Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

Yeah in SP which i enjoy a lot too i never play effectively.

But in MP my cruel opponents force me to not play as sloppy as in SP http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.
I am still obsessed with my idea to win a SP game vs. impossible AIs with just using national troops and commanders. So far i have never succeeded at this challenge but always enjoy it to try it again http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Death nations and underwater nations do not count as valid nations for this challenge http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

I would guess that another strategy would be a strong dominion wall, strong defense (jutenheim), and holding out until his tactics kill him off. Depending of course on which nation he is playing.

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

That sounds like an interesting challenge. By death nations do you mean Ermor or any nation that has national death mages? Do you allow battleship summoning (elementals,skeletons,false horrors etc)?

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

I plan to make 2 total conversion mods. The first will be a basic fantasy based mod with dwarves, elves etc.

The second mod will be the same, except that all troops for the nations and their summons will be stronger, but they will cost the same mana/resource/gold. However 1 nation's troops won't be upgraded, and that will be the human player's nation. Imho it will be almost impossible to win against the AIs on the hardest diff. level with my upcoming settings in that TC mod.

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

I've tried the game with the following restrictions:
- only national troops (and pretender can be used) and mercenaries can be used (no indy mages);
- no ritual summons;
- no creature generators (neither permanent, like devil generator nor battlefield ones such as living water, lifelong protection etc);
- no gem generators;

To my surprise I've won without much difficulty, which is probably because I've played Jotunheim. My plan was to use blessed woodsmen and later on use niefel jarls as mini-SC. Considering that research didn't look like a high priority I took drain-2. I've got monolith with E9W6S4 (dom 6) which left me with enough points for decent scales. Early on I wasn't buying mages at all - just woodsmen and jotun jarls to lead them. I had to wait a bit until I got enough woodsmen to keep a good line (to avoid being surrounded) before expanding, but then it went easy - I've steamrolled over indy and my AI neighbours (Man, Arco and Abysia). I only bought few mages to search for sites. After getting construction researched (mostly by pretender) I've bought some more mages and equipped them with skull mentors. I've tried to use Niefel Jarls as SCs, but it didn't work particularly well, they were only useful to take poorly defended provinces, so in the end I've conquered everybody mostly with woodsmen. Afterwards, I think it might be easier to play any other Jotunheim theme - I had virtually no mage support on the battlefield.

Though, I've played on small map without Ermor or water nations (with them things would be more difficult I think). I suspect this approach wouldn't be that successful (but perhaps still viable) on a large map, but I wanted to finish it before Dom3 anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

This strategy will likely work with any other bless-efficient nation.

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

Yes this is very possible on a small map, however on a large map with impossible AIs...I don't think that it would work. I might give it a try.

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

I've tried a large map with Machaka (F9N9 sacred spiders) and things went pretty well again (even better than with Jotuns I think). I'm surprised how much different the game is when you're not allowed to use summons. Now I have tons of gems and now I understand why AI likes to give a lot of gems to every magic caster http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Drain 3 seems to be a way to go because there's no big rush to research anymore and later gems can be spent to forge research boosters. Amazingly, it seems that with this strategy it's actually easier to win vs impossible AI. I have never tried this strategy before, but it works really well. Once again I've easily run over 3 neighbours (Arco, Man and Pangaea) with my spiders (and they rarely die) and now (by turn 40) I have the largest empire with large spider army (ability to recruit them in capital only hurts a bit though) and I can afford expensive mages to provide serious firepower support, so effectively I've already overcome advantages impossible AI had. I'll try to play a bit further to make sure nothing unexpected happens...

Dominions doesn't stop to amaze me http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I used this tactics in MP blitzes, but why I've never thought that it may work in a larger game? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

I'm also a fan of Machaka yet I play most large or huge maps... I moved to different nations because I hated having the worst province defense.

Maybe Dominions_4 will have a feature where gamers can cast spells and/or spend gold to upgrade the units of province defense.

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

Err... What about the globals? You know, the one with mechanical men, and the other with underwater monsters defending your provinces, and the one with the dead being animated to fight as vine creatures?

Re: Leadership levels upped, I see?
 

wow interesting. I will try it also. I've never used this tactic in the MP games to be honest, and usually we play on "small" maps. Hm..perhaps I should give it a try in MP also. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif