Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 6:16 am

As far as I know, Bogus and company are seducable, but you probably won't seduce them because they all have high morale values. Every one of them is also a beast in an assassination fight, making your probable seduction failures probably expensive.

All told, while capturing Bogus and friends is very cool, it's probably not worth as much as holding the province for a long time. So if Bogus comes early, you should probably just roust them with a normal army.

-Username17

K · Post by K » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:15 am

The commands they have can be copied onto other commanders if you can Hellbinf Heart or Charm them, but that being said they aren't that interesting.

Attack Commander and Fire Commander sound overpowered, but by the end of the game your commanders tend to be nestled in armies and armored, thugs or SCs, or come in such large numbers that even strike teams of commander-killers are pointless.

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:45 am

I'f I decide to charm/hellbind them it will not be solely for the command options. It will simply be to bolster my own army, to take their stuff and to brag to the other players (especially this).

I think that FT's assessment is correct though, it will be a lot more cost effective in the long term to simply retake the province by force of arms.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 5:13 pm

I'm playing as MA Atlantis in an MP game and I'm in an early war with R'lyeh. Things are going well enough except that squid-boy recently managed to summon a Vastness. We just entered turn 13 and so far all of my research has gone towards reaching conj-4 for Voice of Tiamat. How do you take down an ethereal, very high stat, blood vengeance +3 monstrosity like that?

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 6:41 pm

You pretty much don't, at least not directly. You can throw enough chaff at it that you get ~30 attacks through the ethereal and the blood vengence, or you can kill the commanders and get it to retreat into your territory.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed Nov 09, 2011 8:52 pm

Aww... I saw this thread and thought it was talking about Dominion the card game.

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 12:44 am

Mindless units may be of some use against the Vastness, but it will leave commanders vulnerable to Mind Blast.

An expensive option would be to throw elementals at it. That is assumng you can even pin it down in a province.

You may be able to negotiate for a few Lead Shields for crucial commanders, but until you can outfit a few appropriate summons, you're probably going to be forced to throw lots of units at it.

Ikeren · Post by **Ikeren** » Thu Nov 10, 2011 9:47 pm

Aww... I saw this thread and thought it was talking about Dominion the card game.

Played this the other night, had lots of fun.

Shatner · Post by **Shatner** » Fri Nov 11, 2011 7:08 pm

By the way, does anyone know of any good forums for Dominions 3? I already hang out on the Shrapnel Forum and I have wandered over to the much sleepier Invasion Boards but that's about it.

Any good ones out there?

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 5:39 am

Quarter to Three and Something Aweful both have fairly active Dominions discussions and recruitment.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Sat Nov 12, 2011 11:16 am

Somethingawful does not habe a Forum per se, but an megathread (+ some Lets Play threads)
http://forums.somethingawful.com/showth ... genumber=1

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 10:30 am

So, I'm in an Random-Game (randomly generated Nations by this Mod.).

My main reasearch mages are W1 Ice Crafters. Any suggestions what I can do with them, if I want to use them for anything besides researching (or crafting)?

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:35 pm

If you're talking about Caelum's Ice Crafters, then they are pretty limited.

The forge bonus is nice, but limited by your construction rating. They can easily force the water bracelet if you have construction 6, for example. If you can empower them in the path of blood, that might open up a few doors.

Their melee stats are not good, but they have a decent precision, which means you can toss something like an Ice Pebble Staff on one and set it to patrol, or join in on a seige if required.

Even at low construction they can assist getting you into the water, with rings of water breathing or a shambler skin suit.

Low level water spells are prevelant in Evocation, Enchantment and Alteration. Mainly debuffs like slime and dessication. Assuming you can get your research up to Heart of Ice, you can set your ungeared researchers to cast that spell. For a lower emergency attack strategy, you could cast Quickness + Breath of Winter, then script to attack rear. It is entirely possible they will do some damage, but it is more likely they will get one-shotted by a bodyguard.

That is about all I can think of. I'm having a similar issue with W1 Bakkemono Shaman in an MP game, so I have done a bit of research.

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 12:39 pm

Without knowing what else your nation has, it's basically impossible for us to tell you what would be a good use for your ice crafters.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 1:23 pm

Winnah wrote:If you're talking about Caelum's Ice Crafters, then they are pretty limited.

Yes, I'm talking about those.
Hearth of Ice = Frozen Hearth?

Grek wrote:Without knowing what else your nation has, it's basically impossible for us to tell you what would be a good use for your ice crafters.

http://www.llamaserver.net/showScores.c ... omocalypse
I'm leading at the moment in provinces, forts and income. So I'm a little worried about an gangbang...

I also have:
Ryujin and Nagaraja
as recruit anywhere mages.

I focused - so far - my research exclusively on Evocation.

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 2:53 pm

Naga Raja blow. They have exactly enough magic to bless, quickness, and ironskin themselves, and not enough asskicking to do fuck all with once they do that. You can clear bullshit troops out of the way, but the Nagaraja is pretty thoroughly a "mid range" thug and not really worth the 300 gold you slather on them. Ryujin are proper caster asskickers.

