Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

I keep trying, but I just can't seem to get into the game.

Maybe its the general misunderstanding of the strategy element, and maybe it's something else.

But could some of you tell me how/when you came to adore this game? Thanks so much!

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I loved it the second I fired up the demo. Honestly. It's only gotten more rich and rewarding the more I've played. But it clearly isn't for everyone, since individual tastes vary so much. Could you elaborate a bit more as to what your general problems are?

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

Well, I'm always running out of funds for recruiting units, and am quickly defeated by my neighbors...

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

Start on easy difficulty and maybe set the world to "rich" in the starting options. Otherwise take high order scales, when creating your pretender.

Go and attack something to squander your army and gain new income. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

japinard,

I had that problem at first, too. You need to aggressively expand early on. Try to play the Aran map with 5 or so other nations. That will give you some room to expand before immediately encountering other nations.

The reason I didn't do well at first was that I was recruiting the wrong units. Tell us please what nation you are playing and what your general strategy is. If you're trying to initially learn with a weak race, that may be a big part of the problem. I can recommend something like Ulm, Pythium, or Arco to get started.

Try that and let us know where you falter. We need to have some idea of what you are doing to give recommendations. But a common mistake is concentrating on weak, low-morale units or perhaps not reasearching sufficiently. I'm far from an expert on this game.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

If you have the latest patch installed, you can (and probably should) start with more provinces. 5 or 6 will usually give your home castle more income to work with. Also be advised that the starting army for many nations is pitifully weak compared to emidiate neighbours (indies) Their strength depends heavily on the independant strenght setting (duh!). If you have proplems with them reduce their setting.
(They're usually no problem if you have a supercombatant as pretender, but if you go for rainbow it is no shame to build up your army a bit, before teaching those infidels.)

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

Oh , and the love for the game came when an oponent brought about 30 bloodslaves with them on the battlefield and started casting spells.

It was a definite "You can do that?.....Wow." moment.

Another was seeing 6 elefants and 4 chariots waltz through countless militamen/light infantrymen.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

I'm rather into blood sacrifice, blotting out the sun, freezing the ocean surfaces, and filling the sky with lethal pathogens.
More seriously, 'tho, this game basically has "more". The magic system is enormous, the amount of detail in units is rather crazy (down to how many eyes a monster has remaining... if this were a board game, there'd have to be more counters than in _Flat Top_), and more options in rather different nation/theme combinations. Hey, you can play a benevolent deity blessing the world with superb health, great harvests, and phantasmal servants; or you can try for far, far nastier styles, or much in between.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

I'm playing with "Man" and have been recruiting a balanced army of spearmen axemen and archers.

I've had the Arch-Druid as the Pretender. I'd like to stick with Man since the units are easier for me to identify with.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I'd rather fill the sky with lethal pigeons, personally, and I'm somewhat indifferent to blood sacrifice or freezing the ocean. Totally with you on blotting out the sun, though. Stupid frickin' sun.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Build many longbowmen then, they rock. As cheap infantery use tower guards. If you chose a low level of indigenous strengh 20 fighters (of whatever type you start with) and twenty longbowmen will slaughter the indigenous forces. Keep following things in mind:
- scout early and attack your weakest neighbour
- place the fighters in front of your longbowmen and give them the order "hold then attack close enemies" (or somesuch), longbowmen should be ordered "fire close enemies". That way the enemy has to walk up to your army while being nailed by the bowmen. This works especially well if the enemy as little to no cavalry or bowmen of his own
-as soon as you can afford it build some knights and place them on the flanks of your army and order them "attack rearmost enemy"
- enjoy the show http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

[ March 10, 2004, 20:43: Message edited by: Starfighter08 ]

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Man's my favorite nation, hands down. But you are wasting your time with the spearmen and axemen. You want to recruit about 40 longbows and 10 - 20 Wardens (or Daoine Sidhe, if you're playing 'Last of Tuathas'). Put the Wardens on 'hold and attack' and put the longbows into 2 Groups - one on each flank, slightly behind the Wardens. Make sure you have a priest to bless your Wardens.
Take that force and you can take out pretty much any independant force up to strength level 6.

Research Alteration 4 for wind guide and send a crone along with a few air gems

Research Alteration 6 for mass protection and give said crone some nature gems

I should mention that you want to get a pretender with air magic to use this strategy, so that the blessing effect on the wardens includes an air shield.

Once you face other nations get province defense (even though it sucks for Man, it will act as a deterent for a while - to stop them declaring war on you) and raise a couple more armies like the one above.


I'm sure there's other ways to do it, but this is simple and effective to begin with.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Which magics did you invest in?
How did you set up the scales?
What castle did you choose?

What where the game settings?

What did you do in the first 5 turns?
E.g. you remembered to put the taxes to 80% after conquering a province to reduce unrest, than setting them to 100% again when unrest=0 ?

If you tell us a bit more about what you've been doing, we may point out possible flaws in your strategy more easily.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

I had similar problems at the beginning.

