Newbie questions
 

Water provinces: Whats the way to attack them. Do all sides have access to water moving heroes. Are there such things as underwater races which even having boats doesn't mean you can't attack them? Also what is the implication of a race that can't send its main guys on land.

Supply for troops: It says that forts transfer supply to your armies from nearbye provinces. Whats the radius of this and what happens when there is more then one army that needs supply.

What happens when 2 forts share an adjacent province as far as that provinces resources are concerned. Can one of them use all of it if the other is inactive or do they each get half.

In the hall of fame my hero showed as only having 1 kill. I put him in the front of the army on attack(minotaur lord)but he never got another kill. Any ideas on how that works.

What determines siege length?

Is there a population cap and is it the same for each province.



Thanks in advance if you have some answers to these.

Re: Newbie questions
 

1) Icthyids off land provinces (not shamblers, they're really poor). Not all sides have access to water moving heroes, nations with access to death gives the best chances as they have access to mound kings, which are not only amphibian but able to command pale riders which are probably one of the easiest ways to access water. Ryleh, ATlantis and Oceania are all underwater nations, they are tougher to attack there but the downside is, their land forts doesn't offer much in terms of mages.
2) Not sure, it's illustrated in the manual though. As far as I know, they distribute supply to all provinces in their radius so if you have one army in one province and another in say an adjacent one, they won't "steal" each other's food if that's what you meant.
3) Halved.
4) He probably didn't kill anything and you most likely led your army with another commander in the same province so your other commander ended up claiming all the kills.
5) Defense of fort, defenders present. Strength value of your units sieging and siege bonus'.
6) No pop cap. Farmlands tends to start with higher population. And capitals obviously.

Oh and welcome to the forums ~_^. Drop by our mIRC channel sometimes!

Re: Newbie questions
 

Not all nations have an easy time of attacking water provinces. Typically, you need amphibious troops, such as the shamblers or Icthyids you can recruit from some coastal provinces. It's also possible for some undead units to go underwater. There are several water and air items that can be constructed and given to your commanders to enable them to lead troops underwater.

As long as you have amphibious (or poor amphibian) troops, you can always attack any underwater nation.

The major implication is that the nation will have a great deal more trouble attacking land provinces than the land nation. The flip side is that these nations typically are very, very good at defending their underwater provinces. They might have to watch out if they get completely surrounded, as land provinces are usually more numerous than underwater provinces.

Another implication is that the heat/cold scale doesn't affect the income from underwater provinces. It's usually fairly safe to take a cold 3 scale with an underwater nation. You usually want cold 3 instead of heat 3 because water magic is less fatiguing in a cold province, and fire magic more fatiguing. If most of your opponents are the cold loving nations, you might want to consider switching to heat 3.

If both adjacent fortresses have an administration statistic of 50, then each will take half the resources from the province, leaving it with no resources. Fortresses do not take resources from other provinces that have a fortress in them.

He might not have achieved another kill because of his trampling leaving weakened opponents that the rest of your army cleans up. I'm not quite sure about why he wouldn't have been able to get more kills however.

It's in the manual on page 81, but the short of it is that the reduction in the defense score of the fortress for each of your units is equal to the unit's strength squared then divided by 100. Add one if the unit flies, or add the siege strength if the unit has a siege modifier. The defender builds up the defense statistic by the same amount per trop, except that mindless units are only worth 10% of their value.

There's no population cap (Except for the limitations of how big a number can be stored, which would probably be around 2 billion.)

Re: Newbie questions
 

Thanks for the fast response http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Newbie questions
 

In general units with the amphibian or poor amphibian abilities can move underwater. Poor amphibians suffer some stat penalties. Aquatic units cannot go onto land. The various water nations may have some aquatic units but they will also have amphibious units so they can attack land provinces. They'll tend to be weaker on land than land factions though.
If you can take even one water province you can recruit underwater troops there, as well as summoning underwater-only summons with water magic.

I haven't got Dom3 yet, but there were quite a few ways to attack underwater enemies in Dom2 that should still be there. I'll list the ones that spring to mind.

1: Some mercenaries are amphibious. Ship Wreckers may be the best ones.

