Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions

[Winnah]

A few considerations:

Manticore has no cost.
Poison resistant.
Flying
Fear
Decent hit points

I would not focus on paths, so a nation that needs scales would be a good choice here, especially if their sacred units are not worth investing in.

High dominion, for an awe/fear combo may be useful, especially for an active pretender. It should be able to thug fairly effectively for an early province grab, though I would need to test that against a range of indies. By mid game it needs some support, so empowering and teaming up with poison cloud producing units may be an idea.

I can't really comment on the Vampire Queen, as I have never found a set up I am happy with, using that pretender chassis.

Lord of the Wild is an undervalued pretender in my opinion. While it is basically a powered up pan, I have had some success using it as a stealthy thug. Typically with a focus on a strong nature bless.

[angelfromanotherpin]

A few considerations:

Manticore has no cost.
Poison resistant.
Flying
Fear
Decent hit points

Yes, but that's not enough. A Green Dragon has all of those things except zero cost, but experienced players use dragons, and they don't use the Manticore.

[Winnah]

The man eater of myth was described as being pretty terrifying. Maybe a major increase to fear would be appropriate. It was also said to strike without warning, so adding stealth may be an advantage.

Purely speculative. Not sure how that would balance out or whether the cost should be increased.

[Ikeren]

I have a dominions 3 problem. I bought a copy on EBay about 6 months back. I got the manual, and hit had a CD key on a little white sticker on the inside cover. But the CD key had been banned. I contacted the seller, who ignored me. I contacted Shrapnel, they said screw you for buying second hand and trying to avoid paying 50$ for our games.

For a while, it was working great on patch 3.26, then it stopped working after I try to load saved games.

The question is...to play a game online, I have to load up a saved game file, right? Then I have to generate a turn file? I'm wondering if there is some way I wrangle out an online game without spending another 50$ on Dom3.

[Username17]

You can get someone else to front you a cd key, it just won't work if you play in the same game as another person using that key.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

PM me if you want a key to use.

[Zinegata]

The Manticore is the worst Monster-type, chiefly due to low Protection and no paths with an expensive path cost. What could be done to make it competitive with and yet distinct from the Dragons? What would starting at (for example) Blood 1 do for it?

From what I can see the Manticore actually gets more use than Dragons. It's a cheap monster and the extra path on the Dragons are actually pretty superfluous.

One path often isn't a very good addition to a Pretender. Mostly, they're used for getting a 9-level bless (i.e. Fire 9 for Flaming Weapons) or in the case of Astral 9 for casting a big spell like Wish. The paths Dragons get are usually used only for the former.

Moreover, Blood is the worst single-path addition to a Pretender. Blood's bless is pretty bad, so there's little reason to start with high Blood for a bless. It's also not great from a spellcasting perspective as high level blood casting also requires a huge blood income - but if you've got that many blood slaves it should be relatively easy to empower your Pretender up to Blood 9. In this case, it's better to give yourself better scales to aid your bloodhunting (i.e. Growth 3) rather than starting with something that has Blood 9.

The Vampire Queen is just hella overcosted. What would a fair cost be?

The VQ just needs to decide whether it's a Rainbow, a SC or a true hybrid ala Ghost King, and lose the useless summoning schtick.

[K]

Experienced players use dragons because they have high armor, an AoE breath weapon that is great against indies, and use magic that synergizes well with meleeing crap (Breath of Winter, or Fire Shield, or Personal Regen) and/or gets you a decent small Bless(Att, or Def, or Regen 5%).

[Zinegata]

Experienced players use dragons because they have high armor, an AoE breath weapon that is great against indies, and use magic that synergizes well with meleeing crap (Breath of Winter, or Fire Shield, or Personal Regen).

Oh, undoubtedly the Dragon gets used as an out-of-the box indie killer, as it is one of the better SCs for this sort of role.

But the Manticore can do some indie-killing too at a much lower point cost. Fear 5 goes a long way, and the 50 points can be used for 1 better scale (say Magic 1 for +1 research per mage) plus change. It's the better option when you want a simple indie-killer (with no magic) at the cheapest price possible.

Besides, Blood 1 isn't gonna help at all in that role at all. It needs more protection maybe, but the Manticore really "kills" by scaring off its enemies - maybe add up Fear instead?

Edit: Also, yes, you can use your dragon to give a minor bless, albeit it's not really a huge boon. If you're a true bless rush nation, then you're better with a full 9 Bless and lock away the Dragon. If you're not, then you're probably not even bothering to buy any blessed troops (albeit a minor Earth bless is always very good for the reinvig, and many nations have sacred casters)

[K]

Experienced players use dragons because they have high armor, an AoE breath weapon that is great against indies, and use magic that synergizes well with meleeing crap (Breath of Winter, or Fire Shield, or Personal Regen).

