Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions

[K]

Midgard: Van

Personally, I've never been terribly impressed with Vans. They're strong units but they're expensive and hard to mass.

Moreover, Midgard gets Skinshifters anyway, which can cover a lot of your early rushing needs. You're probably better off with a bless for your Vanjarl commanders, who make good thugs.

Vans are awesome until someone realizes that archers take them down like little bitches. I've played with an Earth Bless on them to avoid that issue, but it never seems to work out.

[koz]

OK, so I've tried to play MA Marignon using an F9/S9 bless like Frank suggested, but it never seems to work well for me. Could someone (preferably Frank) tell me in a bit more detail how the pretender is meant to be built, and how you are supposed to play the nation in general with that strategy, because I'm obviously missing something.

[DSMatticus]

OK, so I've tried to play MA Marignon using an F9/S9 bless like Frank suggested, but it never seems to work well for me. Could someone (preferably Frank) tell me in a bit more detail how the pretender is meant to be built, and how you are supposed to play the nation in general with that strategy, because I'm obviously missing something.

Flagellants will never be able to go face-to-face melee with anyone. You need a line-holding unit that is not flagellants that your enemy starts fighting while your flagellants catch up, flank, and insta-gib everything they hit. Ideally, the enemy's first attack goes into a front-line unit with some survivability; their second attack goes into front-line units and the S9 bless. And every attack after that is just going to drop flagellants like flies.

You could also try mixing flagellants into your line-holders at a 2 unit : 1 flagellant ratio or so, letting you deflect some attacks from flagellants to other units while delivering out flagellant pain.

Disclaimer: I may be retarded and everything I just said is wrong. But it's what I would try next, anyway.

[Username17]

First off: you Imprison the Big Giant Head and get F9/S9. That gives you 132 points to spend at Dominion 3. You can blow all that on Dominion 8 and have neutral scales. I like buying a small amount of Order, Growth, and Magic for a lot of Heat and a little Misfortune, but whatever. It honestly depends on how long of a game you plan on having.

For the first couple of turns you make 8 Flagellants, 1 Man At Arms, and as many Crossbowmen as you can afford. On turn one you make a High Inquisitor, and after that you make Grand Masters when you can afford them, High Inquisitors when you have a new province conquering army to send out, and Witch Hunters the rest of the time.

You research Evocation until you get 2 or three and then start branching out. Your magic diversity sucks ass, but your armies and casters are powerful in combat and your late game summons are very powerful and will eventually get you a fully formed air suit. In the meantime, you're really hoping you can get something else going by conquering Amazons or some shit.

Remember to put your men at arms far enough forward that indies don't end up shooting at your archers, and you're good. You're going to try to win your first war with Witch Hunters spamming Fireball and your last war with a Seraph casting Fog Warriors.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

In case it wasn't clear, what Frank is saying is that you should add one Man-at-Arms as an arrow catcher with every expansion army. Flagellants don't have armor and die very, very rapidly against archer armies.

I would also suggest to be picky with who you fight. 8 Flagellants may be able to take on weaker targets (say 20 enemy troops), but against bigger enemy stacks you'll probably need more Xbowmen or Flagellants to thin out the enemy ranks.

[DSMatticus]

Really simple newb question: immortal commander + items + death. Items do what now?

[Zinegata]

I'm pretty sure that at the minimum the items are lost, and that they may get dropped and picked up by the enemy.

[Username17]

Picked up by the winner, not necessarily the enemy.

I think you actually have a higher chance of recovering items from your own dead guys than you do from dead and defeated enemies.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

Oops, my mistake. Yes, the winner.

[tenuki]

You wouldn't try to bless rush with Gibbors, but Levites are build-anywhere medium infantry that happen to be sacred. That is worth considering a bless for, at which point Gibbors are lot more interesting to build.

I'm currently on my way to winning a game (vanilla + EDM) using Gath with an F4W4S9 bless. It's easily the best nation/build I've played so far.

