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| Berytos for the Brain-dead | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Sep 12 2013, 04:46 AM (22,967 Views) | |
| Eschatos | Sep 12 2013, 04:46 AM Post #1 |
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Markata
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Hullo all. I'm not exactly a pro-level Dominions player, but the "release" of Dom4 is a powerful playing field leveller. This guide about to follow is based on my single player assessment so far of Berytos. I'm sure plenty will be changing in the near future, both from patches and mods. Let's start with the information blurb from the civ picking screen. ![]() The coastal city bonuses are an interesting new mechanic. Any Berytos player will be wanting to make friends with the underwater nations, as that coastal bonus does not include any amphibious units. Beyond that, Berytos does have excellent variety in both unit types and magic paths. The blurb forgets that Berytos also has the chance for powerful fire mages. It's only a shame they don't have death or better astral, but that would be brokenly good. The remainder of the guide will start with an evaluation of all available units/unique spells, and then move on to some specific strategies I've come up with. Pretenders: Berytos has an impressive roster of pretenders, even compared to other expanded Dominions 4 nations. You've got the standard mages, a good selection of supercombatants, a massive array of titans and titanlikes, and some statues to round it all out. Some of my favorites: Statue of fertility: A large earth and nature bless will complement Berytos' sacred giants nicely, at least if you want great blockers to give your mages time to cast. Great white bull: This god can get you an awake SC with a weaker version of the aforementioned EN bless. Great black bull: The same as above, but with a BN bless. I'm fond of this for getting easy Armor of Twisting Thorns to help your blood mages as well as expanding into nature with the inevitable indy N mages. Neteret of Joy: Reduces unrest, which could actually allow Dom3 style blood hunting without patrolling your citizens to death. I wouldn't base your entire strategy around that little aspect, but it's certainly nice. Titan of the Sea: If you're not interested in sharing the sea, this god gives 75 units worth of waterbreathing. Prince of Death/any lich: Can singlehandedly break you into death magic. Units: Berytos boasts an excellent variety of units, though I wouldn't call any of them amazing. Militia: Worthless except for manning forts. Berytian Archers: Cheap shortbows, nothing else of note. Berytian Spearmen: Cheap defensive MM2 infantry. Berytian Soldiers: Cheap offensive MM2 infantry. Berytian Heavy Spearmen: Relatively cheap defensive MM1 infantry. They make great blockers with their formation fighting attribute. Berytian Elite Soldier: Despite their elite title, these guys are nothing special. MM1 is a killer for less than stellar protection/offense. Berytian Lancer: Cheap light cavalry. Cavalry with only one attack, I'd sooner hire independents unless you need lots of reinforcements ASAP. War Elephants: Great early expansion material. Low morale makes them unsuitable past the early game. Colossi Warrior: Cap-only sacred giants. Good but not great sacreds with their single attack and high encumbrance. They do have MM3 though, which is a definite plus. I wouldn't base an entire strategy around them but they're worth a bless. Commanders: Berytian Scouts: +55 stealth, forest survival, and mountain survival makes these guys quite nice if you can't get mages instead. Berytian Captain: Your only high leadership non-mage. He can sail with an army but is otherwise unexceptional. Berytian Priest: B1H2 with 1 FWEB random. They don't have enough paths to do much more than blood hunt, build temples, and cast basic blood summons. I could definitely see using them as mass communion slaves later in the game. Berytian Sage: E1 with 1 AW random. Good for researching and little else. Mage Pilot: A1W1 In my opinion, these guys don't have a useful niche. Their paths are lackluster, they can't research as well as Sages, and they can't lead as well as a Captain or Bride. Storm Caller: A2W2 with 1 FAWS random. Despite being slow to recruit, these guys are good for being your only astral mage as well as for having good chances at A3 or W3. They're still overshadowed by far by the last commander. Bride-in-Waiting: F2A2E1B2H2 with 1.1 FAEB randoms. Excellent paths and even good thug potential with fire/shock resistance, sacredness, and excellent MR. Sadly cap-only and slow to recruit. Exclusively hire these in your capital once you have the money. Beyond their excellent research and battlemage abilities, they can also forge a wide array of gear and boosters. A bit of luck will get you to earth boots and blood stones. Getting further boosters will require a helpful god, construction 8, or some judicious empowering. Consider aiming for staves of elemental mastery or robes of the magi. National Spells: Berytos inherits a number of Hinnom's summons(sadly no Grigori) but little else. Conjuration 3: Herd of Elephants: N2 at 30 gems. Elephants are great, but by the time you can cast this spell they'll be outdated, unless you get extremely lucky with independent troops or base a god around early nature searching. Even if you can do so, I say this is too expensive to be worth it. Summmon Mazzikim: N1 at 3 gems. These guys have the same problem as the above spell, but with the added penalty of being nearly useless for combat. I can't think of a reason to summon these unless you're desperate for stealthy units. Pride of Lions: N2 at 10 gems. These might actually have a decent tradeoff between cost and power. This spell requiring conjuration 