New to Dom 3
 

I'm thinking of getting Dominions 3 since Elemental War of Magic is an epic fail. After getting the game what are some base mod that I should pick up? Any good graphic mods? I wasn't able to find anything scanning through the boards. Thanks.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

After just getting the game I would definitely download and install the latest patch/upgrades program from here.
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/Illwint...DOM3_page.html

After that Id say that most mods would just make changes to the game. Not much reason to do that until you play the game for awhile and get the feel for what you like or dont like about it. Not much reason to make changes for what someone else didnt like. When you have played around for abit and have some things you would like to see different then we can recommend mods for those areas.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

You might want to start with just playing the game as it stands. I've hardly ever felt the need to look into mods or using the things as Dominions 3 stands strong on it's own.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Conceptual Balance Mod (CBM) addresses balance related concerns that many long time competitive players have with the base version of the game. This is almost certainly the most popular mod used in multiplayer games. There are a few alternate versions of this mod using it as a base as well, but they aren't as popular thus far. Just look for anything with balance in the name if you're looking for one of these.

Armor Revamp is a fairly new one attempting to address concerns with heavy infantry being perhaps too easily killed due to having severe fatigue issues due to armor encumbrance. Basically this one changes encumbrance values of most non-magical armors and one or two magical ones, and that's it.

Endgame Diversity Mod is an attempt to bring more options to the late game, which otherwise tend to be dominated by a very small number of options which are just outright better than everything else and limited to just two magic paths, forcing everyone to develop them or lose in late game (applies to multiplayer only). Endgame Diversity is still fairly new, but is being used more and more in multiplayer.

There are some good nation mods laying around, too. Most of them can be found here. Especially anything by sombre and burnsaber. Their nation mods and llamabeast's Tomb Kings are the most commonly played in multiplayer. And pretty damn fun, too :) They tend to hover somewhere between middle end and high end nations in power. And are stacked with exceptionally well-done graphics.

The mods and maps section of this forum has a number of other nation mods as well. There's a lot of new mods that have been added lately that aren't listed in the mod list, so take your time when looking through that forum. The mod list is a good place to start though. Many people like Amos' mods, for example, though their balance is... questionable, at best. Some of them can make for good AI opponents, though ;)

Last but not least, Burnsaber has made a number of other mods that can be found here or on the other website I linked with a goal of changing up gameplay a bit. UWGIM is a mod designed to make it easier for underwater and land nations to interact with (and kill) one another. Some aspects of this have been rolled into CBM from above. Others include CrossPathCombatSpells, adding a number of spells to take better advantage of low level crosspath mages and give them something to do. Or the Holy War mod, which adds in things like holy magic sites with more recruitable sacreds.

I hope this helps!

Re: New to Dom 3
 

I'm new to Dom 3 as well, but having bought both it and Elemental recently, I think you can guess which one I've been spending my time playing! So far I love Dom 3, although I feel a little pathetic that the AI has beaten me like 3 times in a row. Definitely a steep learning curve on this game.

I've finally put together a good playthrough as Agartha - I was lucky to start in a corner of the map and my first attempt at an immobile pretender seems to be going well, with maxed Order and Production scales I can crank out a lot of units every turn.

Maybe I might eventually look into Play by Email, since that seems to be doing quite well on these forums, but I'm not sure with law school starting imminently I really have the time, nor do I think I'm good enough at the game to not get stomped, very quickly.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

The dom3 AI may not be brilliant, but it is pretty brutal with those hordes of units it will produce. So don't feel too bad if you get beaten a number of times before your first win. Eventually you'll start learning synergies and the spell system a bit better and things will start to click.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

No mods are really needed, but no, there isn't anything that increases the graphics. The manual's guide for most nations is a decent build, but usually not amazing, so you can always try that out. For sure do the tutorial. Then it's just playing around until you get it and then very quickly you'll find yourself stomping the AI.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Check out this link:

http://game.dom3minions.com/bin/vsAI_chk.cgi

Humans vs AI games with a "how to join" link at the top of the page. These games are good to learn to play on as you can team up on the AI.

Cheers GP for that one :)

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Thank you very much! I'm sure I'll use that in the future. I still need to be better right now though - I was so close in my recent Vampire Queen EA Mictlan game. I set up a decent blood economy but I was struggling to hold the frontiers, and eventually a nasty stack broke through and rampaged about all of my soft fleshy internal provinces, and that was that. Gonna try it again though it was fun. I think this time I'm gonna go all out and max turmoil scales and just go for straight blood production.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Dom3 is a great game. Check out the semi-random program by Ballbarian (in his signature all over the place) for extra AI fun when you are ready. I think mods are best avoided when playing single player. The AI is already sort of crippled and most mods adjust things for multiplayer. For that, they are very worthwhile since a lot of them fix balance issues.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Though I would suggest some version of the Better Independents mod for SP. It changes the costs of some of the more useless indy troops so the AI won't recruit them. You see armies with a lot more national troops and a lot better troops overall.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

The vanilla AI is a one-trick pony. Or rather, very limited tricks. Eventually you get feel for it and start beating it regularly (not knocking it, its still good enough to provide an opponent for most of the long learning curve)

But there are mods and maps designed to boost the AI. And program generators such as SemiRandom or Chaos. You tend to have to find the threads talking about it since its a different course than the "fixing" or "balancing" ones.

