Manual Thread - Dominions 4: Thrones of Ascension

You can download the Dominions 4 manuals from Illwinter's Dominions 4 page:
Illwinter.com

Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaay!

It's release day (oct 10) in Sweden now, btw.

Will there be a manual with the list of magic items?

Thanks! Maybe Kristoffer could make a nice cover page for those of us who want have the manual printed and bound, like the Dom3 manual.

Ooops, I forgot the magic item manual. Good catch.

jk.illwinter wrote: It's release day (oct 10) in Sweden now, btw.

If you are talking about final version of the game,i cant download it from desura,getting 404 not found error

edit : works ok with desura application,hope that direct download of the exe file will be available soon,too...cheers

Edited by: igoraki

Manual says that Pangeaea and Marveni only pay half cost for a temple. This also applies to Man (unless this is a game bug).

Is there a table of contents at all in the main manual, or did I manage to miss it?

Nice manuals. Thank you.

Is there going to be a server manual?

VERY nice manuals. I was surprised to see all the separate files, but i like the way they were released. Now: which order shall I print them in?

Decisions, decisions before I even start playing! I am one happy gamer tonight!

All hail the great and powerful manual

Two questions on the manuals:

Will the main manual be updated with a table of contents?

Where is the Path-Boosting chart for magic items?

not sure if i should post this here or not. but the description for fata morgana is not right.

All provinces with 1 or more province defense gain 30 Phantasmal Warriors as province defense. this is no longer true it instead gives u PD based upon how many PD u have already bought.

Looked thru all of the manuals, still missing a lot of stuff. Seems pretty bare bones, with little in the way of explanation for many things.

For instance, nowhere does it explain what the Undying bless actually does. Kind of an important thing to skip. I can find it with a google search, but not anywhere in the manual. Same with death weapons, fire weapons, burning vengence, or actually any of the bless effects. All it says is that they behave similar to their spell descriptions. Well, not all of those have associated spells. I had to create a test game to see what they actually did. Why it doesn't give this information on the Pretender creation screen has bothered me since Dom3. Alas.

Formation descriptions were similarly lacking. It boiled down to "line formations move a bit slower". That was it. Really? Formations are a pretty big addition to the game and that is all that can be bothered to be said about them?

Absolutely ZERO information on communions. Not a single word other than the spells Communions Master and Communion Slave appearing in the battlefield spells reference manual, and that didn't even provide a description. Certain communion mechanics were changed in Dom4, and not a word printed about them.

And no nation descriptions. Dom3's manual had descriptions of each nation, along with strengths, weakness, and an EXAMPLE STRATEGY that would be really helpful for new players to provide a decent basis of WTF to do. I thought at the very least there would be some entries dealing with the just new nations, but nope.

The list goes on. I read the whole thing, and I was pretty disappointed, honestly. The new tutorial looked good, and reading about where the creators got inspiration for each nation was really interesting. However, I was looking forward to a juicy compendium of information, but I guess I'll have to turn back to old forum posts and wiki entries to try and piece together tidbits instead.

Its great to finally have ones hand on the manuals - good job! I do note however, that there appear to be several issues with the summons listings. In particular, it is not evident which summons are in fact commanders nor is there a complete reference pertaining to the magical paths present on summons. Ashen Ermor and Pyth/Marig angelic summons just to state a few...

rrbrzr wrote: Will the main manual be updated with a table of contents?

Where is the Path-Boosting chart for magic items?

The Dom3 Path Booster quickrefs were always fan-made. There never was an Illwinter produced version of that.

As far as the table of contents goes, we must ask Bruce about that. The structure of the main manual is substantially different in execution than the supplementary documentation I produced, so I do not have an immediate answer.

PrawnWonton wrote: Looked thru all of the manuals, still missing a lot of stuff. Seems pretty bare bones, with little in the way of explanation for many things.

For instance, nowhere does it explain what the Undying bless actually does. Kind of an important thing to skip. I can find it with a google search, but not anywhere in the manual. Same with death weapons, fire weapons, burning vengence, or actually any of the bless effects. All it says is that they behave similar to their spell descriptions. Well, not all of those have associated spells. I had to create a test game to see what they actually did. Why it doesn't give this information on the Pretender creation screen has bothered me since Dom3. Alas.

Formation descriptions were similarly lacking. It boiled down to "line formations move a bit slower". That was it. Really? Formations are a pretty big addition to the game and that is all that can be bothered to be said about them?

Absolutely ZERO information on communions. Not a single word other than the spells Communions Master and Communion Slave appearing in the battlefield spells reference manual, and that didn't even provide a description. Certain communion mechanics were changed in Dom4, and not a word printed about them.

And no nation descriptions. Dom3's manual had descriptions of each nation, along with strengths, weakness, and an EXAMPLE STRATEGY that would be really helpful for new players to provide a decent basis of WTF to do. I thought at the very least there would be some entries dealing with the just new nations, but nope.

The list goes on. I read the whole thing, and I was pretty disappointed, honestly. The new tutorial looked good, and reading about where the creators got inspiration for each nation was really interesting. However, I was looking forward to a juicy compendium of information, but I guess I'll have to turn back to old forum posts and wiki entries to try and piece together tidbits instead.

Some of the spell entries may have issues because the spell descriptions were not proofread in time for game release (there was no time with everything else that was going on).

The formations bit has the most important things in it, along with even a couple of screenshots. I suppose it should say that sparse line leaves gaps and double line is two squares deep while still behaving like line, but other than that, what else is missing? Detailed examples of how each one behaves on the battlefield vs all other types of formations?

