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

I ALWAYS loose.... any advice?


A quick preface.... I bought my copy of ominions 2 from a used games bin at an electronic botique, just the cd.... no manual. I looked at the walkthrough and read the FAQ on the website which helped alot but still missing some info i'm sure. So a quick question... what determines how much resources for making units other then gold a province produces other then your fortress type?

I like to play ermor(sp?), and I am a HUGE fan of the 110 lich so I always use that. I give em 4 astral and 7 or 8 death magic, castle and as high domain as I can get, offhand I think its 4 or 6. I always disable the three races which can go over water.On turn 1 I have my lich research enchantment, I recruit one of the 340 mage/priests(always forget the name) and enough of the valite(sp?)-the cheapest infantry to fill up the centurion the game starts with.

I make the centurion a prophet.

Turn two I send my lich off... a few quick notes on my lich. I think he already qualifies as the new overgod... I always send him to deathmatch when it comes up, of the 25 or so I've done, hes lost 2.... on the famous board he usually has more kills alone then the grand sum of ALL other units, combined.

After the first death match is there any reason to go again? Whats the real benifit of being on the fame board? I have my 340 gold mage/priest(always forget the name... sorry) finish researching enchantment. I have my prophet centurion reanimate long dead so as to not drain population. ANY time any undead producing unit is idle I have them produce long dead so as to not drain the population and get a few extra units.

My primary goal is to make a border.... any kind of border to make a bottleneck, if I see physical barriers I fight my way to them then fight to capture the border around them from the neutral territories. My primary path usually turns out to be a circle or elipse around the center city but not always...


My lich goes off doing his own thing, he goes to every neutral provence where domain is positive and just steam rolls over all opposition.

As for other Groups..... I send out centurions along with the cheapest infantry... another side note, yes there are quite a few heh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

Is anything more exspensive then the cheapest infantry cost effective for the ermor? The best infantry cost about 3x as much and are twice as effective.... roughly.

I have my group leaders always hold behind troops. I comprise my Groups of one centurion and as many valites as I can fit, sometimes a flag holder or two but usually not. I line them up infront of the center, to the right.

In the begining when its only the lich, the centurion prophet and the 340 mage/priest, the lich is still going and just terrorizing, the centurion and priest conquer as they can and stop at every province they do for one turn to raise souless if there are corpses or long dead if there are not so as to not drain the population.

Another sidenote... how does raising undead work? Gouls subtract fromt he population, so do souless, long dead do not-long dead seem to be the worst type of the 3 however. It seems the number of souless is directly proportional to their unholy priest strength or their strength in death magic.... do you raise more souless if there corpses, what about gouls? How many gouls/souless do you make compared to
your dark priest/death magic skill? I ALWAYS use my undead as fodder, putting them in one big lump to the far more right in the center. I can usually keep my mundane soldier casualties VERY low though often my undead get massacred. This gets my volites trained pretty damn well.... they live a very long time and fight many battles.


So I try to get a border.... as this happens I make more 340 mage/priests and centurions and fill the centurions with volites.

If I can I build forts on the border as I can....

Lets fast foward!


If I get a good border and luck out with natural barriers I get a couple of bottlenecks and prosper putting a fortress in every city, YEY! I place 340 priests on the border and have them raising massive numbers of long dead. At this point I like to change my group composition. Instead of a centurion and make volites I put a centurion 12 volites, and 12 archers from conquered provinces. I have several 340 mage/priests in my home city and have em researching.

THIS I have managed to get very stable several times, even taking about 1/5'th of the map behind my massive fortifications twice-the problem.... the moment I step out I encounter g-d only knows how many units...... they toss armies of 100-200 people at my strong points, plow over them then just destroy me.

Any advice?

Quick questions.....

Any benifit to placing a temple besides the units it can produce and domain bonus? Besides a few spells and my immortal god ressurecting in it, how exactly DOES domain help?

One thing I know is a problem but I dont know how to fix... orders! I usually leave most of my units orderless! When I DO order them they usually get massacred. I carefully position my troops... I order archers to fire, I order my undead to attack closest, I order my commanders to hold back or cast spells, my mundane troops however usually have no orders.... any thoughts? Also I never use calvalry.... I never seem to get provinces with good resource #'s and having calvalry so I dont recruit em.

