Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions

[Akula]

So, I'm playing in a game as MA Ti'en Ch'i against Abbysia and Ermor. (No CBM, but endgame diversity mod is in because someone wanted to try it) As this is a game with Av, site frequency has been jacked through the roof.
I took a imprisoned Oracle with A4 E4 S6 and O3 P0 H0 G0 L3 M1 Dom 7.

The plan is to blitz alteration first, snagging wind guide and putting my self near mother oak; then get construction and evocation, so that my Imperial Geomancers can form a synthetic communing with Imperial Alchemists or just other Geomancers and drop big battlefield spells. (also forging Fever fetishes and Clams)

I'm looking into a wish based endgame and hopefully putting up Forge if I can get one of the factions to subsidize me in exchange for some forge time.

But what I'm worried about is the gap between Alteration 4 and Construction and Evocation 6. I was thinking that I would use cavalry and crossbowmen with glaive infantry (or no infantry at all) to threaten Abbysia, and hopefully Ermor will have better things to do than to jump me.

[Orca]

How do you command the bone fiends? Or... you just don't make to many due to the lack of a decent undead commander and focus on the conventional demons?

Any blood or death commander can lead demons/undead.

[cthulhu]

Yeah the problem is you have bone fiends fucking everywhere and most Hinnom commanders are B1 or B2 so can lead 10 of them, which is one turns summoning.

And all the decent blood commanders ALSO eat pop, so you cannot even pile them up.

It's a bit of a problem.

[name_here]

Mound kings? They're a good 80 undead leadership each.

[Username17]

That cave man shaman you get is Death 1, which gives him Undead/Demon leadership of 30. Also he can cast Mound King for 3 death gems and as mentioned already, that comes with leadership 80.

-Username17

[cthulhu]

Wow I am astonishingly retarded. Yeah, I was using him.. just not for leading undead. Whoops.

[Orion]

What size map do people like to play on? I've been playing on medium random, where I have a tendency to get stomped early by 5 X Difficults unless I play water, sacreds, or giants. I notice, however, from the province numbers thrown around in many nation guides, that quite a few people seem to be playing on large maps. That might explain why they assume indie mages are easier to find than I am finding them, and high-end research more useful.

What size do you guys use, and why?

(Also: Holy shit Bandar Warriors are awesome. I got stomped as Kailasa whenever I didn't take a heavy bless, until I discovered these guys.)

[Akula]

What size map do people like to play on? I've been playing on medium random, where I have a tendency to get stomped early by 5 X Difficults unless I play water, sacreds, or giants. I notice, however, from the province numbers thrown around in many nation guides, that quite a few people seem to be playing on large maps. That might explain why they assume indie mages are easier to find than I am finding them, and high-end research more useful.

I generally ensure about 15-20 provinces per nation when I am playing in singleplayer or testing something. If the AI is stomping you, try turn indie strength up, the AI is dumb enough to attack at a province full of knights or whatever over and over again with the same kind of forces, it can give you more breathing room.

(Also: Holy shit Bandar Warriors are awesome. I got stomped as Kailasa whenever I didn't take a heavy bless, until I discovered these guys.)

Bandar warriors are kinda shitty, they die to arrows real easy and they are expensive. The only good part is that they fling rocks super far, and you can throw a strength of giants on them to make them like archers.

The real key to beating the higher difficulty AIs is to use force multipliers that don't take a lot of mages to pull off. Flaming Arrows, Wooden Warriors, that kind of thing. Massed evocation will work, but you need a lot of it, because Impossible AIs have armies of 600 dudes and that can overwhelm you before blast them all.

LA T'ien Ch'i is one of the best nations to play against the AI, they get free PD (In order scales) and they get tons of nice units per point of PD. Plus a mid range mage. 30 or so PD + one guy to cast Wind guide can stop a AI army cold, or at least damage them. And you can easily do that over and over again. MA Ermor also does well, because you freespawn so many guys that you will actually have more of them than the AI does, and the AI is too dumb to get a bunch of banishers together.

[cthulhu]

Damn it, in testing I still keep boning myself by accident.

It definitely looks powerful though - it would probably be more pro with a nation that didn't have pop eaters as its blood casters.

[cthulhu]

In general strategy news, misfortune scales cause me physical pain. It appears everyone on the shrappers forums plays with them.

In a test game I got a +3000 gold event on turn 10, which is just explosive.

[Orion]

So what's up with the Divine Emperor Chassis? He costs the same as a Great Sage and gets

+5 HP
+3 Defense
+2 Misc. Slots

-2 Hands
-feet
-8 research
+1 Encumbrance

This seems like a slam dunk in favor of the Great Sage. Does the slight HP and defense bump make him a drastically better combat evoker or something? I'm seriously tempted to conclude he must have some special ability not documented in his chassis text.

