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| Berytos - demons rule the world | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Nov 22 2015, 03:33 AM (2,373 Views) | |
| Osangar | Nov 22 2015, 03:33 AM Post #1 |
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Markata
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Hi folks! Since the very beginning of my dom4-experience I’ve always been fascinated by blood summons. It took me a while to get some experience (even though I’m still a relatively new player) and finally I think I've found out the appropriate nation and strategy I was looking for since the very beginning. It’s my first guide and English isn’t my mother tongue, so if any1 reading and considering this useful to him/her or to community wants to help – I would really appreciate. I want to make clear that this might be an unorthodox strategy and there are lot of different, maybe much better strategies around, but still I think it’s worth posting. Keep in mind even though I can’t and actually don’t want to cover every single aspect of the game, it’s very likely I’ve forgotten some important things, so if u’re missing something important – just ask. Last but not least: if u find any mistakes (which u probably will), let me know it, so I can correct them. Ideas, feedback, constructive criticism is also appreciated. 1) Scales: Order 2, sloth1, heat 2, growth 3, missfortune 1, magic 3, dom6 Order2: obviously great for income, no need to explain further. With some luck u can claim a throne boosting it up. Sloth1: the national troops aren’t great and don’t cost that much resources, even colossi are pretty nice priced (35g, 25r), so even later in the game with dom10 u should be able to pump 10/turn if u want. But since this strategy doesn’t really base on them, it doesn’t really matter. But still I don’t like to go further into sloth because I still want to recruit troops early in the game and have some colossi in the midgame. Heat 2: h1 is preferred by the nation, so many would think it’s a fixed -5% gold income, but regarding the season changes (biasing the temperature) u actually lose in 5 out of 12 monthes 5% gold, netting a 2.083% gold loss over all. In return u get a lot out of it. Most obviously u gain 40 points u can invest in something else. Additionally it makes sure ur river borders can’t get frozen while u have sailing commanders. Growth3: g3 is pretty much needed since it’s early age (core population isn’t high) and Berytos is blood hunting nation. Additionally it boosts ur actual income and slowly raises ur income in future. Missfortune1: isn’t good in any regard, but since I'm running magic 3, it doesn’t hurt that much. Magic3: great for research, synergizes exceptionally well with pretender. Gives u a massive advantage in terms of research. Dom6: I don’t take very high starting dominion because I'm running awaken pretender and Berytos can and should sacrifice additionally. 2) Pretender chasis + path: In this particular strategy “Netheret of many names” is a must-have. As i mentioned above, I take magic3, so with fix amount of +2 and magic based scaling on research boost, u get +5research on every single mage researching on this tile. Adding +3 research from magic3 itself, ur 80g sages end up researching 17/turn. It must be a bug or some sort of information are hidden since sage with basic amount of 9, having adept researcher +2, +5 due to pretender +3 due magic scales should research 19/turn, while mage pilot should end up with 17 research, but they research with respectively 17 and 14. Probably I'm missing some game mechanics, I would appreciate it if some1 could explain it to me. Given the chasis and the scales I only have few points over, so I take s2 and that's it. 3) Early game: As already mentioned above, though Berytos has a variety of national troops, they aren’t great by any means (except Colossi) and often have troubles clearing indies. I feel like only the sacreds are worth the gold, but I can’t field enough of them in the very beginning, so I use another constellation for my first troop. I actually prophetize my starting commander and recruit 3 elephants + sage on the first turn. With this constellation I conquer first few provinces. The key thing is position. I put my starting melee troop in the center on hold and attack and the archers some lines behind. The elephants are right or left the archers and need to engage from aside, they should not be blocked by ur melee troops. Remove 2-3 soldiers from ur melee squad and add them to elephants. This should make sure they're not routing after getting hit 2-3 times. Try to position ur troops so that enemy lines stop right before ur elephants. 1-2 hits normally don’t matter, the first charge of the elephants should rout the indy squad or leave very few enemies left. The second elephant attack should win u the battle. Avoid berserkers, cavalry and if possible barbarians with this strategy. U have to test it some times until u have a feeling for it. I normally reinforce my troops for 3rd battle and don’t recruit any elephants after that. My go-to troop are colossi warriors either in line or squad formation, 1-3 squads depending on their number. I put them in very first line possible without any particular order, they do fine this way. I feel like other troops are not worth the gold/resources since colossi are pretty reasonable priced. Build second fort early in the game, if u have a chance build it on coastal farm provinces. Notice that for any fort on a coastal province u get bonus 10% income from this tile. On a test run I’ve built a fort on a coastal farm land. After all scale bonuses applied I had net income of 211, growing up to 215 while building a fort. After finishing the fort this tile provided 256 gold/turn, so a sizable boost in income in the very beginning. As soon as u have second fort and ur income allows, switch ur capital from recruiting sages onto bride-in-waiting. From now on u should recruit only bride-in-waiting in ur cap. In the other forts u can recruit stormcallers for sitesearching, priests for blood hunting etc. U can start sitesearching earlier with sages/storm callers, but it will slow down ur research, which I prioritize early. 4) Research I strongly suggest to rush construction 4. On construction 2 u'll get owl quills and dwarven hammers. On construction 4 u get lot of cool stuff, very important dowsing rod, blood stone and earth boots. Build as many dowsing rods as u need to support all of ur priests blood hunting. This greatly increases the amount of slaves ur priests can catch. Since the research is absolutely incredible u reach construction 4 even before the second fort is built... so don’t bother starting blood hunting before. After ur blood economy starts running u've a variety of possible research possibilities. I prefer to go straight for blood magic giving me the possibility to transform my slaves into real battle power. I suggest at least blood 4 for good summons. From here on u can either go further (blood 6 for example) or go for evo5 (storm + evocations) or pick up antimagic and if needed elemental resistances (ench. 4/5). Having very fast research also makes u very flexible. 5) Units suggested As already told above I suggest some elephants for the very early turns to clear first indies, once u have 2-3 provinces around ur cap – switch to colossi only. Decent, fairly priced early age unit even without any blesses, more than enough to stomp any indies u face. After ur blood economy starts running add storm demons and demon knights. U may want to use ur devils to raid since they’re flying. U may consider to fully replace ur national troops by demons (but I have to admit I’m not sure if there are any hard counters to demon-only-armies). Feedback with examples is appreciated. I want to explain why I think that focusing on demon summons is worth the mages turn. Unless u forge some boosters u’ll have to use ur cap only, slow-to-recruit mages to summon 1 demon/turn. Worth it? I believe it absolutely is. First of all and very key – they don’t cost upkeep. So once summoned u don’t pay any single coin any longer. Demon knight: 20 hp, 22 protection, 13 attack, 17 defense, charge AND fear aura 5… 22 protection by 1 encumbrance… magic resist 15 + antimagic makes banishment not really worth it. To round it up morale 30 means they pretty much don’t rout unless the commanders are all dead. Storm demon: Even though he can’t cast spells, he’s simply better than nearly any other mage doing evocations. He has storm immunity AND storm power which means he’s getting better instead of worse during the storm. Base precision of 14 raises to 17 during storm (while nearly any other mage is shooting like blind with 5-10 precision depending on spell). Storm demon throw armor negating lightnings with base dmg of 12, respectively 15 while storm and has 10 ammo while most mages have to buff something first and have 3-4 scripted rounds after which their effect often goes down pretty much due to casting-ai + fatigue. If u’re interested in exact stats + more, check them on https://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/ Mid and late game: Beside obvious thing abusing ur superior demon forces of demon knights and storm demons u can make use of devils as raiding force (just don’t mix ice demons with fire demons). Using this strategy I don’t really need lot of gems beside maybe earth gems for crafting some dwarven hammers, reinvig boots, earthboots and casting some big aoe or battlefield buffs like lightning resistance, marble warriors and so on. U’ll surely need some gems to equip ur thugs properly, but u’ve great magic diversity on ur mages, only thing u’re really lacking are nature mages/gems. At some point u may get a national hero (especially makelo “queen of the city” is pretty awesome). If u’re unlucky u have to rely on things u can summon, but blood offers tons of them on higher ranks. If u’re looking for thug chasis, there are lot of them on blood magic + additionally u can summon melquarts (blood magic 6, 99 slaves). I’m not sure they’re worth it since u have access to so many powerful chasis and melqarts add nothing special to what u already have. Their “specialty” is being sacred, but since this strategy don’t use any blesses at all… and after all they kill 80 population a turn for simply being around. I hope this guide can help u to get through the early game while providing ideas and general strategy for midgame. I don’t think there’s a masterplan for the late game (at least I don’t have any). U should adapt to the situation u’re in, but u have all the tools u need too. |
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| Taragarth | Nov 22 2015, 03:46 PM Post #2 |
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*Spicy* Crew
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Inspiring researcher does not go up from magic scales; so what you get is +5 research per mage per turn in the location that your pretender is in. +3 from magic, +2 from inspiring researcher. In the case of the sage it goes like this: 9 base, +2 adept researcher = 11 + 2 from inspiring researcher (pretender) = 13 + 3 from magic scales = 16. At least, that's the number I'm getting after setting up this pretender. How you get to the 17 is beyond me. |
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| Admiral_Aorta | Nov 22 2015, 11:33 PM Post #3 |
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Suddenly a troll appeared in the laboratory!
