What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Hi,

For a new player just starting, is there any consensus on which nation might be easiest to play? I'm thinking primarily EA or MA.

Thanks,

Akela

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Ashdod (hinnom).

You're big. You squish things.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Hmm doesn't hinnom/ashdod/gath one of those ages have the big folks causing unrest? I don't think that is too easy for a new player to manage.

LA ermor is easy to get going but is banned from many MP games and also when it is in an MP game it gets ganged up on EARLY.

But the AI has a terrible time against a human playing LA Ermor so it makes single player pretty easy.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I'd say EA Ermor or MA Pythium. No Blood, no need to worry about the niceties of using giants, nice easy-to-use national troops and strong PD. Oh, and decent magic to boot.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Also Niefelheim with a traditional high bless strategy, is pretty simple to play (at least against lower difficulty AI). Really any giants will do you well, but those 3 are the simplest. Just make sure you put Nature4 on your pretender at the very least, but you'll want to experiment with your bless by placing a lot of magic on your pretender.

Also, bear in mind that getting too used to giants will make normal troops seem awkward when you try other nations, and you'll be shocked by their attrition rate compared to giants. :p

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

What about MA Acro?

Just spam mind burn, paralyze, and soul slay and throw massive amounts of elephants with hypas to boost morale to trample them to bits?

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

This is the right general advice but the wrong nation. Pythium is a communion-dependent nation - by its very nature complex. You're better off playing like Man or Pan who are straightforward in both magic and military.

Edit: swapped out Aby for Pan cause aby has blood. Basically just trying to point out nations with fairly restricted magic paths and fairly obvious troops.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Sorry, OP, but the answer to your question is "No, there is not a consensus."

Find a nation that has a concept you find interesting and play SP against an AI (Easy to start). Read strategy guides and your manual. Play around with different unit, commander and mage combinations.

This game has a learning curve, but I and many others have found it to be a very rewarding investment. Good Luck!

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Yeah, while there are certainly nations that are harder and easier, it all comes down to playstyle and what you find interesting.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Just for the sake of being awkward:

Pan also have Blood in EA and MA. Pan's Blood is a bit like Pyth's communions though - they aren't obligatory but they're something you can use to wring the last drops of power from the nation. And of course in the long term you'll want to learn a little about both.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Easiest nation to play is the one you have played the most.

Best nation to start with to learn the ropes is one with little magic diversity and obvious strengths to take advantage of.

Niefel if you want to play with blesses, Abyssia if you want to just burn everything to the ground, and C'tis if you want to just spam skeletons at everyone forever and ever.

Now, there are tricks to any of those nations, but they each offer a relatively straightforward start up and power ramp up, and you don't have to mess around with much outside of your particular magic paths (Water/Death for Niefel, fire/blood for Abyssia, and Death/Nature for C'tis).

But yeah, generally, just pick one nation, read some guides on it, and play a dozen SP games (don't have to play them very far even) to get a feel for how you think it should run.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Depends on your playstyle. Some nations suit some players better than others, for example, Ulm and Abysia are both nations that I like to play and fit me well.

In EA Vanheim and Helheim are good nations that have excellent line troops even without the sacreds, so you can try those. Ermor as well.

In MA, Ulm, Arco, Pythium, Ermor (but the communions and undead reanimation give it a bit of a spin, so a bit advanced to get the synergies going). Man is also a good choice, as is Marignon.

Try things, play around with them. DON'T start with EA or LA Mictlan or with the other tricksy nations unless they are really your style.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I'd say Niefelheim personally, read a guide once,use some sort of bless and it's a piece of cake.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I would say Ashdod now, its a breeze to play and you will probably win your very 1st game (SP).:)

All other nations may disappoint afterwards thou...:(

I can't say I have really noticed the population eating negative effect but then I just played them with a E9 N8 and recruited Adon's and Zamzummites.

In the MP I am in a Adon after being severely horror marked got attacked by the doom horror, hunter of heros and went half a dozen rounds with him. He nearly killed him, reducing the hunter to 25hps before failing his MR check vs the soul slaying weapon. One more hit and he would have been a hero...:D

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I think there is a difference between "easiest to play" for a newbie, and easiest to win with. To me the easiest to PLAY might be something like LA Ulm. Mostly just worrying about armored armies, and not magic or quirks particular to specific nations.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I agree Gandalf. To me easiest is the nation which requires the fewest clicks to do well with.