[name_here]

dominion strength 2?

Well, actually, he could stack Misc boosters for nutcaseness.

But really, it's probably another instance of "BALANCE? YOU SPEAK BALANCE IN MY HALLS?!"

[K]

A lot of Pretenders don't make a lot of sense. Mostly, they have niche uses.

[Username17]

The Divine Emperor has four misc slots. So the comparison is to other 4 misc slot choices. That's the Oracle, and the Crone. Compared to the Oracle you pay more points, have less magic, and a lower dominion. But you can move, and new magic types only cost 10 points instead of 40, also you can wear hats and armor. Clearly, you would sometimes want to do that. Compared to the Crone, you spend 35 more points and you get an extra point of dominion. Also you swap shoes slot for armor (whatever), have better combat stats (whatever), move one point from Death to Astral (though you'll probably end up with both as either), and are less old (cool). The Divine Emperor is on the balance superior to the Crone if you happen to have a Dominion Strength of 6 or more (the cost equivalence point).

Now, four misc slot builds are to my mind pretty niche. I use them so rarely that I don't know if 4 misc slot characters are still able to benefit from two rings of wizardry. I think they probably can. But regardless, of all the Rainbows, the Divine Emperor has the easiest time casting Wish, since he can carry five Astral boosters and probably started life with Astral 4 because it is very cheap. That's an early game utility (hunt for magic sites) and a late game utility (cast Wish). A lot of gods don't necessarily have that.

So I could see running a Divine Emperor. It's just that as Pythium I have shit to do, and probably wouldn't bother.

-Username17

[Orion]

Five astral boosters? That would be Starshine Skullcap, Ring of Sorcery, Ring of Wizardry, Crystal Coin, and...?

Also: I've been tried to design "thematic" pretenders for various nations. It usually ends badly. Huge pretenders for a giant nation, for instance, are kinda silly, but so is the idea of a bunch of giants worshipping a tiny, squishy dude.

[Username17]

Five astral boosters? That would be Starshine Skullcap, Ring of Sorcery, Ring of Wizardry, Crystal Coin, and...?

Also: I've been tried to design "thematic" pretenders for various nations. It usually ends badly. Huge pretenders for a giant nation, for instance, are kinda silly, but so is the idea of a bunch of giants worshipping a tiny, squishy dude.

...Tome of High Power. Or a second Crystal Coin, since last time I checked, the first and last misc slot in a 4 misc slot array were different slots and could provide benefits from the same magic item. It at last used to be that four item slots was technically 1 Misc and 3 Miscs rather than a single block of 4. But you know, whatever. You could also use the Forbidden Light, but I don't recommend it.

-Username17

[Korwin]

Btw. whats the deal with Fever fetishes?

I tried them on indie commanders, but the return was minimal.
Did I something wrong?

[Orion]

Korwin,

Make sure to use a Dwarven Hammer to forge them, and ideally forge them on a Construction Magic Site (fire searching usually finds one eventually).

If your commanders are dying and you're losing the fetishes, remember that you can remove the fetish before the commander dies. He doesn't get undiseased, but you can put the fetish on a new guy. Alternatively, put them on something with a ton of HP, preferably one with a second life so you don't lose it when he bites it.

Finally, If you have Nature 4 on your pretender and forge some Shrouds of the Battle Saints, I'm pretty sure that would keep your fetish bearers alive indefinitely.

----

Frank, I've seen a number of guides suggest using Assassins to clear out the commanders of indie provinces so they rout when attacked. Does this actually work? I made an assassin and plunked him in a province full of Knights. He's been killing a commander per turn for at least 5 turns. Do they ever run out?

[Grek]

Btw. whats the deal with Fever fetishes?

I tried them on indie commanders, but the return was minimal.
Did I something wrong?

The number of gems you get out of a fetish is based on the fraction of health remaining on the commander. The closer to being dead a commander is, the more gems they produce. Regeneration, recuperation, healing and undeadness all drop this amount by a large hit. Thus, your ideal commander is something that has alot of HP, but doesn't regenerate and isn't undead. So, think elephant commander, or Machaka's spider commanders, or a giant of some sort. Indie commanders are actually pretty shitty for this task.

[Username17]

Any Regeneration at all will keep a prospective fever carrier from actually dying. Ring, Shroud, whatever. Also, you can put fever fetishes on old people who are already dying of disease to squeeze gems out of their suffering.

Frank, I've seen a number of guides suggest using Assassins to clear out the commanders of indie provinces so they rout when attacked. Does this actually work? I made an assassin and plunked him in a province full of Knights. He's been killing a commander per turn for at least 5 turns. Do they ever run out?

