How difficult is this game?
 

I've seen it being sold at a local game store. The premise seems interesting and I'm a big fan of fantasy and of strategy games. But how difficult is it to beat the AI? I don't want to spend 50$ on a game that's going to have me ripping my hair out in frustration...


Thanks in advance for any answers...

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Dominions 3 isn't really hard in SP (after 3 or 4 games you'll probably find some strategies always working against AIs then it's just a question of execution and adaptation to your nation).

The learning curve is longer for MP as there are really a lot of usable tactics and counters to know.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Does it have different difficulty levels?
How does it compare to other turn-based strategy games?

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Yes, Easy, Normal, Difficult, Mighty and Impossible.

The AI can be quite challenging for half a dozen games or more. Especially if you avoid reading spoilers on this board and just discover the game for yourself.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Tempting, very tempting......

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Personally, its the best fantasy strategy game I have ever played.

I have played it longer than any other game ever, just over a year now. Mainly due to the very active MP community. I must have played 30 - 40 MP games by now.

Its the sheer depth of the game and constant new patches, which introduce new content.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

In addition to the built in difficulty levels you can create the map scenario in such a way that the game is more or less challenging. For instance, a 1v1 against an Impossible AI on a small map is not nearly as difficult as a 1v21 Normal AIs on a small map. And there are all manner of setups in between, plus you can set the AI to offensive or defensive, etc.

Suffice it to say that you can make the game ridiculously easy or quite challenging, even after becoming familiar with the basics.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Yes there are 5 difficulties from easy to impossible (impossible AIs may be really hard to beat, but mostly because they start with lot of bonuses).

edit : and sector24 is right, there are also a lot of ways to make SP challenging once normal maps become too easy

How does it compare ? Hard to say.

I think the dominions AI isn't as good as the really good ones (ie Civilization or Galciv AIs), but far better than the AIs of Paradox games and most indie wargames.

About complexity I would say a dominion SP game against non impossible AIs (if you just use what you need to win = perhaps 5% of the content) isn't more complex than any of these games, but there are then several more layers of deepness once you play against humans (the only games I see with an as big number of combos are card boardgames like Star Chamber).

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

The AI is frustratingly difficult if you limit yourself from abusing it. There's no real middle ground though since if you use anything like good magic scripting, thugs/SC's, PD, you pretty much roll over it. The game becomes incredibly fun when you play online though.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Fenris99, I have been computer gaming since the early 1980's, with an old Atari 400. I've had games of all stripes and genres. I have to say this is the one game that has kept my interest the longest. I've had the game about a year, now and on these boards, people are still mentioning aspects of the game I have never seen. With all the nations and eras, I have yet to try ALL of them. There is soooo much to discover and learn. I come from a military simulation (historical) background in gaming, and to be honest, I don't even play those anymore. I can sincerely say that Dominions3 is the ONLY game I play. SP or MP. I still am challenged by the AI. In my SP games I normally will use 8-9 AI nations on medium sized maps. I let the computer randomly choose the nations and I set a few at mighty and difficult. I know there are a lot of much better players than I, but I routinely get my butt kicked at these settings. I can also honestly say that compared to most $40 wargames I own, $100 for Dominions 3 would not be overcharging. (I hope the Devs don't act on that statement) The game just has more lasting value than any other game I have run on to.

Buy it. You won't regret it.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

There's also the active participation of the game developers on the forums, and continuing active development of the game in the form of relatively frequent free patches with new content, often incorporating features requested by players and modders.

SP can be challenging, but in different ways than MP. I can reliably beat Impossible now as long as I don't fall to an early AI rush. In SP on impossible you need to contend with the AI having orders of magnitude larger armies than you, but know that it doesn't effectively use the magic system or item crafting, and often makes mistakes in battlefield strategy.

In MP you have to contend with extremely talented players who will drop a house on you and your mom without trying...but then you can oftentimes diplomatically attach yourself to a different talented player and learn a lot about the strategy of the game by watching the titans battle each other.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Well, I picked up a copy.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

I can give you the noob perspective as I bought the game a couple months back. I consider based fantasy war/empire games by far my favorite genre, and while I missed Master of Magic, I have tried most everything else: HOMM, AoW, WarCraft and Warlords. None of those comes remotely close to capturing the “epic” nature of the genre the way Dominions does. The game plays out like a Steven Erikson novel and like Erikson, manages a subtle sense of humor. Its quite dangerous for your personal relationships, so make sure your significant other has something to occupy their time while you waste away the hours trying to figure out how to stop the Shinuyaman hordes from overrunning your Ulmish empire…

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Dominions 3 is the best turn based strategy game I have ever played. And I don't think we have yet seen all that can be done with the "engine", which the patches are uncovering bit by bit. So Dom3 is the best turn based game I have ever played, and is still improving with every patch.

Oh, and I will also credit the decline of my fencing career to this game. I used to fence 4 hours a day 4 times a week before I met Dom3. Now I'll be lucky to get in a session once every other month. My gf might be next. Wahahaha http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Hmm I just loaded it up and I don't know how to do anything. Obviously I need to read the manual first.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Check out the tutorial as well, though I would recommend reading the manual at some point as well. One caveat to that though, is that some things in the manual have changed since it was written (that's a nice way of saying that they're buggy). So take everything with a grain of salt and chalk it up to learning when you find something that diverges from the printed material, it'll save you some frustration to keep that in mind (speaking from personal experience here).

Some things off the top of my head:
Your rate of dominion spread does not increase with every 5 temples you build.
The morale system is (I'm pretty sure) much more complex than the rulebook explanation, you don't get random routing of elite units due to a bad morale roll. (Which I'm glad is the case)
Critical hits due to fatigue do not simply halve the protection value of the unit when they occur, the effect is much more severe in practice.

There's other stuff in there I'm sure, but that's a sampling. Don't mean to scare you off, as this is without the doubt the best money I've spent in my life on a game, just wanted to keep you from taking everything in the book as gospel.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

The first... maybe five games that you try (yes TRY) to play will make you feel like you're on some kind of crazy pills.

Don't worry, everybody goes through this. The coolest part of this game is discovering what every nation has to offer, what every spell and summon does, and every item you can construct.

I advise just throwing away your manual (seriously. Who can even remember all that junk?) and going headfirst into the game.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Ummm is there a list of 'deviations from the manual' somewhere?

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Dom3 is sold in stores? I thought it was only available to order online?

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Yeah, just play through the tutorial. Then stick to Early Age for your first few games. Middle Age and Late Age games are slightly more complicated due to some ... unique ... nations with hostile dominion effects.

I have to agree with HotNife: Your first few games will probably be overwhelmingly complicated. Don't worry about it. Dom3 has a steep learning curve, but that learning curve is a direct result of the unbelievable amount of STUFF in the game. Once you start to get the hang of it, everything will start to make sense.

As soon as you've exhausted the "vanilla" races and gameplay (which will be a few years from now), then hop over to the "Scenarios, Maps and Mods" subforum to download some user-created content. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

If you are a strategist, this game is unequaled.

At first you will be overwhelmed, because you have no ability to find a balance or even useful strategy. There are something like 600 spells in the game alone. Most are garbage, but the trick is in using specific spells against other Nations (even the "crappy" ones). Not only that, you have to choose "paths of magic" to study, so a spell you want or like is only available if you put your researching abilities to it. In the mean time, there may a simple yet unavailable spell that would make your life grand, but you chose something else.

THAT is the nature of this game. Choices.
Every turn you are forced to make choices that can win or lose it for you, right now. And then there are the choices within the choices, such as what to recruit; how to use THOSE choices.

Effectively you are playing in a gaming soup. Not only are you playing against the other players (be they AI or real), but you are playing against yourself.

There's a saying of mine that applies to all games:
"An 'always-losing' strategy, always loses."

I have seen people try-and-try-again the same losing strategies to games and then wonder why they lost.
If it didn't work the 1st, 2nd, or 3rd times, on what planet does it work on the 4th time?

Adaptation.
It is the name of this game.
You either adapt, or you lose.
But here things are not that simple. To start with you have to choose an era (early/middle/late) and a nation. Already you're looking at 150 choices. {Apologies to developers, this is an arbitrary number; I did not work out the possibilities.}
---------------------------------------------------------
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Personal note.
When I first started playing, I settled on Helmheim as my 'Nation of choice.' But time and time again, I was humbled by (Late-Age) Ermor. So then I started playing LA Ermor, and that became my love. ALL OTHER NATIONS HATE ERMOR. (A bonus to me!)
Huh? Surely. Anyone who challenges me early is doomed to die. I may go with him, but que será, será.
================================================== =======
================================================== ========
Why we (the community) love this game is that we are challenged at every turn (literally).

Faithfully submitted,
HNC3 = Howard N. Christ III

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

In SP vs the easy AI you'll probably win as soon as you understand how the game works. You'll find it much harder against a bunch of Impossible AI's and MP is a whole different issue.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Some small retailers have bought a numberof copies from Shrapnel to sell the conventional way, so that's probably one of those.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Well, I played last night without reading the manual and got my Wyrm-god killed on turn three. You mean he can't take on large armies by himself?! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif SO anyway I brought the manual to work today so I can at least know how to do things like move my armies around.

I found the game at J and R, a small retailer in downtown NYC. I wandered in looking to see if they had any new games and it caught my eye.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

I'd like to second the point regarding the mods. That's a huge part of extending the life of SP. The quality does vary, but that's normal in any human enterprise.

If you play quite a bit of SP, especially on large maps, one incalculably important ability to learn is how to handle large groups of troops. The computer AI generally likes to hire them.

I must disagree with the point about the usefulness of the rulebook. RTFM23 comes to mind regarding it. The most important parts to know early are, IMO, the parts that apply to any nation. They are, in no particular order:

1) Learn the rules of morale. Certain nations have no problem with morale; others have crippling problems with morale.

2) Learn how dominion spreads. This almost follows from 1), since from a morale standpoint, you always want to fight in your own dominion for the morale boost it gives.

3) Learn the scales. Learn them well. Don't concentrate on the actual pretender chassis you take so much as what those scales do, and what they mean. As an example, start a game with any nation and take Turmoil-3. Don't even play a turn. Look at how much money you make (which will be from your capital province of ~30k people). Then exit the game, and take Turmoil-2. Etc. etc., all the way up to Order-3. That gives a much more concrete 'feel' as to what happens with that scale, at least. You can do the same with Sloth vs. Productivity, but for Growth/Death and Luck/Misfortune, there's no 'concrete' way of figuring those out.

4) Learn how to position troops. Experiment. Some are pretty obvious (shield archers with other troops... generally), but there are other issues as well.

A frequent discussion on these forums is what nation to suggest to a beginning player. I prefer to ask the player what kind of nation they want to play, and then suggest from a shorter list. Most people who pick up this game will know enough about the genre (4x TBS) that they'll be able to answer this question.

Anyway, sorry for the longwindedness.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Don't apologize, it's all good advice. I'm trying to figure out how to play so more advice is better.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Well, that said, what kinds of nations/factions/different-strategic-choice-factors do you enjoy? Luckily, Dom3 has something for everyone. Generally, about 3 somethings for each one. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Ah, that's a difficult question to answer. When I played the Civ games I usually tried to out-tech everyone. With Paradox games I usually role-played by trying to outdo whatever that nation did historically; overrun Sibera for Russia, colonize for England, etc. When playing wargames I generally prefer to have a smaller army of elite units. I also prefer ranged units that can kill before the enemy closes the distance.

Any advice on starting nations?

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

1) Like to out-tech people. This generally means good magic (since it's the 'tech tree')

2) Rather like RPing.

3) Smaller, more Elite armies.

4) Ranged units.

Well, I guess the obvious response is 'MA Caelum'. They have excellent ranged units, but don't really use them. They have very good mages, and good _battlemages_ at that. The only sticking point is that their initial army is generally almost required to be Mammoths intermixed with high-morale troops and just stomping everything flat. Dunno if that appeals to you.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

I'll give it a try tonight... just reading through the manual right now. There's so much to do here. It's awesome!

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

I like MA Marignon for a starting nation. They are human, so quite familiar. They have powerful crossbowmen, and elite knights. It rapidly becomes obvious that magic is powerful as they can lay down some serious firepower with easy access to fire magic. And later on in the game they can do interesting things like summon angels.

Also they have interesting options in that any of a strong bless, a rainbow pretender or excellent scales would be a reasonable tactic to try out.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Those guys sound even more interesting.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

They _are_ pretty 'traditional'; I guess my issue with them is that they are virtually the only nation he ever plays. So I'm overloaded on them. :p

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Oh, when I play RTS I'm kind of a turtler. I like to build up and research and then attack with a fully upgraded army.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

ok, question: How do you raise the spell levels of your mages? Do they go up automatically when you research magic?

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

I suppose you mean their level in the different paths of magic (fire, death, nature and the like)? They don't improve automatically or easily. With the appropiate level in construction and the apropiate paths you can construct some items that boost one or more paths. (A list of all the boosters can be found on page 282-283 of the manual. That's the page I've used most often. )

Alternatively you can use magical gems to 'empower' you mage in that path. To do so just select the 'empower' order when your commander is in a province with a lab. This is cripplingly expensive though, and generally only done to experiment/for fun in SP, or occasianally to reach certain benchmarks in MP (you'll start to figure them out when you play more)

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

So you're telling me that you can research all these powerful spells and have no one capable of casting them?

Also, what determines their base level in the magic disciplines? Is it the pretender's levels?

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

The nations specialize. Middle-Age (MA) Marignon, as an example, is a Fire/Astral nation with a touch of other paths I don't remember. Other nations have different magics. Pretenders don't affect the mages available. Gem income is often just as important as the power of your mages.

As far as magic power goes:
1 is low
2 is base power: fireballs, bolts of lightning, etc
3 allows most good stuff, most often
4 is high, and all paths have at least one booster item available at level 4 and construction 4 or 6.
5 and above is for the heroes, pretenders and epic spells, and mages that start with 5 or more can also use booster items and spells to reach most high-level goals.
9 and above is only used for spesific strategies, to reach spesific goals. Pretenders rarely take magic over level 5 or so unless the nation can also use the bless it provides.

Example with Marignon:
Their Grand Masters can get up to Fire 4 or Astral 3 with a lucky random pick (click on the question mark next to the magic paths to see what they can get). With that and research in Construction they can forge a Flaming Helmet or a Starshine Skullcap, bringing them to Fire 5 or Astral 4. The Conjuration spells "Phoenix Power", "Light of the Northern Star" and "Power of the Spheres" can be used to further increase their paths to Fire 7 and Astral 6, for battles at least.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

OK, so the magic level of your mages is based on the nation that you play?

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Who? Me? I've only played them once! I do really like them though.

I remember I spent my first Dominions demo game carting a single fire-2 mage around, getting him lots of experience, waiting for him to become fire-3. It was very frustrating! (It turns out it doesn't work like that at all).

You have to plan what you research for the mages you've got. And always you will have heaps of spells you can't cast.

For example, as Marignon, you should research Evocation, to give you fireballs and stuff. Evocation also includes water spells (like water strike), air spells (like lightning) and so on - but they're no use to you, so you might as well ignore them.

When on the research screen you can press the 'f' key to show only fire spells - and equivalently 'w' for water, etc.. The only non-obvious one is 's' for astral. This can be very useful for seeing what spells will be useful for you.

After a while you also get a feel for what each school is likely to do. The most obvious ones are Evocation, for directly attacking people (fireballs, lightning), conjuration for summoning things, alteration for buffs (spells that make your mages and troops tougher) and construction for enabling forging of items. There are some non-obvious things though - for instance Phoenix Power, which gives fire mages an extra level of fire magic in battle, is in Conjuration.

Although there are a bajillion spells, they are all quite distinct, and after a while you will get to know a few that you like. If you're Marignon, you'll get to like Fireball, Falling Fires (both evocation) and Phoenix Power.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

> So you're telling me that you can research all these powerful spells and have no one capable of casting them?

That is very often happening. Each nation has strong magic paths, weak magic paths, paths on pretender, and paths on independant mages. First two are fixed, third you design, and fourth is random.

Some people will go out of ways to make sure that their pretender covers all path nation is missing. Others make sure that he can forge boosters for strong paths of nation. Others concentrate on making sure he can summon other mages that complete the nation. Others forsake some paths completely.

As many strategies as players. In MP, trade can close holes.

Example: MA Man has many, many air mages, but no one has solid chance of getting Air magic at level 4. But that is level required to forge items that make air magic stronger, and many awesome air spells need much more than level 3 air magic.

So some players will forget that, and really hurt. Others will make sure their Pretender has air magic at level 4 or more. Others will look at nations list in an MP game, and say "Cealum is in game, and he will want to trade air boosters for nature boosters". And then the game starts, and Cealum is closest neighbor, and only wants to trade daggers, blade first.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

How do I get gems?

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Ahh this is very interesting.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

First, you have a gem income from your capitol, this will generally be of a type your nation is strong in. Then, in each province there is a chance there will be 1-4 magical site, most of which will give you gems of some kind. A few of those sites you will discover when you conquer the province, but most will remain hidden until you search for them.

Searching can be done in two ways: first a mage can search the province he's in for sites in the paths he possesses. Sites come in levels from 1-4, and you search in the path and levels of your mage. So a Fire3 Astral3 mage will find most, but not all fire and astral sites, but will not uncover sites of other paths. Second, there are site-searching spells spread around the different research schools. There is one for each path of magic, and casting that spell (select the 'cast ritual spell' order on a mage in a lab province once you have the appropiate research, then select the spell in question from the list you get) will cost some gems, and will search a province of your choise for all sites in that path. There are also 2 spells that search for sites of multiple paths, but one is underwater only, and the other very expensive.

Thus getting more sites of the paths your nation is strong in is quite easy, as you will have both the mages to search manually, or to cast the remote search spells, and the gems needed to cast those spells (from the gem income of your capitol), but finding sites in other paths will be harder. There are several ways to do this, the easiest being designing what is known as a 'rainbow pretender' A rainbow pretender uses a pretender chassis with cheap access to new paths (take a look at most 'human' pretenders, they fit the bill perfectly), and will buy low levels (often 2, sometimes more) of magic in as many paths as possible. This is useful for finding sites, and if you take care when choosing your magic picks (this will come with experience) will allow you to forge many useful items your national mages might not be able to forge.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

> How do I get gems?

Your capital generates some.

Magic sites are assigned randomly to provinces at start, or even appear sometimes out of their own. Some are hidden, so you have to search for them with mages.

Some items generate gems every month.

Some lucky events give you gems.

And there is trade in MP.

And there are spells that give you gems periodically or in one go. And if you are total bastard, you can hunt your population down to sacrifice them as slaves, or you can kill them to send crows to collect death gems (not recommeded)

There are no simple answers in Dominions III. :-)

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

Thanks for the answers, guys.

The manual is good but it doesn't cover everything.

I'm sure I will have more questions after I play tonight. I'm reading the Marignon strategy page, they look straightforward for a beginner.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

As far as what determines the paths of your mages, the magic paths are an intrinsic part of the unit itself, so a mage may have certain paths fixed and some randomly determined (randoms can only be less than 100% sure, so not all of your mages always get them all).

Units that have been intended for a specific nation ahve been designed with that nation in mind, so for example the magic paths of mages reflect that.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

As well as empowering your mages (permanent increase for a lot of gems) you can also use the gems in combat to boost your level temporarily. You can use one gem per spell to increase you level by one. It's a good way of casting spells you would normally not be able too.

For example a weak fire mage with one level in fire magic can use one gem to cast phoenix power (level 2 fire spell). Phoenix power boost your level in fire by 1 for the whole battle. You mage is now level 2. By using another gem, your mage can cast a level 3 spell. All of a sudden your crappy mage is quite deadly.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

There is also communions and sabbaths to increase your mages' power. You can find more about those in the forums, and propably in Edi's FAQ.

Re: How difficult is this game?
 

This is all great advice, thank you