Conquest of Elysium 5 Announced!

[TheFjordFox]

I've been having trouble with the forces of Inferno. It seems as if every time I start, a portal is opened up before I get a chance to grow, and they roll over me. Maybe this is a recent addition. The game is challenging enough as it was, I can't seem to find a way to overcome this new challenge.

In villages, hamlets etc, I believe one of them on any given map generated, there will be one or more mad cultists. If these are not killed at any point, they will open a gate to inferno later in the game. Killing them before they open the gates will solve this problem in most cases. Sometimes it's no up to you to do that tho, you need to rely on the AI taking them on. Which can be dodgy. There are other ways to open a gate to inferno as well, but in my experience this is the main one.

However, and I'm not sure about this, but it seems that if you do this, removing one end-game crisis, another one will just randomly take it's place instead. Take this with a grain of salt however.

[solops]

Well I'm starting to get the hang of the game, playing as a human baron I've managed to get a reasonably sized army marching around the map and taking valuable money-making positions.  It feels a lot more familiar to a traditional 4X than Dominions 5.  Seems like it would be interesting in multiplayer but I'm not sure how much player interaction / diplomacy there is here compared to Dom 5.

Al, what is the difference between CoE and Dom?

[al_infierno]

Well I'm starting to get the hang of the game, playing as a human baron I've managed to get a reasonably sized army marching around the map and taking valuable money-making positions.  It feels a lot more familiar to a traditional 4X than Dominions 5.  Seems like it would be interesting in multiplayer but I'm not sure how much player interaction / diplomacy there is here compared to Dom 5.

Al, what is the difference between CoE and Dom?

On a broad level, CoE is more straight forward and plays a lot faster.  You don't have to fiddle with army compositions, spell cast orders, and things like that - you just attach troops to a general and march them around the map to kill stuff and take valuable tiles, a la Heroes of Might and Magic.  The battles are still automated, so you don't have much control over the battles compared to Dom, so it's kind of a balance between convenience versus depth of strategy.  It's refreshing to play after spending a lot of time in mid-to-late game Dominions.

Also, there are destructible obstacles like trees, fortress gates, etc which makes things battles bit more interesting.

The world map resembles Civ IV with the square tile-based generation, and lots of empty terrain tiles in between valuable tiles like mines and oasis.  Also, you move around generals with an "action point" style system like in Civ games.  The income and troop production is also very reminiscent of Civ - you'll have to wait several turns and use your starting army wisely to grab some valuable tiles so you can get an income rolling before you're really able to raise a sizeable army.  It's not like Dom where you're basically rushing to pump out troops and grab everything in sight ASAP.  Your economy is slow to start, and roaming independent armies like pirates and wild animals will periodically attack you and try to take valuable tiles away.

In a sense, I would describe it as being like a cross between HoMM and Civilization IV with a classic Illwinter asymmetric game design.  The Human Baron plays completely differently to the Troll King or the Kobold Lord, etc.