Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Very True... also the AI will WASTE the gems it has too. I've seen the AI do level_1 Empowerment of water and/or air magic with a nations weak/cheap mages.
Hopefully Dominions_3 will have better intelligence.

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">If two castles both have the same neighbour, then that neighbour has its resources drained by both castles. If the admin % is 40, then one castle will take 40%, and the other will take another 40%. If the resource draining goes over 100% then I believe that it is probably split up amongst the castles according to their relative admin ability.

Two castles that neighbour each other will not drain resources from each other. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO OOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH okay. This hasent been making me loose single handedly but its definatley a thing thats gonna help heh! Another question then http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif . Does it matter what the neighboring provinces are resource wise? If the province with the castle gets 100% of its resources and drains 40% of all nearby provinces resources, does it matter if those provinces suck-so put the castle in the best province of an area to take advantage of it? Does it simply give that province its full potential or give it the resources drained from nearby provinces?


I've been using the more exspensive troopers now.... still loosing but doing much better.


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I wondered the same thing. I also wondered whether the original owner is still playing, as the installation does not ask for the cd. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There is some kind of sticker on the jewel case, its written on there, I dont think its the original jewel case either..... yeah whoever bought it originally proboably still playing multiplayer but single player is gonna Last me ages so its okay heh.

[ July 13, 2004, 15:56: Message edited by: Lach ]

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

I might have missed it somewhere in all of this.
What is your independents set at for a game?
The default of 3?

The 3 default is a big benefit to the AI. Setting it at something like 5 or 6 will usually get you a game which plays VERY differently. A low setting allows the AIs to win most provinces and rush you early with little losses.

The AI doesnt tend to be as smart about who to attack and how much to send so higher indept settings will often cause the AI to waste alot of time and resources trying to take the same province over and over. It keeps the win/loss ratio on the expansion at about the same as you.

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

I've always found it works the other way, that higher independent settings prevent the AI from overextending itself too quickly, and thus ending up with simply a chain of guys that run up and die on my pretender over and over. With 9, the AI has larger armies by the time we meet, instead of little puny armies.

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

With Independent setting of 8 and 9... I have seen where I'm always taking lots more provinces then the AI opponents. The computer opponents seem to have more problems conquering them.
With Independent setting of 2 and 3... the game forces players to being rushed by each other and the AI. Also allows me to move in swallowing a weaker AI much more quickly.

I usually set independents with 5 or 6... seems to give the greatest challenge with AI opponents from my experience.

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

I guess I can see where 3 or 4 might be good for a combat god. I dont play those much. Even then Id say it would only be for advanced players. If an AI has nothing to slow it down then I dont think a newbie would keep up with its expansion while they are still learning the game.

And Id probably stick more with a game where I lose to a large army later, than one where I get washed over early. Hmmmm maybe the 3 default is for the demo Version so that games can get into player-vs-ai combat before turn 40.

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">OK... lets say you build a fort in a province that had previously shown 50 resources. The province really had 100 resources, but without a fort you can only utilize half of it. So.. the fort you built will make the resource count 100. Now, the administration value is a percentage of the resources in neighboring provinces given to the fort. So, if you have the fort built next to a province with ( too make the math easy ) also 100 resources, and your fort has an admin value of 30, 30 resources will go to the fort, making the total resource value 130. The 30 rescources will be drained from the second province, making its resource count 70. Without a fort, however, only half the resources will be used, giving it only 35 resources. hope thaqt helps the confusion

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">perhaps the most important dominion bonus is morale; troops fighting in friendly dominion gain 1 morale, whereas troops in enemy dominions have -1. this makes the morale difference effectively 2 points.

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

Dominion is the "push" of your god. You "push" your scales, and the benefits for your troops, into areas you own or even dont own yet. Mostly you are pushing into nothingness until you meet the dominion of another player.

There are alot of tactical uses and (like so much of this game) it depends on who you are playing and how you are playing them. If you are Ulm and can withstand negative magic scales, then you push this "weak magic" dominion ahead of your army. If you were Arcos and count heavily on magic then you might have taken alot of plus-magic scale. You would want to push that ahead of your armies and have it operating strongly in your domain. If the two dominions meet then it becomes a tug-of-war to see what dominion will be in the province that the battle happens in.

Maybe its easier to picture Abyssia fighting Caelum. Abyssia likes heat, Caelum likes cold. They both have combat benefits in their own temperature preference. So if you are having trouble with those armies then you would need to slow down, pull back, bring up priests to pray, and build temples. Thats to PUSH your dominion forward creating a comfortable combat zone for your troops.

Its easier to give specific examples. If you mention a nation/theme, and ask about a "strong dominion" tactic, then alot of people will give their favorite suggestions for that race.

[ July 13, 2004, 23:32: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Another aspect of high Indy settings is that it forces an element of Darwinism into the AI: Instead of the AI expending most of its resources in pointless warfare with each other, only the strongest AIs survive, and the weak perish. With low indy settings, you have maybe 12 of the 17 players bickering and squabbling amongst themselves in massive wastes of resources. With 9, you'll see maybe 6 of them grow to power, the rest strangled by the independents and/or overcome by the remaining 6. Those remaining 6 will put up a much better fight.

Re: I ALWAYS loose.... I need advice and have MANY questions heh!
 

Not gonna declare an early victory yet.... but doing awsome now http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

I have had 1/7'th of the map bottlenecked to 3 points which had an ENORMEOUS number of exspensive troops protecting them... I have about 20 sages in a back province researching, just finshed researching enchantment, conjuration and alteration....

I can not yet "bunker down" the enemy territory but I have my lich and a bunch of higher level undead roving the country side simply massacring everything they come to, as well as a 340 mage and my original leader(a prophet who is now.... a demi diety himself) and about 55 conventional troops going around the country side simply destroying everything in their path http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

The mundane troops are doing...... amazing, its like a hot knife through butter, none of my mundane troops died in combat in about 20 fights... havent lost ONE troop since they left, the only thing that has hurt them in starvation as some provinces cant feed em...

I had my lich start at the north bottleneck and work his way south, the 340 mage and prophet start in the south and work his way north.... they just met and I built a fortress there, gonna expand out, capture the four entrances to that continent then let the bombing of dresden begin http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .


All the information from this thread was..... tremendously usefull heh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif I'll still have more questions though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

[ July 14, 2004, 00:42: Message edited by: Lach ]