2: Some land provinces allow recruitment of amphibious units - icthyids and shamblers

3: There are magical items that grant water-breathing (basically the same as 'poor amphibian' IIRC. Some affect only the commander but some also affect his troops. If the commander dies the troops probably drown though. In Doms2 these were in the water and air paths.

4: A few commanders have the special ability to lead men underwater, at least according to their flavour text.

5: Some land nations have recruitable amphibious units. All Agarthan pale ones seem to be good amphibians.

6: There are many summonable units that are amphibious:

Water magic has many aquatic summons, but you need an underwater lab and a water magic capable of going underwater to cast them. There are also some amphibious water summons that you can cast on land. Sea Trolls are the most obvious example.

Many, but not all, undead are poor amphibians and can go underwater.

I believe that many constructs (generally earth magic) are poor amphibians.

7: There might be some global enchantments that can help. I think there was one in Doms2, but I never used it...


Water nations are also very vulnerable to dominion problems because each sea province usually borders many land provinces which could all have temples. If you find yourself in a stalemate where you can't conquer the seas but you can hold all the land then building enough temples may grant you victory.

The AI does not focus much on underwater provinces when playing as an underwater nation. They often do not take sea provinces far away from their home province, focusing instead on nearby land ones. This allows land nations to get a good foothold in the seas. Land nations are much weaker underwater, but if your economy is stronger you may be able to recruit enough tritons etc to hold off a sea nation. Big armies of magical summons could flatten pretty much any AI army with ease in Doms2. The underwater summons were never quite as devastating as those on land but they were potent enough...

Re: Newbie questions
 

This does not appear to be a problem in Dom3. In my current game Oceania & Atlantis started in seperate large bodies of water. They held every water province and were starting to clash with my forces on land before I was finally able to enter the sea with summons & shamblers. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Newbie questions
 

Question about movement and Combat.

Let's say I have armies in Provinces A & B and my opponent has armies in province C And D. Province B does NOT border province D! I attack Province C from both A&B. My opponent attacks province A from C&D. How does it resolve? To my 2 armies meet his 1 army in province C? Or do the armies in the provinces being attacked stop and defend so it's 1 army vs 1 army? Think of a province setup like a "Z" and how it's resolved.


Finally, let's say there's only 2 provinces(this is simpler) and We attack each other at the same time...Is there a defender or do you meet on neutral ground?

thanks bundles.

Re: Newbie questions
 

This is explained in detail in the manual. Page 64+ (MOVEMENT). The Dom3 Manual is quite cool!

1. All Movement in friendly provinces happens
2. Movement in enemy territory followed in a random manner. So the answer of your questions should be clear

Re: Newbie questions
 

I read the manual turn order pages and understand movement in friendly provinces happens first. Random manner doesn't exactly answer my question. I know that entering an enemy provinces stops your movement. but my question remains.

If the enemy moves first into a province, are you then blocked from moving out of a province? If the movement is random will your forces possibly attack piecemeal if they're coming from 2 differnet provinceS?

Re: Newbie questions
 

Thats explained on page 68.

"...
For example if 2 armies attack each other one of the 3 things can happen:

- there is a battle in the enemy province
- there is a battle in your province
- the armies miss one another and exchange place
which event occurs depends on the size of the armies and the terrain involved"

So eventually your army is 'pinned' in your province.

Re: Newbie questions
 

Like calmon says: either your army will be prevented from moving, and combat will occur in your province between your army and the enemy army, or both armies will move (possibly resulting in position exchange), or your army will move first and the enemy army won't (resulting in battle in opponent's province).

Thus, sometimes you try to coordinate attack from more than one province, and only part of your army get there, which may result in battle loss (hey, where's my left flank?). And, sometimes an army was supposed to vacate a province while another followed, and both end up in the same province, resulting in starvation.

Re: Newbie questions
 

I'm a newbie and I have a question.

Since Gandalf Parker, the good man, put up a multiplayer blitz server, I can't wait to play a person, but I wanted to know generally how other people play.

I got the general feeling that a majority of people, at least those that post on the forums here create small but elite + blessed armies to massacre their opponents without taking any losses, while adding invincible combatants in the mix.

