So since Dom 3 is being discussed

[Username17]

Starting next to Ulm is a dream come true for any MA Van player. While their arbalests hurt, they are also not terribly accurate and only fire every three turns. Put up a thin line of Huskarls or some shit with a shield of some kind and let the glamor cav run past them. Ulmish troops are garbage, in no small part because a Van lance will explode one anyway, and also because they will tire themselves out before they'll break glamor.

And hey, once you get the Ulmish capital, you'll be treated to delicious Earth gems.

-Username17

[Kaelik]

Is there any way to patch the game without destroying it and without doing each of like elevendy billion patches one after the other in order?

[Orca]

Just apply the latest patch only?

[Kaelik]

Just apply the latest patch only?

I did that. It broke the game.

[The Lunatic Fringe]

Is there any way to patch the game without destroying it and without doing each of like elevendy billion patches one after the other in order?

Did you buy the game?

[name_here]

I'm afraid you may just have to suck it up. Pretty sure there's only 24, and it didn't take me more than an hour at most.

[Kaelik]

I'm afraid you may just have to suck it up. Pretty sure there's only 24, and it didn't take me more than an hour at most.

So to be clear, Orion is full of shit, and patches aren't inclusive?

[Username17]

I'm afraid you may just have to suck it up. Pretty sure there's only 24, and it didn't take me more than an hour at most.

So to be clear, Orion is full of shit, and patches aren't inclusive?

Most patches are inclusive. I have literally no idea if the last patch is inclusive because I have been updating as they came out and haven't done a clean install in like... 3 years. Even from computer to computer I just transfer with a memory stick because the game doesn't leave DRMs or rootkits around and can be played from a copy off another computer (although not in the same game unfortunately).

When you say "break" the game, what do you mean? Do you mean that the patch reset some graphics defaults to ones that aren't compatible with your graphics card and now all your windows are flashing on and off and you can't start a new game or navigate the graphics options? Or do you mean that you were using a pirate serial number that is no longer recognized post patch?

-Username17

[Zinegata]

Shrapnel Games are known to make you install patches one at a time, in order, or it'll muck the game's files up and make it not run at all.

[Kaelik]

I'm afraid you may just have to suck it up. Pretty sure there's only 24, and it didn't take me more than an hour at most.

So to be clear, Orion is full of shit, and patches aren't inclusive?

Most patches are inclusive. I have literally no idea if the last patch is inclusive because I have been updating as they came out and haven't done a clean install in like... 3 years. Even from computer to computer I just transfer with a memory stick because the game doesn't leave DRMs or rootkits around and can be played from a copy off another computer (although not in the same game unfortunately).

When you say "break" the game, what do you mean? Do you mean that the patch reset some graphics defaults to ones that aren't compatible with your graphics card and now all your windows are flashing on and off and you can't start a new game or navigate the graphics options? Or do you mean that you were using a pirate serial number that is no longer recognized post patch?

-Username17

Neither. While I am using a Pirate Serial, I am still trying to learn the game, and have not even tried online.

I can boot up the game. I can play the game. I can do whatever I want, except recruit units as Ashdod.

For whatever retarded reason, I try to recruit units as Ashdod... and the game gives me some fucked up error message and closes.

Can't repeat it, because I uninstalled everything, and am going to try patch by patch.

EDIT: I got greedy and tried to not actually do all patches. So anyway specific error:

"ConvArmyNbr: error"

Okay... So, some googles have returned that apparently... It is in fact the pirating? Which is really retarded, because if you can detect a Pirate, why not give me a fucking thing that says "Bad Pirate" instead of arbitrarily shooting me for playing only one faction?

Meh, I was kinda hoping to actually enjoy the game past the first 6 turns before running into this sort of shit.

Oh well, back to Starcraft.

[Orca]

I had to do a reinstall of Dom 3 a little while back. Just running patch #21 without the others worked for me then, so you don't need to install them all cumulatively.

Yeah, it does sound like it's some weird antipiracy thing.

[Starmaker]

I bought the game this spring on CD and patched with 3.24. It runs fine, and I'm pretty sure it didn't phone home.

[name_here]

So, uh, what does one do with LA arco?

[Username17]

So, uh, what does one do with LA arco?

You stand behind the best War Elephants in the game until you can get your research up to cast devastating late game magics with your Astral/Death Sybils. Seriously, those war elephants are nuts. They are covered in barding and have the protection of a man in plate armor while being protected by not one, but two long spears.

Other than that, you will try to use neutral and summoned troops as quickly as possible due to the fact that your humans in archaic armor concept is rather trite even in the early era. But the Sybil is a great late game caster and the War Elephant is a great early game bringer of death. Linking the two is pretty doable either with scales or a monster god, because LA Arco doesn't really need its bless for anything.

-Username17

[The Lunatic Fringe]

So, I've been playing for a while now, and I was wondering if someone could give me a rundown of the gameplay differences between the eras. I've been doing EA, with a smattering of MA and LA. Is it true that later eras have less magic (and not just a default setting of fewer sites). Why is MA, as Frank wrote, the sanest? Are the later eras unbalanced by increasing site frequency to match the EA?

Also, while my early game is pretty good with a number of nations, things tend to stall for me in the mid- and late game due to logistics issues. Are there any general principles that can help with this?

[Orca]

Early age has generally better spellcasters and worse, or at least lighter-armored troops. Except for some of the magical troops. Those sides which have some decent troops have a real advantage early on, otherwise the game tends to go to the side which gets good thugs online first. There's less complexity IME.

[name_here]

The general trend is that guys get more armor but less magic. Also, crossbows first appear in MA, and longbows become more common. Independants get boosted as well.