Personally, my favorites for "more more more" unbalance for solo play are Worthy Heroes and Epic Heroes (to get more heroes), Mytheology and Immortal Pretender mods (for more pretenders), the More Magic SItes mod, CPCS (more summons), SingleAge (more nations), and Streamers & Standards because the flags got old to look at. Also Amos modded nations make for new exciting AIs.

If those get old you can always join a multiplayer game with specifically boosted AIs :)

Re: New to Dom 3
 

I'd settle for winning first - yeesh. Got stomped again. Might have to abandon Mictlan, as I'm having trouble getting over the hump with them. Might try a less complicated strategy next.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

I'd avoid the VQ, especially in vanilla. Far too expensive for what you get.
With Mictlan, take whatever chassis you can cheaply get a W9F9 bless with high dominion. Recruit nothing but mages and Jaguar Warriors, slaughter everything. Go heavy into blood hunting, summon your national sacred summons and continue to slaughter everything. When you get bored with killing things, blood sacrifice everywhere and let your dominion win for you.

It's not quite that simple. It takes a little while to get the hang of balancing blood hunting with income and research. Still, Mictlan is a power and double bless sacreds are very hard for the AI to counter.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

I've been using that rebalancing MOD. That seemed like it just made a lot of decent changes. I might try a vanilla game without it next though, which I probably should have done from the start.

Anyway, I abandoned the VQ for this playthrough anyway. I forget what I picked - a big guy with Death and Blood magic. I went D9 B5 with high Turmoil and Strife and high Luck. My initial expansion went ok, and then I had to stop thanks to running into three different factions on my borders - I was scared to try to expand into one of them because I couldn't hold off the other two at the same time. So I tried to switch over to a blood economy, since I knew my long-term gold production would be crappy, and I kind of got stuck inbetween. I got up to level 5 or 6 in blood, I forget which, but couldn't generate enough oomph via summons to stave off the ravening hordes. I had some greenish faction led by the Great White Bull attacking my upper left with stacks of 3-400, and the Pale Ones in far fewer numbers, but still a problem, from my bottom right. Eventually a 50ish stack of tough Pale Ones broke through and went on a blood mage stomping fest. I just kind of got caught in the middle. Take 2 tomorrow I guess (with a non-blood faction this time).

Re: New to Dom 3
 

d9 isn't a particularly good bless, since the death weapons damage is MR negateable (i think), as for blood 5 you don't need the extra strength when you are using another offencive bless.

water 9, fire 9 is commonly used, though a case could be made for astral 9.

You'll need to rely on mages later on, especially with large hordes, aoe spells work wonders. Check out the blood spell Hellfire, castable by all sun priests. It gives 100 fatigue (lots) but has an extremely wide area of effect (4 groups of aoe3, or 3 groups of aoe4 I forget), a few sun priests can cause a little bit of havoc with that spell

you also have the spell reinvigoration, which basicly means you chop up 1 blood slave and get rid of all the fatigue from hellfire. That's all I'll say, experiment and see what other spells work.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Yeah, I was getting pieces of that on my own, but just not putting it together. I took Blood and Death on my pretender because I was trying to be kind of thematic I guess. And I got the Hellfire Rejuvenation combo, but hadn't produced enough Sun Priests to take advantage of it. I might just try a straight F9W9 Pretender with some fairly vanilla faction next and just try to keep it simple.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

If you want a tougher AI for single player games, try the Better Independents mod. Once you learn to deal with the AI, you will soon get tired of every AI nation having the same horde of independents and the BI mod forces the AI to use national troops due to ´cost issues.

Just be real careful with the enslave mind and charm spells if you use the gold version of BI or you'll go bankrupt in no time flat.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Wich bless is better is a personal matter to judge. I like B9 D9 with mictlan. Mainly because that scare off big monsters (other players combat pretenders). And regular armies are no problem for the jaguars.

Against the AI the standard F9 W9 is better as it adresses wiping hordes of weak units.

Wow, never seen that one. Looks like a lot of fun. And a great way to start to learn the game. Anybody want to try one?

Edit:

And more on topic, read the strategy index. The guides are pretty good. And the ones from Baalz are pure inspiration.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

There is actually a number of them
http://www.dom3minions.com/HostedGames.htm

Any that have AIs included can be played solo. Or you can try to get a few people together for a game by posting a thread in this forum, or in Chat, or mentioning it in IRC

Disclaimer: I dont recommend the Chaos games for new players.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Chaos is Chaos. Only sneaky armies can handle them.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

The F9W9 imprisoned pretender works for Mictlan because they have good cheap recruitable everywhere sacreds, plus sacred summons. (And even then it's a great bless against the AI, not so much against other players. It gives maximum killing power, but not much for survivability. A good player will use blockers, archers and spells to slaughter the jaguars before they reach anything important.) Since most nations don't have such good sacreds they won't benefit as much from it, so it's not worth it for them. Or they'll have few big tough sacreds who benefit more from being made even harder to kill.
Essentially you can't take a build for one nation and throw it onto another one.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

