Re: A few newbie questions.
 

"Blood economy" is the collection of blood slaves. It's easier to capture blood slaves in high population provinces, but blood hunting increases unrest and reduces population. Hence, a "blood economy" is fundamentally opposed to a "gold economy".

The big blood nations are EA/LA Mictlan and Lanka, although lots of nations have smaller blood picks (the "'heims", LA Marignon and Ulm, Pangea, come to mind)

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

Duncan, if you like Arcoscephale, stick with them. They are a fine nation.
Not one of the powerhouses, depending on whom you ask, but a very strong nation.
I suggested them as a trading nation not because they have a forge bonus - they
do not - but because they have a great selection of magic, especially in the
Early Age, and excel at all three types of magic searching. By the way, make
sure you have A4 (four levels of Air magic) on your pretender to exploit the
Oreiads fully. They do not look like thugs, but they can be.

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

plz forget the idea trading nation.. it'll give him an incorrect view on the game I think.

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

What do you mean, Aezeal? I know it's probably an idiotic idea, but hey, I thrive on idiotic ideas. Such at using melee only in TF2, or using armies of 1000 hornblowers. Plus, I could sell information too! I love that kind of thing.

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

I would say that you could do very well out of trading items and information if you made an effort with it, but you would still have to have some base of military strength. Your capital is just too juicy a target for other players to leave it alone if you can't defend yourself.

In Galactic Civilizations II I once had an excellent game playing as "The Foundation" (based on Asimov's book). I colonized no planets and didn't build any military until a long way into the game, but concentrated on playing the nations off against each other, trading techs and also doing a lot of research myself. I won. It was awesome.

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

That's why I said i'd have an insanely huge and deadly army in my capital. 24 commanders equipped with Crowns of Command, leading 100 Crossbreeds each.. hehehe. Or I could just spam slingers, as is my wont.

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

Aha! More questions!

How easy is it to mod? Do I just edit a text file or similar? Is there anything that's not moddable?

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

Modding is relatively easy. I you wan't to edit say... the stats of an unit or the name of a nation you will do fine with wordpad or something similar. If you wan't to make an entire nation you'll do fine with a text editor and a program like Paint(Windows) to make unit graphics. Be aware of the fact that not everything can be modded in Dom3. It's easy to do it but not 100% modable. You just can't have it all!http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif
Read the modding manual that comes with the game. It may seem a little overwhelming at first, but you'll learn.

On the subject of the most newbie friendly nation I would you say that Tien Chi is a good nation to start with. Strong troops that are not to expensive and good summons.

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

Okay. Is there a link to a modding tutorial anywhere? Or is there anything in the manual?

Re: A few newbie questions.
 

It's on the game CD and I think it's in the Manual as well.