playing ANYONE against everyone
 

If you could play ANY nation in a huge era 1 game, who would you play? I mean a 1500 province map with all 3 eras being played (and the empty slots for the old grizzeled veterans).

To my count that would be 76 nations (you have to take out 23, 24, 25). So if you could pick one to play against all of the early, mid, and late era nations...

Think about it. It might happen.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

hmm, i'll vote lanka

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

i think mid tien chi --> not after edit http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
they might be not so good, so EA Tien Chi (if meglobob dont want it or LA Tien Chi would be prefered. Or else LA Marignon and EA Abysya would be nice too. If they would be all taken, i'd stick to MA Tien Chi.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Why???

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Probably Patala. IMO it has the best late game potential in the game. Spring and Autumn and MA Ermor might also get votes from me.

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Well thinking about it, 1500/76 is 19.73'ish provinces per player which means you are unlikely to get rushed early.

Also this game would go on a long time, all most certain to never be completed unless you had special victory conditions.

So...I reckon you want a strong magical nation...errm either EA T'ien C'hi or a strong astral nation probably EA Arco.

Choosing to play LA Ermor or LA R'lyeh would be a total nightmare, can you imagine trying to move all those hordes of chaff around...'shudders'

I suppose this would be the ultimate Dom3 game.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

I will play MA Pangaea, MA Arcosphale, or MA Ulm.

Email me if this gets going or you start a MA game with 3-4 human players and the rest AI. dh987@cox.net

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Well consider making a new god for this (and please a password you would be willing to pass on). The game might go for years so a person might get bored, pass on their nation, take another, quit, come back a year later to sub back in on their first nation, etc etc.

Some variant of
 

Some variant of Arcocephale would be hard to pass up. Healing is very tempting for your Pretenders. Although without Death...

I actually like LA Marignon alot for pure power. Astral Corruption ftw. Lanka is probably stronger, but i'm not completely familiar with Lanka yet (i can't remember which are capital only, ect).

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Hmmm, I'd have to go with MA Arcoscephale. With those parameters you're going to have to pick a good long term strategy so I'd go with good scales, strong research and expand early on the backs of elephants while castling up and cranking out the mystics. Strong communions & ability to heal afflictions on SC will carry you through the mid game, then strong astral magic (& good scales) will give you a good presence in the very long late game. You've got enough magic variety to handle anything, and great astral mages which will be brutal in the late game.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

I have to admit that EA Arcos would tempt me alot. In a game with every nation, running for so long, the ability to seduce commanders from every other era/nation would be very tempting.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Errm...thinking about it abit more, would'nt the LA nations have a huge advantage at the beginning with better weapons/armour and then in the end game the EA nations should come out on top with there more powerful mages/magic.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

That did show up abit in the tests with AI's but Im willing to hear the expert veterans claims that AI's are at best a bare minimum comparison.

Human players might make all the difference. Can a great EA player make it far enough into the game to gain ground? Can a great LA player hold what he gains when the EA nations start gaining in their research?

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Meglobob, that's not entirely true. Some of the best national troops are EA sacreds (Vanheim, Mictlan, Neifelheim), while some really good late game powers are LA (Ermor, Ulm).

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

This MP Gandalf, a player playing a LA nation could try to organise a early game massacre of all the EA nations. Can you imagine that, a huge alliance of LA nations slaughtering every EA nation they come across because they know such nations have a huge advantage later in the game.

EA Arco does'nt look so good now eh...as he could be public enemy no.1, would be good fun thou. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Or am I just http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif?

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

More like EA nations would have a big advantage through the whole game. EA Vanhiem, Helhiem, Lanka, Niefelhiem could beat up almost any living LA nation, at any stage of the game. The differnce between ages isn't all it's made out to be... there are some extremely powerful nations scattered through all the eras, but EA has the biggest concentration.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Actually I was thinking that a lucky position would be EA arcos landing in the corner with LA Ulm sitting in front of him and cutting one super NAP (non-aggression pact for lurkers) "protect me now and I will make it worth your while later". Im thinking that either way, NAPs will have a big impact on a game this big.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Yeah, diplomacy in general would be important. Don't want to be known as a pact breaker in a game running for 2 years. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

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To quantum_mechani and Baalz:-

Yea, I agree with you both, some EA nations, like the ones you mentioned would be powerful from the start.

I was however, talking about the entire age as a group and generalising about overall strategy not focusing in, on a couple of nations.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Do most of your mp games have diplomacy? The ones I play with my 3 friends are always everyone for himself. Diplomacy is considered cheating.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

That's the way I prefer to play, but most games/players are otherwise.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

In a game of purely testing strategy, then there usually isnt diplomacy. There doesnt tend to be diplomacy in chess. Also random events, random maps, any kindof luck really.

In a more role-playing game, diplomacy is part of the role playing. So is taking your lumps with random things. Yes, this is my preferred playing style. Im afraid that I got alot of the random stuff added to the game. Try not to hold that agaisnt me.