Basically, it all boils down to this :

- The enemy AIs, even at the lowest difficulty levels, are very good at producing, maitaining, and moving around lots of troops quickly. Unless you are a very well experienced player, the computer will be better than you at producing masses of armies.
- The enemy AIs, even at the highest difficulty levels, are poor at planning long term (most glaring examples : building castles, build up, accumulate and keep alive elite troops to reach a critical mass when they are unstoppable vs. wasting too low amount of them in fodder armies) and building elite, balanced armies with appropriate and effective magic support. After the (admittedly quite hard) learning curve, you'll be able to outrank the computer in those domains, even if you are not a veteran or super experienced played
- It is easy to feel overwhelmed and pressured by the computer masses of agressive armies, and try to keep up in numbers instead of responding with quality. Which is a good way to lose http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/tongue.gif I HIGHLY suggest at the beginning to play a large map with a lower number of opponents. It gives you a breathing rooms, relieves you of the pressure of having a fast expanding computer "rush" you, and allows you to build up superior armies.

With those 3 basic parameters in mind (easier said than done, admittedly http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ), it will be maybe a bit easier to focus your strategies.

Some more precise elements :
- Among the most important factors when comparing "comparable units" (eg. "similar" buildable, moderately priced regular human infantry) are protection and morale. A heavy infantry unit with 15+ protection, all other things beeing equal, is VASTLY superior to a light infantry unit with 10 or less protection.
Especially against neutrals/independant provinces, battles are very rarely to the death, whoever rout first lose, and it is not necessarily the one who suffer from the most losses. Having priestly support to cast sermons of courage is fundamental (one of man's flaws, but cheap bards with the "standard" bonus, the song of morale and close to your combat units can do the job). Having the highest morale is vital.
As for your specific examples : Human Axemen and Spearmen are, frankly only barely ok (don't even think about militia). Tower Guards are your best bet if you need lots of cheap, build everywhere infantery : they have superior morale, decent protection, and a shield. Yes, they are a bit more expensive, but they have much more Lasting power.
Man's infantry is not their forte anyway, but you don't need elite, kickass infantry as man, you have great longbows to deal damage, knights to crush enemy's flanks, and great "special" units (wardens and knights of avalon) when/if you can afford them. All you need is a not too costly decent infantry with OK standing power (= both protection and morale) to serve as meatshield, and tower guards are imho you best bet.
Thought their strategic movement of 1 bites ... Keep your eyes open for better independant infantry (you can find some with 15 protection).
Anyway, don't invest too much in infantry if you are man, your power lies elsewhere.

- At least in the beginning and in single player games (there are always way to counter specific troops and tactics, so don't put your eggs in the same basket in multiplayer), buy lots of longbowmen. They are relatively cheap, and immensely powerful against almost anything independant (except the strongest provinces), and can hold their own against many AI armies. Divide them in 2 or more Groups instead of a big lump, put them slightly behind front ranks, on the flanks (to avoid friendly fire).
When/if feasible, try to boost them with magic (as other suggested, wind guide is excellent, but "gem logisitics" is pretty hard at the beginning).

- Try to build up (even if they are damn expensive and slow to produce) a force of elite shock troops : knights (and knights of avalon) and/or wardens. Those will win you the advanced battles. You need however to commit yourself to producing a critical mass of them (sending them piecemeal to the opponent with only fodder troops as support is a very bad idea), and strike a balance between accumulating a good amount of them, and produce cheaper troops to expand and respond to the computer's agressiveness.
Fortunately, as man, you have cheap AND effective units with the longbowmen. Cherish them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

- Magic support can turn the tide of the battle, even if it is a hard learning curve too, choosing the right spells and avoiding the intial pitfalls and disappointments (friggin' mages can't hit the broad side of a barn with their attack spells). Man's mages have quite a lot of straightforward, useful, low level spells : try tangle vines, sleep, aim and lightning bolt for starters.
And it is not limited to combat magic, summoned creatures can beef up armies enormously, and are a great way to avoid beeing overwhelmed by the opponent. Gold and ressources are hard to come by, you always need more to build troops ... gems are an ADDITIONAL currency usable to "buy" more units.

As other said : expand quickly.

And a little note : although man is a very "familiar" theme with easily recognizable units, it is maybe not necessarily the more comprehensive faction to start with (a nation combining powerful magic and mediocre infantry and priestly support is harder to play than the opposite at first).
Many players usually suggest base Ulm (although the sheer number of different kind sof infantry is intimidating at first, I think in the very beginning you can pretty much build any of them indifferently, and make more educated choices later when you are more familiar with the game) : arguably the best infantry in the game, insanely powerful (though expensive) knights and powerful crossbows. The best and easiest to understand combined army of regular troops. Aside from that, you have poor priest and specialized mages, not bad in their field of expertise, but very specialized, so you don't need to have lots of experience and understanding of the intricacies of magic to play Ulm well. Just rely on the standard, intuitive, "real life"/historical basic troops tactics.

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

Mercenaries.

In the early game, mercs make a huge difference.

As for Wind Guide/Flaming Arrows, I find sending a regular commander dude with the gems, and then giving out the 1 air 1 fire gem to the mage each turn, while more work, means less wasted gems. heh

Re: Please help me to love Dominions 2!
 

Play with the Aran map and R'lyeh (aquatic nation, strong astral magic) against 5 opponents (but not Atlantis and Ermor !). Conquer all the seas, and then begin to conquer the other provinces, but try to keep a short front !
For the first time, I'm about to win a game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif