The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

Province Defense DOES NOT "scare" a Human Player like it does a computer player. You may surprise the Human Player once, or get lucky because he thinks caves are dark so he doesn't bother to decoy your non-programmable archers, but you are not going to stop, scare, or more than slow down a Human Player with Province Defense.

Province Defense is usefull for dealing with VERY WEAK raids, and giving your real army a boost if you know there is going to be a fight in that province. Both these are legimate uses.

Putting 30 PD in multiple provinces will get many Human Players to attack you, as it tells them where you have put your gold.

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

Plus, don't waste your money on things that you don't need. Especially temples/labs. If I see a temple in a province which isn't behind the walls of a fort then I know that attacking that province will tear down the temple, which equals to a 400 gold loss for you. If I find a lab in a province that I conquer then I thank you for the chance to equip my commanders with the newest items and gems and stash away looted items that I found. But since you shouldn't leave your research magi undefended, you certainly wouldn't need a lab in the woods, unless you can recruit a mage with a new magic path there.

Building temples in almost every province you have is a sure "ATTACK ME" sign for other players, as it's a waste of gold.

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

But do put some PD everywhere. At least one point. And I'll usually put enough, at least in the early/mid game to stop the early remote attack spells (Call of the Winds/Wild, ARouse Hunger, Imprint Souls,etc)

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

I think the biggest difference is diplomacy. From what I've seen of MP games, you /need/ to work out a peace treaty with some neighbours, before attacking the weaker one. In most cases it seems successful players sign a NAP (non aggression pact) with the first person they meet pretty much without hesitation. Being the third nation in a little group all in one area when the first two already have a NAP is basically asking to be killed and chopped up between the two of them. People like to win fights and most of the time that means double teaming you.

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

The biggest difference between the AI and Human players is that humans actually use magic (i have never seen the AI to use more than 1 or 2 random mages per battle).

As an example, in one of my early MP games, i created an undefeatable army of 200 principes with Pythium and sent them to attack Marignon (or Abysia i forgot which one) and i lost all of them in a battle where the enemy fielded just 10 F2 mages with some bodyguards. (A fireball kills 3 principes per cast, so with 10 mages spamming fireball i lost 30 principes per turn).

The other important thing is that players at least the good ones will adapt themselves to your tactic if you are at war with them, so its not like against the AI where you can field always the same armies and always win.

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I played some SP games and never heard about PD stopping AI. How does it work?

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

Not always. There are times when having lots of temples is quite reasonable. If you are using your dominion as a weapon. Or if you are bumping up your dominion to assist with a spell (like GoH) or to produce more of your sacreds.

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Sure, there are uses. But expect them to be attacked. Heavily.

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

My best advice for the new MP:

"Do not spit in the wind, do not pull the mask of the ole Lone Ranger, and don't mess around with Slim."

Besides that, do a little research and find out who keeps their treaties-and who is notorious for breaking them at the 1st opportunity.

In God we trust-everyone else pays cash.

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The AI will generally be disinclined to attack you if you invest heavily in PD. I don't know the specifics, but PD 15 in the neighboring provinces seems to work well.

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The AI only takes note of every 10 levels, so 1, 11, 21, 31, etc. are the critical levels.

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Oh! Thanks, QM. That's good to know.

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quantum_mechani:

I always kept it at 10 or 20, so it seems I need to move it by one point. And what AI does when all provinces have the same PD? And I am sure it won't attack 1000 army with PD 0 instead of empty probince with PD 21...

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

It's based on the AI's belief that it can successfully take a province if it declares war on you. For instance, you can heavily defend all your provinces except 1 with no PD and eventually the AI will look at your army graph and decide you're weak. It'll build up what it thinks are a sufficient number of troops and attack you.

Now if you have more than 1 "open" province it just makes the AI attack you faster. It seems like the AI is always at war with at least 1 nation in order to expand, so if all of its neighbors appear tougher than you it's just a matter of time before they attack you.

Further, the reason you get ganged up on is because one nation declares war on you and you expend resources to defeat them, gather more lightly defended provinces while at the same time losing troops. Another nation attacking you just increases the number of lightly defended provinces and lost units, encouraging more opponents to gang up on you.

That's my take on it anyway. I've never had a border nation attack me when they had nothing to gain. Occasionally they declare war on you via a message but they're always ready to take something the next turn.

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

As far as exactly which provinces the AI will attack, that's harder to predict, though PD certainly does play a role. The big advantage of the higher PD on borders is preventing the AI from declaring war in the first place.

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I've noticed that the AI seems to balance PD vs. gold income. There are probably other factors as well but thats the only one I've noticed a pattern for.

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sector24:

Well, AI declares war when it is on the other side of the map and no chance to be close to me for many many turns. And just throws some distance spells at me.

I have now strange situation, bordering with Ermor but he didn't attack me even once. And we have border for like 30 turns. And Ermor has enormous army [like 3x bigger then next one, it is MA].

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

Plenty of PD on the border?

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I was talking primarily about your neighbors, I do admit that occasionally you get a message from someone you've never seen but I am not exactly sure why that is. My best guess would be that they may have expanded up against stronger neighbors on every front and need someone to go to war with.

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Thats true, only so far as it goes.

In SP, I routinely steer attacking AI's where I want them to go by making even a 1 pt difference in pd.

While I usually use the 21 breakpoint, it works pretty much anywhere.

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My advice would be:
Dont let solo play make you too cocky, and try everything.

What might be a full game strategy in solo play, becomes a one-shot tactic in multiplay. Get a full toolbox of tactics. No matter how many different guides and strategies you read about your nation, read more. Dont toss any out because at some point in some game when you are really hurting then it could be a workable surprise. It will help in keeping you unpredictable.

Gandalf Parker
--
GameMaster: Now you are at the fifth door. Bash it in also?
Paladin: No, its time for Change of Tactics. I knock.
GameMaster: Ummm... Ok... They say "What?"
Paladin: I say "Pizza."

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

Slight disagreement.

My experience is the AI is always at war with somebody other than at the very start. If you're it's only neighbor that almost certainly means war no matter what.

In fact, I've had the AI declare on me once when there was no possibility of attacking me that turn as we had no points of contact. There were two AI's at war with each other. I didn't particularly like the prospects of war with my neighbor so I was pushing dominion. He popped--the remaining AI immediately declared on me, despite the fact that we had the big empty zone of the dead AI between us.

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Loren: I've noticed that AIs declare war even if using remote spells. Now, we all know when an enemy throws remote attack spells on us... it may be possible that sometimes when the AI declares war, they've thrown another spell at you that is cloaked by a random event, or maybe has a spy raising unrest somewhere.

As far as SP/MP differences, this I'm sure will come out wrong, but MP doesn't seem to have room for anything but blind optimality. I'd have to research some of the MP games that try to 'enforce' some flavor, but basically, I can see many reasons to play SP Dom3. I can see only one reason to play MP Dom3.

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Firstly, I generally agree that high PD will not deter an enemy in MP: I generally never use more than about 20 except in rare circumstances. However, high PD does have benefits.

If an invader knows they are facing a series of low PD provinces, they can take several a turn by splitting their forces. However, if they are up against high PD, they may not be able to do this safely. Thus high PD can potentially reduce the number of provinces you lose. Provinces mean money: arguably a 50gold province is worth 100 in a war, in that it's not just a drop in your income but an equivalent increase in your opponent's. Obviously the same is true of gem income.

Furthermore, weak PD can be destroyed often with minimal loss. More substantial PD is much more likely to cause casualties in return. Going from PD 10 to PD 20 costs you about 150 gold, but if that PD destroys 10 basic units more than PD 10 would, you've cost your enemy 100 gold, plus possible afflictions.

A final note I'd say regards misfortune scales. You'll need high PD (20+) just to resist the frequent barbarian hordes who tend to pillage your empire, although it might not stop a tougher encounter like knights unless it's really high. Particularly if that square has a fortress or you can't reclaim it quickly because troops aren't available, that extra gold per province can save you a lot of grief.

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In late game, however, barbarian hordes are known as "walking death gems" if you happen to have a flying SC who wields the Sickle whose crop is pain. Then you'd wish that your PD doesn't kill too many of them for the harvest.

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Well, while MP for sure requires a player to play "better" (thus, probably, giving less of what you call "flavor"), it still requires you as well to have a bunch of different styles available - just in order to be able to surprise your enemy ;)

Oh, there are probably lots of reasons to play SP, and each of them is 100% valid, since it's you playing :)
But the "only one" reason to play MP is simple - because it's a real challenge, a challenge to play versus someone that can actually surprise you, that can adapt tactics.

Ah, and you can also make fun of your opponent, and taunt them in the forums or via ingame messages. The AI doesn't really respond to those ;)

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Bleh.

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Of course you can get creamed as well, but even if you lost a battle in the game, you can still tickle your enemy with snippy remarks in the forums ;)

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I understand what you are trying to get at, but its not true.

Playing in MP forces everyone to be efficient, not uniform. The CBM mod (the most popular MP mod by far) is a brilliant example of this - it doesnt force players into specific units or tactics but tries to make every unit in the game viable. MP games force players to constantly innovate against each others strategies and as a result there is a constant churn of new units and spells as players try to exploit them in new ways to outwit thier enemies.

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#1 thing to remember when starting MP:

People will get hurt.

At first, it will mostly be you, unless you are an evil sonuvabytch.

8-60 people join a game, only one wins, this means that many people in the game will be hurt.

Therefore - you must be able to tolerate adversity, or your panties will get bunched up so tight they cut off blood flow, and then you have to explain to people that your legs were amputated because you couldn't handle fully cerebralized fantasy online warfare between sprites. Sad, really. :shock:

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In fact, this is the #1 similarity, arising from a difference, in SP and MP. That is, in SP you will try and do many different things simply because at a certain threshold, they all work against the AI. In SP you will try and do many different things because if you stick to 1 trick, you will tend to lose.

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I think you mean MP in your last sentence there Jim

Re: The #1 Difference New Players Must Know For MP
 

[quote=JimMorrison;673669]In fact, this is the #1 similarity, arising from a difference, in SP and MP. That is, in SP you will try and do many different things simply because at a certain threshold, they all work against the AI. In MP you will try and do many different things because if you stick to 1 trick, you will tend to lose.

I dunno what you're talking about. <3

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I think you overthought my statement. My point is that you cannot think of 'what would be fun to play', but rather 'what would win me the game the fastest'. I completely agree that efficiency is important and not uniformity; I never said you had to be uniform. What I meant (and perhaps said poorly) is that you will never choose a less efficient means to an end in MP, because no one else does. The optimal strategy in MP is always efficiency, because there is (in the end) only one goal in MP: to win.

Now, what efficiency _is_ can (and given strategical concerns, _must_) change over the course of the game. But it is always efficiency. Even with CBM (with which I play all of my games), I am dismayed at the discussion regarding 'useful' Pretenders in MP. Over and over in discussions of MP, I see entire ways of playing the game dismissed as 'useless', and in MP they probably are. But this does a disservice to the game as a whole, for it speaks louder than any words that there is more to the game than simply MP.

My advice to people who wish to play MP is to discard everything you've learned about the game, because MP is a different game.

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Maybe if you are a full-time salaried Dom3 player. :) Not if you are playing for fun though. If you are playing for fun, then you'd better think of 'what would be fun to play', otherwise there's really not much point. Obviously your game plan should at least give your Pretender some chance to ascend, so you can avoid being completely humiliated, which is usually not fun.

The goal of your nation is to win. The goal of you as a player should be to have fun. It's a game.

By the way in the MP Preponderance game I've been sending my astral mages into Strange Houses to summon void creatures. Completely inefficient! All I have to show for it is a couple mages with some summoning skill now, and a Vile Thing to show for my troubles. But it's quite fun. Also I've been messing around in the Forgotten City, and have poured at least 1000 gold into it and not gotten anything back yet. But I've had some funny battles with the horrors within. So 'no one else does' is just not true.

