Hello there, it's been a long time since I picked the game, but I feel bad that a have a guide that doesn't feel finished yet. Another issue I think I need to solve is removing the magic items table as I feel that they make everything messy. I will probably move them somewhere until a better format is found (possibly not in this guide). So here is a new section for you that still struggles to understand what DRN, Rolls, and Checks mean in the game. Enjoy!

Population number determines how much income it can generate per turn. The amount of gold income is simply the Population number divided by 100. Of course, this amount is subject to a number of modifiers:

• Order increases this amount by 5% and Chaos decreases it by 5%
  
• Production increases this amount by 2% and Sloth decreases it by 2%
  
• Growth increases this amount by 3% and Death decreases it by 3%
  
• Then, if the province has fort, this scale-modified income is increased by half of its admin in percentage. So a 30 admin fort will give a bonus of 15% income.
  
• Lastly, 25 unrest reduces fort-modified income by 33%, 50 unrest reduces this amount by 50%, and 100 unrest will reduce this amount by 66% (anything between them is proportionally scaled). As you can see, it is of your best interest to not let a province's unrest go too high.
  
• The population number itself can grow or shrink, depending on the Growth and Death scale of the dominion, this happen very slowly though.
  
• A province not connected by any other provinces to any of your fort doesn't contribute its income. The income number will be colored red in those provinces.

Resources on a province depends on its terrain type, with plains, swamp, and wastes only has few resources, and forests and mountains have a high number of resources. If there is no fort on the province, the amount of resource displayed is actually half of its true production capacity, only half of it is usable for recruitment in that province, so if a province, lets call this example province Wolvenwoods, has 90 resource. It actually has 180, but only that 90 can be used to recruit troops in that province. This might be confusing now, but you'll understand that shortly.

A province without a fort that is located directly next to a fort province contributes a percentage of its true production capacity to every fort adjacent to it. This amount is the fort's admin in percentage. So if Wolvenwoods is located next to a fort with 30 admin, it will contribute 60-ish resource (30% of its true production capacity) to that fort province.

Now, what happened if Wolvenwoods is located next to two fort, one with 30 admin and one with 20 admin? The result is Wolvenwoods contributes 60 production to one fort, and 36 production to another. This will reduce the true production by 96, as a result, you can only use the remaining 84 (out of 180) to recruit unit in that province. This is why it is important for you to know that the true capacity is actually the double capacity value.

• Each Production scale improves the province production by 15%
  
• Each Sloth scale decreases the province production by 15%
  
• A province with 25 unrest has its production decreased by 20%, 50 unrest reduce it by 33%, and 100 unrest reduce the capacity by 50%
  
• Furthermore, no troops may be recruited in a province with 100 unrest or more.
  
• If a province has a fort, its true production capacity will be available for recruitment. This means if you build a fort in Wolvenwoods, you can use its entire 180 production for unit recruitment.
  
• A province with a fort draws resource from all its adjacent provinces (but only from ones you control) equal to its admin in percentage. However, land fort cannot draw resource from an underwater province, and vice-versa.
  
• Fort prevents the province to contribute its resource. If a fort you own is located next to another fort you own, they will not receive resource from each other.

Supply indicates how many unit can a province support. A unit uses supply equal to its size -1. This means a human-size unit will consume 1 supply each month. A 1-size unit consume no supply at all. If your army exceeds the supply limit, starvation will occur and your units will be diseased.

• Supply is determined by population, for the first 10.000 population, each 1.000 population will contribute about 40 supply point. After the first 10.000, each 1.000 population will contribute less, maybe about 10-ish. For a 5.000 pop province, you can expect about 200-ish supply, and for 20.000 pop province, you can expect about 500-ish supply before modifications.
  
• Growth scale increases available supply by 15%
  
• Death scale decreases available supply by 15%
  
• If the heat/cold scale does not match the nation's preferred heat level, the supply will be decreased by 10% for each one scale away from the ideal level.
  
• A friendly (owned) province that is located at least within 4 province from your fort, it gets bonus supply depending on the fort's admin. This bonus supply is added after previous modifications.
  
• Nature mage also contributes supply to a province, depending on their N magic level (added by mltnschroeder)

Maybe the most important trait of a province, a province's terrain type dictates a province's income variety and availability of magic sites. The terrain also limits movement to anyone without the appropriate Survival skill. A movement between two province will always use the one with most movement cost, except if the unit in question (all units in the squad) have the appropriate Survival skill, in which the movement cost will be treated by 1.

A commander with Map Move 3 wants to go from a mountain province to a plain province, and from that plain province he wants to go to a forest province. This will need 5 point of map move = (mountain-plains movement : 3) + (plains-forest movement: 2), meaning the commander won't be able to reach the forest province this turn. In fact, due to him starting in a Mountain province, he won't pass more than 1 province in this turn, despite being faster compared to other commander

Now if that commander equips Boots of the Messenger magic item (which will give a commander survival skill on all terrain), he would only need 2 point of map move to reach the forest province = (mountain-plains movement with mountain survival skill : 1) + (plains-forest movement with forest survival skill : 1). Now you can see that with survival skill, the commander's ability to reach a friendly province is greatly helped!