Oh, undoubtedly the Dragon gets used as an out-of-the box indie killer, as it is one of the better SCs for this sort of role.

But the Manticore can do some indie-killing too at a much lower point cost. Fear 5 goes a long way, and the 50 points can be used for 1 better scale (say Magic 1 for +1 research per mage) plus change. It's the better option when you want a simple indie-killer (with no magic) at the cheapest price possible.

The Protection 6 means that the Manticore gets killed pretty easy even if you Dominion up to 9 or 10 for the Awe.

At that point, you can actually get a more efficient use of points by using something else.

It's counter-intuitive, but Dominions really rewards system mastery.

[Winnah]

I ran a couple of test games.

Manticore with Dom 10 left 98 points. I put them in growth. 18 left over.

Strength 9 indies.

No scripting. Just sent it into provinces at random on the first turn, then against different types of indies to get an idea of how it would fare against them.

Out of 3 'tests' it routed twice on the first turn. Once against Woodsmen, the other against Markata, not exactly standard opponents, though other pretenders would make short work of these groups. It had no trouble with barbarians, militia or mixed goups of militia, light and heavy infantry and archers.

Any group with large mobs of archers was hit or miss, depending on the opening volley. Only cavalry backed by archer or crossbowmen would force it to rout repeatedly.

Only killed once. Lizardmen. Shaman used tangling vines while the warriors made short work of the Manticore, even with Awe deflecting a significant number of attacks. I should add that the Manticore in this test had aquired 3 afflictions by turn 11. I played the other two games out to turn 20, in both other cases it had captured a fair amount of territory, but had also racked up a number of afflictions.

Definately not great, but for a short, blitz style game it could be fun. For a longer game requiring deeper strategy and tactical mastery, you should definately look elsewhere.

I would not mind the protection 6 so much if the Manticore had regeneration/recuperation. Without it, the pretender is going to get crippled and become useless well before it starts facing any intelligent opposition. I doubt it has the staying power to even influence a small game to the end (other than its ability to grab provinces quickly and without support, early game). To be honest, it pales in comparison to something like an imprisoned Gorgon, even taking extra provinces into consideration. I could probably have done just as well using an awake PoD (and be better prepared for mid game).

[angelfromanotherpin]

Yes, the Manticore absolutely does not stack up to any of the other Monster chasses; not to Dragons, not to the Wyrm, not to the Kraken.

The reason I thought Blood was that the Manticore thematically is Blood, Death, or Nature; and Death and Nature have Dragon types. Plus, if it gets crippled in the early expansion, it can still hold a divining rod and blood hunt.

The problem is that right now it does not seem to have even a playable niche use.

[Ikeren]

Out of 3 'tests' it routed twice on the first turn. Once against Woodsmen, the other against Markata, not exactly standard opponents, though other pretenders would make short work of these groups. It had no trouble with barbarians, militia or mixed goups of militia, light and heavy infantry and archers.

I was thinking about this, actually. Has anyone written a program to generate small games, and then test pretender combinations (as well as starting armies) against blind attacks to get a look at success rates on Indies 5, where the standard game is played? Not like, 3 tests, but like, 100? Because it could be useful to know percentages success rates, and losses, for starting armies blind attacks, and pretend blind attacks.

[Winnah]

I'm not going to pretend my test games provided accurate data. It was more about sating my own curiosity than providing concrete statistics.

Having said that, if someone does want to collate this data, send me some parameters and I'll help with the legwork.

[Username17]

There's a program that runs test battles, but I think you have to input all the troops on both sides.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

Working on Oceania, and thinking about the dragon summons in particular. So, the intent is that these will be monster-chassis casters, right? Feels like they should be based on the Elemental Royalty, roughly Conj-8 and 50 gems.

Right now I think I want the spells to require Air/Earth 1 + Water 4, so that a non-empowered recruitable can cast them - it still takes two water boosters, but that shouldn't be a problem.

What should the Dragon's path levels be? Right now I'm thinking Astral/Death 3, Water 1 or 2.

I'd like to have there be 4 unique dragons, based on the four chinese dragon sea kings. If that's the case, they should have a human alternate form.

Is there any way to mod a spell to function like the elemental royalty spells - a random pick off a short list of available uniques? I'm willing to write up four different spells, I'd just prefer not to.

Oh, and is there a good existing sprite for such beings? Right now the best thing I can see is putting some claws on a Sea Serpent; and I might prefer to do it from scratch.

edit: holy shit there's a perfect chinese dragon sprite that I somehow found accidentally. I don't even know what the sprite number is, it came with copystats from the sea serpent.