Thus any one focusing on communions is right out ;)

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Ok, how about Ulm or Man then. That seems like the most drop kick of nations.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Yes those strike me as correct.

Its like in RPGs or someone learning DnD or something like that. I tell them start as Human, Fighter. Maybe even Human Barbarian. Why? Because you already know how to play human barbarian. :)
That way you can learn the game first, and the specialties later.

In Dom3 it would seem to me that Ulm or Man (slap head for forgetting Man) would come already filled in with much of the basic "what do I do with this" information. The units are recognizable without a history degree, the abilities are obvious, etc.

He might not win. And would feel like there is so much more they could do. But thats good. Then he moves on gradually into the fun stuff. :)

DejaVu on this conversation: what are the nations that the demo is limited to?

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Thanks everyone! Yeah, I guess easiest to play was what I was looking for. My brother and I are just starting and I was looking for a nation with fairly straight-forward strategies.
As I know you all know, this game can be very overwhelming in the beginning.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

My recommendation is MA Marignon. It has familiar human troops, and gives you a chance to get used to magic with their powerful battle mages.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Well. The answer is ... IT SURE AS HELL ISN'T MAVERNI!!!

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Hmmm well easiest to play is still Niefel :D

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I always suggest abysia because you can learn battle magic without risk of friendly fire, it's mostly in one school and you have a variety of very solid infantry.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

For EA, I'm on Aby too, I'd say if it's your first games - take an Imprisoned pretender with strong scales and you'll learn a lot on using the shielded troops to protect the damage dealing unshielded ones from arrows - use battlemagic - straightforward rituals...

Still for EA, Ulm is generally quite simple too (you can pick decent scales and a dormant Red Dragon to help expanding in Dragon form or eventually casting Flaming Arrows in human form), and also Niefelheim for starting to get an idea of blessed SCs, Helheim and Vanheim for strong blessed troops, Yomi for straightforward battle magic, stealthy troops and mid-game SCs which make use of self-buffs and equipment. :)

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

You know, I often see them overlooked, but my roommate learned the game by focusing exclusively on Tir na n'Og. Their glamoured infantry is a bit pricey (25g like Van et al), but if you go a pure scales strat for gold income, you can really do anything you want with the game, as long as you keep your troop count up. Those Sidhe are quite potent, and can generally defeat far larger AI chaff hordes with little bother other than forming a line with your squads, and setting them to Fire Closest.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I'd also suggest using a mod or two. 'Deadly Seas' will keep water nations out of your game and water will be an 'out of bounds' area. And I wrote a small utility called DomBak (link in my sig) that easily backs up each turn for you. That way you can try a strategy, see if it works, quickly restore any past turn and try something different. :)

When I was starting I only used to play as MA Man because it seemed familiar.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Yikes, dont complicate the situation with mods if its the guy's first time.

I think its fair to say at this point that Ulm and Man are probably the most recognizable and straightforward nations. Thier units all perform obvious functions and their magic is quite limited in diversity.

Next step up would be nations like Abysia and Marignon - again they have straightforward units. But in those cases, you should focus solely on Fire magic (dont worry about astral and blood for the moment), because fire magic has the most traditionally recognizable spells like Fireball and whatnot.

Once you have some base dominion knowledge then you can wander off and try all the crazy diversity of nations that exist...

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I'd say Niefelheim, except that blessing troops can be complicated without H3 casters (you have to learn to Hold and Attack instead of just Attack, and how to assess how many priests you need to bless everyone). MA Ulm or EA Abysia is probably a good choice, for solid troops and good recruitable-anywhere battlemages.

