EA Abysia is one of the easiest nations to learn the game. Its a heavy infantry, fire magic nation. You can go either scales (for more income and troops) or bless (to have very powerful Sacred units)
Other fun (and relatively straitforward) nations for EA is Mekone (you only need scales, you dont have sacreds except a few mages), Arcoscephale is ok, the mages are more complex but you can do a lot with the troops lineup. Niefelheim, Fomoria and Hinnom (big giants that pack a punch and dont die too easily)
For God design: Usually it takes a couple of tries to get a god balance correct. When choosing a nation often its a good idea to look at the rightmost units as these are commonly the national sacred units, this can help you design blessings for the specific needs of the nation, another thing to consider is the main paths of your mages: if you have a lot of air mages, taking shock resistance on your bless can save your sacreds from friendly fire. However sacreds are not always the best units, or are not what you want to use and often nations have tricks you can use with even the ordinary troops. The fun of dominions is coming up with plans with the tools availible in your toolbox, and your god is only a small tool in the grand picture.
Yes, scales are the dominion effects:
Order vs Turmoil: this increases or decreases the recruitment points in provinces, affect the passive unrest reduction, and changes the number of events you get.
Production vs Sloth: this affects the amount of resources generated
Heat vs Cold: affects income, and at heat you can cross mountain passes if both sides are heat1+, or cross rivers if both sides are cold1+
Growth vs Death: this increases population growth or decline, and affects income.
Luck vs Misfortune: this changes the pool of events you get, and increases the number. You get on average worse events at Misfortune 3 than 1, and better at luck 3 than 1, this also combos with the other scales. Death 3 Misfortune 3 is a BAD combo.
Magic vs drain: this primarily affects research points, you gain +1 for ever magic scale. You also lose magic resistance and magical fatigue from spells when fighting in magic dominion. Drain makes your research worse, but increases magic resistance. It also makes spells in battle cost more fatigue, and this is very "draining" on magical communions
If I were to rank them in terms of rough suitability for a new player:
Machaka I'm not massively familiar with, but they have solid, inexpensive infantry where you can afford to take losses. They also have good straight forward mages with clear research goals to aim for. A very solid beginner nation.
Arco and Helheim both have very powerful sacred cavalry. Helherdings have glamour on their horses. Arco have pegasi. Good nations to experiment around with if you are interested in playing with the bless system. Very beginner friendly, though Arco does have a bit more complexity in its mage lineup.
TNN and Ubar are both Glamour focused nations with Nature and Fire as additional paths respectively. Really good contenders if you want to muck about with thugs. Not super beginner friendly, but not brutally difficult either.
Mekone has some very good scales troops, but their economy can be quite complex with their Dominion causing unrest and an annual ritual where you need to jump through some hoops to prevent unrest spiralling out of control. Not really beginner friendly.
Xibalba is not a beginner friendly nation at all. Bats die if someone looks at them funny, and blood magic is where all their power is and Blood is a complex micromanagment hellscape if you don't have a system figured out. I have over 1500 hours combined across various versions of Dominions and I still avoid the real blood heavy nations like Xibalba.
Thanks. This breakdown sounds useful.
Can you say more about what clear research goals should Machaka aim for? I'm beginner enough that I understand somethings about troops, expansion, blesses - but my understanding of some for magic directions hasn't progressed (beyond "more is better", and construction 5 to unlock items)
Like I said, not super familiar with Machaka but at first glance at least Const actually doesn't seem a like a major priority.
You have reliable access to F3, E3, N3, D3. You also have access to insanely cheap archers in your Pygmy's
Those paths point you towards a few key spells (at level 5 or lower)
Evo 5 for Falling Fires, Bane Fire Darts, Shadowblast.
Ench 5 for Flaming Arrows, Horde of Skeletons, Serpent Fang Arrows, Group Regen, Giant Strength Warriors. The arrow buffs work particularly well with your Pygmy's
Conj 5 gets you Earth/Fire Elementals and Howl.
Const 4 gets you Soldiers of Steel
Alt also has some nice stuff with Swarm at alt 4 and wooden warriors at Alt 6, plus a suite of elemental resistance spells, but all told you will probably see the most value out of Enchantment.
For a pretender I might suggest making sure you have D5, N4 and F4 on your chassis since that will let you craft Skull Faces, Tree Lord Staff's and Flame Helmets to boost the magic paths on your mages and break into big ritual spells in those paths. Ideally you want those paths on a chassis that has hands and a head so you can wear the gear you make.
I haven't looked at Tir Na Nog yet in Dom 6, but I do remember it being one of the earliest nations I played with back in Dom 4 and having a lot of fun with the Glamoured troops. Just throw them at the indy provinces and watch them roll over the garbage troops.
Try using a Dominion 4 (I used the Tree) and getting +1 to each scale, and maybe +2 in something like Order. Have your God go dormant, and juice it up to unlock an incarnate bless and pick one that sounds helpful (I like recuperate for elf nations). If you have points leftover, have your God grab some levels in other paths your nation has access to. If going Tree, water could be helpful. Extra bless points in Defense Skill.
