What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III?
 

What is the nastiest surprise you guys have ever encountered while playing Dom III.

I will relate my nastiest (and most hilarious) experience, which happened 5 minutes ago. So I am playing a long game with 15 AI opponents, and we are left with me (Arco) and one AI (Sauromatica).

Now I've kicked Sauromatica off most of the land provinces, so I am finally heading toward the AI's sea provinces. THe invasion will be a two-pronged one, with two absolutely massive, powerful armies (it was a long game with 15 AI opponents, as I said).

In one of the armies (I called these guys my "national army"), I have my Wind Rider prophet with godly equipment, and with over 200 hit points and at least level 10 in every magic path (he was buffed at least a dozen times with "Wish"). He is ably assisted by Pathos, who also has godly equipment and over 200 hit points and is at least level 10 in every magic path. Both my prophet and Pathos also have 5 Seraph body guard each! (It's too bad no puny Hunter of Heroes showed up, for he would have been licked!). Buttressing my prophet and Pathos are 2 Seraph commanders who were gifted with "Reason." Finally, in this army there were some dozen Oreids and Mystics each, most of them who have been multiple empowered and fully equipped. Together with the foot soldiers--composing mostly Myrmidons, this army is about 600 strong.

The other army is my "summoned" army. It had about a dozen Pretender gods who were "Wished" and gifted with "Reason." They too were all superbly equipped. It also had another dozen or so Ether Lords and their Ether Warrior retinue. There are fewer guys in this army, but with commanders and foot solders this strong, this army too was well-nigh invincible.

So I am going to administer the coup de grace--or so I thought. Wrong...

Here's what happened. Sauromatica had "Thetis' Blessing" on for almost the entire game. So I thought it was safe to attack their water provinces. I wasn't worried about "Thetis' Blessing" being bumped off by another global, because there were only 3 globals up, so Sauromatica had to cast 3 globals in order to even have a chance at bumping off "Thetis' Blessing."

You can imagine what happened. The first turn I enter two water provinces using those 2 massive armies, Sauromatica casts 3 globals and "Thetis' Blessing" is bumped off!!!

So my two cherished armies all drown!

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/eek.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/fear.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/shock.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Needless to say, I was surprised [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/Envy.gif[/img]

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Now I am wondering if the AI did this deliberately to "drown" my armies, all was this a freak accident? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

massed mages with no script casting phoenix pyre on themselves and setting off an army destroying chain reaction... not once but twice. Two big armies and dozens of mages http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Summoning otherworldly beasties of the void with middle age R'lyeh using a Void Lord pretender god only to have him get feebleminded when summoning a single lesser otherness. You'd think that a powerful void being itself could sustain a little bit of unimaginable horror but guess not. :|

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Even if they hadn't cast those globals, weren't you worried about killing their pretender, or whoever cast the spell? It seems pretty likely you'd do that before taking their very last province.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

1. I am a "newb." http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

2. I wasn't worried, as AI is fairly easy in this game (except perhaps on Impossible with many opponents), and I had such a massive, powerful military machine.

But in any case, I will be more careful about entering water provinces next time http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Global spells end when the caster dies. That's what Vicious Love asked you about.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Electrical power failure after 3 hours of play.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

I suppose there's a big risk of none-electrical power failure when playing dom3 http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Playing Dom2, I got a really nasty surprise when I discovered that Bone Grinding insta-kills every skeletal undead on the battlefield :X (yes, every single one from that group of ~1000 storming that capital province's fortification)

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

My nastiest surprise in Dom III was shelling out the 26 death gems to summon a Tomb King, then finding out they couldn't summon Tomb Wyrms!

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III?
 

Mine may have been when playing MP as Vanheim, and finding out the hard way that frost giants completely trumped all my men with their wall of frost, no matter how skilled, and that I had no magic to protect against the cold. That surprise was soon topped when I was thinking I might be turning the situation around, and then having my dominion vanish.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III?
 

Mmmn, there was also the time my killer pretender got killed by an independent hoburg with a magic sword...

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Seems pretty tame compared to these, but:

I have a mage with boots of the planes (teleport) and the Chalice. He teleports around to different armies and reduces afflictions. This is necessary as all my mages are ancient and keep getting more and more afflictions, and mages are the basis of my armies.

Anyways, one turn he just disappears. Can't find him. Overview doesn't list him. Can't remake the chalice or the boots, so I am pretty sure he is out there somewhere. No idea what is going on. Except my extended armies are falling apart, and my mass of researchers/caster in the capital are dying off quickly now.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Lost in Space and Time, perhaps? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/stupid.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image.../firedevil.gif

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Yea, the boots can cause that to happen iirc.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

That sounds like a good guess to me. Darn it.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Nothing big, but this turn in a game I've lost a two times empowered mage with an about 80 gems worth gear, including hammer and 3 boosters. He was forging in a lab in a dom 8 province protected by an astral dome, there was a garnison and lots of other mages, he had bodyguards, he wasn't old, I had no particular message about his death... It seems the wrath of god global has chosen to kill Him among my hundreds of units (the "funniest" thing is I had 17 units wounded and only one killed by the ligthnings this turn and it was this one).

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III
 

Ha ha, if I were you I would dispel Pangaea's Wrath of God, I considered dispelling it but choose not too as it would hurt all other players in the game as well as me. Good call by me.

That really is what I call bad luck...

Hunter of Heroes. :o
 

I think the nastiest surprise I've seen so far was seeing the Hunter of Heroes eat multiple of my non-horror-marked HoFers before the HHNerf mod. :p

Starting in the dead center of a random map and rapidly needing to deal with war on six fronts was also a very unpleasant surprise in one game.

Re: Hunter of Heroes. :o
 

SP: Playing MA C'Tis and fighting a two front war against Caelum and Arcos, trading land for time and slowly wearing down their several hundred strong armies. (lots of elephants from Arcos)
When on my third front Ulm starts invading with a 2k+ army.
First SP game i lost since the early days of Dom2.
Annoyed me especially since i had a lot of spies in Ulm and so could tell that this invasion army consisted of about 90% of all his troops. If the dastard had tried that in multiplayer he'd have been eviscerated by the other nations that bordered him. But the AIs there left him alone for at least a dozen turns which was when i gave up, having no more land to use for attrition tactics. Especially since by then Ulm had recruited another thousand or so troops ready to reinforce the remainders of the first army.
On the plus side, i found a lot of nasty tricks to pull off to inflict disruption and casualites on national armies with minimal losses. (except the provinces of course)

Re: Hunter of Heroes. :o
 

What was the AI difficulty level? 2000 units is a lot of units! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Hunter of Heroes. :o
 

Getting hit by the random event that "Faith is decreasing but crops are growing faster"....on the second turn....while playing Mictlan. Doh! Fortunately that was a SP game and obviously I hadn't invested much time in it yet. Still, pretty funny.

Re: Hunter of Heroes. :o
 

I was playing a 4-player-blitz (my second that day).

First thing I did when I saw where quantum mechanic were, was to attack him. I thought I could get fast to his capitol but he was really prepared to repel me. So It became a bloody war, specially when his pretender showed up. (I was massing a really big amount of crappy units there).

Then, in between turns i thought "they are taking too long to make their turns, Im going to rest for 5 minutes and then continue playing".
But when I woke up it was about 9 am in the morning. They sure must have wait for long for me to play.

Mental note: if you are too tired don´t play a blitz.

Re: Hunter of Heroes. :o
 

Ah, so that's what happened. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Hunter of Heroes. :o
 

My nastiest surprise in Dom3: Ghost King casting few buffs including stoneskin.

Re: Hunter of Heroes. :o
 

My nastiest surprise was maybe when, in an early game, I flew my fully equipped, very powerful master lich into a province that had negative Dom, without fully understanding the way the game works. Needless to say, I lost him and all his equipment. I also lost a couple of nations from lack of Dom, before I figured out why, and I discovered that water-breathers can't participate in the Arena.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III?
 

Bogus. Many times in many ways. He is also great when he hits the other guy, he saved my empire once.

I wish he was stronger in Dom III.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III?
 

Last evening.

Five skilled Abysia Fire Mages (lvl 3 to 5) sieging a Tien C'hi Fortress.

All stacked just behind my massive troops to cast again and again Falling Fire (or Fireball, Conflagration, whatever doing big amount of damage to lots of units at one time), and well protected by 5 Lava Warriors each (just in case).

Tien C'hi army was slaughtered, routed, just ONE unit left on the battlefield, running for his life ...

My lazy mages, having nothing more interresting to do, have all cast Phoenix Pyre at this time.

You guess :
one of them was killed by a tower's arrow, and ...

<font color="red"> BOOM -&gt; BOOM -&gt; BOOM !!! </font>

3 deads, the two lucky survivors crippled, and 2/3 of bodyguards destroyed.

I have to replay three times the battle to undestands what happened.

I was angry, but then, I think of this thread (and this one too), and laught a lot !

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III?
 

My nastiest surprise was experiencing the hunter of heroes bug... not fun.

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III?
 

The pricetag!! Heheheh

Re: What is your nastiest surprise ever in Dom III?
 

Actually, my very nastiest surprise was when I lost my manual-ouch, that one still hurts.