Any answers to my many many questions heh?

I REALLY enjoy dominions 2... its addicting and reall fun, I just suck at it heh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

[ July 13, 2004, 00:55: Message edited by: Lach ]

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

Aiee! My eyes! I think I'm blind now. Thanks a lot.

Okay, let's address the points I actually understood.

Dominion is a good thing. It spreads your national scales of choice, which, depending on what you picked, may or may not be any good. It also gives you an income boost percentage equal to your dominion strength, and allows your lich to, obviously, respawn if killed inside it. It's usually a good thing, unless your scales suck. You can also wipe out other players entirely if you replace all of their dominion with yours, and you lose if you run out of dominion.

If you're running into armies of 100-200 enemies, your options are to simply try to overcome them by brute force, I.E., have more men than them, and simply crush them in an overwhelming wave, or you can fight dirty: Summon powerful commander units, equip them with magic items, and watch as they mow down entire armies like grass, singlehandedly. Search the Boards for the relevant information on "SCs" and "Bane Lords", since this seems to be your most immediately accessible option.

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

Your strategy sounds decent, but you are conspicuously lacking any plans for a gem economy. You will need to harvest those death gems and any others that you can find in order to get to the next stage of military and magical might.

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

Sorry about formatting... it got messed up when I copied it over heh, I fixed it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

OOOOOOH so the higher the dominion the more it shifts to the default I picked at the begining? I thought that was just for the home province.....The income boost... so I take it it is 10% per dominion strength, or?


I shoul try the commander thing with powerfull items heh http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif .

Thanks for the info, lets see if anyone else answers any of my other many questions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif


<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I am usually swimming in gems. I send my 340 mage/priests or my lich to searc for gems in each province they go to. I also usually elevate one of my 340 mage/priests(usually the first because he has alot of experience... they rarley die) to higher death magic and astral magic when I have enough gems.

[ July 13, 2004, 01:02: Message edited by: Lach ]

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Looks like somebody ripped you off there.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The number of resources a province has is determined by a number of factors. The basic amount is determined by the population and land type of the province. Mountains produce more resources, while farmlands produce less. Farmlands have more population, however, which makes their gold income much higher. There are also magical sites in some provinces that increase the amount of available resources. The amount of resources is also modified by the productivity scale.

In any given province, the presence of a fortress will give you all of the resources that the province is capable of producing. If you don't have a castle, then the available resources in a province are halved. The other source of resources is the fact that a castle pulls its administration percentage of resources from neighbouring friendly provinces that do not have a castle.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You should try the Lich Queen, as she is a cheaper deal for Ermor.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">There isn't a lot of reason to go to the death match ever, since once you win you always have to go back on subsequent occasions. The hall of fame provides heroic abilities to commanders that are not pretenders.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Praetorian guards are considerably more than twice as effective as Velites, since they are much less likely to suffer attrition in battles. Principes are probably the best general purpose infantry for Broken Empire Ermor though, as they have excellent morale and other stats.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ghouls take population, soulless require corpses, longdead do not require anything.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You can only raise soulless if there are unburied corpses in a province.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You only get an income boost from your dominion if you have picked positive order scale. It's a 7% bonus per level of the scale, and only applies to those provinces whre you have enough dominion to enforce the scale.

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

You could try taking ashen empire dominion for Ermor against weak AI opponents and then just playing a game to test things out.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Got it for $20.00 heh, so nah http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif .

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">So any bordering provence to one with a castle will also get its full resource value?


Thank you for the other info http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is where the Admin value of a Fort comes into play. The admin is what amount of resource draw that fort has from its surrounding provinces.

Those provinces get drained of resources.

[ July 13, 2004, 02:33: Message edited by: Demosthenes ]

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

Actually this brings up the question i had regarding unholy summoning; Ghouls vs. Longdead vs. Souless.

Soulless are only raised with weapons and armor after a battle (a nice touch). Otherwise they come back unarmed. And unskilled - the lowest in the game. They're virtually worthless in combat without weapons. But they do have 15 hp.

Longdead are skilled and their armaments are varied. Many have 11+ armor and 11 attacks skills. But most have only 5 hp - banish bait. Longdead tend to die just about as badly as Soulless.