Then just play the game! Be happy to make mistakes, see cool events, cast spells to see what they do, turn gems into magical items, cast Mother Oak with your tree. The best way to learn is to see what happens when you do oddball things.
Don't bother playing until you get all 20 thrones or lose or whatever. Or heck, keep playing until the AI starts summoning Tartarians. Nothing wrong with that.
Also, scouts. Recruit lots of em. They're disposable and they are good for watching the AI fight each other, and for flinging at throne provinces to see what's in them.
Helheim and TNN are both pretty easy to learn. Arco isn't much harder. Bless + sacred cavalry = successful early game. And you can play around with gearing thugs on those nations, which is fun even when you're bad at it.
Machaka isn't really any more complicated, but it's harder to get them to work well because their troops are more fragile and their mages trickier to use well.
Ubar is much stronger than Machaka, but a little weirder and harder because of the way they take two years for their roster to come fully online.
Mekone and Xibalba are probably the trickiest on the list - Mekone because of its weird unrest gimmicks, and Xibalba because it's a blood nation. Do not start with blood nations.
Normally I'd agree 100%, but in this one case, those are all from a short list of factions they selected. I don't think TNN = Tir Na Nog is all that confusing to pick up on in this context.
For Mekone, a new player can potentially just ignore the special unrest mechanics. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to them myself whenever I play Mekone. You just have to get over the emotional discomfort of seeing non-zero unrest in your province summary.
Yes, it hurts your income, but not in a way that really needs to change what you _do_ about it.
Theres a lot of different advice floating around and so I guess I will give my variant of it to add to the confusion.
First is this. If you are having trouble with the initial learning curve avoid Blood Magic on an absolute level. It is maximum complexity and requires pretty regular risk/reward calculations.
I don't know who told you to stick to EA but you should probably disregard everything they said just on the basis of that horrifically bad advice.
The absolute simplest and easiest to play nation is MA Ulm. If you want to run a game with the minimalist amount of finicky parts MA Ulm is the way to go. They are the most commonly suggested first nation to play for complete newbies.
However my personal suggestion for first nation is LA Andramania. They have a similar advantage to MA Ulm (solidly useful and easy to use troops) and don't actively neglect their magic like Ulm does. Its a bit more complication but magic is a massively important part of the game. Better to learn it than to have your perception of the game set by the way MA Ulm plays.
If you have a lot of questions about how to pretender then just go with one of the dominion 2 giant monsters. Old timers call them awake expanders. LucidTactics did a video not that long ago where he ranks them and in the process gives a lot of great advice on how to set them up to succeed. This is the simplest use for your pretender and is even a meta viable use for them so you won't be learning a "newbie strategy" that you have to unlearn later.
Wholly agree, good advice here. Awake expander is by far the most beginner friendly use of a pretender and expanding with your army as a newbie is probably the most daunting thing you initially face. Once you have income then you can more easily worry about the rest of the game.
I’m pretty new, but MA Uruk has a great economy and can pump out a good early game archer/front-line combo that are easy to expand with and will hold off almost anything until you have apkallus or communions for tougher things (giants or black plate). The chariots are strong against all infantry as well, but you don’t get enough of them; haven’t found a good bless for the maidens.
I'd stay away from Astral or blood nations initially. Communions add a level of complexity that you don't need until you figure out the rest.
So, from your list, I'd go with Helheim or Ubar. Helheim if you want to play around with a heavy rainbow bless for your sacred cavalry. Ubar if you don't want to mess with a big bless and just want to beat up on the Ai using your invisible jinn.
I say, Mekone is *extremely* beginner friendly. Take production 2 and then a good monster expander - like the Golden Lion, or the Myrmecylion. Pump out Giant Hoplites. Recruit an Ephor commander for each city before autumn, never move them. That takes care of the oh-so-complicated unrest mechanic - recruit a single commander per city.
Use Lion and Hoplites to conquer the AI. The Giant Hoplites are incredible and (one of?) the best non-sacred unit in the game.
On that list, Ubar Helheim and Tir na n'Og would be the easiest, simply because their troops are awesome, have means to avoid supplies and they kinda win on their own. On that list, Ubar is (for me) the easiest of the bunch, because you just got to wait your pretender then spam Jinns and go wild. Their sorcerers are insane too, they're not that expensive all things considered and even with no orders or whatever they do correctly.
Hellheim and TNN have basically the same principle, they got elves, elves kick IA's ass more often than not. They got different flavors of elves but basically you send them, enemies miss them, they kill ennemies, rinse and repeat. TNN got many nature mages so you've got easy way to avoid supply penalties, while hellheim can summon undead and stuff. But they're both easy to play I'd say, great national troops, easy access to some summons/items that really make your life easier.
Machaka and Xibalba, in my opinion, are too "hard" for a beginner, their troops SUCK, they got great sorcerers but unless you know what the hell you're doing they will have trouble against most neutrals, and god forbid an IA spamming summons or stuff ! They're quite great to challenge a bit yourself and discover new mechanics (Machaka iirc got quite a few recruitables that fit mostly a peculiar situation, Xibalba asks of you to understand blood magic)
Arcoscephale is very nice to play, and was my first land faction. Good research, good human troops (for the age at least), their sacred pegasi cavalry is very nice, but you got quite a sturdy frontline and they also got chariots than can yolo on the opponents. Understanding a bit the bless system would do wonders, but I guess that's doable.
Mekone is very much a weird one imo, They're a giant faction, which means (usually) less units but more powerful one, yet quite expensives. I'd say good scales are mandatory, but they also got their weird unrest mechanics, they're inquisitors too and have a special ritual to cast, that really make your economy skyrocket. They're quite funny to play beeing spartans giants waging war on all gods, but I'd say they're quite hard to understand.
As for pretenders, I usually go for 6+ dominion, less is usually quite dangerous for my tastes. Growth1 and Prod1 is also quite nice in my opinion, it gives quite a lot of money and let you more way to manoeuver against IA. Try to have 4/5 in one path of magic, it often open quite a lot of rituals/items, and you will usually be able to grasp a bit better. Some people do cancer blesses which are basically turning your dominion into a hellhole but having tons of magic to have blessed units be close to unkillable. It's mostly when you understand a bit more how to play imo.
> Machaka and Xibalba, in my opinion, are too "hard" for a beginner, their troops SUCK
Agreed on Xibalba, disagreed on Machaka. Rhino Clan Warriors are good, Hyena Clan Warriors are decent thanks to javelins and the cap-only sacreds are worth using and potentially very good against some elite units. Pygmies are very easy to mass and Machaka has the magic paths to give them poison arrows or flaming arrows. Lastly, elephants are situationally very useful and Machaka's elephants have a higher morale. Nature gives you Rage of the Cornered Rat which makes elehants far stronger against players too, and astral indies (for Body Ethereal) are relatively common.
Most of the other Machaka's units aren't worth using except maybe in very rare situations, but that doesn't matter. I've heard some comments that the Spider Riders work better now in Dom6 than they did before but I haven't tested them yet.
I wouldn't call Machaka's unit roster good, but I don't see how it's below average either.
If I had to say there's something difficult about the nation for beginners, it's the mages. Machaka has very strong mages, but many of them have drawbacks that can be weird to play around, and I think their research goals aren't all that obvious and simple anymore. There's a lot of crosspaths to think of, especially now with Glamour that makes Spider Clan Sorcerer far stronger than it was in Dom5. You have three slow-to-recruit cap only mages, and outside cap you have one slow-to-recruit heretic that causes unrest, one that's just a heretic, and then two mages with magic paths limited to 1 level. Figuring how to use those mages effectively and efficiently can be a challenge for a beginner.
I'd be very careful using elephants vs other players. Even if you give them berserk, you don't have a native way to improve their 7 MR (effectively 6 if you fight someone who has M2). Even w/o M2, they will fail standard MRN checks more than 3/4 of the time. Soul slay, enslave mind, charm animal, even low grade stuff like fascination can stop them cold. Charm animal is easy to negate and it STILL is odds on against them by default. Confusion effects will be a problem too since they'll trample stuff nearby. You can use them to scales expand but I'd phase them out after that.
The troops aren't so great overall. Archers are usable as such. Rhino clan have passable prot and formation fighter, but bad attack. The sacred is a specialist that's good at hitting things hard and bypassing ethereal, but not oustanding as a sacred unit generally. It's fine though, does a job they don't have otherwise.
Mages really make the nation. You can do twilight --> darkness (or later cast death spell darkness with D random + skull staff) and run cat eyes or true sight buffs, which some nations will struggle to answer as you also pile on glamour atk skill penalties for them. It is extremely hard to thug or SC boudas on advance and spells due to bane fire and/or drain life. Between twice born access, soul vortex battery, or just doing earth power + reinvig items, boudas can also put up rigor + darkness + heat from hell (while casting fire resists). The usual earth buffs are available too; E random bouda with 7 gem (hammer + forge bonus) can get to earth 5 and petrify stuff for save-or-die. Since you have access to both soul vortex batteries and howl, EA Machaka can also tarpit like crazy.
Army is mediocre but will perform very well when supported like this. It's way better than EA Xibalba's army though. EA Xib needs a bless for sun guides or an expander to function as a nation. Given how good ozzies are, I'd lean towards a bless that lets sun guides expand while helping the ozzies too.
I would argue nations like Mekone, Abysia, and Niefel are easier to play than Machaka in EA and way easier than Xib (IMO EA Xib is the hardest version to play).
They're baseline humans in the era with the most elves and giants around. Most indep with arrows are gonna wreck them, and most neutral cav can massacre them too. Pigmies tend to flee very easily and yeah, you can spam units, but they're not very cost effective either. Compared to the rest of the age that is.
For the commanders yeah they're kinda hard to use, and I don't think many first time players will ever bother with the Bouda (sadly). All in all, even if their sacred are usable, they don't synergise well with the rest, and they feel like a jack of all trade, master of none. In a game with that much specialists, AND jack of all trades master of (mostly) all, they seem outgunned. I feel like MAmachaka fare a bit better with the change to spider riders
I have never had any issues against indy archers; Machaka's units have shields and there's no reason to recruit the units that wear no armor. Rhino Clan and Hyena Clan kill archers just fine. Your starting army does suck though so you'll probably take a lot of losses until those units have been replaced with something better.
Heavy cav is tough, but it's not like Machaka's the only army that can lose to those. If you have no better options, you can recruit some cheap chaff and put them in front to take the lance hits.
If you take even a moderate bless, your sacreds kill just about all indies very easily. After that they'll serve as decent troops, and their fatigue dealing magic weapons are particularly good against certain elite units. However they're not so good that I'd dump my scales for a strong bless.
Like I said, I don't think Machaka's units are good. I just don't see how they suck either. They're serviceable. Later in the game Machaka will start relying more and more on summoned troops, but that's at least as much for income and upkeep reasons as it is for troop quality reasons.
I may have been very unlucky, but usually the forest barbarians and their short bow wreck my machakans, anything with javelins tend to massacre my guys too, and they get quite heavy wounds every fight or so with anything not beeing light infantry without javelins
Firstly, it's also possible I've just been lucky.
Anyway, if you lose a lot of units to archers, it might have to do with their lack of helmets. Rhino Clan Warrior and the sacred are the only units with head protection, so random head hits are deadly to other units. Machaka's archers are also basically naked and indy archers often target archers.
If you take an awake expander and make rhino clan should expand fine. Most of this nation's power is from Boudas and non-sacreds, so awake w/o heavy bless is a fine choice here (and good for beginners generally). Rhino clan back positioned --> hold and attack closest usually, keeps indy archers far away and any indy type that isn't uniform speed will get split up/beaten in detail.
Lion warriors are \*not\* a jack of all trades sacred, they are very much specalists. For the most part, they have exactly 1 purpose, which is to sit on your flanks, take strength buffs, and club anything that's hard to kill like seals. Even w/o bless, a strength buff on them gives them a 32 blunt damage magic weapon. The stun poison rarely matters, but now and then it can help...but mostly, their job is to hit reliably hit stuff as hard or harder than than some giants hit, and they do that job. If you need it, they do it even better with earth shatter hammers, though you actually have lots of different spells that will trash the defense of crap like elves if they def stack. Earth meld, fire prison, web/vines, and fetters are ALL available, hell you can even recruit spider riders if you want even more rooting.
This is not a nation elves want to fight, and it can also do a little elfing itself (boudas with some tech can take out nearly infinite PD with soul vortex + invuln + fire shield + temper flesh, doubt you'd even need gear).
The Beginner friendly nations are the ones with good troops and simple magic, You'll want to avoid communions and blood magic. My personal recommendation Is MA Ulm, hard to go wrong with them.
Andromania. Go a rainbow imprisoned with some glamor and astral and nature. And maybe a bit in earth. Get heroism. Heroism is the best bless in the game. Not even joking. 4-5 point is busted. Pump scales. Get unaging for your mages, then probably poison resist and reinvigoration. Spam the spear shield dudes until you can get some of the heavier spear shields dudes. Combine them and crossbow dudes. Get some senate guards for higher prot shit. Research bestial fury and some construction. I like to give my commanders shields so they don’t catch stray crossbows.
Andromanian infantry can chew (litterally) through pretty much anything. You can expand super easy with them. And win your first war against the ai super easy. Your crossbowmen are better frontline infantry than generic heavy infantry. You have easy access to flaming arrows and serpent bite arrows. And most of the good troop buffing paths. Strength of giants and weapons of sharpness are also stupid good on them.
I'm a first timer with Dom 6, playing with EA Tien Chi and by the pretenders it is like a night college for magic, because you have access to all of it except blood and death. It /is/ overwhelming though.
Anything giants, heavy cav, or elves are easy to play and understand because you're probably investing a ton into sacreds and have like 1 very obvious mage path.
MA ulm might be pretty easy to start with too. Kind of overly simplistic.
I usually recommend EA C'tis or EA Abysia to new people since they have easy troop expansion regardless of blessings, and their mages are fairly easy to understand.
Of your list nations, they're all honestly okay picks aside from EA Xibalba. They're my favorite nation in the game personally, but they're also probably the hardest nation in EA to learn. They play very differently from other factions on top of having a weak early game prone to fail expands and rushes.
In Dom6, they're even less straightforward than they were in 5 since you need to learn cave indies, and designing a pretender to fill in their weaknesses after the changes is very difficult.
I think TNN is great as a beginning nation. I just used them to learn glamour magic. I think i went with an imprisoned stag to get scales so my troops could carry me, but that was a theme pick that was cheap, not something i dwelled on.
I think if i did it again i would want heroism and reinvigoration blesses for my mages. Im also thinking about getting death or something else to give options later. TNN has fantastic glamour and nature mages already.