The easiest nation I learned on was Niefelheim. They're great with a Earth-9 Water-9 or Earth-9 Nature-9 or, my favorite, Earth-9 Water-6 Nature-6. They go into battle and their cold-aura just kills almost everything. Anything else out there gets killed by the giant axe. Because they're so big and have so many HPs, their protection lets them live a few rounds, and their regeneration lets them recoup back up to full (and reduces afflictions). This nation is also good for learning how to kit-out thugs. It's a bit expensive, though, so I would recommend Order 3.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

The standard Neifel bless is E9Nx. Water might be nice, but isn't really needed. The cold aura kills, not the axe strokes. Regen, reinvig and the extra protection keep them alive long enough for the cold to work. In fact, W9 means they do pick up a fatigue since the reinvig isn't enough to cancel out the extra attacks. They start with fairly low defense and get swarmed so the defense bonus from the lesser W bless doesn't really help much.

That leaves you with more pretender points for halfway decent scales.

You can give Neifel Jarls reinvig gear so they can cast Quicken Self and lots of other buffs.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

E9N6 is probably the most competitive. Any more Nature gets expensive fast (and not everyone likes Berserk on their Sacreds). Less, and you're down to 5% Regen, which is almost not worth it.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

I am going to be purchasing Dom 3 in a few days as well. It seems the release of elemental was a good thing for Dom 3.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

LOL
Hmmm....
I hadnt considered that. All thru the development of Elemental I understand that Dom3 was often used in comparison. There might be some direct fallout.

Im still hopeful but so far Elemental seems like an example of what I refer to often when people say they are thinking about buying Dom3. "Ive paid as much for games that lasted a month on my machine, but Dom3 has lasted for years." So far Im still waiting to be convinced that this is more than a one-month game.

The only other great example of those-other-games that Elemental could be is if within a month someone posted an always-win walk-thru.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Gandalf: It is a "more than a one month" game, in that you apparently have to wait "more than one month" after you purchase it, for the devs to render it playable.

While that's happening, Stardock thoughtfully encourages you to explore their interactive adventure, "Adventures in Betatesting!", an exciting massive multiplayer for fans and ex-fans of the game, that Stardock actually plays with you.

It has immense replayability for potentially years to come, as you get to help Stardock magically transform broken and absent lines of code into a working game, right before your very eyes.

So it's really 2 games for the price of one.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Well at least you apparently get ONE FULL YEAR of FREE updates and patches.
So I guess as long as they get it working before that year is over then people wont be able to complain TOO much.

Playing with the devs is usually a benefit of being in a beta-test group. Im not sure how well that will work with an open beta like Elementals to play in every game. But there are people here who have espoused the wonderful benefits of a fully open beta where the devs can suffer the slings and arrows of their loyal and caring fanbase. I am sure that polished company such as StarDock will be showing us the right way to do such things just as they led the way to a download system that all of the small game companies will (or should be) duplicating soon.


Gandalf Parker
--
Any similarities between the above views and those of my employer,
my service provider, the admins of this forum, my wife, or any majority;
will be changed immediately upon notification.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

I have to say, I loathe their download "system".

Originally, yes, it was great--you could download the game directly off of their site, with the CD key. No muss, no fuss. Worthy of duplication, I totally agree.

Now, though, Stardock has switched to an incredibly bad 3rd party that forces you to download what I can only assume is an "adware made easy" program from a site absolutely bloated with web advertizements, which didn't even work, and which not only wasted my time, but forced me to run extensive scans.

I could live with an advert page, but not with this kind of strongarm tactic in partnership with a 3rd party I don't even know.

I emailed Stardock directly, hoping that if I provided them my CD key, they could just email me the game, but they were incredibly unhelpful.

It's just another good start that they've made, and then outright ruined, without any consideration for their fanbase, even a proven customer.

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Sorry. I forgot to add the sarcasm smiley.
I know that its very rare that I post sarcastically.

For so long we kept seeing here "how come Shrapnel cant offer digital like Steam or Stardock" as if it was some sort of major news that such things were being done. :)

Re: New to Dom 3
 

What is this 3rd party thing? I have three Impulse games but have not seen anything like what you describe.

Do you mean the actual Impulse program?

Re: New to Dom 3
 

Technically Impulse might be called a 3rd party software since it is a separate company.
On the other hand, its a split off of StarDock and is still a sub corp of Stardock Corporation.
http://www.impulsedriven.com/about

And tho Im sure no one noticed, its formation follows closely my comments about digital download. When people first started yelling for it I said that all of the examples people were throwing around of "they seem to be doing it" had written their own download management software which is not as easy as it seems. And that only when a plug-n-play option was available would it become widespread. When you could add it to your site as easily as you add a forum or a blog or a wiki. (Brad does read these forums and Ive known him for longer than most but I wont take full credit). Brad did a smart thing by separating and packaging his digital download system