So we have established now that you will be clamming. If I recall correctly, Ryujin have feet, so they can make a hammer for you once you get to construction 4. They can and will also make water robes at the same time. So you have to ask yourself if you want to empower an Ice Crafter in Nature and Water in order to make cheaper clams. The answer depends on how many turns you expect things to go. It takes 50 turns for that to pay off in Nature Gems (less if you need to make extra Thistle Maces), but only 8 turns to pay off in Water. Ultimately what you're looking at is spending 80 gems to empower in order to save 5 gems a turn. If you have a big windfall of gems early on, this is worth considering.

-Username17

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 2:59 pm

Sadly its an CBM game, (I really wanted to try the random nation mod, so CBM was sort of mandatory) so no clams and no hammers.

Winnah · Post by **Winnah** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 3:01 pm

oops. I meant Frozen Heart, Alteration 6.

One possible strat involves getting Alteration and Construction to level 2. Quickness doubles the number of spells that can be cast from items. So an Ice pebble staff, Scepter of Authority or Skull Talisman would fire twice a round. Assuming you can get a Ryujin with Fire, A staff of Corrosion may become available at construction 4 (though Rune Smashers may be more appropriate). Whether it is worth dedicating a Ryujin to crafting is up to you.

Evocation leaves Slime as your main spell for Ice Crafters. I suppose you could give them all a gem and script them to cast Ice Strike in an emergency. It does untyped damage, so it works best against low protection chaff.

You really want a Fire & Water Ryujin. Acid spells are fantastic.

Just a few thoughts.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 3:48 pm

BTW. is there an immunity against acid?

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 4:00 pm

Korwin wrote:BTW. is there an immunity against acid?

No. Acid Damage is Armor Piercing and cannot be resisted, making it one of the better things in the game. It's basically magical physical damage that ignores half your protection and corrodes your armor.

-Username17

Judging__Eagle · Post by **Judging__Eagle** » Mon Nov 21, 2011 11:05 pm

Zinegata wrote:On rechecking, each Magister adds 15 to the castle defense/offense, and he can sneak past sieges. With each fort pumping out a Magister, you can probably have 10+ Magisters out every turn to add 150 to a castle defense anywhere. Realistically, you'll have a supply of these Magisters already built up before the war - since there is a slight chance that the Magister pops out without any magic and you can gather all of them up into one huge stack that can defend your castle.

It won't save you against a massed Ermorian army, but it is usually more than enough against other nations that aren't packing huge amounts of chaff (and I don't really recall very many nations that get free chaff anyway).

The problem is getting enough magic firepower to deal with the massed chaff armies in the first place.

Perhaps Blood might be the way to go? Getting high blood magic can unlock a lot of other types of magic.

The real trick at that point is prioritizing which sorts of non-Blood magic you're going to be using. If you've got piles of fire gems, and few ways to use them, maybe you're going to do some Evocation research.

Of course, if you have held off on site searching, then the summoned creatures could be used as site searchers to kick off a gem economy that would fit with your game plan. This isn't really a 'good' idea, as gem economies are best kicked off early; and tier 1-3 is all that's needed to search for most sites (I'm not sure if anything actually needs 4+ in a magic flavour to be found).

I'm not sure what sorts of gems LA man can find however.

Of course, you could go for a strict blood strategy for mass army killing; dropping Horrors in enemy provinces to rip through enemy strong points (but not forts).

Grek · Post by **Grek** » Tue Nov 22, 2011 12:32 am

Korwin wrote: http://www.llamaserver.net/showScores.c ... omocalypse
I'm leading at the moment in provinces, forts and income. So I'm a little worried about an gangbang...

I was mainly worried about your early expansion, since getting a lead there is one of the better ways to get ahead in the rest of the game. But you seem of have that covered.

One thing to consider for your Nagaraja is that they're amphibians. This means that you can build a small number of them into thugs (like 3 total) and send them to conquer any underwater provinces you come across. They can also site search for nature while they're down there and, if you get lucky, catch you a kelp fortress (N1 underwater site that gives you a fort) to secure your underwater holdings.

Whether or not you can hold the underwater provinces depends entirely on whether there are any strong underwater nations being produced by your mod. I suspect not, since that somewhat difficult to code.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Dec 13, 2011 10:20 am

Doomed to Fail. Let's play Dominions 3!

angelfromanotherpin · Post by **angelfromanotherpin** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 4:15 am

Anyone have tips on Blood Hunting? I'm going in as MA Abysia and I've never been sure if my usual strategies are at all good.

Zinegata · Post by **Zinegata** » Wed Dec 14, 2011 4:46 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote:Anyone have tips on Blood Hunting? I'm going in as MA Abysia and I've never been sure if my usual strategies are at all good.

Blood hunting reaches maximum efficiency if you hunt in province with 5,000 population or more (albeit the ideal is those that are around 5,000 population, since more population means more tax income lost).

Have the divining rod item for each hunter (counts as +1 blood level for blood hunting). Use cheap blood hunters with some levels in blood magic (you get a bonus when blood hunting), which Abysia should have if I recall right. Otherwise, use lots of scouts.

Also, taking Growth to offset population losses due to Blood Hunting may not be a bad idea.