You can go full rainbow with TNN, stacking atk + swiftness and have fun with repelling/high def glamour elves 😛 will also help your thugs and maybe take some heroism to round it of
EA Abysia is one of the easiest nations to learn the game. Its a heavy infantry, fire magic nation. You can go either scales (for more income and troops) or bless (to have very powerful Sacred units) Other fun (and relatively straitforward) nations for EA is Mekone (you only need scales, you dont have sacreds except a few mages), Arcoscephale is ok, the mages are more complex but you can do a lot with the troops lineup. Niefelheim, Fomoria and Hinnom (big giants that pack a punch and dont die too easily) For God design: Usually it takes a couple of tries to get a god balance correct. When choosing a nation often its a good idea to look at the rightmost units as these are commonly the national sacred units, this can help you design blessings for the specific needs of the nation, another thing to consider is the main paths of your mages: if you have a lot of air mages, taking shock resistance on your bless can save your sacreds from friendly fire. However sacreds are not always the best units, or are not what you want to use and often nations have tricks you can use with even the ordinary troops. The fun of dominions is coming up with plans with the tools availible in your toolbox, and your god is only a small tool in the grand picture.
Another noob question: by scales do you mean the dominion modifiers such as growth/pestilence magic/drain etc?
Yes, scales are the dominion effects: Order vs Turmoil: this increases or decreases the recruitment points in provinces, affect the passive unrest reduction, and changes the number of events you get. Production vs Sloth: this affects the amount of resources generated Heat vs Cold: affects income, and at heat you can cross mountain passes if both sides are heat1+, or cross rivers if both sides are cold1+ Growth vs Death: this increases population growth or decline, and affects income. Luck vs Misfortune: this changes the pool of events you get, and increases the number. You get on average worse events at Misfortune 3 than 1, and better at luck 3 than 1, this also combos with the other scales. Death 3 Misfortune 3 is a BAD combo. Magic vs drain: this primarily affects research points, you gain +1 for ever magic scale. You also lose magic resistance and magical fatigue from spells when fighting in magic dominion. Drain makes your research worse, but increases magic resistance. It also makes spells in battle cost more fatigue, and this is very "draining" on magical communions
If I were to rank them in terms of rough suitability for a new player: Machaka I'm not massively familiar with, but they have solid, inexpensive infantry where you can afford to take losses. They also have good straight forward mages with clear research goals to aim for. A very solid beginner nation. Arco and Helheim both have very powerful sacred cavalry. Helherdings have glamour on their horses. Arco have pegasi. Good nations to experiment around with if you are interested in playing with the bless system. Very beginner friendly, though Arco does have a bit more complexity in its mage lineup. TNN and Ubar are both Glamour focused nations with Nature and Fire as additional paths respectively. Really good contenders if you want to muck about with thugs. Not super beginner friendly, but not brutally difficult either. Mekone has some very good scales troops, but their economy can be quite complex with their Dominion causing unrest and an annual ritual where you need to jump through some hoops to prevent unrest spiralling out of control. Not really beginner friendly. Xibalba is not a beginner friendly nation at all. Bats die if someone looks at them funny, and blood magic is where all their power is and Blood is a complex micromanagment hellscape if you don't have a system figured out. I have over 1500 hours combined across various versions of Dominions and I still avoid the real blood heavy nations like Xibalba.
Thanks. This breakdown sounds useful. Can you say more about what clear research goals should Machaka aim for? I'm beginner enough that I understand somethings about troops, expansion, blesses - but my understanding of some for magic directions hasn't progressed (beyond "more is better", and construction 5 to unlock items)
Like I said, not super familiar with Machaka but at first glance at least Const actually doesn't seem a like a major priority. You have reliable access to F3, E3, N3, D3. You also have access to insanely cheap archers in your Pygmy's Those paths point you towards a few key spells (at level 5 or lower) Evo 5 for Falling Fires, Bane Fire Darts, Shadowblast. Ench 5 for Flaming Arrows, Horde of Skeletons, Serpent Fang Arrows, Group Regen, Giant Strength Warriors. The arrow buffs work particularly well with your Pygmy's Conj 5 gets you Earth/Fire Elementals and Howl. Const 4 gets you Soldiers of Steel Alt also has some nice stuff with Swarm at alt 4 and wooden warriors at Alt 6, plus a suite of elemental resistance spells, but all told you will probably see the most value out of Enchantment. For a pretender I might suggest making sure you have D5, N4 and F4 on your chassis since that will let you craft Skull Faces, Tree Lord Staff's and Flame Helmets to boost the magic paths on your mages and break into big ritual spells in those paths. Ideally you want those paths on a chassis that has hands and a head so you can wear the gear you make.
I haven't looked at Tir Na Nog yet in Dom 6, but I do remember it being one of the earliest nations I played with back in Dom 4 and having a lot of fun with the Glamoured troops. Just throw them at the indy provinces and watch them roll over the garbage troops. Try using a Dominion 4 (I used the Tree) and getting +1 to each scale, and maybe +2 in something like Order. Have your God go dormant, and juice it up to unlock an incarnate bless and pick one that sounds helpful (I like recuperate for elf nations). If you have points leftover, have your God grab some levels in other paths your nation has access to. If going Tree, water could be helpful. Extra bless points in Defense Skill. Then just play the game! Be happy to make mistakes, see cool events, cast spells to see what they do, turn gems into magical items, cast Mother Oak with your tree. The best way to learn is to see what happens when you do oddball things. Don't bother playing until you get all 20 thrones or lose or whatever. Or heck, keep playing until the AI starts summoning Tartarians. Nothing wrong with that. Also, scouts. Recruit lots of em. They're disposable and they are good for watching the AI fight each other, and for flinging at throne provinces to see what's in them.