Now i used to have a deep aVersion to Ghouls because of the way they ate pop. But on further reflection (and experience), they have the advantage of Paralyzing Poison, which if it connects and sticks, is just plain better than some feeble zombie limp-wristed punch. And of course you can use summoning Ghouls to burninate one of those random provinces you oftentimes take over.

Ghoul / Soulless / Longdead?
(I have this idea of plaing base Ermor with 3 Growth and pumping out Ghouls.)

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

Ghouls = Take and Hold usage (They are not mindless, if you notice, so they have a full repair/destroy castle damage)

Soulless = Get more per summon if you have corpses. As good as Longdead, but more. If you are summoning Longdead, you might as well summon Soulless while you have corpses unless you plan on Raven Feasting. IMO the AI should notice when there are no corpses and switch their Reanimation to longdead (if they can) when there are no more Corpses.

Longdead = No population Reanimation. Fodder for free!

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">This is where the Admin value of a Fort comes into play. The admin is what amount of resource draw that fort has from its surrounding provinces.

Those provinces get drained of resources. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The province it is built in gets full resources, neighboring provinces get the administration %?


Okay... the AI cheats and I am certain of it. I managed to get a REALLY strong border... covered a good size of territory and only 4 entrances, one of which is hard to get to!

All 4 of them have an enormeous number of troops.... on one of them in particular I was stacking every extra troop I could in preperation of breaking out and capturing an area past that bottleneck up to the next bottleneck(then fortify that area ETC). Eventually I broke out and attacked

Within two turns of doing this the AI on the other side of me, who could not possibly see that are, who had no armies on that side of the world and who had no global spells to reveal the area, massed 450 units on my other side..... how they even GOT 450 units, which had to of been most of their army there that quickly is beyond me, let alone how they knew.... grrr heh.


Chalk up another massive slaughter heh.

[ July 13, 2004, 04:18: Message edited by: Lach ]

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, the province it is built in get full resources, neighbouring provinces lose resources according to the admin percentage, which go to the province with the castle.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The only difference between the AI and yourself is the number of points it gets to make its pretender, and that it knows which provinces you control. On normal, you get the same amount of points, on easy, it gets less, and on impossible, it gets more. After that, you are playing by the same rules. The AI just uses huge hordes of the cheapest troops, built in every province that it can, which you could do yourself if you had as much patience as it.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The AI knows what provinces you control, and can gather any other informationn via scouts, which it uses a lot of.

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

[quote]Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

Quote:

Originally posted by Lach: [qb]The province it is built in gets full resources, neighboring provinces get the administration %?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No, the province it is built in get full resources, neighbouring provinces lose resources according to the admin percentage, which go to the province with the castle.


So what if two neighboring provinces both have castles?

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.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The AI blows all of its money building tons of crap, and doesn't research much at all. This means it has lots of money to, well, blow on crap. The fact that they build NOTHING but crap will quickly become readily apparent when you start fielding higher-class units like SCs, and mow through the AI's hordes of crap like a bazooka rocket through tissue paper.

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

I've always thought Broken Empire (which is what you're using) was a horrible theme. Anyways, my advice is that you stop making velites and create principes and hastati, if principes use too much resource. Also remember to use your gems to get your powerful undead critters out. Wights, behemoths, and bane lords are really good critters, as are ghosts, in my opinion.

BTW, if you didn't have the manual, how'd you get the game to work? Isn't the CD key on the manual?

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

<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.

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

The AI nations appear to mass HUGE armies at higher difficulty levels. Much larger than any positive scales can ever justify. This indicates to me that the AI does indeed cheat with gold/ressources at higher than normal difficulty settings.

I think most dom players start out by losing the the AI, while they get used to and adapt to the same-time movement of armies, and learn how to build and compose armies to be effective. These seemingly rudimentary things can take many days of playing before you have enough experience to know what works and what does not. The best way is to notice in each game what seems to work, and what does not. This can be very simple things, like noticing that your heavy infantry armies almost always win, but that they never kill many enemies because they cannot run them down when they break, and that your suffer huge losses when heavy infantry breaks, because they are too slow to retreat before being run down.

