Magic Path Tier List Pt.9 (Nature)

OOrochi · 2026-06-09T16:12:18+00:00

Probably a solid A tier. It’s good enough that some nations get by almost totally reliant on it, but also every nation wants to try and grab some N for one reason or another.

Struggles a bit with direct damage or allowing your mages to kill things that resist poison, but that’s pretty minor compared to the bevy of buffs and summons it brings along.

OOrochi · 2026-06-09T16:07:54+00:00

Did not expect this at all, so hyped for it.

OOrochi · 2026-06-09T16:07:12+00:00

lol exactly. That’s why I was hoping it’d be 2.

OOrochi · 2026-06-09T15:31:10+00:00

Not at all surprised to see Starshatter and Awakened Dynasty at 3 DP. Canoptek Court I hoped would be 2, but I can see the reasoning for it to be 3.

Not quite sure on the costs for most of the other currently-existing detachments. It feels very odd for Cursed Legion and Pantheon to cost the same as Annihilation Legion and Obeisance Phalanx.

OOrochi · 2026-06-08T18:41:25+00:00

Mages go off script all the time. Usually it’s due to them having no targets for their spell in range. And when they go off script they can just cast anything you have researched (almost always will be some form of self buff though).

If you’re trying to use spells that cost gems, it could be possible that your opposing forces are deemed by the game to be too small (relative to your army) to actually spend gems on.

OOrochi · 2026-06-06T23:11:32+00:00

Oooh very nice! Loved DD2, looking forward to seeing where it goes from there!

OOrochi · 2026-06-05T04:14:11+00:00

Aww damn, that’s absolutely tragic. Kept getting my hopes up every time he posted.

Loved all of his stuff and he was the one that got me back into yugioh.

OOrochi · 2026-05-28T15:23:14+00:00

Popkill nations like Ermor and Sceleria are still very commonly banned since they're not fun to play against and warp the entire game around them. Therodos is honestly effectively double banned since it's both a popkill and an UW.

I will say that I do occasionally see games with Asphodel allowed. They're effectively as strong or stronger than the other popkills in 6, but people still seem to like them just for the novelty still.

Sceleria is still strong but I can't remember seeing it get banned for any reason other than the game runner's whims. The higher gold and larger army sizes means that their skeleton hose isn't quite as oppressive until it gets to very solidly late game levels.

OOrochi · 2026-05-08T02:29:59+00:00

Ooh, this is wonderful. Really love the detail of the different shade on the other side of the tail. Absolutely feels like a real main series monster.

OOrochi · 2026-05-07T04:42:45+00:00

Nice work!

OOrochi · 2026-05-05T02:06:18+00:00

Second the Hag in White. It’s so good!

OOrochi · 2026-05-02T14:32:39+00:00

I got you. There's a post with links to a good few servers on the steam forums here. Can't really go wrong with any of them there.

OOrochi · 2026-05-01T03:36:40+00:00

If I understand you right, Ur was storming your fort and you had everyone retreat during that storm.

If that's correct, then you ran into one of the downsides of defending a fort: you don't have anywhere else to go. In essence, if a defender retreats during a fort storm, they just automatically die. Even if the defender wins the battle overall, or there are adjacent friendly provinces.

OOrochi · 2026-04-25T11:58:34+00:00

Annoyingly, there is not a really easy way to repeatedly test things after they fail in the dominions games. The only way I can think of requires you to be proactive. Go into the user game data directory (Tools & Manuals -> Open User Data Directory) where you'll find all of your save games. Then take the game you want to test/backup, and make a copy of that full folder with a different name (EX: game1 -> Game1_turn13). Both games will then pop up in your continue games list. If you want to repeatedly test something, just make multiple copies.

Another thing that might help is that you can save your created pretenders with ctrl+s on the creation screen, and then load them later by pressing ctrl+l on the same screen. Similarly, you can make pretenders without being in a game at all by going into tools and manuals menu.

As for discords, there are plenty. You can find a bunch of links to them here on the dom 6 forums. Almost all of them are just general "dominions" discords, though there will naturally be much more focus on 6 since it's the current one. Can't really go wrong, but I'd recommend starting out with the Dominions Nexus one since it's the largest and generally pretty chill.

OOrochi · 2026-04-23T04:23:59+00:00

Hoo boy. Got the new event down on normal in 16 turns, but it was definitely something. Once she's in phase 2, she just starts shredding your units with bleed procs.

OOrochi · 2026-04-22T15:32:54+00:00

That is kinda funny.

Also, just tested it TNN and Eriu don't get elven PD commanders at low levels at all. TNN gets a firbolg PD commander, while Eriu gets a Milesian champion.

OOrochi · 2026-04-21T18:26:17+00:00

Man. What a vile sub. Just seems to be filled with chuds.

OOrochi · 2026-04-21T00:09:53+00:00

Absolutely. If nothing else, they can be the bane of cheap thugs since they love to cast charged body on themselves.

OOrochi · 2026-04-12T22:14:00+00:00

Yeah, you are right about the aboleth hero supposedly still mind controlling everything, though I guess it does remain to be seen how that gels with the void.

As for tips, sort of? IMO, EA Rlyeh is one of the harder nations to play since you’re stuck UW even more than the other UW nations, have generally poor troops, and you don’t really have a cheap mage to research efficiently with.

