Nerf
 

In light of the recent CBM 1.7 discussion, I think I've figured out where my frustration with Dominions stems from. It's the excessive nerfing tendency. Every time someone finds a relatively easy and effective strategy to use, it gets nerfed. I suppose for multiplayer this makes sense, where balance is more important. But in SP it just tends to turn the game into a troop slogfest.

So, the secret to SP play seems to be antinerfing. I find the following game startup works well:
Sites: 75%
Money: 50%
Resource: 50%
Research: easy
Clam forging: essential

Once you're drowning in gems (relative to cash), you can start truly playing around. Slashing the number of troops on the board also vastly improves the effectiveness of thugs and SCs.

I wonder how this setup would work in MP? Clam forging does give WN nations an advantage over others.

Re: Nerf
 

My secret to playing SP is this:
Sites: 35%
Money: 100%
Resource: 100%
Research: standard
Clam forging: none

I haven't ever run into problems executing even my most absurd strategies, although that rarely guarantees their success...

How can you blame them for removing "i win" buttons? What's the point of SP if you can just spam X for victory?

Re: Nerf
 

Removing gem generators entirely isnt so much nerfing as it is gameplay redesign...

I mean gem-generators arnt necessarily imbalanced, you could have a version of the game where every race has equal access to gem generators. It would be balanced. I only picked up Dominions 3 earlier this year and I've never played MP, but my understanding is that gem generators were removed for gameplay/micro reasons.

It kinda reminds me of Supreme Commander- the vanilla version had exponential growth through mass fabricators, the expansion kicked early mass fabs in the balls so it was much more restricted.

Re: Nerf
 

Gem gens like clams are so much of a pain. I even stopped using them in some games where I have a lot of these, because forging a pair of these every turn and clicking the button to store 50 more astral gems in your vault each turn while reassigning manually the gems to the 3 or 4 mages who are in a lab but must have S gems handy each turn is a chore.

Re: Nerf
 

Don't play with the CBM.

Play with a version you like.

Re: Nerf
 

You can do that already. Play Pangaea. Take a sleeping Oracle, max your scales, recruit Centaur Warrior [40 gold 12 resources] hordes, and flatten everything the AI throws at you.

The fun is finding new ways to win that aren't 10 times more difficult to implement. When you find one, cheer, then try something different.

Re: Nerf
 

Wrong.



also, you win SP by taking one province, 125pd, take another province, 125pd, rinse and repeat. Forever. It takes probably gazillion turns and wins you the game. It's still not fun. SP ai is so very boring and fsckd up that it's almost unplayable.

Re: Nerf
 

Every AI ever is susceptible to rush tactics and gaming the system, that's not new. So, um, if you want to have fun, don't do that.
How not? Please note that balance != gameplay you don't like. I hate gem gens.

Re: Nerf
 

Other nations get more w/n income or constr site, they win. Unless you meant by "equal access" that every single nation got exactly the same w+n income and mages, in which case yes, you are right.


Which I doubt.

Re: Nerf
 

Even that isn't necessarily balanced because choices for each nation have to be balanced internally. Giving every nation the same cheap super unit, for instance, still would not be balanced.

Re: Nerf
 

I haven't tested this strategy, but I have some questions before experimenting with it.
Do you start by upping the capital province to 125PD before trying to take another? If you want to do that as quickly as possible, you won't want to waste any cash on troops or mages until you're ready to conquer the next province. It should only take about 20 turns for each 125 PD to start. Less as you expand and income goes up, of course.
I'll have to try it sometime. No research, minimal troops, invest everything in PD. Maybe you would win eventually, unless you get hit before you've got that first PD up, which is quite possible. More likely, you'd be in 1 or 2 provinces that the AI couldn't take, but you wouldn't be able to expand with so little resources against the AI hordes.


If that's how you play SP, I see why you think it's unplayable.

Re: Nerf
 

...

You can build a balanced game with gem generators, as long as everyone has in some form equal access to them. I don't mean every nation automatically gets Clam of Pearls spam, just that it's theoretically possible to balance it. ;p

That, of course, in no way discusses the negative impact of gem generators on gameplay particularly as pertains to map control, gold, and risk/reward.

Re: Nerf
 

Your AI opponents are not able to hoard gem generators such as clams which provides you an unfair advantage. Why don't you try a game where you don't use any gem generators and provide a distant AI opponent with a dozen or more SCs of his own.

It's too bad more intelligence wasn't provided for AI opponents.

Re: Nerf
 

The AI in this game is actually pretty good given its complexity and the wildly varying capabilities of nations. However, complex systems like this are very vulnerable to munchkin behavior which players understand and the AI does not.

A lot of the recent CBM changes are clearly aimed at eliminating munchkin strategies; exponential gemgens and universal hammers are both examples of extreme optimization. So, actually, CBM will provide a better SP experience.

Re: Nerf
 

gem gens were specifically removed because they led to annoying gameplay. Namely, it strongly encouraged turtling *and* it made gem income both invisible and unassailable. Since gems were the real currency of the realm, as it were, this means there was no way to destroy the real economy of the opposition (since they could hide all their units with gem gens under 25 domes in their capital, making them impossible to assail, and generally speaking these would also be hiding scouts, so you couldn't assassinate them). This meant games went on much longer than they should have as no meaningful victories were possible.

Re: Nerf
 

I've had a lot of luck achieving a more balanced game by controlling the start conditions and having "kill" rules to end the game at a certain point or time.

Re: Nerf
 

Just take a few provinces, and the moment you see any AI, pd125. It'll speed the start by about.. say 100 turns.

It's not how I play SP (I don't play SP at all), it's just an example of how a bad gameplay mechanic wins the AI.

Also, it might not be doable with machaka or the ape pd nations. MA Ulm, MA Pyth probably have the best chance of never ever losing a province.

Re: Nerf
 

... I haven't tried it, but I don't buy it. I've seen Mighty AIs (let alone Impossibles) field armies that could squash 125 pd by year 3. And the AI is notoriously squirrely and likes to rampage around at random through weak territories. (Granted, it often does this with armies no player would consider an expendable raiding force, but hey. :P)

And i mean, you lose a single province and you're out 8000 gold... and maybe we just have different map size preferences but I don't see how you're sitting around and saving up 8000 gold in the early game.

Re: Nerf
 

7875 gold per province in pd???!!!

And what happens when a 300-strong AI army shows up and eats it?

Re: Nerf
 

Think of the principle more than the exact methodology.

Start with very affordable 30PD on the border. Increase as required when a big enough army arrives, watch the AI annihilate itself in futile attacks.

By the time the AI collects a army capable of beating uberPD, you should be able to make him go through several provinces of uberPD. He gets past the first, but the remnants will die on the second. By the time he's got a new army capable of beating a second uberPD (and wasted countless more small ones), you'll have several more provinces with uberPD. You win in the end.

I tried this early when I started playing Dom3, albeit with only 70+PD on the border. Just one big army, eat a province, 70PD, move on.

Re: Nerf
 

That's the reason you don't use machakan/ape PD. Actually niefel/jotun PD might not be able to survive that either, probably. Either way, I've never seen AI take a province with 125pd. Never. Ever.

If you are concerned, throw in a few mages throwing random evo's and you're 99.9% quaranteed to win. The dom3 AI is stupid.

Say, play a game with MA Pyth - and if you ever manage the AI to beat your 125pd, please send me the turn file. I'd be really interested to see what the composition for AI was for that.

Re: Nerf
 

I'll never get the AI to beat my 125 PD, because I'll never be able to afford that much PD, even just along the borders. If you wait to expand until you've got ~8000 gold per province, you'll never get anywhere. If you expand first, you'll have a big border and you still won't be able to afford 125 PD in every province.

Or even 70 (~2500). 30 would be doable, at least on the borders. But even the AI can blow through 30 PD if it has put together a big enough horde.

Maybe you people are playing a different game than I am.

Re: Nerf
 

125PD ?? That's not just turtling that's snailing or even cocooning. I can't think of any experienced SP gamer using 125 PD for AI opponents. I even recall reading a problem where an event could raise the province defence again which causes it to loop back to zero.

Re: Nerf
 

I hate to break it to you guys, but something tells me that quitti is actually:

Re: Nerf
 

Re: Nerf
 

I've played as Quitti says. It works fine, until you get tired of your slow, predictable progress and give up.

It's still possible to lose this way, though. I had a little C'tis in a corner of a huge map once--I was going for some ultimate spell, or something, while an enemy R'lyeh was beating on me and on some other nation I never met. I did fine until the unknown nation fell and R'lyeh began to really thrive. Then the crappy, unready enemy armies that had always been falling into my grinders became so big that they actually won once in a while. But it was the enemy dominion that finally beat me.

Re: Nerf
 

I was going to point this out as another possible risk -- if you're growing that slowly, domkill is a real danger. I guess you would need a fair number of temples and priests to protect against this?

I think I'm going to have to try a game this way and see what happens!

Re: Nerf
 

Hmmm, well, that actually helped considerably.

One of the big problems I have against the AI is attrition -- when he flings 100 troop armies of crud against me, and I defend with 100 competent troops, I'll lose 10-20 troops. Then he hits me with another 100 cruddites. And then 150. And then 200. And then...

Cranking up the D to 50-60 is expensive, but the AI can't dent it. Interesting.

So why doesn't this work against human opponents?

(BTW, I was playing Abysia; the humanbred PD is reasonably good. I wouldn't try this with Bandar Log or Shinyuma)

Re: Nerf
 

It doesn't work against humans because it's not hard to make a teleporting or flying thug that can take out any amount of PD without any real chance of dying. Or mages to do the same. So your huge investment goes poof and your enemy, who hasn't been spending 1000s on PD and thus has more forts/mages/research, just rolls over you.