• Battles fought in cave is fought under Darkness, which makes unit without Darkvision considerably weaker.
  
• Swamp has chance inflict disease to a troop stationed on it.

• You always have full information on provinces you own, except its corpses information.
  
• Undead priest and death mages reveal corpses information in its current province.
  
• Your scout will reveal any army on province it is on, and the report is accurate.
  
• Province you own will reveal any army on ALL surrounding provinces, the report given is not quite accurate though.
  
• Your dominion will reveal any province's Income and Resources.
  
• Your dominion will also reveal any adjacent enemy dominion.
  
• Arcoschepale's dominion will also give report on troops on that province with an accurate information. Enjoy it when playing them.

Your scout will reveal any army on province it is on. The scout's report is quite accurate, so the scout is actually essential in deciding which province to expand, unless you believe you'll expansion party will smash anything. Besides your scout, province you own (starting on turn 2) will reveal any army on surrounding provinces. This information is not very accurate, but can give you idea what kind of troops exists there and how big it is. This will help you avoid clashing with Elephants or Heavy Cavalries early. This feature also makes it easier to see where your nation border is.

If you have a dominion on a province (even just one candle), your dominion will reveal the province's Income and Resources. This could help you decide which is the best province to expand to. You don't need any units or provinces to see this information. Also, like how a province reveals any adjacent army, your dominion will also reveal enemy dominions on surrounding provinces. This is very useful as you can know where the enemy dominion is concentrated and guess the location of their forts/capital.

Ah, the DRN, or the Dominions Random Number. The manual has a very complete information about it right in the beginning, but if you are not familiar with terms such as "Roll" and "Check" it can get very confusing, let's see if we can simplify things. To put it simply, you actually can replace any instance of "DRN" with "a random number". Let's talk more about what is DRNs, Rolls, and Checks below. Hopefully, with these examples, you could understand what these terms actually mean.

Brace yourself for a long section. While these might be a long explanation, I'm sure its easy to understand!

This is a part of handy table you can find the the "Probabilities" page.


What does this table mean? This is how likely you are going to be successful when attempting an action in Dominions 4. The simplest example would be attacking. Wait, not fighting? Nope, in this game two unit fighting does that by attacking in turns. Unit A attack, then unit B attack, then unit A attack again, never in same time (although the game could process them real quick it looks like they attack in the same time). You'll see why this matters below.

Alaric is a human hero that is attacking a Minotaur Soldier. Alaric has 12 Attack, while the Minotaur has 9 Defense. To make a successful attack, Alaric has to create an Attack Roll that is greater than the Minotaur's Defense Roll.

What is Attack Roll? Attack roll is simply Alaric's Attack attribute + DRN (a random number), while Defense Roll is the Minotaur's Defense attribute + DRN (another random number). If there is no DRN involved, the result of the attack would be very simple, Alaric will ALWAYS be able to hit the Minotaur due to his Attack is greater than the Minotaur's Defense.

Because DRN is involved, the possibility is as the table above shows; the difference between Alaric's Attack and Minotaurs Defense is 3. This means that the chance for Alaric to create a successful hit is 70%. That's it? Yep that's it! I told you it was very simple. This is also applicable to anything in the game that need rolls.

Now, if Alaric is fighting a nimble Tiger with 15 Defense instead, he only has 24% chance to hit the Tiger. As you see from the table, in this game, a difference of 1 attribute is significant. That Knight and Elite Knight might only has 1 point of difference in their Attack attribute, but the Elite Knight will make a successful hit a lot more often compared to the Knight.

Note: That table above accounts probability when you have to beat something, such as the attacking example above. When you are the one defending for example, you actually has higher chance than that as a defending unit only has to make Defense Roll equal to the Attack Roll to completely dodge an attack.

As I think it would took a very long time if I wait to finish the guide in its entirety, I think it would be better if I release the guide as small chunks of updates over time. If you have any opinion regarding the content or prefer to wait for the guide to finish entirely, I'd appreciate the suggestion!

The latest addition was a guide about understanding provinces. They are a very important aspect of dominions as your empire are running on those.

The current work in progress is about Magic Items, but I want try a different format, as I find it to be clunky to look, with so many different column sizes. The guide about Air Magic Items is actually done, but I'd like to think more about the format first. After that, I will continue to other path Magic Items

Why Magic Items?
Sure, the manual covers this, the Inspector got this, but my aim is to explain what each item does in a more simpler way than the Inspector, and in more cleaner way than the manual.

I hope this can help newer player easily browse which Magic Item he/she interested in, whether the mage of his/her nation able to forge it, and how many construction research he/she must have done to reach it. I separate the single-path Magic Items with those of multiple path as not everyone got access to items with multiple requirements.