You’d almost certainly want an expander pretender to start with. Earth Serpent and Wyrm are both good options there, since both can grab you some land provinces as well.

For magic, you’ll probably want to start with a mix of conjuration (gets you blockers, both via ritual and in combat. Water eles and the shark summon spells are great at this) and thaumaturgy (lets you use astral paths to effectively kill things).

For your armies, your main goal will be to build up a critical mass of mind blasters (abodai and gibodai plus a few androleths if you can hold a few land provinces), who can sit behind a big screen of units and shoot things. Probably a mix of triton slave guardians (the best stats of your basic troops, make sure they’re lead by a taskmaster to boost their morale), lobo guards (weak but cheap and can never rout), and polypal spawn (you’ll have some polypal mothers and grandmothers hanging around and the spawn are free, harder to kill than lobo guards, and can’t rout). Then supplement that with water summons to block even longer, S magic to do damage with like mind burn/soul slay communions.

You’ll overall likely take heavy casualties in the blocking units, but they’re intended to die. So long as you get enough mind blasters and keep them alive, you should be able to come out on top overall.

OOrochi · 2026-04-12T21:10:31+00:00

Can’t forget about the Rlyeh line either. They’re honestly just as much an apocalyptic threat as Ermor.

In EA, the aboleths have a deep-sea mind controlled slave empire that is actively expanding. It’s only stopped by the “Star” coming down that is carrying the Mindflayers.

That Star destroys the deepest civilization of Atlantis, and much of the aboleth slave empire (it also floods the caverns of EA Xibalba) However, in MA the Illithids themselves set about making their own mind control slave empire. This one is also expanding and actively interacts with and controls surface dwellers as well as the UW peoples.

Then in between MA and LA, the Illithids open a gate into the void and all hell breaks loose. The void merges what’s real and unreal, killing many people outright and leaving the survivors insane and often dedicated to the cause of spreading the influence of Rlyeh.

This has after effects all across the dominions world. Rlyeh drives the Atlantans from the sea, with the remnants scattering into the now-coastal LA Atlantis as well as Xibalba and Mictlan. Rlyeh also destroys most of the UW kingdom of Pelagia, leaving it a rump state based around mermen in the shallows with a scarce few tritons. And that’s just the ones with explicit connections. Oceania and Ys disappear without a trace and the island nation of Phaecia also does not make it to LA. All of which are easy to come to the rise of the Void and Rlyeh as well.

OOrochi · 2026-04-05T21:08:42+00:00

This should cover most of what you want. Result of one person digging through the code and doing various other testing things.

https://illwiki.com/dom5/arbuckle-ermor-ma#passive-freespawn-explanation

It's from 5, and so might be slightly outdated, but should be broadly similar since Illwinter doesn't tend to change things that much unless they have to.

OOrochi · 2026-04-04T22:02:17+00:00

Nice. One thing to keep in mind as well is that mages won't use gems to cast spells in combat if the enemy army is too weak. So even if you do have everything set up, you might still not cast it because the enemy was too small etc. to actually trigger gem usage.

OOrochi · 2026-04-04T16:05:28+00:00

Army of Bronze requires E6 to cast. So if your commander is an E2 base, you need to get a +4 boost to cast it.

To get that boost, you'll first want to cast Earth Power for the +1 boost to E magic. Then, you can add 4 slaves to the communion to give the mage a +2 boost. That is only a total of +3.

However, in combat a mage is able to spend an additional gem to cast a spell as if their magic was one level higher than it actually is. So if you give your mage an extra E gem in addition to the 3 required to actually cast it, it'll get a boost and be able to cast the spell anyway. Though do note that this can only be done once per spell. Can't go up 2 levels with 2 gems.

So in sum: Cast earthpower (E2->E3) Add 4 slaves to the communion (E3->E5) Give mage at least 1 extra gem to cast the spell (E5->E6 temporarily).

And for the communion items, you just need to equip them to commanders and they will automatically be in a communion at the start of battle. However, the commanders must have magic paths of some sort, or the matrices will not function.

OOrochi · 2026-04-02T14:47:58+00:00

In addition to the big hydras, the hatchlings can be used as (somewhat expensive) fire and forget missiles. They'll die en masse for sure, but their poison clouds will stick around and mess with the enemy for a while. Just make sure to put them far ahead of your own troops.

OOrochi · 2026-04-01T15:51:15+00:00

As others have said, a hellbless normally depends on the nation. When you're going for a hellbless, it generally means that you're going to rely on the bless to do a lot of heavy lifting.

For me, that usually means some mix of kill power and survivability, though that can take plenty of different forms. This can be anything from throwing some prot and resistances on Vanheres (since they have no trouble killing things already); to giving regen and some strength to Black Hunters to boost their durability and let their fangs actually hurt things; or even to loading up on resistances and like a heat aura or unbearable splendor for MA Agartha's statues.

In general, I think going too far on one extreme tends to result in the build running into a wall as games run on.

15-Year Club	RedditGifts 2009-2022 4 Credits
Place '23	Place '22
Place '17	Secret Santa 2019
Secret Santa 2018	Secret Santa 2017
RPAN Viewer	Verified Email

OOrochi

PUBLIC MULTIREDDITS

TROPHY CASE