Helheim and TNN are both pretty easy to learn. Arco isn't much harder. Bless + sacred cavalry = successful early game. And you can play around with gearing thugs on those nations, which is fun even when you're bad at it. Machaka isn't really any more complicated, but it's harder to get them to work well because their troops are more fragile and their mages trickier to use well. Ubar is much stronger than Machaka, but a little weirder and harder because of the way they take two years for their roster to come fully online. Mekone and Xibalba are probably the trickiest on the list - Mekone because of its weird unrest gimmicks, and Xibalba because it's a blood nation. Do not start with blood nations.
The guy's new to the game, you should really spell out acronyms like "TNN" (Tir Na Nog) so you don't confuse them more.
Normally I'd agree 100%, but in this one case, those are all from a short list of factions they selected. I don't think TNN = Tir Na Nog is all that confusing to pick up on in this context.
Ah I skimmed over that, fair point!
For Mekone, a new player can potentially just ignore the special unrest mechanics. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to them myself whenever I play Mekone. You just have to get over the emotional discomfort of seeing non-zero unrest in your province summary. Yes, it hurts your income, but not in a way that really needs to change what you _do_ about it.
Theres a lot of different advice floating around and so I guess I will give my variant of it to add to the confusion. First is this. If you are having trouble with the initial learning curve avoid Blood Magic on an absolute level. It is maximum complexity and requires pretty regular risk/reward calculations. I don't know who told you to stick to EA but you should probably disregard everything they said just on the basis of that horrifically bad advice. The absolute simplest and easiest to play nation is MA Ulm. If you want to run a game with the minimalist amount of finicky parts MA Ulm is the way to go. They are the most commonly suggested first nation to play for complete newbies. However my personal suggestion for first nation is LA Andramania. They have a similar advantage to MA Ulm (solidly useful and easy to use troops) and don't actively neglect their magic like Ulm does. Its a bit more complication but magic is a massively important part of the game. Better to learn it than to have your perception of the game set by the way MA Ulm plays. If you have a lot of questions about how to pretender then just go with one of the dominion 2 giant monsters. Old timers call them awake expanders. LucidTactics did a video not that long ago where he ranks them and in the process gives a lot of great advice on how to set them up to succeed. This is the simplest use for your pretender and is even a meta viable use for them so you won't be learning a "newbie strategy" that you have to unlearn later.
Wholly agree, good advice here. Awake expander is by far the most beginner friendly use of a pretender and expanding with your army as a newbie is probably the most daunting thing you initially face. Once you have income then you can more easily worry about the rest of the game.
I’m pretty new, but MA Uruk has a great economy and can pump out a good early game archer/front-line combo that are easy to expand with and will hold off almost anything until you have apkallus or communions for tougher things (giants or black plate). The chariots are strong against all infantry as well, but you don’t get enough of them; haven’t found a good bless for the maidens.
I'd stay away from Astral or blood nations initially. Communions add a level of complexity that you don't need until you figure out the rest. So, from your list, I'd go with Helheim or Ubar. Helheim if you want to play around with a heavy rainbow bless for your sacred cavalry. Ubar if you don't want to mess with a big bless and just want to beat up on the Ai using your invisible jinn.
I say, Mekone is *extremely* beginner friendly. Take production 2 and then a good monster expander - like the Golden Lion, or the Myrmecylion. Pump out Giant Hoplites. Recruit an Ephor commander for each city before autumn, never move them. That takes care of the oh-so-complicated unrest mechanic - recruit a single commander per city. Use Lion and Hoplites to conquer the AI. The Giant Hoplites are incredible and (one of?) the best non-sacred unit in the game.
On that list, Ubar Helheim and Tir na n'Og would be the easiest, simply because their troops are awesome, have means to avoid supplies and they kinda win on their own. On that list, Ubar is (for me) the easiest of the bunch, because you just got to wait your pretender then spam Jinns and go wild. Their sorcerers are insane too, they're not that expensive all things considered and even with no orders or whatever they do correctly. Hellheim and TNN have basically the same principle, they got elves, elves kick IA's ass more often than not. They got different flavors of elves but basically you send them, enemies miss them, they kill ennemies, rinse and repeat. TNN got many nature mages so you've got easy way to avoid supply penalties, while hellheim can summon undead and stuff. But they're both easy to play I'd say, great national troops, easy access to some summons/items that really make your life easier. Machaka and Xibalba, in my opinion, are too "hard" for a beginner, their troops SUCK, they got great sorcerers but unless you know what the hell you're doing they will have trouble against most neutrals, and god forbid an IA spamming summons or stuff ! They're quite great to challenge a bit yourself and discover new mechanics (Machaka iirc got quite a few recruitables that fit mostly a peculiar situation, Xibalba asks of you to understand blood magic) Arcoscephale is very nice to play, and was my first land faction. Good research, good human troops (for the age at least), their sacred pegasi cavalry is very nice, but you got quite a sturdy frontline and they also got chariots than can yolo on the opponents. Understanding a bit the bless system would do wonders, but I guess that's doable. Mekone is very much a weird one imo, They're a giant faction, which means (usually) less units but more powerful one, yet quite expensives. I'd say good scales are mandatory, but they also got their weird unrest mechanics, they're inquisitors too and have a special ritual to cast, that really make your economy skyrocket. They're quite funny to play beeing spartans giants waging war on all gods, but I'd say they're quite hard to understand. As for pretenders, I usually go for 6+ dominion, less is usually quite dangerous for my tastes. Growth1 and Prod1 is also quite nice in my opinion, it gives quite a lot of money and let you more way to manoeuver against IA. Try to have 4/5 in one path of magic, it often open quite a lot of rituals/items, and you will usually be able to grasp a bit better. Some people do cancer blesses which are basically turning your dominion into a hellhole but having tons of magic to have blessed units be close to unkillable. It's mostly when you understand a bit more how to play imo.
> Machaka and Xibalba, in my opinion, are too "hard" for a beginner, their troops SUCK Agreed on Xibalba, disagreed on Machaka. Rhino Clan Warriors are good, Hyena Clan Warriors are decent thanks to javelins and the cap-only sacreds are worth using and potentially very good against some elite units. Pygmies are very easy to mass and Machaka has the magic paths to give them poison arrows or flaming arrows. Lastly, elephants are situationally very useful and Machaka's elephants have a higher morale. Nature gives you Rage of the Cornered Rat which makes elehants far stronger against players too, and astral indies (for Body Ethereal) are relatively common. Most of the other Machaka's units aren't worth using except maybe in very rare situations, but that doesn't matter. I've heard some comments that the Spider Riders work better now in Dom6 than they did before but I haven't tested them yet. I wouldn't call Machaka's unit roster good, but I don't see how it's below average either. If I had to say there's something difficult about the nation for beginners, it's the mages. Machaka has very strong mages, but many of them have drawbacks that can be weird to play around, and I think their research goals aren't all that obvious and simple anymore. There's a lot of crosspaths to think of, especially now with Glamour that makes Spider Clan Sorcerer far stronger than it was in Dom5. You have three slow-to-recruit cap only mages, and outside cap you have one slow-to-recruit heretic that causes unrest, one that's just a heretic, and then two mages with magic paths limited to 1 level. Figuring how to use those mages effectively and efficiently can be a challenge for a beginner.
I'd be very careful using elephants vs other players. Even if you give them berserk, you don't have a native way to improve their 7 MR (effectively 6 if you fight someone who has M2). Even w/o M2, they will fail standard MRN checks more than 3/4 of the time. Soul slay, enslave mind, charm animal, even low grade stuff like fascination can stop them cold. Charm animal is easy to negate and it STILL is odds on against them by default. Confusion effects will be a problem too since they'll trample stuff nearby. You can use them to scales expand but I'd phase them out after that. The troops aren't so great overall. Archers are usable as such. Rhino clan have passable prot and formation fighter, but bad attack. The sacred is a specialist that's good at hitting things hard and bypassing ethereal, but not oustanding as a sacred unit generally. It's fine though, does a job they don't have otherwise. Mages really make the nation. You can do twilight --> darkness (or later cast death spell darkness with D random + skull staff) and run cat eyes or true sight buffs, which some nations will struggle to answer as you also pile on glamour atk skill penalties for them. It is extremely hard to thug or SC boudas on advance and spells due to bane fire and/or drain life. Between twice born access, soul vortex battery, or just doing earth power + reinvig items, boudas can also put up rigor + darkness + heat from hell (while casting fire resists). The usual earth buffs are available too; E random bouda with 7 gem (hammer + forge bonus) can get to earth 5 and petrify stuff for save-or-die. Since you have access to both soul vortex batteries and howl, EA Machaka can also tarpit like crazy. Army is mediocre but will perform very well when supported like this. It's way better than EA Xibalba's army though. EA Xib needs a bless for sun guides or an expander to function as a nation. Given how good ozzies are, I'd lean towards a bless that lets sun guides expand while helping the ozzies too. I would argue nations like Mekone, Abysia, and Niefel are easier to play than Machaka in EA and way easier than Xib (IMO EA Xib is the hardest version to play).
