Dominions 6 – Starting Tips That Aren’t Immediately Intuitive

Tips for Starters

Get mages hunting for magic sites early. Ideally following around your expansion armies. 2 in their path will find 90%ish of all magic sites of that type.

Spells with an area of 1 means 1 full square. A size 3 unit (humans are size 3) can fit 3 into a square and there are smaller units and formation experts that can fit more. So these spells typically hit multiple units. With the relatively smaller armies of the early game a few mages spamming out 1 area buff or attack spells can be a significant help in a fight.

A default human has 10 in most stats (protection being an exception which is based on equipment). Use this as a good measure to determine how good a unit is. It has 14 attack, thats high. It has 7 defense. Thats low. You can get a rather accurate assessment of units with this a a general rule.

The general combat situation is both sides have a 50/50 chance to hit and they die in 2 hits on average (with occasional 1 shots). Obviously this changes when you add X factors like giants with big health or Ulm Black Knights with the best armor in the game. However knowing that battle is generally deadly in relatively few hits puts a lot of things into perspective. My favorite example of this is cheat fate. It negates a single hit on the unit. Knowing hes in a 2 hit fight with the occasional 1 shot makes that looks a lot better yah?

Weapon reach matters a lot. If a unit’s weapon is longer than their opponent then their opponent has to succeed in 2 rolls to hit. The added roll is longer weapon’s attack vs defense of the attacker. A notable example of how useful this is is the low defense barbarian with a 2 handed weapon and high attack. These barbs bust heads pretty effectively. His high attack and low defense with a weapon of only reach 1 means he has a lot of trouble fighting a spear wielder. Keep this in mind when you scout out provinces full of barbarians.