Let's Play Dominions: An Experiment in Utilitarianism

Our third turn and our first battle. While you do not directly control your units in Dominions, the formations and scripts which you wrote for your commanders to follow determine how your units will act during the battles. You can see the formations we set up here, with our two priestly commanders in the back buffing the morale of our units and our crossbows firing at the enemy as they advance.



The enemy has some archers as well - hopefully our kite shield bearing heavy infantry can weather the shots from their regular arrows better than they can withstand our armor piercing crossbow bolts. You can also see that they have their infantry ordered to charge right away given the unevenness in their formation. The independent province AI tends to favor the 'box' formation, which gives units a slight morale bonus, but means that they present a smaller surface area at the front. This means that not all of their units will be able to attack at once, which is a crucial reason that the factions can beat them even when outnumbered by units of similar cost.



The battle goes more or less as expected from here. Buffeted by crossbow bolts and taking free hits as their mob hits our phalanx, the light infantry break first, making their heavy infantry heavily outnumbered. They, too, soon run away, and when our melee units close on their archers, the battle is over.



It wasn't a flawless victory. We lost two of each of our infantry units in taking the province. These are acceptable losses, however, and we can trust that every man on the field knew that their lives were sacrificed for the greater good.