Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions

[Winnah]

I would look into a high tax strategy, at least for the early game.

Your starting army has a minor patrol bonus, but enought to tax at 150% for the 1st turn with no risk of accumulating unrest.

Your standard forts and mountain forts are expensive, but have a high administration value. With a small squad of your national archers patrolling, you can set tax to 110%-120% and not worry about losing excessive population, depending on province size and growth scales, you may even receive small population gains at that level of taxation.

High income scales will have a dramatic effect on the money you can pull in, which will enable you to afford your expensive capial commanders.

If you diversify your magic, look at the stuff you will have trouble acquiring boosters for; Fire, Air and Nature. You will have no trouble creating astral, earth or water boosters. Death and Blood are dependant on your national summons.

Regarding your national summons, you are going to need a decent astral income if you want to afford them. The national Crystal pretender draws in a small Astral income, but forging Clams is something you are not really equipped for.

Mass producing Avernite Mages and Nephil Shamans might help you set of a fever fetish factory though, as you have decent odds of getting a F/N caster and your capital mages are capable of producing hammers.

[Orion]

How gung ho is the AI about combat blood magic. If I leave a bunch of unscripted Pandemoniacs around with blood slaves, will they cast awesome stuff like Blood Burst or dumb things like Tangle Vines?

[Username17]

How gung ho is the AI about combat blood magic. If I leave a bunch of unscripted Pandemoniacs around with blood slaves, will they cast awesome stuff like Blood Burst or dumb things like Tangle Vines?

They'll act pretty similarly to bloodhenge druids. So you'll get them throwing out a bunch of Imps (which is often a good move), but they'll also throw out a not inconsiderable amount of Agonies (which is usually a waste of slaves in my opinion).

-Username17

[Orion]

What's the deal with Serpent Fiends? They cost the same as Fiends of Darkness at a higher research level, but have worse hit points, magic resistance, attack and defense, and one poison attack instead of two. Is the kind of poison they have super special Because otherwise I have trouble understanding when I would summon them.

[Ancient History]

The only major advantage is that you can summon Serpent Fiends with Blood 1 - which, if you have a fair number of minor blood casters and the virgins to spare might help in a siege. But you're right, at the point you have researched Blood 4 they're a less than ideal option.

[Winnah]

They have a better poison, poison immunity and require blood 1 to summon.

I use the better poison label generally. The weak poison delivered by FoD will build up over time, with every hit they land.

They might be of situational use in swamp battles or if you plan of casting spells like quagmire, or foul vapours, or using them in conjunction with units that possess a poison cloud.

You're better off summoning Fiends of Darkness in most cases. You're also more likely to see Fiends of Darkness due to the cost-effective rituals, Ritual of 5 gates and Forces of Darkness.

re: Poison Damage

Poison damage is inflicted over time. A poisoned unit will have the amount of poison damage tracked and they will take 10% of their remaining poison damage every round. If you look at the unit icon of a poisoned unit, there will be a green bar below the health and encumbrance bars that will track the poison damage.

So a weak poison does 5 points of poison damage per hit. The poison will deal 1 point of damage per round until it is expended.

A death poison deals 35 points of poison damage per hit. So it will deal around 4 points of damage per round, then 3, then 2, then 1 until expended.

Poison stacking from multiple hits or effects will build up and do increasing amounts of damage per turn, but the unit will still only take 10% of their remaining poison damage every round.

I am pretty sure that poison resistance takes effect on the initial hit, but you may want to check that for yourself.

[Username17]

Note also that Serpent Fiends have swamp survival (which gives them better stats in a swamp or quagmire spell), while Fiends of Darkness are stealthy (and can thus be led on ninja raids by stealthy undead leaders like Specters), and have Dark Power (which gives them an even larger relative stat bonus when darkness is cast). But basically Winnah is right. If you were going to do a big poison strategy with Foul Vapors, Serpent Fiends would look pretty attractive and otherwise Fiends of Darkness are mostly better.

I would say that if you are specifically concerned about taking down one really big enemy who possibly regenerates (such a Great White Bull), that the Serpent Fiend's one attack with a really big poison payload is actually more to the point than the Fiend of Darkness' two claws with tiny poison riders. But for the most part, Fiends of Darkness exist because Vanheim has a bunch of Blood 1 casters and it is nice to be able to have them make demons on short notice sometimes.

The really obvious faction for Serpent Fiend use would be Mictlan, because they have all those Blood 1 Mictlan Priests lying around researching. But in practice, they would always summon Beast Bats instead because they come in larger numbers and are sacred. And no one plays EA Mictlan without a hefty bless.

-Username17

[Orion]

Yeah, I noted the swamp survival, but I wasn't being imaginative enough. I thought it was a pure flavor ability, since they fly and can't die of disease. I didn't know it effected stats.

[Winnah]

Units with swamp survival gain +1attack/defence in swamps.

Everything else has a -1 attack/defence penalty, reduced action points and increased encumbrance (+2).

[Orion]

Is there anywhere I can look up what various nations get for PD?

