Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions

[Username17]

Nether Darts mostly is your end game. You have a lot of krill that people have to hack through and you're shelling the enemy with giant machine gun barrages of psychic death. That's a late game battle tactic right there.

Your real finishing move is teleporting in a communion big enough to cast Master Enslave with your own army already along for the ride. Literally appear out of the ether and steal a third of someone else's end-game army while you murder the rest. But most games will have a winner declared before it gets to that point.

-Username17

[Orca]

Actually automated site searching skips provinces which already have 2 sites found, not 3. With the standard site percentage this is actually a pretty sensible cutoff.

One more bug is that the water 2 spell which finds all underwater elemental sites doesn't skip provinces where you've already got a mage casting that spell - if you've got 3 mages casting Voice of Tiamat and you don't change the target, they will all cast it on the same province.

[cthulhu]

So what causes the awesome bug on battlemaps where the terrian dissappears and is replaced by a wire grid?

[Akula]

Pushing g and then something else. That is, believe it or not, a feature.

[cthulhu]

rofl, awesome.

[Orion]

Note to FBMF: this thread was supposed to go in MPSIMS

Okay, cruising with single-player kailasa, I killed 2 of my enemies and am fighting on 2 fronts against the remaining players. That's okay, I have about the territory, army, income, etc. of both put togehter. (Mictlan somehow outresearched me dramatically, but I am catching up.) But this game is frustrating me too much to continue, due to several problems that cropped up in the last few turns:

1: all the forts and ownership flags on the map have GONE AWAY. Temples are still visible, as are armies, but I have trouble distinguish independents from enemies armies of independents. And remembering where my forts are. Weirdly, no other games on this computer are affected.

2: Random events keep dropping giant hordes of indy barbarians on my provinces. They can kill my PD 20. Is this an actual random event, or a spell?

3: Independent heavy cavalry is everywhere and I'm not sure how to fight them. They make mincemeat of my blessed Yakshas. I know conventional advice is to throw a line for chaff in front to soak the charges, but (a) I have no money for that and (b) the charge wasn't the problem (they all have twist fate). No, they just whiff ineffectively and get ground down. just researched strength of giants, maybe that will help?

4: Fucking magnets, how do they work? Sauromatia has sent about 20 Sauromatian riders all through my land, stomping on my PD. How do I stop them or catch them? Every turn i retake the land they left, but I don't want to lose more temples.

5: When I put 3 guys autocasting augury, they all targeted the same province next turn.

[name_here]

1. That's a new one on me. You may have hit the wrong button.

2. Pretty sure that's a random event

3.
A) Markata are like 5 gold. It's not seriously a big deal
B) That and Iron Bane are pretty good/
4. The thing to remember is that non-flyers can only move to an adjacent enemy territory. You might be able to head them off that way. Failing that, magic resolves before movement, and teleporting in will override movement orders. enter into the magic battle phase thingy, where remote army spells and teleported dudes resolve before moving onto some other stuff, then assassinations, then movement and fighting.

EDIT: I am dumb.

[angelfromanotherpin]

1: all the forts and ownership flags on the map have GONE AWAY. Temples are still visible, as are armies, but I have trouble distinguish independents from enemies armies of independents. And remembering where my forts are. Weirdly, no other games on this computer are affected.

Various number keys toggle various different things as shown or not on the map. Flags and forts are number 1.

[cthulhu]

Yeah, the flags and forts thing is a hot key that caused me some degree of puzzlement.

The manual helpfully doesn't mention all the hotkeys or have them in one place.

[K]

1: all the forts and ownership flags on the map have GONE AWAY. Temples are still visible, as are armies, but I have trouble distinguish independents from enemies armies of independents. And remembering where my forts are. Weirdly, no other games on this computer are affected.

There is a hotkey to see only provinces and no flags. You hit it it seems. Go back to the map settings and turn it back on.

2: Random events keep dropping giant hordes of indy barbarians on my provinces. They can kill my PD 20. Is this an actual random event, or a spell?

Random event. You have bad Luck scales, right? Well, this is the price of bad luck.

3: Independent heavy cavalry is everywhere and I'm not sure how to fight them. They make mincemeat of my blessed Yakshas. I know conventional advice is to throw a line for chaff in front to soak the charges, but (a) I have no money for that and (b) the charge wasn't the problem (they all have twist fate). No, they just whiff ineffectively and get ground down. just researched strength of giants, maybe that will help?

Basically, any magic is your answer. As an earth power, even Earth Meld can be devastating.

Kailasa gets Astral, right? Well, Mind Burn is an excellent low level killer.

4: Fucking magnets, how do they work? Sauromatia has sent about 20 Sauromatian riders all through my land, stomping on my PD. How do I stop them or catch them? Every turn i retake the land they left, but I don't want to lose more temples.

Well, you can either try to anticipate where they will be next and be there or try to do a magic battle. Magic battles take place before the move or combat phase, so if you can Cloud Trapeze or Teleport in a SC you can smash them before they move, or send in a whole army with spells like Faery Trod.

You can also use assassination spells to just kill the commanders, which means the army can't move.

5: When I put 3 guys autocasting augury, they all targeted the same province next turn.

Looks like you are out of provinces that meet the criteria for autocast. Now cast manually.

