Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Fri Dec 10, 2010 3:13 pm

Still MA Ry'leh:

Is... organizing say, indie Priests, and equipping them, and having them act as mini groups of sacred troops, a good idea in Dom3? I'm thinking of how to make different types of elite units, that cost different power grades. So, a cleric in some minimal armour; and a self bless, can act like sacred.... but it's not really worth it.

I've got my hands on the amazon scary cavalry; which might be useful as part of my plans. fear inducing units can be really useful at messing with an enemies plans.

I'm getting to the point where... spies, and temple building mage-priests are purchased as much as my actual researchers and mages.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri Dec 10, 2010 4:41 pm

No, not a good idea. As MA Ryleh, you want to open up that Void Gate and yank yourself out a Vastness or some other big nasty and use that as a SC chasis.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Fri Dec 10, 2010 5:11 pm

Grek wrote:No, not a good idea. As MA Ryleh, you want to open up that Void Gate and yank yourself out a Vastness or some other big nasty and use that as a SC chasis.

Vastnesses are not SCs. They do not have the slots to be truly durable. They big advantage they have is map move 10 and teleport.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Fri Dec 10, 2010 11:36 pm

I've never really looked at the stats of Ryleh stuff. The point still stands, though, you want to get something big and nasty out of the Void Gate, not an indie priest.

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 12:14 am

Oh, well, yeah. I was just thinking of a way to use my priests aside from as a way to stack dom change in a single province at a time. Apparently Priests can stack their dom increase, as long as the Dominion in the province was less than their level. So, 9 priests, could potentially raise the dom by 9 ranks; as long as the Dom was less than their current Dom.

Going to summon some elemental royalty; awake some gargoyles, and cast the various gem-creating enchantments.

Right now my different graphs are on a constantly asymmetric increase. My research lagged for much of year 1; but in year 2 went beyond everyone's, it's nearly a straight line upwards; while the AIs are plodding along with slowly increasing linear growth.

In playing a very large map, I'm giving serious consideration to building many different SCs, and equipping them to take on different regions of the map.

First though; dominate the sea I'm in; and expand into the other major sea that I have seen to be empty. I had Eyes of God active for a few rounds to see what the map was like. Then an AI also cast the spell. I'm going to burn their eyes out using Oedipus' 'whatever' spell; and recast EoG with a low end astral mage who gets to 5S via 3-4 boosters (cap, coin, both rings; so any 1S caster of mine can cast the ritual).

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 1:39 am

Yeah, no. Indie priests aren't cost-effective fighters... they're weak unarmored humans with below-average stats, that just happen to be sacred. If you're Mictlan or someone else with a very heavy bless, you might maybe consider it... but if you are such a race, you no doubt have better uses for weak priests, like blessing your actual sacreds.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 11:10 am

I tend to think Indie priests only exist to build Temples

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Sat Dec 11, 2010 2:56 pm

Zinegata wrote:I tend to think Indie priests only exist to build Temples

They can also lead Ashdod early expansion groups.

K · Post by K » Sat Dec 11, 2010 9:02 pm

If you are nation that makes undead with priests, you use indie priests for that. As Lanka, I make sure to spit out a few indie priest factories for mass monkey ghoul production.

If you aren't blessed with undead production, then they tend to get used as as Banishment spammers or temple production.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Dec 17, 2010 5:09 pm

Nations with freespawn are:
EA and MA Pangea
LA Ermor
LA R'ley

Did I miss some?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Dec 17, 2010 5:33 pm

Korwin wrote:Nations with freespawn are:
EA and MA Pangea
LA Ermor
LA R'ley

Did I miss some?

Depends on how you define FreeSpawn.

LA Ermor and LA Rlyeh are the only nations whose dominion spawns troops inherently. EA and MA Pangaea and EA Rlyeh have commanders available in their castles who cause freespawn troops to appear in provinces they are camping in, and every age of Pangaea has access to a spell that kills all their population and freespawns undead all over the place. LA Ulm has a commander they can buy in their home province who has a summon allies command, and a national summoning at level 0 that makes a commander who freespawns troops. MA Ermor and EA Lanka have the special power where their normal priests can reanimate the dead. Every era of Mictlan can kill a bunch of bloodslaves at high blood research to make Onaquis, who dominion spawn beast bats.

So where do you draw the line?

-Username17

internet_superbot · Post by **internet_superbot** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 5:51 pm

LA Ulm gets wolves. As well, mictlan gets free slave warriors, a few pretenders (in CBM especially) also spawn free troops.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 5:55 pm

I'd count freespawn as being anything that appears without requiring gold, gems, or a turn from someone who could do something more valuable instead.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sat Dec 18, 2010 6:10 pm

Anybody have tips on LA C'tis? I haven't played them very much, but I heard the following.

- They have a worse selection of infantry than previous ages with slave lizards gone
- A decent Fire minor / Death major mages recruit-anywhere mage
- Undead priests summonable with no research, who can reanimate undead drakes and chariots at the higher end.
- Slingers that produce poison clouds where they hit

At lower research levels, they can tie up enemies in melee while the poison clouds kill off foes faster than them thanks to racial poison resistance. Then priests can turn the bodies into soulless after battle with reanimation, keeping a good supply of melee screens.

A chaff-reanimation strategy isn't as good as M-or-LA Ermor's, but can still be good.

Banefire is a good evocation research goal.

Your level 2 and 3 priests can make decent-to-good thugs if you pull them off reanimation duty.

At the cheesy end of things, Life After Death combined with damage auras might be able to get you upkeep-free mages at higher research levels.