Dominions tends to be split. There are those who play their god, and there are those who consider their god just another piece in the game. Since there is no easy way to keep diplomacy out of the game, I think this one will have alot of it.

Side Note: I do have a list of hacks I did to try and create a game with no diplomacy. Blind email accounts all off of my server, watching the log and reporting any msgs between players, etc etc. It still ended up short of absolute but I might host a game like that one day down the road.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

i like them

just that they are considered very weak has not to mean that i cant play them http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. But as i think over it early or late might be the better choice, lets go to change my opinion, before anyone notices http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Early Era nations are more powerful magically with better sacreds, but lack Holy, mounted Knights, and x-bows. Death is less common in the Early Era as well.

Since Magic or Sacreds > all in Dominions, in the long run, i'd say Early Era nations would be more powerful on average than LA nations. AI, though of course, do not use magic or sacreds correctly, so LA nations are probably stronger in AI hands.

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I would not try actively to catch anyone teaming up. It would simply be the honor system. I see no point in cheating in a game? What would be the point of winning a game you had an unfair advantage playing in?

Now there may be people at the start, that say flat out they intend to team up, and if that is the case i can live with that. Albeit no amount of good strategy can overcome 4-5 people ganging up on you.

Despite Pangaea(MA) having limited mages and gems, I could see it doing well in a big game. Its units, with berserk, are never really obsolete. And stealth never really becomes obsolete either. With the use of blood, which i do not use against the AI, you could have very powerful assassins, and the spine devil is a cheap early unit that can give certain nations fits.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

EA T'ien Chi

Wide range of paths, good summons and ok nats. I usually play with a chaos economy, but would think hard about going good scales for such a long term game.

I've recently started playing around with Growth/death scales at the extremes more and earlier there were posts saying death-3 has a minor long term effect. It seems noticeable, but survivable. My last FOTM was Pangaea, and growth 2 or 3 was noticeable late game as well - I could actually regen the provinces I would decimate hunting.

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MA Ermor is very strong, probably stronger than LA Ermor now. If they had Soul Gate, i'd love them to ...um, death.

What hurts MA Ermor is finding some mage time for research.

EA Ctis is very much like MA Ermor, with just a couple more negatives and several more positives. I like MA Ctis in theory, but i've not really played them in multi in all honesty. I just like free Disease dominions http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

The problem i have with MA ctis, is holding water squares. You cannot buy pd, and if you hire indies they die of disease.

Obviously you could try to have a horde of undead in every square, but that gets expensive. And on land, you would like to hire some good indies, like cross bowmen. But they die of disease as well. maybe if you took a pretender that could heal, but that would be micromanaging hell.

I doubt Ctis could keep gift of health up, or get the chalice.

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I would probably go for LA Ulm with some growth just because i like them and they grow into a great late-game power(almost every count you summon increases your blood income for yet more counts until all your huntable provinces are being hunted in)

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Of course the issue with LA Ulm is that counts aren't really good for anything besides blood hunting.

R'Lyeh is one of the few nations with access to W/N mages, so it will always be one of the most powerful in the late game.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

In part i agree with you, nations with access to either clams (+ astral) or blood stones(+ earth gems), or just plain blood hunting will have a good chance in a game as big as this.

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W/N?
For some reason Oceania always did very well in the AI tests.

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While making a 100 clams may be a great strategy, it is another perfect example of how to kill the fun of a game to me. I think i would rather lose, flying my gorgon around and leading armies with banelords etc, then to micromanage some mages to generate pearls.

ideally, i would like to see the number of such gem producing items limited to a few per race. Clam generation also minimizes the importance of some pretenders that generate gems, global spells that generate gems, and actually hunting for gems with spells.

I realize that making clams is a valid strategy, but it is one, for the sake of fun, i would like to see nerfed. Tlk about a buzz kill.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

LA ulm counts not useful for anything other than bloodhunting? With a high dominion fountain of blood you can have stealthy, flying squads of counts and vampires flying around risk free. You can have counts flying around to raise skeletons a few times, die and do it again next turn or my personal favourite get as many counts as you find neccesary and set them to fly in and either summon lammashtas, attack closest(in friendly dominion) or summon lammashtas, retreat(the lammashta fear often auto-routs counts but the lammashtas fight on so no problems).

When your blood hunters who are scattered around you empire are flying, stealthy, immortal, army leading, skeleton/lammashta raising, raiders who can fairly easily be turned into thugs you can be pretty versatile if you maintain your dominion levels. With my sleeping fountain of blood i can also get all blood royalty other than demon lords while having dom8 and nice scales(and i can also forge soul contracts early). The ideal defence situation is having an enemy army attack you in your dominion and hitting it turn after turn with flying, immortal counts and vampires(along with vampire lords who are even better thugs due to soul vortex).

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Though I have never played a race with a lot undead, I have played against Ermor a ton. Does Purgatory not affect LA Ulm?

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Ashen Empire - I can see armed soulless for years.