Now get out there and summon some Bog Beasts!

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[quote=vfb;673751
By the way in the MP Preponderance game I've been sending my astral mages into Strange Houses to summon void creatures. Completely inefficient! All I have to show for it is a couple mages with some summoning skill now, and a Vile Thing to show for my troubles. But it's quite fun. Also I've been messing around in the Forgotten City, and have poured at least 1000 gold into it and not gotten anything back yet. But I've had some funny battles with the horrors within. So 'no one else does' is just not true.

Now get out there and summon some Bog Beasts![/QUOTE]


How do you pour 1000 gold into a forgotten city? dying?
In another thread they said Forgotten city was broken. I do know that while I never died, I never got anything out of it either... 9 turns in a row.

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I don't think everyone plays MP Dominions 3 games simply to win. In fact, thinking on the subject made me remember the classic Magic: the Gathering personalities.(http://www.wizards.com/Magic/Magazin...om/daily/mr280). I think many similiarities between Timmy, Johnny, & Spike can be applied to the way players approach MP games.

Timmy - tends to take awake SCs/strong blesses. Deploys strong, powerful units that can be employed in a simple fashion.

Johnny - someone who looks for combinations of spells, or continually finds new uses for uncommon items or spells, etc. Takes over hopeless sub positions just to see what they can do. Perhaps focuses heavily on diplomacy instead of the traditional means of achieving victory.

Spike - Exercises efficiency at all cost, using only the best available units/spells at all times. Every decision is made with a thought to how it will bring them closer to domination over all the other players.

Obviously people are going to be a mix of each category, but most importantly the goals for each are not always winning the game. Timmy might be satisfied winning a single war, or even just seeing their SC wipe out hordes of enemies in a single battle. Johnny may be happy when their specific combination of spells catches an enemy unprepared, or if they pull off a massive sneak-attack. Spike is probably the more like the typical MP player you described, but I doubt it's even the most common. However I suppose you do have to practice some level of efficiency, or you simply won't live long enough to achieve your other goals ;)

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I'm pretty much the Johnny type I believe. Love learning new stuff and trying out different combinations of things - I'm an explorer pretty much. Winning is a kick of course but beating your enemy with a radically different strategy that no one ever thought possible is an even great kick. I don't like playing it safe - safe is boring, safe is everyday life. Guess I need to get out more... :)

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Timmy- no idea
Johnny- Baalz, at least as far as finding new uses for underused spells/items
Spike- Sounds a little like Micah

I'm going off what I've seen in the forums, having not played any high level games. ;)

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I'd call myself a Johnny (though I also love themes I guess, so Vorthos too; for example, I really wish there was a Chronicles LA game so I could play as R'lyeh. There's just something about Lovecraft...). I like trying to figure out how to make underused nations work :) Not that I'm good, so usually I fail. But hey, I try, and I can have some fun while I'm at it!

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I would like to think of myself as a Johnny, but in practice I'm definitely a Timmy. I enjoy finding a good combination, but what I'm really after is "500 out of 500 enemies killed" and battle spells that produce lots of little red numbers without any gemcost (D9 Cloud of Death being my favorite).

-Max

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Actually, Spike sounds exactly like Micah.

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And I would like to add a fourth type of player.

Kenny - Who knows the game, but usually has no idea what the hell he is doing. He just throws all kinds of stuff out there and hopes he finds something that sticks.

I would be a Kenny.

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I am proud to be a Kenny too. Kennys of the world unite!

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Well, so far my pattern in dom3 multiplayer has been more or less as a wannabe johnny who eventually realizes that in their current game the idea isn't really going to work, and resorts to spiky timmyism.

That and some straightup timmyism in my first game.

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Kenny usually ends up dead in SouthPark.

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http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/pictu...&pictureid=123


vfb, you inspired me! Now take my GIMP away so that I can get some sleep. :p

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Ballbarian, I hereby take away your GIMP for an unspecified period. That is a really great graphic though, :)

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As I do in MP games.

Where can I unite with the other Kennys?

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Hint: using diplomacy. ;)