Once you have a firm grip on these basics, you are ready to take your game to the next level by using gems to get the maximum gain from them. Later in the game, gems will determine the outcome, as they can produce units, magic items, and spell effects that can be applied to destroy any army comprised of normal units purchased for gold, regardless of its size and composition. To master this art, you must study all the spells, magic items and units (including summoned units) in the game, which again will take days of playing with trial and error.

It's all jolly good fun. :-)

/Rainbow

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

The thing is, the "basics" encompass enough to fill two whole other games

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 ]

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">hehe you will start to love wish (alteration 9) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

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

I managed to get about 2/7'ths of the world map and would of gotten another 7'th but decided to bunker in.

I summoned massive numbers of undead and held my borders.... then I casted weight of yeas(or whatever its called) and the one that causes global darkness.... SUDDENLY the only enemy left(the guy on the other 1/7'th was weak and died quickly to the third guy left, one guy had the other 4/7'th of the map) was able to summon litteral hordes of undead..... I didnt see him cast one death magic spell the whole game..... and somehow he still maintained a good chunk of his army even though he only has 10% of the income.... is it me or is weight of ages worthless? It only affects like 100 units a turn.... well not useless but not very usefull, if its you and one or two other enemies your pumping out more then that per turn, not a significant dent..... I wish it didnt hurt your own troops.

I lost.


As for wish.... the only thing I could wish for were gems-and I rarley got enough to replace the spell, or artifacts.... I couldnt find anything else that would work, any hints?

[ July 14, 2004, 17:37: Message edited by: Lach ]

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

Well, if you want to win, Wish for a "Doom Horror" or "Vastness". Two very powerful monsters. After that you will be very, VERY nervous if someone casts Wish, especially if that someone is human... AI does Wish for things that bad.

I think that your enemy suddenly lost almost all his mages, and had only a small bunch of undead mages left. As he had almost nothing to use his gems on and was too short on cash to be able to buy mages that could be useful he used alchemy to get more money and Death gems. He then either summoned more undead mages (maybe Revenants) and with them casted Reanimation, or Demiliches (Lichcraft) and more powerful summons.

Or maybe he just had so many provinces that even with 10% income he massed huge armies on the provinces near your border.

For masses of undead you could have survived by casting Thaumaturgy spells Control Dead ( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif )and Wither Bones (high armor-negating damage, no resistances or saving throw, only vs undead). Also, Earth spell Blade Wind does wonders against all low-protection units your enemy might have.

I haven't yet tried to play a game that big to the end... It seems that it will be interesting.

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

"In Illwinter's game Dominions 2, you can build temples, wage wars against pagan neighbors, and research fantasitcal magical spells. But Wish requires exact spelling.... and it doesn't take American Express.

VISA, its everywhere you want to be."

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Great move there, Charlie. You cast Burden of Time *AND* Utterdark as Broken Empire? Are you nuts? Utterdark/BoT is only for dead nations, ones that entirely lack living troops and normal income. If you are a living nation, I.E., one that receives income and recruits national units, never cast these!

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

I thought the other ermor themes only slowly killed your population and gave some free undead, not turned your whole nation into undead?


I had enough undead to hold my borders so I didnt need my mundane troops anymore.... it didnt stop the enemy though so he ran over me.

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

I thought the other ermor themes only slowly killed your population and gave some free undead, not turned your whole nation into undead?


I had enough undead to hold my borders so I didnt need my mundane troops anymore.... it didnt stop the enemy though so he ran over me.

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

I thought the other ermor themes only slowly killed your population and gave some free undead, not turned your whole nation into undead?


I had enough undead to hold my borders so I didnt need my mundane troops anymore.... it didnt stop the enemy though so he ran over me.


Edit: Woah triple post, sorry.

[ July 14, 2004, 20:10: Message edited by: Lach ]

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That depends on how you define "slowly". On 24 hour hosting, yeah, I suppose that is pretty slow. It does take several days for this to happen that way. In single player, I'd say your entire nation will be undead in a matter of minutes.

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

How does getting the free undead work? Is your population replaced by undead or you get free undead units? What about gold/production?