Bless descriptions would probably be a nice addition and there is nothing to prevent it from being added afterward.

All in all, remember that the manual was written by a single person who is not a hardcore Dominions veteran. Time was an issue, as was evident from the release being delayed due to waiting for the manual and it was important to make sure that all the information in the manual was correct, rather than there being more stuff. Adding nation descriptions and example strategies later is not difficult, if they are deemed desirable.

Edirr wrote:

rrbrzr wrote: Will the main manual be updated with a table of contents?

Where is the Path-Boosting chart for magic items?

The Dom3 Path Booster quickrefs were always fan-made. There never was an Illwinter produced version of that.

There's one in pages 283 and 284 of Dom3 manual.

Edited by: kimmokm

Edirr wrote:

rrbrzr wrote: Will the main manual be updated with a table of contents?

Where is the Path-Boosting chart for magic items?

The Dom3 Path Booster quickrefs were always fan-made. There never was an Illwinter produced version of that.

Dominions 3 manual, page 283.

Edirr wrote:
All in all, remember that the manual was written by a single person who is not a hardcore Dominions veteran. Time was an issue, as was evident from the release being delayed due to waiting for the manual and it was important to make sure that all the information in the manual was correct, rather than there being more stuff. Adding nation descriptions and example strategies later is not difficult, if they are deemed desirable.

Yeah, that is my issue. The Dom3 manual (written by the same guy), was pretty awesome. Dom4 gets delayed so the manual can come out. So here I am thinking it must be a pretty kickass manual to delay the game. And.... yeah... Reads like a rough draft, which it probably is. Was the game delayed in order to get the most up-to-date info into the manual possible? Nope. Is the manual going to provide information that is either not in the game or not accessible in the game? Nope. Instead, it is missing a lot of really basic and important things. I mean, there is absolutely ZERO info on Lemuria: How to play it, how their army recruitment works, how if you don't bring a death magic pretender you are SOL, what the different summons do, etc. They are a new nation, completely different than anything else in the game, and not even a single sentence about them. Makes no sense.

I had my hopes up. Dominions 3 stands as the last great manual for pc games, and I was hoping that Dom4's would eclipse it. You know, saying as how they delayed the game for it and all. Alas... The game would have been better off if the time and money sunk into the manual was put towards making an easy to access in-game encyclopedia. Or at least make something like an updated version of the online dominions 3 mod loader. That would have been way more useful.

Oh, and about formations: Yes, there should be a description of WTF they do, other than move speed. Unless, of course, that is ALL they do. Why in the world would I want to take a moral hit and move slower? Surely different formations have different advantages. Or maybe not. I have no idea, because other than move speed and spacing, I got nothing. Will double lines fare better against cavalry charges? Will skirmish formations break more easily? If the enemy punches thru the center of my line formation, will they break, or will the wings try to envelope? Do any of the formations actually DO anything, confer any benefit or downside, other than modify spacing and move speed? Does squad size have any effect on formations? I read the whole manual, and I have no idea. And that information is also not availabe in-game. So... hrmpf.

I was really looking forward to have many of my questions answered, but none of them were. Not a single one. So yes, I'm disappointed in the manual. I don't think it will be very helpful to new players at all. They would be better off reading the obsolete Dom3 manual. Or just trial and error, for that matter. Which kind of defeats the purpose of going to the effort of making a big manual in the first place.

Edited by: PrawnWonton

I've skimmed through the manual this morning and found it pretty good actually. It's smaller, and the important information is more concentrated. I certainly don't miss the example strategies. I think that removing them was a good move. The nation section is as good as ever.

Formation description felt alright to me.

However i do agree with PrawnWonton on one point : skill description should be more complete. At the very least the skills obtainable by bless should be included. Many skills are self-explanatory and don't really require explanation, but things such as invulnerability, the magic shields, immortal, mistform, etc. could really use some description in the manual.

Unit classes could probably include demons.

I also miss the strategy part from the old manual. Though it has been criticized, it was a pretty good read for a new player.

There's not even an index in the manual.
Their is some lore between the usefull information, but it's looking the same. Maybe the lore should be in italic.
Some mistackes like the indirect fire path bonus listing +10 supply bonus.
It's also a little bit too "texty", it's all black on white paragraph after paragraph. Very few colors and pictures to aerate.
Also the pics are informatives, but low res/quality and often feels to much print/screen + 30second paint editing. Just take a look at the army stetup screenshot for example. Here what I see at 100% zoom :

It's sad because the auxilliary manuals (spell, items), even if less good than the Dom3 database, I find them pretty well done.

Edited by: varsovie_pat

It's interesting to have updates on the combat mechanics.

Manual wrote:
Critical hit due to fatigue Each time a hit is scored, a DRN is made to check for a critical hit and the unit's Fatigue / 15) is subtracted. If the DRN is less than 3, a critical hit is scored and the defender's protection values are all reduced by half.

In Dom3 the DRN had to be less than 2, not 3, so critical hits were impossible at zero fatigue. Now you'll get critted 1/36 times even if fatigue is zero. I don't know if this has much tactical significance but it's interesting to know.

The following sentences are very interesting.

Manual wrote:
Every repel attempt adds one to the required weapon length for repelling.

Manual wrote:
Underwater efffects: slashing and blunt weapons have an attack penalty equal to weapon length underwater, while piercing weapons do not. If a weapon does both piercing damage as well as another type, the underwater penalty is halved.

rrbrzr wrote: Two questions on the manuals:

Will the main manual be updated with a table of contents?

Where is the Path-Boosting chart for magic items?

Click here: Indiedb.com

Edited by: Grigio87

It's out of date.