[angelfromanotherpin]

The manual helpfully doesn't mention all the hotkeys or have them in one place.

Pg 294 (last page) of my manual has them.

[Orion]

I have positive luck scales. I'm pretty sure somebody is casting Raging Hearts on me.

[K]

I have positive luck scales. I'm pretty sure somebody is casting Raging Hearts on me.

Positive luck scales and Turmoil can still mean a lot of bad events.

If someone is casting spells on you, you should see unrest going up in those provinces. Not managing unrest causes barbarians and knights to pop up.

[Zinegata]

I'm not sure. I think the Barbarian invasion can only come from an event.

There are other spells that cause an NPC third party to invade you, but they're generally in the form of phantoms, ghosts, and nastier stuff than Barbarians.

That being said, how's your magic looking?

[name_here]

If you've got the research, you could try domeing random provinces and see what you get.

[Avoraciopoctules]

So I'm playing a quasi-PBEM game. The map is designed for single player, and it has some nonstandard stuff in it. Screenshot below.



What does MA Mictlan need to take this province? Living statues have high Protection and the morale of skeletons. I don't know if the Golem has gear, and I haven't looked at Gargoyles yet. Do living statues have immunity to Fire/Cold?

I can field a little over a hundred mixed Jaguar, Sun, and regular warriors without much trouble. I have a sucky Rainbow bless (the guy who started the game designed my pretender after I gave him some vague instructions over the phone), but I can use 8 evoker priests and 4 drakes as fire support to my main combatants.

And yeah, that province in the bottom right corner is full of War Trolls. I am fighting towards the east corner of the map in the hopes of getting to someplace with decent gold income. Gems are doing pretty well, though. I think this is still year 1.

[K]

That golem is a badass Astral and I think Earth mage. Basically, you need a high-end army to take it. Marble warriors are high protection and don't fatigue.

The war trolls are a lot easier. Masses of indie archers should solve that problem.

[Grek]

Golems don't normally have earth magic, just S3.

[Username17]

Antatus is a special poptype.

Com: 471 (Golem) Antatus
Item: Marble Armor
Item: Crown of Command
Item: Herald Lance
Item: Scutata Volturnus
Guards: 474 (Living Statues)
Pop: 474 (Living Statues)
Pop: 542 (Gargoyles)

He will own you. Also, Gargoyles are hard core. They cost 10 gems a piece and people upgrade them to super combatants with the Gift of Reason fairly often.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

I just advanced time a bit in a test game to see how my reserve army would do.

This was a nasty fight. But I had a large numerical advantage, decent troops, and around 12 mages throwing level 2 spells. The gargoyles were really hardcore, but helpless when magically stunlocked. The statues took some damage and slowdown from my attack spells. And the golem was significantly weakened when my troops got to it.

I probably would have a much nastier time if these weren't indies. Those gargoyles attacked my soldiers in front rather than the mages. The golem didn't attack until my soldiers closed with it.

[K]

High-end indies are often taken better with assassination. Even an out of the box seducer or assassin with a Skull Talisman can take even powerful mages (though a Golem mage or a Mother of Nature is just going to be a beast).

Seduction is also occasionally useful for filling out types of magic you don't have or getting unique magic items. I once got a A6 indie illusionist that way (an extremely rare indie province full of phantasmal troops), but occasionally lucky shamans or Wizards end up with magic you want. Bloodhedge Druids are also nice since they often guard provinces but don't actually show up as recruitables..

Hilariously, Antatus also can't be seduced.

[Akula]

But, because he cannot run away, you get a nice piece of magical gear if you have troops that are hardcore enough to stab him in the face.

[cthulhu]

So bootstrapping magical access - does someone know a guide to leveraging it up? Things like building out nature or earth access from a 1N or 1E indie mage or whatever.

Franks EA TC guide has some content, but often it's built from a perspective that would be useless to, say, Maginion or whatever

[Akula]

So bootstrapping magical access - does someone know a guide to leveraging it up? Things like building out nature or earth access from a 1N or 1E indie mage or whatever.

Franks EA TC guide has some content, but often it's built from a perspective that would be useless to, say, Maginion or whatever

For N the sequence is N2+thistle mace=N3 then either S1 N3=Moonvine Bracelet or RoS/RoW (S5 and S6) gets N4 which gets Ivy Kings which (with two boosters already assumed) will get you a treelord's staff. Which will get you N6-7.

E is just E2=Earth Boots=Troll King+Bloodstone or Elemental Staff or RoW=E5 which will get you Forge of the Ancients.

You need N5 or A4 to break into air. N5 gets fairy queens who can (with RoW) forge boosters and summon queens, who can take the gear and cast anything you care about.

[Zinegata]

So bootstrapping magical access - does someone know a guide to leveraging it up? Things like building out nature or earth access from a 1N or 1E indie mage or whatever.

Franks EA TC guide has some content, but often it's built from a perspective that would be useless to, say, Maginion or whatever

Here's a good guide.

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:Sec ... ster_guide

Generally, use a combination of item forging and summoning stuff that can cast spells. Also, it's usually mandatory to have 2 minimum in a path to start pumping it up to max, so some empowering may be needed if you start with 1N Shamans.