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The two themes of Ermor have no recruitable units. Every unit is either automatically raised from the dead by your dominion in your provinces, with more undead rising in provinces with castles and temples. You can also summon unholy priests that can further increase the number of undead that you have available. You will also very quickly kill off your entire population base, and have no more gold income or resources.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The two themes of Ermor have no recruitable units. Every unit is either automatically raised from the dead by your dominion in your provinces, with more undead rising in provinces with castles and temples. You can also summon unholy priests that can further increase the number of undead that you have available. You will also very quickly kill off your entire population base, and have no more gold income or resources. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">yep . only one thing to add :
if ´there are gold producing buildings in a province like arena , gold mine ... you still get the gold http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif so with some luck ermor still gets a small but steady gold income http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif
because ermor only needs to build castles / temples / labs it is most likely enough .
if you need some further gold alchemizing fire / earth gems should always be enough http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

i prefer the free summons of AE ermor a bit more than the SG ermor free summons . you even get weak leaders summoned from time to time .
so you can use legions of free crap undeads to "scout/ oppurtunity kill" enemies and unleash your core troops which you summoned after that first costless test wave http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
the longdead horseriders / knights of the sepulchre you get are weak too but quite quick http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

in sp ae / sg ermor is real nice and for the pc's almost undefeatable .
so really the ideal race to test things http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

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

Sounds good but I wont be able to build castles besides pillaging....

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Heheheh....how little you yet understand....

No, really, what ELSE would you do with all the money you'll get from pillaging and alchemy OTHER than build castles, temples, and labs? It's not as if your units require any upkeep, or that you have any to recruit. With the exception of a few indy mages, what else would you buy? Castles! LOTS OF CASTLES! I WILL BURY YOU IN MILES AND MILES OF CASTLES IN THE DESOLATE WASTELAND! YAAAR!

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

Most of my earlier questions turned out to be from lack of understanding game mechanics..... the problem still persists however. IF I can live long enough to get high level magic and a big gem income I can win...... or get close enough that I am satisfied.

The problem is that the computer just SWARMS over me with ENORMEOUS troops numbers.... how the hell can I counter that?

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You might be playing the game with lots of computer opponents on small maps... which would cause this scenario.

or

You might not be expanding to independent neighboring provinces fast enough. You should be planning to conquer a province every other turn. Mercenaries help big time with this.

Also when you first meet your enemies don't go attacking multiple computer opponents unless you feel confident about keeping them under your thumb.

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

Turn up the independent setting. That slows them down.

If you are talking about Ermor, thats his basic tactic. The answer is "make priests". As soon as you see ermor coming, start making priests. Their banishment spell makes big holes in that swarm. Of course you build your tactic around giving them time to cast that many times. Heavy infantry, set everyone far back on the battlefield, have the infantry do "hold and attack closest" or maybe just "guard commander". Dont charge the enemy, make them wear themselves out charging you.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Just in case nobody got it, you can successfully wish for VISA.

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">What happens if you do?

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

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">the faerun map is optimal for learning the game .
because there you have plenty of time and most likely will meet your first opponent after you already control 10-15 provinces at least .
and it is not wraparound . this makes orania a not so easy map if you play with all 17 ai opponents ihmo .
if you have luck and they fight mostly against each other for a long time it's easy to win because you will have superior summons .
but if you are already in battle with 1 ai at turn 5 and 1-2 others at turn 10 which often happens and they go with all their stuff on you it is very hard to survive .
if you play standard ulm or marignon this is not so hard to come by because your starting troops are just great but with other nations .
playing ryhleh is ihmo very optimal for beginners since your only opponent in the beginning is atlantis if you did turn them on .
so you have time and can decide against the ai when the carnage should start by deciding when you go on the continent .

finally a tip : to see if you expand "fast" enough look often at the provinces score graph .
if you are in the upper third it should be enough . depends on nations though and since you play nonstandard ermor they don't need to expand very fast in the beginning http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

i think the ai is not too bad because their swarming keeps you busy in early-midgame and often successfully disturbs you quite a bit .
rarely but it happens sometimes the ai does even summon magic troops like summer lions .
only thing i haven't yet seen is summoning them one of the unique summons .
general i think the ai is good enough to be a challenge in most cases if you do not play under extreme settings.
when i started playing dominions 6 weeks before i first thought exactly the same they always have more than me and the ai is very good .
you already found out yourself that at high magic levels the ai is very beatable but i really think it is good enough at impossible settings since it is a challenge even for sc pretenders with its hordes in early - midgame http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif