First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

All,
This is my first post here, but I have been lurking for a few weeks. I’ve been playing Dom3 for about a month now (SP only), and I must say, hats off to Illwinter for making a game that manages to feel like Master of Magic while adding an immense amount to it! Granted, there are things I don’t like or would like to see, but there is so much to love in this game that the “warts” are easy to overlook.
Anyhow, on to the point of the post: With so many nation choices, I am having a very hard time finding one in each age that conforms to my preferred style, so I was hoping some of you real veterans could give me some insight. Though this is going to get a bit long-winded, I think the best way to do this is to describe what I like and dislike about the nations I have played in order to give you an understanding of my style. I hope this isn’t too imposing. I also hope that this (relatively) brief summary might help new players when wondering what to expect out of certain nations.
In any event, the nations I have played to a significant degree (all SP) are: Niefelheim, Lanka, and LA Ermor. Of these, I prefer Niefelheim, followed by Lanka. I do not particularly enjoy playing LA Ermor, for reasons I will mention below. Additionally, I have experimented with Helheim, Vanheim, Fomoria, Agartha, and R’lyeh, though I can’t say I really understand any of these well. And the strategy thread seems to be incomplete on most of these, so I really don’t know where to start with most of them.
Niefelheim
Likes/Advantages:
- Great SC/Superthugs that can take a licking and keep on ticking. With the proper bless (E9/N9), good formation, and the right magic items, an army with 2 Gygja, 5 Niefel Jarls, and 25 Niefel giants is almost unstoppable. I’ve seen them take on 20 to 1 odds in single player without a single loss of life. This type of efficiency really appeals to me.
- Great for a bless strategy due to the powerful sacreds
- High (relative) protection/defense/HP. Again, it’s all about keeping them alive. Add the N bless and some good items (Hydra Skin), and they are very, very hard to take down. This makes them very low maintenance. Basically, you are not constantly having to replenish their ranks as they hardly ever die. Cast Gift of Health and you can pretty much forget about them and just drill holes in the enemy.
- Cold dominion. Extra points in pretender design, and domain spreads what the Niefels love.
- Cold aura. Takes down most critters foolish enough to swarm them.
- Berserkers. These guys do NOT run. The only time I ever saw a 32 unit army get beat was by an Ermor army of 890 units. The Niefels fought to the death and took 380 poor souls with them.
- Strong Early/Middle game. This is the part of the game I like best, so I prefer a nation that is strong during this portion.
Dislikes/Disadvantages:
- Cost. Holy crap, are these things expensive! At 500 for the Jarls and 250 for the giants, a 32 unit army will cost you around 10K gold. On the upside, you can probably expect to get 20+ territories in a huge game before you have to replace any of them.
- Somewhat slow start. With Independents set to 9, you can’t really start expanding rapidly until your first 6 unit army is built, and that will take around 4 turns with taxes at 200.
- Really poor magic diversity/power (IMHO). I find magic tends to take a huge backseat for me when playing with Niefelheim. In order to get good diversity, I need to either track down some good indie mages, or spend a LOT of gems on my mages.
- Below average priests (IMHO). Divine bless is not really available to anyone except your prophet.
- Poor province defense. Against the AI, you can usually count on defending successfully against equal or lower numbers, but if they have more units than you have points in PD, you are probably going to lose the province. This makes hit-and-run tactics against you very attractive, to the point that even the AI does it. Combine that with the fact that until the late game, you are likely only going to have 2 or 3 real armies, and expanding while retaining territory becomes very, very expensive.
- Low research ability. Pretty much have to forge Skull Mentors to keep up.
- High supply use. You pretty much have to forge summer swords to cost effectively keep these guys fed.
- Low numbers of big units. Swarm tactics are very effective against Niefels. If you get surrounded by Barbarians, give it up. Also, area effect spells can be brutal.
- Fire weakness. Late game can be very, very bad.
- Capital only units. Neifelheim’s good units are ALL capitol-only. On a big map, this makes consistent expansion very difficult (you basically have to rotate armies out constantly, always having several being built, travelling to the front lines, and fighting simultaneously. Very tedious.

Lanka
Likes/Advantages:
- Summons. These guys have probably the best summons in the game, making late-game armies that can crush just about anyone (except maybe Niefels, but I am going to test that soon). Davanas and Mandahas are wickedly powerful, and with screened with scores of cheap Gana and supported via scores of Atavi and Bandar archers, can just steamroll through territories. 10 to 1 odds may be pushing it, but I’ve seen them beat 5 to 1 pretty easily with minimal chaff losses.
- Lots of good recruitable units until you can get a blood economy going. Palankashas and Raksharajas supported by the aforementioned Gana/Avanti/Bandar combo can take territories for a good while with minimal losses.
- Probably the best nation to bless. LOADS of sacred units.
- Decent protection/defense/HP. Enough to make a bless strategy with N9 effective, anyhow.
- Decent priests (Mandaha), but you have to summon them. Still, a Divine Bless in each army is nice to have.
- Above average Early/Middle game. Late game is where Lanka comes alive, but they are strong enough to expand quite aggressively until then.
- Decent protection/defense/HP. With a N/E bless, the big units tend to stay alive, and you only have to replace the small (archers/Gana) units, which you can do anywhere that has a fortress and lab. This is much better than the constant army rotation merry-go-round than Neifelheim requires.

Dislikes/Disadvantages:
- Blood reliance. Those summons take a TON of blood to cast. Hard to build the blood economy, as you need a group of blood hunters in each major city along with a good army for riot control.
- Poor magic diversity. Needs indys and empowerment to fully utilize magic.
- Really, really bad PD. Most times, you need to have double the points in PD as the number of units attacking a city to be truly safe. This gets very expensive very fast.
- Low research ability. Needs Skull Mentors.
- Gluttonous/High supply use. These guys are even worse than Niefels in this regard. Need a couple of Cauldrons and at least one Wineskin for every decent sized army.
- Fire weakness. Flaming arrows SUCK.
- Undead/Demons. Banishment SUCKS.

Ermor (LA)
Likes/Advantages:
- Yea ma, no gold! How can you not like a nation that doesn’t use gold or production capability at ALL. It’s great! Thousands of units, 7 gold upkeep. Hurray!
- Kill ‘em all and let God….errr….Me sort them out. Pillage newly conquered provinces, blood hunt to your heart’s content, cast some of those REALLY nasty global enchantments. It’s all good, we don’t need no stinking live people!
- Free units! Spontaneously spawning freebies everywhere. Doesn’t matter what the PD is, really, you always have more than enough units to protect everything. Did I mention they are all free?
Dislikes/Disadvantages:

- Can’t really recruit any other units. No gold.
- MICROMANAGEMENT. Oh my goodness, what a huge pain in the rear! You have to run armies from territory to territory to collect all the dead you “grow” and make them into a proper army. Turns last forever. This reason was actually enough to cause me to quit playing at about mid-game. I like playing on large maps, and this is just masochistic to try and manage on a large (200+ territory) map. Consequently, I’m sure Ermor has many more advantages and disadvantages, but, frankly, I can’t be bothered.

If you are still reading this, I thank you, and would like to know: Do you have any suggestions for good MA/LA nations for me to try? I really want to start MP play, but I am worried that I do not understand enough nations and do not have a good nation pick for MA/LA.

Any help is greatly apprectiated.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Now that my eyes have stopped bleeding, welcome to the forum! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I'm Edi, Hunter of Bugs, Master of the Database and Lord of the FAQ. If you need to ask anything, there will be lots of people here eager to help you. If not me, then one of the regular veterans.

As far as nation recommendations go:

Late era, try Ulm and Chelms (LA MAn). Both are pretty traditional and not prone to too much tweaking, but I happen to like them. Both also play a solid game without needing exotic tricks. But each according to his style.

In the middle era I'm partial to Ulm in SP, but Man and Eriu are great too, as is Vanheim.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

I generally teach people Dominions by letting them play MA Man. It gives you a good feel for how "normal human" units that make up most of the game play vs. the nations with cool but unbalanced stuff (and by unbalanced I just mean that they fail to have the full range of units used by nations, and maybe special extra units).

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Thanks for the fast response Edi. I know that's a long first post, but I wanted to make sure I gave enough info about my playing style and preferences. I'll give those nations a shot. Are there any nations with really killer SC's or Superthugs in MA or LA? I haven't seen any, but that's one of the things I really like about Niefels and Lanka.

Thanks again!

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Thanks K. Is MA Man actually competitive? Somehow, I would think all of the base units are going to make it very weak. Just looking at the manual, it looks like they have decent to good PD, stealthy preists/bards, and longbowmen, but are otherwise complete pushovers. Maybe I'm being harsh though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...s/confused.gif

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Networkingguru......don't discount Man. His Avalon Knights are fearsome and the wardens with a high fire and water bless are something to behold!!!

Welcome to the forum, by the way!!!

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

MA Man Longbowmen are one the best units in the game, in my opinion. Cheap, powerful, and available everywhere. Toss in Wind Guide and you're good to go.

The nations you've chosen so far are SC and thug nations. I'm not saying that they are bad (I'm a formidable Lanka player, for example), but they are limited.

In a game like this, even nations people "know to be bad" aren't actually bad, they just need a different set of tactics to make them shine. MA Man is all about using good units and a little magic for an overall powerful army. Other armies are all about powerful mages and trick armies(Abysia), special spells(Lanka), unique armies(Caelum), Swarm tactics backed by magic (LA Ermor or Pangaea), or just plain craziness(LA Ry'leh).

Thug and SC armies fall quickly to a few mages spamming single-target killers like Drain Life or Frozen Heart. Diversifying your overall tactical and strategic knowledge is the only way to be competitive in this game. Thats why every other game I play is "some other nation." Niche tactics played with another nation come up again when you are playing your favorite nations. For example, my time playing Abysia comes in handy every time I find a site that makes Fire mages.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Man has also

Stealthy raiders (Warden or Cu Siddhe)
Knights (They are just strong units)
Good Nature magic --> Lots of army buffs like mass protection, relieve and mass regeneration
Look that you get some fire on the pretender for the flaming arrows.

Every nation is somehow competitive.

btw. i would succest to play some MP, as playing against the AI is not what makes Dom3 fun

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

I would say that aside from Lanka and Niefelheim, the only out-of-the-box SC/thug nation would be Fomoria, unless you go for a double bless on some of the better bless nations.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

What about Yomi? Dai Oni self-bless (at least E4N4) with built-in Fire Shield and Soul Vortex works pretty good IMO.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

MA Marignon is a nice nation for learning. The army is decent and has combined arms, and they have excellent non-unique SC summons. Magic's kinda narrow and the age problem is annoying but they follow the "normal" progresion of power- arms - arms and casters - SCs.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Thanks Hadrian_II. I will give Man a try as well. I guess I have just been spoiled by playing thug nations against the AI, as I can't stand replenishing armies, and with Neifel, for example, that is a rare need. However, Lanka isn't so bad, as I can replinish anywhere, unlike Ermor or Neifel.

As for MP, I would love to play some MP, but I am really put off by what seems to be a very complicated process (find a game in the forum, get on IRC, play during certian times I am guessing, etc.). My wife is learning the game, and if I can get a buddy of mine to learn it, I can play MP with them. I guess I'll head into the forum and try to find a good game anyway, just kinda hate coming in and getting stomped, LOL.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Yea, I thoght about Fomoria, just skipped them as there aren't any good guides. I'm going to give them a shot anyhow though, looks like I will need to get GoH ASAP to deal with afflictions.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Thanks Tyrant, I will give them a try as well. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

I think this needs to be discussed in greater detail.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Yes, we haven't had any real long discussions about bad monkey PD for over a week.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Really, or is this an inside joke? I did see all the threads on mismatched PD, so I'm not real sure how to respond. I will say that I've seen Lanka's PD get crushed by a relatively small number of units on many occasions.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

It's a joke! Better start talking about something else quick, or all your threads will belong to monkey PD.

If you do like to crank up PD --- which I personally don't, but hey, to each his own, then that's another good reason to go with K's suggestion of MA Man. (Not that you need to use Man's PD, since their army has good mobility).

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

It was an inside joke, just because a week or so back we had two or three threads talking about the monkey PD being bad in excruciating detail. Well, one guy was quite upset about it being so weak and talked about it at great length and the rest of us were just a bit bewildered.

Signing up to MP games is not very hard in fact. The difficulty is just in finding one. The trick is just to look at the MP forum every day or two, and see if any games are advertising players. If they are' just post to say you'd like to play and you'll be started in no time. Games start up pretty frequently, and both me and lch host games for new players quite often (although you will be welcome to join any game).

The IRC channel is largely for blitzes, i.e. "I have several hours free and want to play NOW". Personally I never go on there - I just don't tend to have time.

Games organised here tend to have one turn a day and last for several months. Although it sounds slow, trust me, it gets exciting. In many ways it adds to the experience as you have time to really think about your strategies.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

LOL, will do.

As far as man, I just started a game with them based on the previous suggestions, and I have to admit, I am enjoying it so far. However, I am intrigued that you do not use PD. I can't see how you get away with no PD unless you keep an army in every province, which doesn't really seem economically feasible. With all the random events, not to mention spells that can target from afar and flying units, I don't see how you can secure provinces without using PD. Can you elaborate?

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Wow. One turn a day does sound incredibly slow. That's basically PBEM speed. However, I enjoy very large maps, so a few hours isn't going to cut it either. Are there "middle-ground" games? If not, what does it take to host a game?

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

'A few hours' is a very loose description of blitz games. They almost always last at least 2-3 hours, and I've played them as long as 8. That said, you will probably have difficulty finding players that want to blitz on very large maps, since 25+ provinces per player past turn 40 can already be nearing an hour per turn.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

I don't think the IRC channel is mainly for blitzes - a lot of mod discussion, balance discussion and whatnot goes on there. There are blitzes set up too, but that isn't the main thing we talk about.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Oops, sorry to give the impression that you should have zero PD. I'll always buy 1PD -- this lets me see what I get invaded by. I'll buy 3PD if I can afford it (ha ha, no seriously, sometimes you're 2GP away from another elephant or knight or mage, and in that case I will get just 1PD). 1-3PD will stop enemy scouts from taking your provinces.

I'll put 5-10PD in any province that I think might get call-of-winded.

As someone else remarked, in MP, PD is not a deterrent to stop other players from attacking you. The deterrent is your capability to counter-attack.

When you lose a province to a remote attack or random event, if the province is now independent, you can take your time and send an army group to retake it. Or, a couple of assassins with skulls (sorry, none for Man!) can liberate provinces from Knights or Barbarians on their own.

If another player has done something like teleport or fly or sneak a stealth army into a province you own, then you can use your own rituals to kill their commanders. With Man, you get A3 crones, so you could rain down some seeking arrows. They'll have a PD commander so they won't auto-route, but if you can keep the army immobilized (no commanders) and bring up a bigger army to route it, your enemy will lose all the units.

Try not to leave temples outside forts, since it'll cost you 200 gold if your enemy razes it (400 for most other nations). Try not to leave labs outside forts, because they can be used against you.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

OK, I understand. Seems like MP is considerably different from SP in this regard. In SP, I have the habit of posting 20 in PD in every province I take, the moment I take it, in the early game. By late game, that number has risen to 50 - 100, depending on how much I expect to be attacked there. If nothing else, it seems like a good investment, just to damage the enemy a little with zero upkeep cost. On the other hand, 50 PD costs like 1000 gold, so if you can buy a decent army for less than that, I guess it's not a very intellegent investment.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

OUCH! Having never played this MP, I am having a hard time seeing how it takes that long. In the late game, I may take 15 minutes to complete a turn (except for LA Ermor, LOL), but definitely no longer. How does MP work? Does each player take thier turn and then the next player gets to try? I was under the impression that turn decisions were simultanious?

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

It's simultaneous, but as I said, it can easily take individual players close to an hour for a turn (though it depends on a lot of factors, especially if you are in an intense war, careful scripting eats a lot of time).

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Amusingly enough you seem to be very very fond of the powerhouse nations. You might consider Pythium next. They seem to suit your tastes for MA. If you want to try something that requires a bit more finesse yet retain the SC/thug feel, Yomi is a nice pick. LA TC is quite good actually. A variety of magics as well as a good amount of strats you can do.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

If you want to try a water nation like the ones you like, Atlantis is a good choice in all ages too (in Early of course, it's one of the best thug nation, with lot of high hp/good prot leaders, but in MA or even in LA the big mages/good hp leaders can become above average thugs, and in all eras summoned Sea Kings are also a good base).

ps : but note that sea nations aren't at all a challenge against most AIs, land computer nations are very unefficient at invading seas, you'll just have to worry about other sea powers

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Re one turn/day being slow: For the first 20 or so turns it is definitely a bit slow, but after that tends to feel about right to me. People often play two or even three games at once, but it's important to stagger them, otherwise they all reach late game at once and your head explodes.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Playing MP is really pretty simple. You don't need IRC, you can play any time you want and there are newbie games starting fairly regularly. IRC is good for playing blitz games, that start up and play straight through. Most MP games on the forum start with a 24 hour timer, so you can do your turn any time during the day. This does lead to games lasting for months.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Yea, I guess I had not considered the possibility of scripting for the specific battle you are facing. In SP I usually just "set it and forget it", as something like Divine Bless-cast-cast-cast-hold attack clostest tends to work fine. However, if you have that much time to setup for every battle (and there is no reward for completing a turn quickly), it's definitely to your advantage to script and set formation specific for each battle.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Yea, I tend to like armies consisting of small numbers of big troops, mostly because they rarely fall, so I don't have to worry about attrition. I'm playing MA man right now, and while I am enjoying it, I have to replinish the army much more often than I would like. Also, someone keeps dropping an arrow or two from the sky every turn and killing my stupid crones, which is highly annoying. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

I'll give them a try as well, thanks. I haven't chosen water nations at this point as I have not played many water-heavy maps, but I will give them a try.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

It's not just due to extra time, but simply because you're playing other humans. The AI doesn't adapt to your tactics.
Other players will. If they know what you're going to do every time, they'll find a way to counter it, even against stronger forces.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

I think MA Ulm is the best nation for beginners. Just a dormant pretender with all good scales.
Buy a frontline infantry with independant archers back and start building armies and forts. You can even beat impossible AI. later Summon earthpower and blade wind will make your mages useful.
A master alchemist with all the paths will allow acces to every trick in late game.

Sure this wont work in MP.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

Just finished MA Man, and I have to say, it was eye-opening. Longbowmen are great, crones suck. Wardens are absolutely one of the coolest units I've seen yet. I rean through Jotunheim with an army of 40 of these guys just stealing undefended territories. Got located by patrolling units of giants twice and slaughtered them both times. Great units, and I really did not expect that after looking at thier stats. Bards are pretty cool too, you can pretty much shut down another nation's production with them. All that being said, Mighty AI on Pythium did me in in the end. I quit playing once they reached 500% of me on all possible score graphs, no point in delaying the inevitable. Anyhow, I may give them another shot later, but they don't really fit my style too well. Good balanced units, but, with the exception of the wardens and bards (and longbowmen, of course), they don't really stand out to me in any other areas. I guess maybe that's thier advantage - no real weaknesses, just straight ahead tactics.

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

OK, played MA Marignon to about mid game, and I have to say I'm not real impressed. The Mage/Preists are pretty cool, but these guys are really one-trick ponies, and if you end up in a bad location like I did, the game is real rough. I have to say, I had more gold than I knew what to do with, but was always resource-bound, which is a change (and not necessarily a welcome one). However, the inability to to do any real site-searching, combined with a bad location left me scrabling for gems for Acashic record.

I don't really like the scales I took (order 3, prod 3, growth 3, misfortune 3, and drain 3) though, so I may play again with different scales (Less emphasis on gold and DEFINITELY no misfortune).

Overall, they just really don't fit how I like to play. I'd much rather work with a nation with a strong bless strategy than one where your main sacred is essentially a chaff unit (Flaggelents).

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

It seems you judge nations on how strong/imbalanced their early game units are (especially their sacreds). If this is the case I recommend: Lanka(EA), Niefelheim(EA), Helheim(EA) and maybe vanheim(MA).

If you are looking at other very strong/potent nations I would recommend strong blood nations, since blood hunting in mid/late game can be very potent. If that suits your game play check in Miclan(EA), Miclan(LA) and Marignon(LA).

Other very strong nations that plays very differently are Ermor(LA) and Rlyeh(LA).

Re: First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?
 

I'd say that's probably accurate. I like a strong bless nation in general, and I like to be able to easily get the powerful units. Some nations seem to have powerful units available only if you follow a certain path, I don't really like that.

As for LA Ermor and R'lyeh, I hav e played them both at this point. Ermor I really don't like, too much micromanagement of chaff, and the free spawns are never worth having in numbers lower than 1000, IMHO. LS R'lyeh took me three games to figure out, but now that I've got a decent handle on them, I really like them. Lots of freespawns, and some of them are actually quite good. Also, ironicly enough, PD seems to be quite decent verses land nations (which I most defnitely did not expect), but sucks verses another amphibious nation (like LA Atlantis). Still, I am really enjoying my current LA R'lyeh nation. I'll check out Miclan.

As for Neifelhiem, Lanka, Helheim and Vanheim, I love Neifel and Lanka, not so keen on the others. Maybe I just need to find a good bless strat for them though.

Thanks for the tips!