5 made it useless in Dom3, but being lowered to conjuration 3 certainly helps its viability. This still needs you to find N2 mages. Conjuration 5: Summon Lilot: N4 at 25 gems. Basically a non-blood succubus. Just go blood and get real succubi, along with all your other national summons. Blood 3: Summon Se'irim: B2 at 33 slaves. Quite an expensive early cast, but this gets you eight sacred berserkers with three attacks and superb morale/magic resist. If you have a good bless, these guys might be worth massing early on. Blood 4: Summon Shedim: B3A1 at 32 slaves. Gets you three buffed storm demons. Your Brides-in-Waiting are pretty much perfect for casting this. If you can work out a good early blood economy, spam these guys. Don't forget they can only be summoned in wastelands. Blood 6: Call Melqart: B3F2 at 99 slaves. Melqarts are nice, but I don't know if they're 99-slave summon nice. At least it's easy to get the paths to summon them. That covers all the unique aspects of Berytos, now let's examine some strategies I've come up with. Strategies: Blood for the Blood God: Take an Awake Great Black Bull with N4B4, Dominion 7, Order3/Sloth2/Heat2/Growth3/Misfortune1/Drain1. This gets you an excellent early SC with enough magic to secure any blood booster you want, and the scales to sustain active blood hunting across your lands. Expand quickly in the early game with a supporting army, and once the independents are crushed use the bull for site searching, forging, and casting. As soon as you can afford the income hit, set up massive scale blood hunting for ALL THE SUMMONS. Some spells to aim for: Summon Se'irim, Summon Shedim, Summon Illearth, Call Melqart, and any unique summons. I suggest even empowering a high-water Storm Caller for Ice Devils. Your late game will ideally revolve around Demon/Melqart SCs, blood communions, and expanding into every path through the aforementioned unique demons. Blood vortex could be an excellent global to aim for, since your order scales will weaken its popkill. Skulls for the Skull Throne: Take a dormant Prince of Death with D6, Dominion 8, Order3/Sloth1/Heat1/Growth1/Magic1. Who says Berytos isn't a death nation? Prove them wrong with a Prince of Death! By the time he wakes up in year two hopefully you'll have a decently sized nation that he can manually site search. Once you're all searched out, devote him to summoning undead or researching. You could even try to make him an early SC if you don't mind the risk of losing the linchpin of your entire strategy. I recommend focusing on Conjuration for Bane thugs and Spectral Mages/Mound Fiends to provide extra death support. Enchantment will also be nice for basic undead and cheap leaders to manage them. Late game, shoot for vast hordes of undead backed up by bane thugs, Tartarian SCs, and even a global or three. If you're feeling crazy you could even throw in some of your national troops or mages. Rainberytos: Take a dormant great sage with F1A4W1E2S2D1N2B4, Dominion 7, Order3/Sloth1/Heat1/Growth1/Misfortune1/Drain1 Personally, I'm extremely fond of rainbow mages. If you can last through to late game you'll have access to pretty much every spell, magic item, and booster in the game. This build will put you on the proper path to obtain loads of boosters, especially with the aid of your inevitable robes of the magi and staves of elemental mastery. Feel free to chime in with criticism and/or praise. |
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| TreantHugger | Sep 12 2013, 06:05 AM Post #2 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Quick and obvious reminder: Blood stone is no longer a part of your economy. Now just a booster that gives temp-gems for battles. You didn't suggest it's the old style, but there are people out there still reading old guides on Dom3 strats. |
| Other name you may know me as: Speleothing | |
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| Ohlmann | Sep 12 2013, 09:39 AM Post #3 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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I will try to be bluntly honest but not insulting : this guide seem useless. There is no information in it that help me, only thing you can guess with a casual glance. Sorry to say that, especially since I don't pretend to make very good guides or be a very good player. A list of thing that could improve it : * a discussion on bless. I am fond of air / earth bless because of your awesome Bride in Waiting who are sacred, but I didn't test it much. * a discussion on expansion. I don't think you need a pretender for that, but what work best ? Why spending point on a black bull ? * a discussion on magic diversity. What do you really need your pretender for ? * a discussion on pretender. Berytos have almost every pretender possible, and you talk about very few of them, in very generic way * real strategies and not generic pretenders |
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| Deerhound | Sep 12 2013, 12:32 PM Post #4 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I've seen worse guides ![]() Cheers for the writings. |
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| Maerlande | Sep 12 2013, 01:20 PM Post #5 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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That was insulting Ohlmann. The guide is not useless because it's not useful to you. It doesn't have to be. Plenty of guides are just a breakdown for new players. Let's not discourage guide writers. We don't have enough to warrant that. He provided three potential strategies. That's more than I usually provide. And they are fine if short. But those are constructive suggestions. Just scrap that first paragraph. Eschatos! Thank you very much for your work. Keep going. It's viable analysis and that alone is worth a guide. Good work on laying out the good and bad on the units and commanders. |