Is it possible to put up a fight by conscripting masses of trashy troops, keep morale up the best you can, and overwhelm an opponent? I was wondering if there is a good human wave strategy. I tried playing Late Ermor but the AI killed me. I don't like the undead that much.

Or should I try to go for spells like Leprosy and Black Death? I know how annoying those kind of spells are when the computer does it to me.

Re: Newbie questions
 

It all depends on what you want and can afford.

The best nation to probably try the "Standard Army" would more than likely be MA Ulm. Play with Order3/Production3 and a Pretender with at least some nature (N3 is a good markerpoint) and probably death (D3) or Astral. Recruit a good mix of units, xbows, heavy infantry, use your Cav (HCav) only for situations that require it, since they are gold heavy.

Make +Supply items for nature, in order to keep your armies in shape.

Recruit indpendents that help diversify your armies: nature mages, death mage, amazonian sacred units (Pegasi, Lizard riders), independant mages.

Make big armies with "Thugs" in order to develop how to equip and identify units that make good thugs. Along with that a few battlemages for support, equipping them with Earthboots to use Bladewind, Battlefield support spells. Ulm is a good nation for this with death and astral because their forgeable items can be equipped on both constructs and undead to make use of their low encumberance values.

Your endgame thugs should probably comprise of Iron Dragons and Golems.

Look for promising provinces for high resource centers in order to churn out the masses of units. Watch out for stagnation with upkeep due to not expanding or waring enough.

These are ways you can play the "Army" game of Dominions.

Re: Newbie questions
 

Zen pretty much beat me to it. Though to answer your question about whether or not it is enough to simply overwhelm your opponent with trashy troops, the answer is no. Trashy troops are meant for either raiding pd or standing in front of your mages.

Re: Newbie questions
 

Blitz games are over very quickly. If you might come to blows with an enemy on turn 5, and will before turn 10, you have to be ready for all kinds of surprises. Like E9, Dominion 9 Cyclops with prot 29 and Awe. You won't research Plague or Leprosy in that time. If a blitz goes for long, you might get them eventually, but that'd mean that you specialized in one path only, and you had better hope it covered all your nation's needs.

To deal with monsters of this kind, you need spells that cause considerable damage. Loss of hitpoints isn't usually enough to stop these super-combatants (SCs), so you should use spells that kill, disable or paralyze the target instead of just causing damage, unless the damage is extremely high. Spells with high precision and range (like Astral spells in Thaumaturgy) are better than spells with poor precision.

You must probably mass one spell a lot before it works.

Against some sacred elites, spells that cause direct damage might be more useful. Many sacred units have very good hp and/or very good magic resistance, though, so you would probably need more mages than you have.



Massing normal units probably won't work. They'll rout, for one thing. Watch out for troops with better morale (e.g. MA Ulm's Pikemen have morale 11 instead of 10, and Guardians have great morale). Massing undead might work, but your enemy will probably field priests then. Massing Vine Men might work, but they're a bit too weak for that. Vine Ogres are better but harder to mass in large enough numbers.

Plan for second castle quickly. If your enemy depends on troops he can only get from his capital, you have an easier time running over him with numbers. Try to build the second castle so that, if needed, you can build independent units your nation usually can't field in large enough numbers to matter. MA Ulm might want to have some arhchers, perhaps even Longbowmen if you manage to find a Farmlands province neighbouring enough resource-heavy provinces for a fort to be worth it there.

Re: Newbie questions
 

Unfortunately, small maps with no special victory conditions create a situation where some strategies can be said to be the "usual winning strategy". PLEASE do not consider that to be the total definition of what is good or bad in Dominions 3. Its a very small part of it, though it might be all of how some people play and view the game. Generally, I would say that the way to kick tail in this game is to discover the nation that best lets you play the way you tend to play. Forcing yourself into a particular strategy wont work better than someone who is comfortable in a specialised nation.

OK enough rant. On the blitz maps Im setting the games up right now on, you might want to concentrate on simple army tactics with powerful national troops. The game isnt likely to allow much use of flight, stealth, specialised allies, or focus on research. MAYBE the strong defense and buildup (dam bursting) strategy depending on who you are playing against.