Commander Battles
 

In playing around with Dominions 3, I have discovered an odd format that I really like, nicknamed Commander Battles. Basically, you cannot ever assign troops to commanders, except for when killing off initial troops (Troops are still allowed to take advantage of Gift of Reason or similar), indies are set to 9, and everyone has at each other. However, I find myself wondering how to play the nations without strong death magic so that they can compete. Some are easy enough (Vanheim can basically butcher indies with about 10 mages once you get evocation 3, Arco has the Oreid, which is SC material), but others don't work as well. If anyone else has done this, what nations are more fun to do this with, and do you have any advice for nations that have more trouble (Oceania for instance.)

Re: Commander Battles
 

Wow, talk about horribly imbalanced. Hi, i'll play with Nieflheim. Its not about the death magic, its about the SC power that is the Niefl Jarl.

Vanheim doesn't need 10 mages, they just need a decent bless, alt 3, and a thug with gear.

But Marveni is hopeless, as is most of the Ulms, and a decent number of other nations. Recruitable thugs/SCs rule the day, and taking an SC god is virtually required unless you have good blessable thug/SC commanders.

Of course, Nieflheim just wins. There isn't much you can do about that. Can easily expand no later than turn 3, and can pop out an SC virtually every turn, all without an awake pretender.

Troops are essential to nation balance - some nations can't do without them.

Re: Commander Battles
 

With a proper bless, niefelheim will work easily enough. Also I'd guess eriu works similarily to vanheim, and with some evo research abysia will probably work well enough too.

Edit: Squirrelloid ninjaed the niefelheim issue. Well played, sir!

Re: Commander Battles
 

Yeah, of course it is horribly unbalanced. That much is basically a given. Nobody is expecting balance, but it would be nice to have a vague idea of what is completely hopeless, what has an absurd edge (Neifleheim was an obvious one, EA atlantis seems to have an edge in the Basalt King as well), and in general what can work for a fun game. Certainly a competitive game would have to be highly restricted in nations, but the nation difference actually does seem kind of nice if there is a significant difference in player skill(ie, taking EA Arco and letting a player who isn't as good have EA C'tis.

Death magic and SCs are the big things, and while some are obvious, I'm just trying to weed out surprises.

As for Vanheim. Alt 3 is a reference to mistform, correct?

Re: Commander Battles
 

mistform. Also gives them mirror image as an anti-thug/SC spell.

Niefl/Hinnom(Ashdod)/Yomi/EA Atlantis/Fomoria strike me as the probable big winners in approximately that order.

Helheim/Vanheim/Eriu have top tier thugs but a decent research burden before they come online. Also have the advantage of being scaleable (ie, every fortress can produce an excellent thug). In this particular ruleset, probably want an awake SC (Cyclops?) to expand while they research, so they can throw up a 2nd fort after not too long.

EA Arco's Oreiad can easily SC against indies given suitable research and gear. And EA Arco has the research tools to get the job done quickly.

Re: Commander Battles
 

EA Oceania would be awfully fun to play like that--Triton Princes and Kings all day long. In CBM at least Amulets of the Fish are cheap enough to pass around.

Jomon or another of the assassin-heavy nations would also be amusing--you might be able to make a run for fast expansion with ninjas.

Here's an unexpected one: Bogarus. Call Lesser Horror does a number on indies, and ultimately their troops sucked so bad they didn't really mind losing them.

Re: Commander Battles
 

I would say LA Ulm as well, although they lose Ghoul Guardians. The Send Lesser Horror strategy goes well with them. The same goes for LA Marignon.

Re: Commander Battles
 

Bogarus? That probably could work fairly well. That's unanticipated, to say the least. I've also been looking at Mictlan recently, they seem potentially very powerful, largely complements of the Succubus and how incredibly easy it is for them to get large amounts of them. Why is Yomi so powerful though?

On EA arco. Skeptics get a lot better at dominion killing people when you can't actually assign units to patrolling commanders. Granted, there are obvious ways to get a huge boost to patrolling, but in the early game, they are nasty. They are actually pretty nasty under these rules.

Re: Commander Battles
 

yomi has dai oni and shura. enough said

Re: Commander Battles
 

When you have a recruitable SC with H1F2D2E3?1, you're pretty much set. Blessing, Phoenix Pyre, Soul Vortex, Invincibility, Fire Shield. Summon Earthpower+Iron Will can be substituted in, when necessary. And they have a second form. Oh, and with Earthpower, Earthquakes.

Game Over.

Re: Commander Battles
 

That does give them a lot, but because you can't bring units on the offensive, you are suddenly in a lot of danger from some defensive measures. Ie Charm. Still, that does sound like they are top tier. Keeping them with EA Atlantis, Hinnom, Niefl and the like then.

Re: Commander Battles
 

Really if we're talking about EA, any nation with recruitable SCs will dominate in such a game. Fomoria (Air and Death and a bit of water makes for Bless/Mistform/MirrorImage/SoulVortex/Quickness, and Dance of the Morrigans), and Helheim (same with Fomoria, except with Svarts and Earth Buffs and Sabbaths) would both rank up there.

Generally speaking, it becomes a pain in the arse for pretty much everyone to expand, but nations like EA Ermor, Ulm, C'tis, and Maverni (and maybe Sauromatia) take it in the groin. EA Mictlan and Abysia can compensate with lesser horror spamming, but overall, the game goes to recruitable thug/SC nations.

Re: Commander Battles
 

Variant on this game: a commander can only lead 60 HP worth of troops, including himself. Giant nations like Hinnom/Ashdod/Niefelheim could only solo, but Marverni could have small squads of elite troops. It *might* still have some of the feel you're going for without eliminating human nations from consideration completely.

I guess castle construction would be a priority in these games. And the micro will quickly get out of hand, because placing 50 commanders on the battlefield is SO much harder than placing 50 grunts. Have fun!

-Max

Re: Commander Battles
 

What about commanders with over 60 HP? Since that cap would completely bar Golems, Tartarians, Elemental Royalty, even the humble Sea King SC after a bit of experience.

Re: Commander Battles
 

I thought about writing a footnote that said "Except that a commander >60 HP counts as only 60 HP, so you can still use SC pretenders etc." but I sort of figured that in practice it would up to the people actually playing the game and I didn't want to clutter my post with footnotes for corner cases. But good for you on spotting that.

-Max

Re: Commander Battles
 

Thing is, an HP limit could make sense, even for commanders. With Tartarians, Seraphs, Chayots, etc. cut, along with Niefleheims top commanders, it actually closes the gap. It could work either way, although I would probably bump it up to 70 HP. Maybe involve the square root of HP for the total and cap it at 10, rounding down.

Re: Commander Battles
 

K,
I like your thinking out of the box on this. The thing is it *could* be made balanced with sufficient mods/rules/restrictions.
-ssj

Re: Commander Battles
 

So you'll cap it at 121 HP?

Re: Commander Battles
 

120 is the last number allowed, yes. But 3 creatures with 15 HP each will eat up the entire thing, unless you have a 1-3 HP critter to throw in as well. Basically this encourages SCing. Squaring and then allowing a total would encourage the opposite. My point is that the exact statistic could be played around with.

Re: Commander Battles
 

It sounds like it would be easier to enforce if you just make a mod where everyone is poor leaders except SCs who have 0 leadership. You could write a script fairly easy that would generate the code to set all the commanders to #poorleader and then manual change the SCs such as Niefel Giants etc.

Re: Commander Battles
 

This just assumes that people will be polite and stay within the rules. A mod would be preferable, mostly for balance purposes, but its niche enough that that's unlikely. I certainly lack the modding skill, not to mention an adequate understanding of balance.

Re: Commander Battles
 

It can't be done with a mod, since #poorleader sets the number of units you can lead and not the max HP of units you lead. For instance, a #poorleader could still violate the rules by leading 10 Niefel giants.

You have to rely on people to play within the rules, but that shouldn't be a problem since violations would be quite obvious.

-Max

Re: Commander Battles
 

I'm not seeing how, say, EA Ermor could expand with 60hp of units any better than it could expand with just a commander. Six principes are insufficient to expand with.

In practice, a 50hp giant is worth ~250hp of *good* troops, give or take, although with gear and blessing the giant is likely even better.

Re: Commander Battles
 

Yeah, I meant instead of the 60 HP rule, use a low leadership rule, not that setting a unit to #poorleader would cap the total HP.

Re: Commander Battles
 

That's not because of the HP, it's because Niefel Giants are sacreds with good stats and have chill auras. Try expanding with 60 HP of Jotun Hirdmans and see how much fun that it. :-/

EA Ermor will probably have to either 1.) rely on elite units and/or sacreds for expansion, or 2.) send multiple commanders. Perhaps both. Honestly I think most non-bless nations would have trouble expanding with just a single commander.

-Max

Re: Commander Battles
 

Okay. In retrospect my comment was probably so obvious to modders like you that I should have known you were suggesting an different rule.

-Max

Re: Commander Battles
 

The niefl jarl doesn't even *need* a bless. The chill aura certainly helps.

The Jotun Jarl would be perfectly useable for this as well, so, you know, your non-capital forts have something to produce.

I'm not even considering normal niefl/jotun troops - there's no point. You don't have a single commander who would let you bring a normal troop to the party and squeeze in under 60hp iirc.

Re: Commander Battles
 

I'm not trying to talk about strategies for commander battles here, I'm addressing your point that 60 HP of giant units is worth 250 HP of regular units for expansion and that therefore human nations are still at a disadvantage. Aside from blessed giant units I don't think that's true. 6 Principes have lower Strength than a giant unit, but they also have 6 times more attacks and probably better defense because of tower shields.

How many unblessed Jotun Jarls does it take to conquer an indy province of 50 heavy infantry? I'm guessing at least 6 but I don't know for sure. That doesn't seem worse than Ermor.

-Max

Re: Commander Battles
 

We can use Equites of the Sacred Shroud if you prefer so the comparison unit is sacred.

No one is going to use a non-blessed Jotun Jarl. The fact remains that they exist and are blessable. They're also 35hp instead of 50. So 3 of them are ~100 hp. Do you think 10 Equites of the Sacred Shroud will expand as well as 3 Jotun Jarls?

Edit: 10 Equites of the sacred shroud are also 500g, more than 3 Jotun Jarls.

Or we could consider a nation like Marveni, whose sacred is so unexciting as to be useless in small quantities. You'd seriously need 20-30 of them, even with a bless, to expand reasonably.

Re: Commander Battles
 

The Marverni sacreds are a little better than you give them credit. I can usually expand with less than 10 with a good bless.

Re: Commander Battles
 

Look, the original statement I disagreed with was, "50hp giant is worth ~250hp of *good* troops, give or take, although with gear and blessing the giant is likely even better." Clearly that excludes blessing and gear. It is with that statement that I took issue. 100 HP worth of unblessed Jotun Jarl is not worth 500 HP of Principes.

I absolutely agree that blessings can change this equation. So can certain special abilities on the giant unit like Niefel chill, although I don't know if that's sufficient to tip the balance without a bless.

-Max