[DSMatticus]

So, I have thugs who can cast soul vortex. How do I get them to wade into melee and occasionally cast soul vortex? I don't want 'attack closest' to turn off their spells. What's the proper scripting here?

[Korwin]

You cast Soul vortex at the beginning. Its an buff.
Then you wade into melee.

[DSMatticus]

Oh. I see. For some reason I thought it was an attack spell.

[Username17]

Oh. I see. For some reason I thought it was an attack spell.

Soul Vortex goes off every turn. So once you cast it, you'd better get away from the rest of your army, because it will drain anyone nearby - friend or foe. As a buff, it extends across communions, and you can end up killing your own army as MA Ermor by having all your slaves sprout Soul Vortices.

-Username17

[Orion]

So what are effective spells to use against Ashdod giants? I was looking at fear spells, but unsure how many it takes to get through Morale 17. I was looking at fatigue spells, but it looks like blessed giants are seriously Enc 0. Earth Meld looks tempting, but is it opposed by Strength?

[DSMatticus]

So what are effective spells to use against Ashdod giants? I was looking at fear spells, but unsure how many it takes to get through Morale 17. I was looking at fatigue spells, but it looks like blessed giants are seriously Enc 0. Earth Meld looks tempting, but is it opposed by Strength?

I hear scripting naked, unguarded mages to attack closest is super effective.

I've been hurt by sleep spam by Pangaea before. It took a pretty decent number of casters, but I lost the battle. YMMV, get a second opinion, etc, etc. Otherwise, air and water seem to have effective options, given the constant beatdowns Caelum gives me in all my games.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Yeah, shock and cold damage bypass most of the giants' defenses. You need to be able to pile on a bunch to overcome the pile of hp/regeneration bless, but it's not starting in a hole like physical or fire damage, or trying to overcome a large defensive value like anything targeting MR or morale.

[K]

Ashod giants are killable by basic magery.

So really anything that you'd use for kill thugs. Fatigue spells like Sleep Cloud and Numbness are super cheap and easy, hard-hitting damage spells like Lightning or Frozen Heart, and weird crap like Paralyze or Petrify work reasonably well (if they punch past MR in the case of spells like Paralyze).

Fear is a special case. It doesn't check MR usually and it does a weird thing where it sometimes checks a lower version of the Morale stat, but most importantly it does force Rout checks and those will succeed eventually because of exploding dice on DRN rolls. This makes Fear wildly effective if spammed, but leads to the problem where you didn't actually kill the thing you wanted to kill.

I've done some devastating work with Fear-based armies, but usually only when I forced people to rout and they had no provinces to go into.

[MisterDee]

So I've played a bit - I've won my share of games against the normal AI (just to figure out the basic gameplay and stuff) - I even took a game to it's bitter end.

I'm now playing on hard (one try before jumping to the toughest difficulty level) to hone my skills - and I want to work out what are the trap options I've been falling into, and the various options I'm under-utilizing.

First - I'm using mercenaries a lot in the early game. Like, all of the available ones if I can get them - which is easy since vs. the computer, a bid of a few golds above the minimum pretty much guarantees you'll get their services.

Obviously, that's not going to work in multiplayer - if mercenaries are any good, there will be fierce competition for their services. And if they aren't...

(Note that as the game advances, I tend to suicide the various mercenary units on forlorn hopes, just so that the AI don't get them at an innopportune moment)

Second - I'm still horribly bad at Thug / SC use. I can make a workable indie-conquering SC, and it's still useful as a bonus to an attacking force later on - but I've seen a somewhat equipped King of Earth die against a normal enemy province. Any pointers would be much appreciated.

Third - I haven't played with battle mages a lot yet. This game I'm starting with Evocation research early on, to force myself to use them. But from what I gather, the name of the game is Communions. So how do I set those up to work properly?

Fourth - Is there a good database of stats for units, spells and items anywhere?

[DSMatticus]

First - I'm using mercenaries a lot in the early game. Like, all of the available ones if I can get them - which is easy since vs. the computer, a bid of a few golds above the minimum pretty much guarantees you'll get their services.

