The map is tile-based in CoE4, so yeah, the changes are done visually. It might seem like I'm rooting for Dominions 4, but CoE4 has enough advantages that your personal taste will really have to dictate the choice. Dominions 4 has much better strategic gameplay (the combat is not at all pre-determined like it is in CoE4) and much more content, CoE4 on the other hand is more of a tabletop roguelike bearing similarities to Heroes of Might & Magic. Dominions 4 from memory only changes gameplay effects and while freezing rivers might have profound meaning to strategy, it's not terribly exciting to behold.Д«oth are worth the money, and at the end you'll just have to choose between them. It relies on you developing new strategies/using new factions(of which there is many) instead of abusing known tactics for your favorite faction.Д¬oE4 has the benefit of being highly luck-based, so the AI suffers less at the end of the day.ДЄs for the map in CoE4 it's fairly dynamic and there's a considerable amount of change that can both permanently and temporarily happen to areas, it feels very roguelike in that regard. CoE butchers the combat mechanics for the sake of brevity.Д«oth of them are pretty fun, Dominions more so if you enjoy strategy and actual depth, keeping in mind once you develop cheese strategies, the AI will not put up any fight what so ever. The best way to describe differences between CoE and Dom to me is that, while in Dom you play a pretender, in CoE you play a Prophet (or Supercombatant, in the case of some factions).Д¬lick to expand.Dominions has infinitely more varied combat.

A Lord playing in the Dark Ages has to be much more cautious in expansion, since castles are much rarer, while a Witch will find the Empire era more challenging since many swamps have been drained or filled-in. While in Dom eras tend to change the make-up of your factions (since the actual terrain part is handled by the Domain mechanic) in CoE eras considerably change your playstyle (factions remain the same). What seems like smarter AI is merely more choice-limited AI.ДЄnother part I like more about CoE is the era system.

Since Dom is province-based and movement is much more restricted, the AI simply has fewer choices when pursuing expansion lanes. It's something which regularly happens in Heroes (M&M). The AI splits armies when attempting to take over stuff like mines (and swamps/ancient forests if it can use them). In your example, it may have considered your army wasn't powerful enough to defeat its main stack.

CoE AI uses a weighting system for threats.

Conquest of elysium 5 cracked