-Max

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Hold and Attack? Maybe it's just me but I use Guard Commander much more :) A normal h2 jarl with two Blessing will take himself and up to 5 giants I'd say, little groups like that are more then enough to start seeing how little groups of sacreds can chew up every indie and most AI armies :cool:

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Using a bless does make for an obvious strategy. But you are talking about a new player here. Let him get used to regular units before even worrying about blesses at all. For us, having played the game often, it seems super obvious, but in reality blessing is like just another small wierd subsystem of dominions that you have to get to know.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Atlantis is pretty straightforward to play. And as an underwater nation, you hardly ever get invaded by opposing nations. So you have plenty of time to learn how everything works and pick your fights.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

The AI can't really invade the water though, so playing an underwater nation would lead to a very low-drama game.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Have to disagree with Mr Gandalf - we have found that magic-users (in 3 ed. - sorcerers) are MUCH better for starting DD players. Reason: they are obvious in what they can and can't do (just make sure he/she understands the spells you give him/her). Fighters, on the other hand, require tactics to be effective - and good grasp on system in general... And in respect to role-playing: there are many versions of fighters, most of them unfamiliar to staring player - but any geek can model magic-user quite well! :)
Returning to basic question: I'd say that what you should look for are good national mages (so that you don't need to plan how you'll make boosters beforehand) with good enough national troops to allow both expansion into indies and a good fight against other national troops. Which means: Hinnom/Ashdod, Sauromatia(!), EA Ermor, Niefelheim, Abyssia, maybe Helheim/Vanheim/Eriu. Maybe MA Ulm/Marignon too...

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

But again thats back to play well or play easy.
A basic human barb "run up and hit it with a club".
Or a fighter "run up and hit it with a sword".
Neither takes alot of explanation. True, they die. But they get the gist of the game and it makes them want more.

First choice IMHO, in either game (DnD or Dom3) doesnt need to cover the whole game. It doesnt need to play well. It needs to whet the appetite to try something better while learning the basic moves of the game.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

And a mage wets their appetite just well! And may even be useful for the rest of the party at the same time. :) (also, "run up and hit it with a sword" characters may inadventedly become a laughingstock of the party (or get bored themselves, which is even worse) - which may defeat the purpose of getting new player in the first place)
And of course it doesn't cover the whole game - they'll need to learn tactics, etc. Which is, by the way, why, say, Abyssia (or Sauromatia) may be a good nation for a start - true, starting player may not be successful with a Bloof - but he could try it while his powerful infantry fights off any opposition (and in DD newby mage can try something wacky whilr fighters hold enemy off him - which they wouldn't do for another fighter!).

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I agree with Gandalf's take on where to start for a new player. There are so many concepts within the game such as: Bless strategies; Super Combatants; Strangulation by Dominion; Battlefield Buffs; Searching; Item planning; Research strategies; Etc etc etc.

For a new player this can be overwhelming. Best to simply play against Easy AI (they aren't that easy!) and learn about army placement strategies. As Gandalf says, this whets the appetite. You have a few victories and think you have the formula down pat and then, 'bam', you meet an enemy using a particular strategy that beats yours. Then you need to re-think how you'll beat this new threat so you focus on learning just that aspect. And so on and so on. Much more manageable for a starting player.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Yes, and, I repeat - you need mages initially strong for this, plus something to play with (such as - oh terror! - Blood). Good troops are secondary here - you have better ones than independents anyway and can mass them as needed. Plus, your mages should be relatively variable or have few possibilities if you run into, say, Jotuns or Abyssia.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Map can make a difference also.
I just put a map up which is great for newbie play. Its a small tower.
http://www.dom3minions.com/maps.htm
It makes managing your front lines easier and helps avoid being attacked on all sides by the AI. I recommend an Independents setting of 5 or higher since that slows down the AIs early expansion.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

When I started learning how to play dominions I did something similar... I made a somewhat smaller tower style map, about 5 provinces across and 60-80 provinces in total, I don't remember anymore. I'd fight just one ai, but the ai would be fairly strong with all that territory available to it. It was good for learning the game, at least.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Agree about independents - actually, I even think that higher independents rating is always better. And for map I used Urgaja or something similar at start with about 3 other nations.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

This is the map that I used to transition from a flailing newbie, to a confident newbie. ;) I got tired of being ganged, so I made a somewhat balanced 4 player map, marked everything No Start except for fairly equal starting spots in the corners.