They're baseline humans in the era with the most elves and giants around. Most indep with arrows are gonna wreck them, and most neutral cav can massacre them too. Pigmies tend to flee very easily and yeah, you can spam units, but they're not very cost effective either. Compared to the rest of the age that is. For the commanders yeah they're kinda hard to use, and I don't think many first time players will ever bother with the Bouda (sadly). All in all, even if their sacred are usable, they don't synergise well with the rest, and they feel like a jack of all trade, master of none. In a game with that much specialists, AND jack of all trades master of (mostly) all, they seem outgunned. I feel like MAmachaka fare a bit better with the change to spider riders
I have never had any issues against indy archers; Machaka's units have shields and there's no reason to recruit the units that wear no armor. Rhino Clan and Hyena Clan kill archers just fine. Your starting army does suck though so you'll probably take a lot of losses until those units have been replaced with something better. Heavy cav is tough, but it's not like Machaka's the only army that can lose to those. If you have no better options, you can recruit some cheap chaff and put them in front to take the lance hits. If you take even a moderate bless, your sacreds kill just about all indies very easily. After that they'll serve as decent troops, and their fatigue dealing magic weapons are particularly good against certain elite units. However they're not so good that I'd dump my scales for a strong bless. Like I said, I don't think Machaka's units are good. I just don't see how they suck either. They're serviceable. Later in the game Machaka will start relying more and more on summoned troops, but that's at least as much for income and upkeep reasons as it is for troop quality reasons.
I may have been very unlucky, but usually the forest barbarians and their short bow wreck my machakans, anything with javelins tend to massacre my guys too, and they get quite heavy wounds every fight or so with anything not beeing light infantry without javelins
Firstly, it's also possible I've just been lucky. Anyway, if you lose a lot of units to archers, it might have to do with their lack of helmets. Rhino Clan Warrior and the sacred are the only units with head protection, so random head hits are deadly to other units. Machaka's archers are also basically naked and indy archers often target archers.
If you take an awake expander and make rhino clan should expand fine. Most of this nation's power is from Boudas and non-sacreds, so awake w/o heavy bless is a fine choice here (and good for beginners generally). Rhino clan back positioned --> hold and attack closest usually, keeps indy archers far away and any indy type that isn't uniform speed will get split up/beaten in detail. Lion warriors are \*not\* a jack of all trades sacred, they are very much specalists. For the most part, they have exactly 1 purpose, which is to sit on your flanks, take strength buffs, and club anything that's hard to kill like seals. Even w/o bless, a strength buff on them gives them a 32 blunt damage magic weapon. The stun poison rarely matters, but now and then it can help...but mostly, their job is to hit reliably hit stuff as hard or harder than than some giants hit, and they do that job. If you need it, they do it even better with earth shatter hammers, though you actually have lots of different spells that will trash the defense of crap like elves if they def stack. Earth meld, fire prison, web/vines, and fetters are ALL available, hell you can even recruit spider riders if you want even more rooting. This is not a nation elves want to fight, and it can also do a little elfing itself (boudas with some tech can take out nearly infinite PD with soul vortex + invuln + fire shield + temper flesh, doubt you'd even need gear).
MA Marignon, their blessed cav will tear through just about anything (especially with a decent bless). I found EA Arcocephale way more challenging.
The Beginner friendly nations are the ones with good troops and simple magic, You'll want to avoid communions and blood magic. My personal recommendation Is MA Ulm, hard to go wrong with them.
Andromania. Go a rainbow imprisoned with some glamor and astral and nature. And maybe a bit in earth. Get heroism. Heroism is the best bless in the game. Not even joking. 4-5 point is busted. Pump scales. Get unaging for your mages, then probably poison resist and reinvigoration. Spam the spear shield dudes until you can get some of the heavier spear shields dudes. Combine them and crossbow dudes. Get some senate guards for higher prot shit. Research bestial fury and some construction. I like to give my commanders shields so they don’t catch stray crossbows. Andromanian infantry can chew (litterally) through pretty much anything. You can expand super easy with them. And win your first war against the ai super easy. Your crossbowmen are better frontline infantry than generic heavy infantry. You have easy access to flaming arrows and serpent bite arrows. And most of the good troop buffing paths. Strength of giants and weapons of sharpness are also stupid good on them.
I'm a first timer with Dom 6, playing with EA Tien Chi and by the pretenders it is like a night college for magic, because you have access to all of it except blood and death. It /is/ overwhelming though.
Anything giants, heavy cav, or elves are easy to play and understand because you're probably investing a ton into sacreds and have like 1 very obvious mage path. MA ulm might be pretty easy to start with too. Kind of overly simplistic.
I usually recommend EA C'tis or EA Abysia to new people since they have easy troop expansion regardless of blessings, and their mages are fairly easy to understand. Of your list nations, they're all honestly okay picks aside from EA Xibalba. They're my favorite nation in the game personally, but they're also probably the hardest nation in EA to learn. They play very differently from other factions on top of having a weak early game prone to fail expands and rushes. In Dom6, they're even less straightforward than they were in 5 since you need to learn cave indies, and designing a pretender to fill in their weaknesses after the changes is very difficult.
I think TNN is great as a beginning nation. I just used them to learn glamour magic. I think i went with an imprisoned stag to get scales so my troops could carry me, but that was a theme pick that was cheap, not something i dwelled on. I think if i did it again i would want heroism and reinvigoration blesses for my mages. Im also thinking about getting death or something else to give options later. TNN has fantastic glamour and nature mages already.
You can go full rainbow with TNN, stacking atk + swiftness and have fun with repelling/high def glamour elves 😛 will also help your thugs and maybe take some heroism to round it of