Also, most nations have this trend: some magic recruitables or an exotic race in EA, either no magic being recruitables or mixed humans and exotics in MA, and LA is almost exclusively human/bandar/atlantian/etc.

Lastly, LA seems to add an event that swipes some of your gems in the early game.

[Username17]

Lastly, LA seems to add an event that swipes some of your gems in the early game.

Those events exist in all eras.

But regardless, in general:

An Early Age Power Will Have...

• An extremely powerful and possibly ancient recruitable mage and/or monster that is capital only.
• Explicitly magical troop options.
• Less armor.
• Low tech equipment.
• 6 gems/turn in the starting province.

A Middle Age Power Will Have...

• Reduced power (and cost) on the capital only stuff.
• Loss of some of the more "fantastic" military units.
• Better armor and weapons (and correspondingly higher resource costs) on basic troops.
• Better magic on everything but the highest caster.
• 5 gems/turn in the starting province.

So when going from Early to Middle for Caelum, you lose the incredibly ass kicking capital only Eagle Kings, but your build-everywhere mages are incredibly superior and your basic troops get the option to be purchased with armor better than like scale and shit. The Middle Era factions are less "hero centric" - relying more upon armies of their "normal" dudes and "normal" casters rather than on tiny groups of incredibly expensive elites surrounded by trash troops and support casters.

The Late Age is a little weirder. Basically each faction gets some "depressing fact"- which in most cases is something as simple as "Now your angelic ancestors are finally all dead and their power is departing from the world". And then you usually have access to even more heavy armor and higher tech weapons still, and your capital only produces 4 gems. But sometimes the depressing fact is that you are Late Age Rlyeh and you don't even recruit troops at all, because you free spawn gibbering madmen and your dominion kills population and drives commanders insane (yours and your opponents).

There are exceptions of course. Late Age Patala has these Naga Rishis that feel exactly like an Early Age capital-only uber unit and most of their "regular" troops are seriously exactly the same as the Early Age Kailasa monkey-trash. But it's a generally good rule to follow that EA is hero-centric, MA is army-centric, and LA is dominated by EVIL.

-Username17

[name_here]

Two questions:

1) is that LA nation that starts with Bog any good? I suspect it's the country ruled by their DnD characters, but given how the designers are wrt balance, that doesn't mean much even if true. EDIT: Bogarus, and it seems they're russian. Question remains.

2) anyone up for setting up some sort of game, preferably one where Frank and K don't gang up on people on purpose even if the strategic situation merits it?

[Zinegata]

I've been reading through the manual. Individually, each individual civilization is quite interesting and the notion of Pretenders is rather novel. Taken together however... it's a bit of a weird clusterfuck .

I must say I like Ermor though. They start out as Rome-recently-converted-to-Christianity. Only Jesus turns out to be evil, blows up Rome, and turns the Empire into half-undead, half-Inquisition in MA. And in Late Age they turn into 100% zombie apocalypse.

Blessing also sounds pretty insane when you take the Pretender bonuses into account. 100% Afflication? Yikes.

[name_here]

Thing is, blesses are hampered by the tendency of sacreds to be capital only. The nations with recruit-anywhere sacreds tend to have some crippling drawback.

[Akula]

Blessings are nice primarily because they can have a big impact on the early game. When your capital is your only fort and you have zero research done, having a mid-tier spell on turn one can make your initial expansion explode. The most potent blesses long term are earth blesses of all stages and minor (4-6) nature. Most other blesses are cool, and potent, but lose utility as the game goes on.

Death blessings don't do anything significant however. (Affliction chance is calculated by damage taken over total HP as a percentage, regeneration reduces this by 80%) The fact is that afflictions are annoying, but also ignorable to a large extent. I will watch as my troops get afflictions and not care all that much. Mage got a limp; don't care. Soldier weakened; one of a dozen in that army. To a large extent the only afflictions that matter are blind, crippled, feebleminded, mute, and diseased. The first because they will ruin thugs or SCs. The other three because they make mages shit.

EDIT;

1) is that LA nation that starts with Bog any good? I suspect it's the country ruled by their DnD characters, but given how the designers are wrt balance, that doesn't mean much even if true. EDIT: Bogarus, and it seems they're russian. Question remains.

Bogarus is distinguished by having some of the best research mages in the game, particularly a very reasonably priced mage that generates 12 rp/turn base. The troops are horrible, they are slow and not impressive once they get to the fight; well, the cavalry is alright, but won't hold up against the cheaper and easier to mass cavalry that Ti'en Ch'i gets, or really any high end stuff. You have blood magic, and pretty good astral with a little death. So the long game is sort of nice. String together a communion and don't forget to have a supercombatant god. Awake PoD with Earth 4 Death 5 Dom 10 and reasonable scales works well.

[Username17]

Two questions:

1) is that LA nation that starts with Bog any good? I suspect it's the country ruled by their DnD characters, but given how the designers are wrt balance, that doesn't mean much even if true. EDIT: Bogarus, and it seems they're russian. Question remains.

Bogarus has a lot of cool summons, some decent casters, amazing research, and troops who are made of actual garbage. Someone playing Bogarus is basically them writing a letter to the table that they intend to turtle.

2) anyone up for setting up some sort of game, preferably one where Frank and K don't gang up on people on purpose even if the strategic situation merits it?

I'd be up for something like that, but right now I am "in transit". Like, literally I am in Ohio staying at DrPraetorius' house and I leave for Vienna tomorrow and I'll leave for Prague the day after that.

-Username17

[name_here]

I guess someone else who knows the hosting voodoo can start setting it up, and kick things off sunday.

[cthulhu]

I will be home the can i book a slot