If anyone reads this thread (Akela or not) and thinks it could be useful, here you go. :happy:

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

I have some notes about using a generator such as ParadoxHarbringers to create a small tilable map, then copying it 4 times reversing each time to get an unfolded napkin type of EXACTLY matched map. It wont work too well with Dom3 generated maps so I put it off but I think it would be well received.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Hm, I see the usual suspects mentioned here. However, I might suggest that the nation a player starts with sometimes colors their view of the game. I would therefore give a slightly more varied nation. (Man and Ulm, particularly, are not very varied.)

I would suggest Midgard. Einhere spam is incredibly easy to do, and leads to easy expansion. You _can_ look into Blood, but don't have to. You _can_ do buffing by Volvas, or Battlemagic from the Galdermen, but don't have. Basically, this is a nation that you can give to a newbie and expect them to do well, but also something they can progress with for more than a few games.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

As an added bonus, there is an incredibly well written and insightful guide for Midgard. It really is a work art, so check it out, newbies and pros alike.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=38147

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Against humans or against AI?
LA RLyeh is the strongest nation overall; against AI its overwhelmingly strong, against humans overpowered and nearly impossible to strike back at, but not unstoppable (you lose if you start near Rlyeh though, even if you 'stop' it) :)

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

No, I think midgard is a bad nation for a new player. You are talking about the persons *first game* for goodness sake. They dont need to be able to have the ability to explore additional magic paths. They need to be able to get a handle on the base level complexity that is dominions without the 5234 other moving parts of the game.

We all take it for granted since we have experience with the game. But I remember when I first played and it was totally overwhelming. And I'm no rookie to strategy / empire games! I even gave up on dominions after trying the demo since it was too complicated. Only came back to it some months later out of boredom and finally got hooked. So, the best route for the new player is the easiest, most limited one.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Yeah, if I had to lay out a plan to learn the game it would be start with the least magically diverse, non-blood, non-communion nation just to start to get a feel for the basic mechanics without being totally overwhelmed with all the spells to cast and items to build. I remember in my first MP game:
1. confusing resources with supplies and starving my troops
2. making my first pretender an E3W1 cyclops b/c I confused the W symbol with the A and was trying to get E3A1 because I thought Gargoyles would be cool
3. having no idea what to research or why mages would do anything but research (just like real word academics)
4. screwing up scripting repeatedly so watching my hero bolt straight out in front of my troops into the waiting arms of hundreds of O-Bakemonos (ouch)
5. forgetting/not knowing enemy dominion would drop my pathetic cyclops HP like a brick, and then getting him crippled, then killed (doh)

etc. etc. Oh and this was just with MA Ulm before their upgrade.

So its easy to forget how much stuff there is and making it even more complicated with things like communions, blood hunting, mages with 256 permutations of paths, can be overwhelming.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Yes, of course. But unless you have decent national mages you would be stuck at the beginning not knowing where and how to get more power for them. And you have to have a decent military, too. So it just seems that MA Ulm wasn't the best nation to start with in any case - you have to know how to utilize their forging abilities...
My own first Dominion death, by the way, had been when I tried to look up two nations simultaneously, had them started as neighbors by random placement and then got one accidentally Dom-killing the other (Titan vs Rainbow)... :)
Another nation that is good for beginners seems to be MA R'lyeh - at least that is what I've started in Dom2 with and it has good enough troops, is somewhat protected by being underwater and already has solid Astral and Water mages with smattering of other paths for future experimentation... ;)

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

Well thanks to all the good advice here I now have two brothers hooked! One to go.

I can tell you from my own experience (1 month now, about 10 games) and the questions I fielded from my brothers that magic is a complete mystery to the brand new player. Like one poster said, we would build mages and put them on research (because that's what Bruce did in the tutuorial) but that's all they would ever do.

You could probably divide magic by effect into 4 main categories. Stuff that modifies combat (buffs/debuffs), direct damage spells, summons and miscellaneous stuff like teleport. All of which are pretty hard for a brand new player to construct a strategy around. The first game seems to be, at least in my limited experience, a matter of moving large masses of troops around the map, watching them fight, and building more of the same.

Re: What is the easiest nation to play?
 

FYI, Marverni is not exactly a good nation to start out with. I'm judging by your sig.