K · Post by K » Sun Dec 19, 2010 2:14 am

Soulless kind of blow. They have high STR and so are great for knocking down fortresses, but their Att and Def is just terrible.

Your undead priests summon awesome lizard versions of longdead and soulless. So awesome they are almost as good as normal troops. Tomb chariots are neat because they are are tramplers and don't fatigue out.

Ctis does Death in a big way. This means spamming skeles in battle and tossing AoEs that undead ignore. Poison is great, but the various Death spells are great too.

You also get some neat level 0 summons. Undead Tomb Kings seem ideal for being Thugs or even SCs.

Ctis in the Late Era also gets a little Astral. This is a big deal because you want Darkness. It makes your lame free undead into actual troops (though even soulless still kinda blow).

Your Mages are also big enough to survive a Bone Grinding. They also want a Soul Vortex (I think ghouls can be drained... you should check) and Disintegration spam.

Banefire is just awesome. Even SCs and pretenders drop when hit by these.

You can also natively make Burning Skulls. With a Fire random you can start pulling off the regular fire tricks, and with an Astral Random you can pull out the big fire magic.

Astral also feeds on itself. Between Power of the Spheres, Light of the Northern Star, and Communions you can basically hit any Astral mark you want to.

You do suck at getting Astral Communion slaves. Hope for a province with Sages or Lizard Shamans or something. Or get some Blood going.

Remember that Sauromancers are recruit anywhere. That's huge.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 4:42 am

Thanks for the advice. Any suggestions as far as pretenders go? I'm thinking that an awake SC might be nice for getting the opportunity for site searching as early as possible and expanding while still building up force. If Astral is both available and useful, would an astral pretender be good for enhancing that, possibly through making boosters?

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 4:50 am

A few souless are useful mixed in with long dead. You can also make them with indie priests so.

K · Post by K » Sun Dec 19, 2010 6:20 am

cthulhu wrote:A few souless are useful mixed in with long dead. You can also make them with indie priests so.

LA C'tis actually can't make them with indie priests. They don't get undead reanimation with normal priests, they get the ability to summon undead priests (and undead or demon priests of any nation can reanimate).

Nachtigallerator · Post by **Nachtigallerator** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 12:51 pm

I'm having a more technical problem with the game, but I'll just go ahead and post here anyway: What's going on when I reinstalled the game and suddendly, it crashes in turn one and spits out a "ConvArmyNbr" error, despite having worked fine with exactly the same configurations (patch level, key) before?

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 1:07 pm

Nachtigallerator wrote:I'm having a more technical problem with the game, but I'll just go ahead and post here anyway: What's going on when I reinstalled the game and suddendly, it crashes in turn one and spits out a "ConvArmyNbr" error, despite having worked fine with exactly the same configurations (patch level, key) before?

that's an invalid key error, so delete the key file in the root directoy of the game and try again.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Sun Dec 19, 2010 10:58 pm

I tried a couple of pretenders out, and discovered that poison auras really aren't as good as I had hoped. Mother of Monsters is not a good turn-1 SC.

I'm thinking that I want to go with a dragon pretender for LA C'tis. Red or blue? Or green, I guess. We might end up using CBM, and that boosts the effectiveness of poison breath. I doubt that I'll be doing much site searching with an SC, so the magical diversity offered by blue is less significant. If I go with a red dragon, I don't get extra fatigue on my SC with Heat 3 scales. Green gives the opportunity for personal regeneration, and Blue might make speed boosts viable. Any suggestions? I could go with any of the three, but I'm leaning hardest towards the Red Dragon at the moment.

K · Post by K » Sun Dec 19, 2010 11:15 pm

Avoraciopoctules wrote:I tried a couple of pretenders out, and discovered that poison auras really aren't as good as I had hoped. Mother of Monsters is not a good turn-1 SC.

I'm thinking that I want to go with a dragon pretender for LA C'tis. Red or blue? Or green, I guess. We might end up using CBM, and that boosts the effectiveness of poison breath. I doubt that I'll be doing much site searching with an SC, so the magical diversity offered by blue is less significant. If I go with a red dragon, I don't get extra fatigue on my SC with Heat 3 scales. Green gives the opportunity for personal regeneration, and Blue might make speed boosts viable. Any suggestions? I could go with any of the three, but I'm leaning hardest towards the Red Dragon at the moment.

Dragons should be red or blue because the green gets a poison breath that kind of sucks.

Prince of Death is a classic SC. Fear + Awe is awesome.

Cyclops is also nice with his giant Protection that you increase with Earth.

Avoraciopoctules · Post by **Avoraciopoctules** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 12:21 am

Princes of Death are pretty awesome, but the combination of the flavor and the fact that they've been overused in the LPs I've followed makes me kinda reluctant to pick them.

Cyclops is cool though. All sorts of neat stuff visible there. I haven't gotten the chance to really utilize one yet, but the ridiculuous armor combined with fear aura looks like it would make for a really fun titan type. I'd want to exploit the fire immunity for something, but all I can think of offhand is fire spells/items neither the pretender nor the nation would be able to access. Then again, there's a decent chance I'd be going up against Abysia.

I've heard the blue dragon has more AOE on its breath weapon. Is that true?

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 12:58 am

Why is the monolith armour regarded as kinda shitty? Is it because no-one who can use the regeneration and protection can handle the encumberance?

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Mon Dec 20, 2010 1:23 am

Also, in my Ryleh game I've discovered a 20% discount enchantment site. I have enchantment 0, so is there anything worth teching up for over other priorities