[Zinegata]

The Protection 6 means that the Manticore gets killed pretty easy even if you Dominion up to 9 or 10 for the Awe.

Like I said, what it really needs is Protection or a heck a lot more Fear.

[Zinegata]

Working on Oceania, and thinking about the dragon summons in particular. So, the intent is that these will be monster-chassis casters, right? Feels like they should be based on the Elemental Royalty, roughly Conj-8 and 50 gems.

Right now I think I want the spells to require Air/Earth 1 + Water 4, so that a non-empowered recruitable can cast them - it still takes two water boosters, but that shouldn't be a problem.

What should the Dragon's path levels be? Right now I'm thinking Astral/Death 3, Water 1 or 2.

I'd like to have there be 4 unique dragons, based on the four chinese dragon sea kings. If that's the case, they should have a human alternate form.

Is there any way to mod a spell to function like the elemental royalty spells - a random pick off a short list of available uniques? I'm willing to write up four different spells, I'd just prefer not to.

Oh, and is there a good existing sprite for such beings? Right now the best thing I can see is putting some claws on a Sea Serpent; and I might prefer to do it from scratch.

edit: holy shit there's a perfect chinese dragon sprite that I somehow found accidentally. I don't even know what the sprite number is, it came with copystats from the sea serpent.

Chinese Dragons aren't usually associated with Death. Astral's probably the best bet, and again Astral's one of the better starting paths on a Pretender if you plan to switch him out later for casting.

[Winnah]

Is there any way to mod a spell to function like the elemental royalty spells - a random pick off a short list of available uniques? I'm willing to write up four different spells, I'd just prefer not to.

Not that I have seen. The elemental royalty spells, blood magic demon/devil summons and the treelord spells utilise a value i am unfamilliar with. You could create a spell that summoned 4 uniques, or 4 different spells that summoned 1 unique each using the modding commands fairly easily. You could even alter the values of one of the existing summons, so that they created your dragons instead of their usual targets...

Only other method I can think of would be brute force, but that would require changing the existing coding and not exist as an optional mod (assuming I could even find the relevant strings). That approach would definately cause more issues than it solved though.

It could be possible though. It may even be surprisingly easy. Main problem lies in having the target summon jump to the next on the list if the unique is already in play. The basic commands in the manual don't touch on this.

I'm not that famillar with Dom3 mods though, so I'm sure someone else can shed more light on this. Dwarf Fortress...I'm the fucking king.

[Username17]

Thematically, Oceania is pretty Greek. So giving them Chinese Dragons would be hella weird. I would suggest going for more Greekish dragons like Typhon and Draco.

-Username17

[angelfromanotherpin]

Chinese Dragons aren't usually associated with Death.

Not most, but some of them are.

Astral's probably the best bet, and again Astral's one of the better starting paths on a Pretender if you plan to switch him out later for casting.

? These aren't pretenders, they're late-game summons to fill holes in the Oceanian line-up.

Not that I have seen.

I have since been told it is not possible.

Thematically, Oceania is pretty Greek. So giving them Chinese Dragons would be hella weird. I would suggest going for more Greekish dragons like Typhon and Draco.

That's certainly doable, though I'll have to research them more closely.

Any comments on the crunch assumptions I'm starting with?

[angelfromanotherpin]

Okay, after a quick crash in Graeco-roman drakonics, I have to say that I'm not a fan of Typhon, because he's goddamn bananas and I'm not clear where to even start with that guy.

However, I have found a couple who seem to be pretty appropriate; Ladon (for Astral) and Ismenios (for Death). Both of those have good thematic associations as water dragons, with their minor summoning element, with the chief casting paths they're supposed to have, and also some neat fluff that can be worked into secondary abilities.

[Winnah]

Kykhreides was a dragon that terrorised islands until it was driven off by a hero. It later became the companion of Demeter.

Could be useful if you wanted a sacred unit to add to your list of dragons.

Crunch wise, I would probably make the majority of secondary abilities accesable in dragon form, given that humanoid slots with good base paths would mean their secondary form would probably only see use when they're losing a battle. Just a thought.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Greek dragons don't seem to be shape-changers, so they don't need alternate forms. That's a load off my programming anyway.

Difficulty: giving unique units unique names. There's supposed to be 50 nametypes (151-200) available for this purpose, but trying to use them crashes the game.

[Winnah]

They're for creating custom name lists.

I thought I saw a reference to a #uniquname tag somewhere,but it is not in the manual. Alluded to in the database though.

try

#selectnametpe 151
#clear
#addname "name"
#addname "name"
#end

Just make sure it can randomly select the same name no matter what.