I've been lucky snatching mercenaries when I want them. I usually bid a little excessively, though. The mercenaries that will really go like hotcakes are amphibious ones, or elephants, or things like that.

Second - I'm still horribly bad at Thug / SC use. I can make a workable indie-conquering SC, and it's still useful as a bonus to an attacking force later on - but I've seen a somewhat equipped King of Earth die against a normal enemy province. Any pointers would be much appreciated.

There are three basic components of a thug.
1) Damage mitigation. This can be in forms you'd expect, like a huge defense score, high protection, and other forms, like awe, regeneration, self-buffs like mistform, mirror image, ethereal body, and luck. You want to combine as many of these as possible for as cheaply as possible. Also: vine shields. They entangle people in melee. Always a good choice.
2) Something to win with before your army auto-routs when the time limit is up. An AoE weapon like firebrand or frostbrand. Fear; your enemies WILL fail a morale check eventually, and they will run.
3) Finally: FATIGUE MITIGATION! Fatigue will kill ANYONE given enough time. As your fatigue goes up, you start getting criticals. Criticals are huge piles of damage which ignore your awesome protection. You need reinvig at least equal to your encumbrance. Or you can use undead or special beings who have a basic encumbrance of 0, which means they never get tired fighting, ever (but they do from spells).

Note: differently stacked out thugs do differently against different units. Ethereal body is useless if your enemy is hauling around magic weapons. Awe is less useful against high morale armies. It takes a lot of protection to make you stop worrying about barbarians or other people with high damage like that. But barbarians have low morale, and will rout like a bitch, so that's good news.

Third - I haven't played with battle mages a lot yet. This game I'm starting with Evocation research early on, to force myself to use them. But from what I gather, the name of the game is Communions. So how do I set those up to work properly?

That's not necessarily true. Plenty of factions have battlemages which can cast your spells out of the box. Consider Caelum; they have A3 battle mages recruitable everywhere in MA. You mass those guys and cast thunder strike. Even though it's 50 fatigue, that's amazing.

Communions are for taking little mages, like with f1 or a1 or whatever, and turning them into big mages with f3 or a3, then dropping mid-level evocation spells. Also, you can use them to bust out higher-level spells than any recruitable caster you might have, so you can drop spells like fire storm without an f5 mage.

I also recommend learning communions later. That's a nightmare unto itself.

[Zinegata]

First - I'm using mercenaries a lot in the early game. Like, all of the available ones if I can get them - which is easy since vs. the computer, a bid of a few golds above the minimum pretty much guarantees you'll get their services.

Some mercs are actually very good for the price, and it's not often that players even bid for them in multiplayer. Knowing which ones are good or trash is part of the game.

By the end game however most mercs are inferior to simply recruiting an equivalent number of troops.

Second - I'm still horribly bad at Thug / SC use. I can make a workable indie-conquering SC, and it's still useful as a bonus to an attacking force later on - but I've seen a somewhat equipped King of Earth die against a normal enemy province. Any pointers would be much appreciated.

It almost always boils down to gear. It's very hard to get a thug or SC killed if they have a Flame Brand, a Shield of Gleaming Gold, and Boots of the Messenger unless the enemy has specific counters.

Third - I haven't played with battle mages a lot yet. This game I'm starting with Evocation research early on, to force myself to use them. But from what I gather, the name of the game is Communions. So how do I set those up to work properly?

Mass Evoc spam tends to win a lot of battles, but it doesn't necessarily involve communions. Traditional communions are more for casting really big spells, while reverse communions are meant to support mass evoc spam.

I strongly suggest playing EA Ermor first, and spam fireballs like crazy.

Fourth - Is there a good database of stats for units, spells and items anywhere?

There used to be a wiki but it's still down.

[koz]

So... Bogarus have a shit-tonne of national summons. Are any of them actually worth summoning in any way, shape or form? If so, why? If not, why not?

[Orion]

I just made a test game and am popping them out to look at them. I will edit in my completely uninformed opinion as I go.