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i don't really think expanding with elephants is worth it. i haven't played berytos much but when I did try them out i was able to expand reasonably well with the troops, even though they're not very good. elephants are basically just targets once expansion has finished. the rest of the guide sounds a bit lacking to me. like you say to rush construction 4 - what happens if another player rushes you? construction 4 won't be very useful there. you mention that storm demons are better than any evocation using mages - that's not really true given that berytos has thunderstrike access, and even without that mages do a lot of things other than throw evocations. Have you used this guide in multiplayer? |
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| Osangar | Nov 23 2015, 11:59 AM Post #4 |
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Markata
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i admit u can expand with the standard troops too, but given 68 resources u can spend on ur first buy what would u go for? 3-5 mediocre melee troops or 9 archers? i think 3 elephants (if positioned well) give u an extreme early killing power. if u pick ur targets appropriately u shouldnt lose more than 2-3 melee troops and if u havent much luck, u lose an elephant. but that's worth it imo. u say rushing construction isnt useful, i disagree on that. the problem in being rushed (in turns of magic support) is not rly what u're researching but much more what mages u're recruiting. for real evo support u need either air 2, water 2, or fire 2. all of them arent available on ur cheap mages. only ur expensive str-mages come up with those path's. so if u need battle magic u need to switch on stormcallers/bride-in-waiting. the strategy i propose implies the switch on bride-in-waiting in ur capital after turn 6-10 (depending on ur needs). to research evocation 2 for example takes u only 2 turns after turn 4, so its not a real problem. u mention thunder strike: its true, berytos has access to it, but still its a 25% chance for air 3 on both ur stormcallers and bride-in-waiting, u can use it on any str-mage spending some air gems to cast it anyway, but still the main problem is getting the mages themself. i dont know what exactly time u mean by "early rush" but i generally see 2 types of enemies u could face. either massed standard troops with some sacreds mixed in or sacred rush. the "standard troops" u can counter with ur standard troops and colossi, use some indy troops to reinforce (for example archers or militia/light infantry as chaff). sacred rush may be harder to stop, since they have mostly higher hp/regeneration or high prot/def so ur regular troops normally have hard time hitting them. in this case i'd say evo magic is useful, but u could also use slime for example (evo 1, w1 to cast) which 50% of ur sages gonna have a path. the other 50% gonna have air 1, so if u desperatly need killing power, give some of ur sages air gems so they can cast lightning bolts while the other cast slime. u disagree on the point i consider to be true that storm demons are better than evo-mages. even though thunder strike is rly strong evocation, how many of them can u cast/battle? realistic value is somewhat between 2 and 5 (if use lot of gems). even considering u're going to use 5 of them/battle, storm demon can throw 10 lightnings somewhat relativating the impact difference. to do that storm demons dont need any gems, can be massed much faster (not str and dont take recruiting slots in forts) and very key cost only few slaves +mage turn and cost no upkeep. and very important to me, they can and should be used while storm. it gives them 3 dmg on lightning + 3 precision while nearly every single mage takes huge penalties in terms of precision. something not that much obvious is that those storm demons are much less vulnerable to things like earth quake and rain of stones due to higher hp pool, some basic protection and being ethereal (i'm not sure if being ethereal reduces impact of earth quakes/rain of stones). could some1 give me an answer how exactly this works in this particular regard? otherwise i'll do some testing as soon as i'm at home again. i rly appreciate ur feedback admiral. i tried to explain my thoughts regarding ur feedback. if u disagree, pls provide some concrete examples/situation i could work with. but u're right, early game rush is rly something should've been discussed in the guide. i'll add it later on. are there any other key things missing? |
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| Admiral_Aorta | Nov 25 2015, 11:21 AM Post #5 |
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Suddenly a troll appeared in the laboratory!
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you would have more access to thunderstrike than you've said, because some storm callers have astral 1 which allows them to use communions in conjunction with the berytian priests(who have sabbath slave access). you've mentioned casting storm for storm demons - storm also allows all of your storm callers to use thunderstrike by casting summon storm power first. and it's still fairly likely that you'll have quite a few storm callers who have air three, because you'll be recruiting them at every single coastal fort, and a 25% chance is much better than the mages of some nations get for extra paths. brides of waiting can of course join communions as well with sabbath master, although they probably have better things to do than spam thunderstrike. storm callers can do other evocations quite well too - any with water 3 can use falling frost, and those with fire 1 can use acid bolt. |
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| Osangar | Nov 30 2015, 10:38 AM Post #6 |
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Markata
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very true, u have more possibilities i've mentioned. thx for providing concrete examples. i am not exactly sure though its as effective (or even more effective) in terms of pure dmg output since ur goldincome is quite limited and u're not going to expand as fast compared for example to some other nations with strong national troops/strong blesses/awaken sc-pretenders or combinations of those. i think to answer this question, one should analyze more deeply how fast u can field both of these alternatives given a fix amount of gold u can spend on it (requiring lot of testing for exact numbers). in testgame i played yesterday i was getting around 25 slaves/turn for 4 priests bloodhunting (default settings) which means u get somewhat around 6 slaves/priest/turn. summoning demons requires 7 slaves/demon, which means its nearly 1 demon/priest/turn. u're somewhat limited by the amount of bride-in-waiting early on, but i've started summoning demons with 3 mages in the mid of the second year. additionally u can craft some earth boots+empower 1 bloodlvl to make sure some of ur priests can summon demons by themselfes. i admit this addition makes sense in mid and lategame, but not rly in early game since u neither have natural earth gems income nor high enough path's in fire/air to craft boosters. i was very lucky getting national hero by the end of the 1. year, so crafting air and fire boosters wasnt a problem anymore, but i wouldnt count on that or on luck finding lot of earth gems very early on. @admiral: ur criticism of not having strong mage support in the very early game is absolutely true. and i think having some evo-mages later on might be useful too, since the impact of single elemental school can be singnificantly decreased by elem. protection |
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