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FAQ Dom4mods FAQ My Dominions 4 Guides and Videos: Pretender Design and Analysis Maerlande's Videos My Nickname Source The Maerlande Chronicles | |
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| llamabeast | Sep 12 2013, 01:29 PM Post #6 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I enjoyed reading this, thanks! |
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| Sombre | Sep 12 2013, 01:40 PM Post #7 |
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Leader of the Community
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Yes, I was going to say the same. 'This guide is light on details, I would like to see more about X, Y, Z' is fine, critical but not rude. 'This guide is useless because you didn't cover X, Y, Z' is not. It's rude. |
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I mod for free and fun. But if you want to tip me for work I've done, you can do so through PayPal to rabbitoflegend@gmail.com General Mods: No PopType Recruitment (NI), No Mercs Mod Nations: Warhammer Empire, Warhammer Lizardmen, Warhammer Skaven, Warhammer Chaos Dwarfs, Warhammer Ogre Kingdoms Maps: Warhammer World Older mods not yet ported: AI Recruitment, Ulm Reborn, Black Ulm, Jomon Broken, Avernum, Tharoon, Arga Dis, Daikaiju, Epic Magic Fail, Dromeda | |
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| Boo | Sep 12 2013, 01:57 PM Post #8 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I'm of the belief that a nation guide should give a player ideas about things to do with the nation to be successful with it, and I don't think you have gone deep enough for that to be true yet. If you are interested in making the guide longer and more extensive I would suggest adding a strengths/weakness dimension, listing the things that Berytos can and can't do. Discussing different expansion methods to find the optimal one is one of the things that's useful, as is warning against ones that don't work too well. Beyond a straight pro/con listing it can be useful to describe the nation's performance during the different stages of the game. Discussing research goals and useful items is appropriate here. A specific bit of advice that might fit is mentioning flaming arrows as an easily accessible research goal since that's one of the spells the nation uses unusually well. If you truly want to go deep and cover all bases discussing strengths alone isn't enough. you also need to deal with the things that the nation might be bad at, and how to deal with the specific threats it might face. For instance many would probably like pointers about what to do if you're faced with an early rush, and which units to use against which enemies. I like that you're mentioning every individual unit since that's going to be helpful for the player who hasn't seen Berytos before. If you want to go deeper here describing how different armies can be made out of the units would be useful, even if it's just mentioning what things you might need an expansion army or what units are useful to bring when going to war. |
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| Maerlande | Sep 12 2013, 02:04 PM Post #9 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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Also, Dominions works best with synergies. So if you have combos of magi, battlemagic and troops that work superb together please list them. |
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FAQ Dom4mods FAQ My Dominions 4 Guides and Videos: Pretender Design and Analysis Maerlande's Videos My Nickname Source The Maerlande Chronicles | |
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| LDiCesare | Sep 12 2013, 02:08 PM Post #10 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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I don't think the colossi warriors warrant a bless. They are too small to be called giants, really, and they are not impressive at all.
Totally wrong. These guys can blood sacrifice. So they can do MUCH more than what you suggest. In 3.99f they were only H1 though. Mage pilots have sailing, 40 leadership and can research. You can use them to lead magic troops across an ocean in a pinch. That's not overly useful, but they do have a niche. The N summons are motly useless for lack of N in the nation. You won't use your pretender for that, and you're better off using N gems to forge rings of regen or the like for your melqarts than spending on such summons. Melqarts are well worth 99 slaves. They are A2B3H3, have tons of hit points. They are good blood sacrtificers. I'm not sure the exact effect, but it looks like they can sacrifice 6 virgins instead of 3, which is pretty awesome. They are also good blood hunters but they eat population. The B3 is very important because of Blood Feast. Once one of your melqarts has accumulated several afflictions and is becoming useless, feed him a village or two and he'll come back good and useful. For the same price, you get (unique) arch devils who are better at magic (F4) but weaker everywhere else. You don't talk about heroes. This leads you to the false impression that going into Death requires some workk on the pretender. If you pick Luck, you will likely receive a nice D3 hero (with Fire, Blood, Earth, Air and Holy too but I can't remember the levels). Regarding pretenders: N4B4. WTF? What is the B4 for? As a bless it's useless. Your sacreds are all strong to begin with. If it's just to let you build armors of thorns, they are not needed to boostrap. Empowering to get a mage able to build a blood thorn is not more expensive. Slaves are cheap. You have zero S and D access (in part because of order/misfortune) with this build.
