites of their type that weaker mages can't.

In general, you want a level 2 or level 3 mage to search for magic sites. Any less and you're likely to miss good magic sites and any stronger is a waste of a rare and powerful mage's turn (often, this will be your God character).

For example, Yatsuhashi is a Lv. 1 Wind Mage and Lv. 2 Nature mage. When searching the map, she can uncover up to LV. 2 Nature sites and only Lv. 1 Wind sites. So you'll want to have a Lv.2 or Lv.3 Wind mage retrace Yatsuhashi's path to find the better Wind sites.

3. When you capture provinces with "Thrones of Ascension" - extremely powerful magic sites often guarded by raid-level bosses, you must first bring either your God, or a Lv. 3 priest there to "Claim" the throne, before enjoying its benefits. Lose the province and you'll need to Claim it again when you reconquer it.

3.1. The yellow-and-red "cone" icons on the map are "Ascension Thrones".

4. When starting out, on your first turn, DO NOT move anything other than scouts (units with Sneaking skill) to any adjacent province. The game has not loaded the neutral armies yet and you might end up immediately fighting strong monsters that will wipe your starting army. Once turn 2 comes, you can start to see a rough estimate of enemies in adjacent provinces.

5. DO NOT underestimate neutral provinces. Some monsters are extremely powerful even in small numbers, while others are extremely shit even in large numbers. Before learning this, try not to fight battles where you're outnumbered, especially because often, if you don't have a scout unit inside the provice, all you're seeing is a "guess", and the enemy's numbers and even composition could be wildly different from what you're told.

6. Your god is NOT all-powerful. Especially early game. The only spells you can cast are the spells that you've researched! That means that no matter how powerful a fire mage you make your god, if you only know fire bolt, then it will only cast fire bolt! Besides that, often, Gods aren't that much physically stronger than normal units! You DO NOT want to throw your God by itself in the middle of the enemy army unless you know exactly what you're doing.

7. Organize and give battle commands to your units! This is not done mid-battle but in the organization tab. Click the areas that say <set battle orders> to give them their commands! Also, click the green box things to setup the initial deployment area of that specific unit! Commanders can be deployed separately from other units! Good and bad positioning can decide battles, so don't skimp out!

8. You can find out how much upkeep each unit costs by right clicking the "Morale" label in a unit's character sheet (displayed as per/year - so for monthly cost, just divide it by 12). Yes, it's obtuse. Don't worry about it.

9. When conquering new provinces, make sure to click, at the top left area of your screen (in the province info panel), the [Defense] label. It will usually show 0 for conquered provinces. Click that and tap the -/+ buttons to add garrisons to provinces! These garrisons are (at low levels) cheaper than normal units and cost NO upkeep! They are intended to defend your territory while your armies are away. Also, if that territory is attacked, they will ADD their numbers to your army, so it's only a good thing!