Fire Summons

Firebird: This looks like crap. 2 gems is a lot to pay for a melee troop with neither protection nor hit points, and you can't make them fast enough to matter.

Zmey: These look decent. They're not amazing or something to base a strategy around, but might well be the best thing you have to dump fire gems into. Each one has 5 shots of "fire breath", which is basically a Fireball with shorter range, so it's similar to forging itemspam items but without the commander management.

Air Summons

Simargl are completely worthless in combat but have a massive patrol value and don't cost upkeep. I could see popping out a half-dozen of them if I was afraid of spies and assassins, or if I wanted to run a taxation game.

Lady Midday is an absurdly good shock troop for the gem cost, coming in with fear, 19 damage, disease, and ethereality. The question is whether, summoning them 1 at a time, you can get enough to matter.

Cloud Vila is a decent caster for the price. If you can make it (probably with your god) it will be your biggest Air mage (other than your god). It's also an N2 mage which could theoretically be a diversity pick but hopefull you have that taken care of already.

Water Summons

Rusalkas are unexciting unless you desperately need the underwater commander. Vodyanoi bootstrap into bigger Water, and have clamming paths. You can make a Beregina if you need a big water mage on land for some reason, but probably shouldn't. Bukavacs are dumb.

Death Summons

A Likho costs 10 gems and sits there spamming curse. That's terrible.

Astral Summons

Sirin are terrible. Alkonost is a flying H3 which some factions would kill for but you have recruitable H3s and nothing worth blessing. Gamayun don't give you anything you don't already have but if you were rolling in astral pearls you could do worse than popping out a pile of them to use as battle mages.

Nature Summons

Mountain Vila is a powerful healer, so if you have afflictions on a god or Sc it might be worth opping one out. Leshiy is a really powerful forger and ritualist but can't go anywhere and it absurdly expensive, so only make it if you need that Air/Earth crosspath or something.

[Winnah]

Simargl: Good patrollers. Not good in combat. Difficult to mass, due to only summoning one at a time.

Lady Midday: Extraordinarily good unit for the cost, but probably only available from an Air/Death Starets. They could be doing better things than summoning these one at a time.

Firebird: Reduces bad events. Difficult to mass for same reason as Simargl. Fragile, but will probably do some damage before getting slaughtered.

Zmey: Kind of okay...There is an annoying bug that makes it difficult to script their fire breath attack reliably. They slowly hop forward until they are in range instead of flying into range and blasting. Unscripted, expect a lot of friendly fire. Scripted just to attack...they are underwhelming against armies, decent against small forces of elites and thugs.

Likho: I keep meaning to play around with the Likho to see what they are capable of, but I usually have a better use for death gems. They do alter the scales of their current location toward misfortune, so massing them and sending them into enemy territory might be a thing...but I doubt it.

Sirin: No. Seduction is OK, but they can't do much in a failed seduction attempt.

Rusalka: Another Seduction unit. Amphibious, undead, Water and Death access. You can start a Rusalka pyramid scheme of sorts with enough gems and access to water bracelets. On a failed seduction you can just set them to spam Frozen Heart, or Quickness and Breath of Winter if they are holding a weapon.

Vodyanoy: Aquatic only. Clam Factory.

Alkonost: Decent flying leader, Standard and Priest. It may be worth summoning the occasional H3, if you don't want to produce them from your capital.

Gamayun: Sacred flying Astral/Air/Holy caster. A few of these can lead a communion to cast some big air or astral magic.

Beregina: Good spellcasting unit, expands diversity in N/W/E can lead troops underwater.

Villa: Both the Villa are good units if you can afford them. Capable of thugging, seduction/assassination, expanding your path access of leading your armies. They are healers as well, in case that matters.

Leshiy: I have not used these guys outside of a forest. I usually just set them to researching or patrolling in whatever province they are summoned. Self buff then turn into a giant green bear. I have not really used them offensively in MP at all, other than to capture adjacent forest provinces.

[angelfromanotherpin]

How does MA Pangaea (with full Turmoil/Sloth) expand in the early game without a thug pretender?