Re: A general inquiry about Dom 3 gaming habits.
 

Awesome ! You're my hero http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: A general inquiry about Dom 3 gaming habits.
 

My favourite so far was my cyclops pretender:

"Bwa Hah, Me crush puny flying thing!"
"Ooh look, puny flying thing has shiny eye, me likes shiny things"
<splut>
"Why it all gone dark?"

Then there's the ultimate Caelum anti archer strategy:
"Behold men, with such a storm they won't be able to hit the blind side of a barn! To the skies, death from above! oh, bugger..."

Also fun is annoying your mages prior to battle so all those lovely wide area spells land among your own troops...

Re: A general inquiry about Dom 3 gaming habits.
 

I have yet to figure out a perfect game situation for myself. I have at best about 2 hours a night to play so I have to figure out what game style works for me.

1. Small maps are too small and the game is over to soon.
2. Medium maps are better, but they still don't allow enough time and/or sources of researchers to get to level 8 or 9 spells.
3. 100+ province maps allow you to research the highest level spells but require too much time to do your turn. By the time I read all the messages, move my major armies, tour the provinces for troop builds than "n" my way through all the leaders I've spent 20 or more minutes on the turn.

I tried faster research speed on medium maps but the rythem of research wasn't right. I had access to far more magic and forging than I could support in gems. (This isn't the usual situation on normal speed where you have to budget gems or certain gems, it was more like "I can't afford anything".)

Right now I'm playing a large map because I've never cast "Wish" or "arcane Nexus". The turn length is killing me, but I figure I'm within 5 or 6 turns of completing the research for both spells. I'll be well short of victory conditions then, but I figure I'll go 2 or 3 more turns just out of curiosity.

(I'm going to wish for "victory" and see what happens.)

Anyway, I am open to suggestions for play style from others who have similar time constraints yet who desire the full experience of the game.

Re: A general inquiry about Dom 3 gaming habits.
 

Try 500 provinces with 50% mountains (lots of chokepoints), magic set high, resources and supply set low, indepts set at maximum.
That should get you into higher research levels without getting to the micromanagement stage.

Re: A general inquiry about Dom 3 gaming habits.
 

Gandalf, that is an absolutely brilliant suggestion. I can see how that combination provides what I'm looking for.

I've always used high resources because that is the way I always set up my games. Oh woe is us poor creatures of habit.

I've been playing on either random maps or the ones that have been provided with the game, none of which meets the criterion you suggest. I have noticed that you have a site with some Dom2 maps. Would you recommend one of those?

Re: A general inquiry about Dom 3 gaming habits.
 

Lowering the resources seems to remove the AIs ability to create as much indept flak troops. It forces it to create more at castles and you get AI armies with more national units. It greatly improves the game if you can stand to play with lowered resources yourself.

The Dom2 site still generates daily maps. The pros and cons of setting it up for automation. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Ive been meaning to create a Dom3 map site but until recently most of the maps would have been generated by the Dom3 map program which seemed redundant. Soon it looks like there will be enough different map generators offering different features to make it worth having a site that each night generates a new catalog of randomly created maps for people to look thru.

You can check out these...
http://www.dom3minions.com/RandomMaps/
There are some examples there with a jpg for each one and a zip file to download the full playable map.

Re: A general inquiry about Dom 3 gaming habits.
 

Thanks for the infomation. I made my own based on your information. I actually set mountains at 80 after a few experiments and just started a game.

Time will tell.