This is an overview of the world map. The black and red flags are the provinces under my control. White flags are independents. Other colors are for other factions. Mictlan is to the south-east, Arco to the north-east, Lanka directly to the north, Arco against at west...Oh, dear, they already circled around the map and surrounded me, this is promising.
Also notice the white/black candles. That represents dominion, the "faith" the locals have on a pretender god. White candles represents my dominion, black candles represent somebody else's dominion. Dominion spreads by itself, but can be helped by building temples and priests preaching. Also each province's stats changes depending on the scales of the respective pretender god.
For example my current dominion has three crossed swords which represents chaos (less taxes, more random events). This is usually a disadvantage, however yomi gets some advantages from this. Also I get sloth 3 that reduces the resources I get, which I don't care because resources are only needed for troops with lots of gear and onis mostly fight naked. Then heat 1, which I believe it's the ideal temperature for onis. And Growth 2, which will increase my provinces population over time. Followed by Luck 3, which increases the number and quality of random events (nice sinergy with chaos), and Magic 3, which makes mages research and cast better.
Now my pretender god, the "leader" of my nation. Usually I would get to design him by picking a base chassis and then spending points for upgrades like magic paths or bonus to my dominion, or picking disadvantages like worst dominion for extra points, but that work was already done for me here.
High stats (in comparison, an average human has 10 on most stats), however what really matters here are the magic paths, in this case 4 Air, 4 Astral and 4 Earth. I can do a lot with this late game once I have advanced my research. Assuming I make it there. For now he'll be running to a nearby fortress and start crafting flying boots as I'm finishing to reach level 4 on the construction school. It also means my sacred troops get some minor boosts when blessed (a path of at least 4 in an element gives an incremental bonus to your troops, at level 9 you get an even bigger bonus, for example Earth 4 makes units recover from fatigue faster, but earth 9 would've made them recover much faster and get a +5 armor bonus). Shame that Yomi doesn't have any recruitable national sacred troops.
Also got a throne of ascension!
They give some big bonus (also sometimes a penalty like this game), and if you conquer enough of those you win the game right away. Other players are automatically warned when you conquer a throne, and you can see their positions on the map from the start of the game, so holding to them can prove complicated. Anyway 3 death gems per turn is nothing to sneeze at, that can fuel a lot of unholy rituals, or be used to craft necromancy items, let's see.
Got a bunch of casters:
Fire 2, death 2, a touch of nature, solid enough, but a bit expensive for my tastes. So I started recruiting those old dudes:
Those actually get their magic paths at random, a common mechanic in Dominions, having base death 1 and then rolling twice from air, death, earth and fire. They're weaker than the lamias, but a lot cheaper, and give me some more magic variety over time, so I'll be focusing on recruiting those. They also start old aged meaning. Yes, this game keeps tabs on your commander's age. And your troops as well. Individually.
However both those commanders suck for leading troops (normal units can't move at all if there's not a commander, and commanders have a limit on how many troops they can control), luckily I have those:
That guy has earned a bunch of experience so he can lead a whooping 195 troops, more than enough for most of my needs. He technically has pretty good combat stats as well, but screw that, 11 HP means he dies to a lucky crit, so he'll remain behind his forces at all times. Plus he has Death 1 which allows him to spam a minor fear spell every turn.
Now for troops I have mostly this:
Not a lot of armor, but they hit hard in melee and can sling cold blasts while closing in the distance. Also come back as ghosts after killed once, and if the ghost survives the battle I get the oni back. They also have a special ability called Chaos Power that boosts their stats while on Chaos dominion, and also benefits from local unrest. However they have high upkeep, so I can only spam those guys if I feel like I'm about to fight a big war. I have other flavors of oni troops that I can recruit, but I'll leave that for another update.
My other current common troops are those:
Archer bandits that can actually hold their own in melee. Also got a bunch of those guys with long spears. Can also sneak around if led by a sneaky commander. And a bonus for raiding, but that kinda sucks unless you have flying or sailing units.
Speaking of sneaking:
Those guys can sneak. And can also be recruited at any mountain provinces. Usually your national units can only be bought at fortresses, and fortresses cost around 600-1000 gold each (a basic oni costs around 20 gold, my casters are around 100-200) and take 4-6 turns to build. I've got a bunch of them spying around the map.
Speaking of expensive stuff:
That's my top deluxe uber unit, and arguably the main reason to play Yomi. This guy can solo armies once I've researched the proper self-buff spells, or provide top-quality magic support behind a wall of troops. Only a couple of other nations get anything that comes close to this.
Alas my predecessor didn't get a single one. I'm rectifying that right now. My capital's production will be focused on producing those at top speed.
Which reminds me, in Dominions 4 you can only buy one commander per turn per province. Except for the top comnanders, like the oni king shown above, that take two turns. Soooo it's gonna take a while to mass my army of oni kings to lay waste to the land.