You said so and I disagree, you just have to take some luck. Site searching with a single path PoD to find death gems seems not very productive to me. An SD pretender would be better in my opinion, as it opens both paths you lack and when he site searches, he's at least more effective. As for the rainbow: F1A4W1E2S2D1N2B4 WTF? A4 you will get on random brides. Same for B4. So why pick high paths you already have? E4S4D4N4 would all make more sense because you can't have any of these naturally. Plus in terms of bless A and B are among the worst for your nation. In my opinion: Bless: You could take some for your sacred commanders. E4+ would be very useful for Melqarts and somewhat for brides. Plus getting E3 is really reliant on luck, so E4+ is nice on the pretender. N9 can be useful for Melqarts and even colossi warriors but it may be overkill? Other blesses are just nice to have. Expansion: You will start on a coast. This means you can use your sailing commanders, and in particular your mages, to bring in reinforcements and site-search immediately afterwards. Your troops are quite average. You can try to use elephants, but they will trample you when they rout so I don't like them as there's no cheap high morale troop to mix them with. For magic diversity, you want S to counter mind hunts, N because you'll get regeneration out of it if nothing else. D can be nice too, but Luck can give you a hero that is strong enough to get you started there, so better to spend some points on luck than 50+ points on an expensive pretender chassis to get D3. It's less reliable, but I think N is more important than trying to squeeze D on your pretender. Although wraith lords and tartarians are nice, you've got blood summons. I haven't checked the various pretender chassis. There is a strong possibility of fast research with the cheap sages, so the neterets and great sage who bring research bonuses are worth discussing. I think Berytos could have very good fast expansion along the coasts, using a mage pilot to bring in reinforcement through sailing, then doing some site searching and going back and forth to rbing more troops. Remember he's cheaper than a commander and you'll have to save up to buy your first Bride. I would probably buy a Bride fast for site searching, and build a second fort, preferably a coastal one, ASAP. Right next to my capital sounds good, particularly if it's a coatal forest through which you can later build roads. Use this to spam sages for research. If your pretender boosts research, send him/her there while you build StR mages in the capital. Later on, just go Melqart + regen. You have very good elemental access, so all elemental royalty are realistic goals too. I would prioritize Blood, then Alt to buff your summons, Cons, Evo and later Conjuration. I don't know if the storm demons are worth looking for wastes. Also remember you can blood-sac, which means you can either pick a low dominion and sac' to make up for it, or agressively push your dominion. In the latter case, Melqarts make a lot of sense too. |
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| Johannes | Sep 12 2013, 02:20 PM Post #11 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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^ You don't get A4 or B4 on brides, not outside 10% randoms. |
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| Ohlmann | Sep 12 2013, 02:23 PM Post #12 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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Also, A4 is +2 precision on your bride in waiting (and priest, but I don't really see what precision spell they will cast). iW are not bad at 12 precision, but the +2 is still pretty handy. Edit : A4 on your pretender, for the bless. |
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| Sombre | Sep 12 2013, 02:47 PM Post #13 |
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Leader of the Community
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Is this true in dom4? |
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I mod for free and fun. But if you want to tip me for work I've done, you can do so through PayPal to rabbitoflegend@gmail.com General Mods: No PopType Recruitment (NI), No Mercs Mod Nations: Warhammer Empire, Warhammer Lizardmen, Warhammer Skaven, Warhammer Chaos Dwarfs, Warhammer Ogre Kingdoms Maps: Warhammer World Older mods not yet ported: AI Recruitment, Ulm Reborn, Black Ulm, Jomon Broken, Avernum, Tharoon, Arga Dis, Daikaiju, Epic Magic Fail, Dromeda | |
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| ForeverJung | Sep 12 2013, 02:48 PM Post #14 |
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Markata
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I'm having a hard time finding a use for heavy spearmen as opposed to regular infantry. They seem good on paper and that length 5 weapon is a real draw, but in my games I'm having a hard time keeping them on the field against indie light infantry, even with a pair of mages throwing lightning bolts. |
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| Ohlmann | Sep 12 2013, 02:49 PM Post #15 |
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Dom 5 Beta Team
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It's my opinion. I didn't tried to test if the precision formulae have changed, it's just that evocations seem to hit target much more often with that. Edit : just in case it wasn't clear, I am talking of the A4 bless, which is +2 precision. Having A2 or A17 does nothing for precision as far as I know. But having A4 on your pretender allow your blessed unit to have +2. |
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