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Well, that's a matter of taste, I think

It would be cool if that were moddable (and maybe it is?). I would expect it would be straightforward to mod such that clams (and related items) don't exist. If you're playing with trusted players it should be quite easy to incorporate this as a house rule.

Well, again, it may be a buzz kill for you, but some of us really enjoy the economic elements that forged generators add to the game. Oh, and btw, all the generators did get significantly nerfed between Dom2 and Dom3.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Yeah, easy to mod clams away. You just make them require a silly amount of skill to forge and make them cost a silly number of gems.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Modding things away is not a good thing for diversity. If some people want to spam clams its their decision. Other people can use that against them and attack right away.

In a special situation, like with 1500 Provinces, where a map is simply to big so the abuse of it is too much, one can simply make a house rule about it and rule them out.

I for one prefere 100 province maps and just sometimes 200provinces, if more players are availible. And its not an issue there. And yeah, i can remember clams beeing much cheaper in earlier dom versions.

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There's essentially no micromanagement. You build a few per turn, and put them on one of your researchers that don't already have one. You then press the pool astral pearls button once a turn.

Let's not further neuter magic if we can avoid it. It's a strategy that only works under a very specific set of circumstances, which is why I've brought it up in both of these threads related to winning massive long-term games.

It does no such thing. The better your gem income, the faster you can build clams. A water gem income of 1 per turn is 15 times slower to start than a water gem income of 15.

The two game settings where I've discussed clams in the past week are already kind of a "buzzkill". It's also already been seriously nerfed to the point where you need on the order of 50 turns or more before you start to turn a profit. They are set on huge maps where you won't see any serious opposition for 20 turns or more. People will be dropping out of these games constantly.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

The advantage of a mod over a house rule, is that people can't break the mod, while they can break the house rule quite easily.

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Sure they can fly around, but they can't actually accomplish much while doing so. They don't have the stats to act as thugs, which means that all that they can do effectively is raise skeletons and, in the very late game, cast disintegrate. You also don't need LA Ulm to get vampires, Mictlan is just as capable of summoning them (although they have little reason to bother) and is likely to have a higher blood income to boot.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Mictlan will have higher blood income to start but when your hunting in all your provinces it should be around the same(also counts auto-summon free thralls). The flying lets them raid(if you know they wont die) aswell as getting then where you need quickly(particularly useful when defending) and their stats are pretty nice. LA Ulm actually does have better access to vampires(though lower starting blood income unless you use your second tier mages for hunting) due to counts only costing 44 slaves rather than 77 for lords(they have slightly improved stats and +1D and blood, none of which really help any of the strategies i listed)

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Oh Graeme, you're just not thinking about it. Here are a couple things that you can do with the counts:
Skelispam
Lashimas
Blood Sabbath - followed by hell power (hint: spawns a bunch of horrors while giving you some pretty big death mages until the horrors kill them before attacking the enemy. )
Drop a bunch of counts on the front line with a few death gems apiece and rain shadow blast down. The counts are so mobile, it's not hard to converge 10 of them wherever you want, and 20 shadow blasts has a pretty devastating effect on most armies.
Empowering counts can be damn effective if you're clever with blood sababath (the sabbath slaves are effected by the master's buffs). Empower a count a single level in fire and another count in earth and now you can have a swarm of iron skinned, fire shielded, immortal, flying, regenerating, lifedraining dudes who steadily build up xp because they never die. Variations on this are endless, and you never need to worry about the dude you empowered dying...
Enemy SC giving you grief? Again, converge a whole swarm of counts on him and hellbind the hell out of that heart.

Perhaps they're not the best unit in the game, but they are a FAR cry from useless if you just apply a bit of thought to them. The power of Ulm's counts is not that any individual one is a badass, it's that Ulm is unrivaled in the number of vamps it can generate, particularly early in the game. A swarm of counts can be very effective - and can't quite stress this enough - they're immortal! That fact means you can use and abuse them in ways you never would other units.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Those ideas seem quite usefull actually.

Just beware of the opponent using 45 stealth preachers to remove your dominion in a province on the turn of the big battle.... preaching happens pre-combat.

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Yeah but dominion spread happens post-combat (for whatever reason - including preaching)

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Do you mean spread to other provinces? Preaching never does that.

Do you mean changing dominion in the province the priest is in? Someone posted success in preaching before defeating an enemy vampire queen, you mean this shouldn't be possible?

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Either way, with thralls patrolling(without losses due to growth), strong dominion and count mobility you SHOULDNT(not that i dont say wont) have to fight outside your dominion(although attacking can be risky because they could mass preach before you hit them).

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

I find moving around gigantic armies to clobber at each other pointlessly a buzzkill.

Re: playing ANYONE against everyone
 

Me too, generally, thats why i like the stealthy raiding form of play i get from LA Ulm http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. Usually with them i dont need any large armies because of the versatility and raiding potential(even in enemy dominion a flying, stealthy skele spammer who can handle himself pretty well in combat is nice) that lets me not have to have huge battles.