[angelfromanotherpin]

The manual has it. I think there's also a pdf you can download from the wiki.

[Judging__Eagle]

http://dom3-mod-inspector.googlecode.co ... lectmods=1

This is also incredibly useful. I started looking at it last night.

[Orion]

Can one province experience the same event more than once per turn? Can you hit someone's capitol with 10 hurricanes at once, or do you have to spread them out over his empire?

[Winnah]

Yes. You can do something like cast multiple Rain of Toads on a province in order to lock down production.

There may be exceptions, but to my knowledge this is true for all event causing spells.

[Username17]

Yes. You can do something like cast multiple Rain of Toads on a province in order to lock down production.

There may be exceptions, but to my knowledge this is true for all event causing spells.

I believe this to be true. There are a number of strategies that involve shutting down someone's capital with hurricanes or frogs.

-Username17

[Orion]

How do major Fire and Death blesses work? Do they use the Fire Arrows mechanic where they replace specific weapons with specific better weapons? If not, can you stack them? If you can't stack them, which takes precedence?

[Username17]

How do major Fire and Death blesses work? Do they use the Fire Arrows mechanic where they replace specific weapons with specific better weapons? If not, can you stack them? If you can't stack them, which takes precedence?

They are rider effects and they stack. I think they also make your normal weapon count as magical, because I otherwise cannot see how Death Weapons could make you do as dramatically better in combat against incorporeals with high MR as it does.

-Username17

[Korwin]

But the blesses fuck up forged items (like Fire Brand), right?

[Winnah]

The bless effects replace the rider on a lot of different weapons. You have to look at some of the data available for modding to make sense of it.

Stuff like a poison bite or a frost brand has a secondary effect on the attack, be it poison or AoE frost. The bless effect will replace that rider with the flaming or death weapons secondary effect.

Not all weapons and special attacks have these secondary effects...Stuff like the life-drain property of a hell sword is actually part of the primary attack, not a rider, so a bless effect should stack on top of it.

One quirk that I have seen documented recently is that the Death Weapons secondary effect applies to every attack, which is not the case with flaming weapons (typically only applies once). There has also been some documentation where the effect can occasionally trigger multiple times from an attack, possibly due to a bug. The bless effect is still MR negates, but has some potential to greatly exceed the damage of flaming weapons on sacred units with multiple attacks, due to the bonus AN +drn (dominions random number) damage.

Most of that is my half-understood bullshit. There is more going on than I detailed. Apparently the unblessed rider is not replaced on unit attacks, so a Machakan Hunter Spider will still poison an opponent if they pass the MR check against the Death Weapons effect. The only thing that happens is that any AoE riders are lost, regardless of the other outcomes of the attack.

You can read more about the other stuff going on here, on Desura.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I'm playing a 1 versus 1 game on a small map. I'm Fomoria, my opponent is R'yleh. Each side started with 3 provinces, and magic site frequency is set very high. I started with a library (Sages mean astral's an option), score graphs suggest R'lyeh started with substantial gem income boosts. My pretender is an imprisoned Lady of Springs with W9N4.

Any suggestions for options in the mid-to-late game? The typical explosion of dozens of blessed morrigans in every battle won't work underwater, and accuracy-boosted druids with thunder bows is probably only viable on land as well.

[Ancient History]

Race to get the Elemental Queens first and kit them out as SCs is all I can think of.

[Orion]

Air and Death have surprisingly good underwater combat options. For some reason, you can cast lightning bolt, orb lightning, and even Shimmering Fields. The latter might be a good way to clear freespawn chaff. Unfortunately, without access to Storm, Wrathful Skies, or THunder Strike, electricity is at best a supplementary strategy. Shadow Bolt and Shadow Blast also work, although not very well against R'lyeh specifically.

You do have lots of ways to make troops. Both skeleton spam and phantasm spam work underwater, so you can do plenty of damage with combat summoning. The biggest problem you'll have is that IIRC the aboleths' psychic attacks will skip over the mindless troops to hit your back line, so invest in antimagic amulets and rainbow armor. You can back your shit up with the high-end air enchants like Mists of Deception and Fog Warriors

Bane Lords with frost brands work great for clearing underwater indies; I assume that with decent MR they could do a lot of damage to R'lyeh. You don't have many amazing remote attack options, but Phantasmal Attack will force him to build PR, and if you manage to research it, Black Death is pretty deadly.

[Username17]

Underwater combat begins and ends with giving mist form to all your troops. Air is the late-game underwater war suit. Mass Regeneration and Sharks are also good, but really it's all about mass mistform.

You can get a big Shark showing in every underwater combat by summoning up a court of sea trolls, so you should probably do that at some point.

-Username17

[Zinegata]

Dom 4 is coming out:

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/ind ... owforum=20

[Almaz]

Excellent. By the time my life gets settled enough to have stable internet, I've cleared out my backlog of games, and I have time to kill, I will be ready just in time for Dominions 4 to be out, and I can pick up Dominions and start playing then.