This "works", but it's very slow in some instances. Yes, Indies run out of commanders, but the number of commanders per province is random, so it's best to have them assassinate until they don't get a battle and then attack. Still, spending 5 turns of commander time to capture an indie province generally isn't as good a return as just fighting the province and accepting some losses.

Also, even the "good" assassins like Machakan Bane Spiders and Jomoni Ninjas don't actually win all their fights. Sometimes bullshit random indies will have like 5 heavy infantry on guard commander, and that is a seriously coinflip fight. Considering the gold you spend on those guys, you're usually better off just taking some losses and taking the province in one battle.

-Username17

[Orion]

Questions:

--Global Enchantments, what can you do if an enemy gets the one you wanted? Specifically, Tir Na Nog cast Mother Oak right before my Pans were going to. What happens if I try to cast it? Or, if using the "dispel" spell, should I cast my Mother Oak on the same turn as Dispel, or on the next turn?

--Upkeep. How do you find out what costs upkeep and how much? I'm currently assuming that animals and undead have no upkeep, and everything else has upkeep proportional to gold cost (half for sacreds). Except for Maenads for some reason?

--How do you get mages to cast single-target spells usefully?

[K]

Questions:

--Global Enchantments, what can you do if an enemy gets the one you wanted? Specifically, Tir Na Nog cast Mother Oak right before my Pans were going to. What happens if I try to cast it? Or, if using the "dispel" spell, should I cast my Mother Oak on the same turn as Dispel, or on the next turn?

When you cast a global that someone else has you have a chance to dispel it if you used more gems over base casting cost to cast it than they did.

Dispel works the same way, but it just removes the global.

If there are five globals up, you get randomly compared to one and might knock it off when you cast yours.

The manual has a whole section on it.

--Upkeep. How do you find out what costs upkeep and how much? I'm currently assuming that animals and undead have no upkeep, and everything else has upkeep proportional to gold cost (half for sacreds). Except for Maenads for some reason?

There really is no hard rule other than looking at the actual code. All recruitables cost upkeep and most summons don't. Exceptions include trolls, for example, who are summons who cost upkeep.

--How do you get mages to cast single-target spells usefully?

There is no clear way to do this. Scripting helps for the first five rounds, but the AI might ignore even that. There are a few rules:

-You will only cast spells that you are in range to do so.

-AI tends to target the most HPs in an area, so giants and stacks of troops.

-AI likes a self-buff the first round.

-Not researching spells is the best way to prevent casting of things you hate. Conjuration is a good one you might want to avoid because it keeps mages from blowing gems on elementals.

-AI will not use gems if it feels the opposition is too weak. It's a constant source of frustration considering that thugs and SCs don't trigger it.

[cthulhu]

So Im starting another vanilla PBEM, with Ryleh. Except it's on the cradle of dominions map with 8 land races and MA atlantis.

While I'd like to go for a Master Lich and do something different, with 199 land provinces and 22 sea proviences, I'm locked into rushing atlantis as hard as possible.

So I was thinking: A Dom 10 <Kraken or Wyrm> with

Order 3

Sloth 3

Cold 3

Growth 1

Luck 3

Magic 1

And hard rushing with crab hybrids and the SC pretender

So my questions are: Which pretender is better and is hard rushing with crab hybrids the most effective strategy.

[Akula]

And hard rushing with crab hybrids and the SC pretender

So my questions are: Which pretender is better and is hard rushing with crab hybrids the most effective strategy.

Krakens are much more fearsome underwater combatants. Wyrms are good for land nations, or underwater nations that want to get onto land. The one point I can think of in the wyrm's favor is that it is poison immune, and lots of underwater troops do the poison weapons thing.

Low attack makes crab hybrids pretty bad at crushing fools between their pincers, so you want to back them up with a group of mindblasting dudes. That will get really expensive really fast.

Honestly, you could go with either pretender and they would both be okay. You should aim for shark attack a soon as you have VoT.

[cthulhu]

And hard rushing with crab hybrids and the SC pretender

So my questions are: Which pretender is better and is hard rushing with crab hybrids the most effective strategy.

Krakens are much more fearsome underwater combatants. Wyrms are good for land nations, or underwater nations that want to get onto land. The one point I can think of in the wyrm's favor is that it is poison immune, and lots of underwater troops do the poison weapons thing.

Low attack makes crab hybrids pretty bad at crushing fools between their pincers, so you want to back them up with a group of mindblasting dudes. That will get really expensive really fast.

Honestly, you could go with either pretender and they would both be okay. You should aim for shark attack a soon as you have VoT.

Looking at the map, I can seriously expect to be at his capital by turn.. 5.

Or him at mine. It depends exactly on the start positions.