The somewhat odd result of this is that no one spends more than the bare minimum on PD, sometimes just 1, sometimes 5-10, which means you can pull of the same raids with much cheaper thugs.

Re: Nerf
 

I'm sorry, but I find playing SP Dominions like this completely idiotic, the PD way I mean.
There are infinite ways to kill the AI, and if you can't beat the AI than it's still not time to try MP.
You can play the same way the AI plays and still beat him easily, just field your nations best troops, no mages no spells, no nothing. Take a nation like Midgard for example and only make skinshifters. Or Agartha and just make Troglodites.
AI tends to use crap troops like militia and other crap which break and rout easily.

Second way to play is just research battle spells. I think that's self explanatory, as the AI has hard time dealing even with the most pathetic mages.

You can just summons a few medicare thugs like Bane Lords and semi-thug them out. Than there's the choosing of any bless nation with a decent bless.
AI can't deal with Kailasa due to awe, can't deal with Micltan, any bless nation really.
You can also take a Giants nation, Hinnom for example, Niefelheim and *just recruit commanders. Take crappy scales and some OP bless and make just a thug Giant commander (Jarl, Melqart...) and send them out one by one. Equipment or buffs are optional.
Than there's death magic, AI can't kill any death nation with raise dead/skeletons.
There's always the take SC awake pretender (Dragon works best) and kill the AI on turn 5, than move one to the next one and so on.
Doing some minor site searching than spamming a ton of summons (note than the AI doesn't site search and therefor rarely uses summons)

Now, you can't do that with human opponents cause nobody really uses PD, unless you expect a fight in your province at which point you probably up the PD to 25 at best so the PD fights along side your troops.
The reason nobody buys PD, or buys very little until much later in the game, or not at all more commonly is that PD is useless.
The money spent on PD is better spent on troops/mages/forts which will be used to take more provinces faster, which will bring you more gold, which will bring you more troops/mages/fors and so on.
PD gets taken out quite easily with minimal or very often no loses due to lack of battlefield orders. PD Archers for example can get screwed by only a hand full of troops placed correctly, and all the other gets screwed by battlefield magic since they're all grouped together or enemy archers.
Or you can just send a thug with say luck and body ethereal and rape any amount of PD.

Re: Nerf
 

You can't always beat the highest-level AI by playing the way the AI does. If you try that then you'll just be roleplaying as a non-cheating AI against a cheating AI.

I played this way because I just wanted to relax for a bit, and building automatic killing machines in computer simulations is how I relax. But then I got sucked into the project of trying to take over a whole huge map without ever actually trying very hard, and it turned out to be an unrewarding timesink. This has happened to me several times over the past couple of years.

Still, it could be fun for somebody to play with 125 PD sometimes.

Re: Nerf
 

you guys need to play with better independents i think ^_^

Re: Nerf
 

True, depending on what nation you take and what the AI takes.
I like to mess around with the AI from time to time too, doe as hard as I try I can never force myself to play serious against the AI no matter what.

One thing I realized too as that the AI has a nice advantage on wrap around maps due to his massive numbers. :)

Re: Nerf
 

Ya, how many of these examples are with better indies and against mighty/impossible AIs?

Re: Nerf
 

All, of course.

Re: Nerf
 

No vet would bother playing against less than impossible AIs. It's too easy to beat the AI on lesser difficulties once you understand how the game works. Personally I only have trouble when fighting 3 or more impossible AIs at the same time. Before I've gotten my magic developed. While using suboptimal anti-AI strategies.

This is no knock against anyone who can't beat the impossible AI. It takes a while to learn the tricks, or a lot of forum reading. But once you become experienced, defeating an impossible AI is actually pretty easy. You have to play a little differently than you would in multiplayer and some strategies that are very effective in MP don't work *at all* in SP. And vice versa, such as with the PD.

Re: Nerf
 

So what's the "correct" way to take on an AI army of 240 troops in mid-spring of year 3 (turn 26)? Assuming your SC Pretender is off dealing with other threats, that is?

The reason I ask is that I verified the excessive PD strategy does work well. I had about 2000 gold worth of troops in province to defend with. Ordinarily, I would have won that battle, but with substantial casualties/attrition. But this time I poured in an additional 1000 gold worth of PD. (PD 41, technically 861 gold).

I started my troops behind my PD. My PD met his horde of garbage, inflicted a good number of casualties, then routed. Then my main troops charged in and finished off his troops. I was pretty pleased with the result. This was with EA Fomoria, btw -- competent PD, but nothing that great (I think?)

So is there a better way to deal with an AI force like this?

Re: Nerf
 

Turn a Fomorian King into a soul vortex-casting SC. He can defeat any number of such armies solo unless the RNG rolls very badly against him. There's also things like dance of the morrigans. But in general PD is a good and effective way to deal with the AI. 20 PD is good enough though mostly, 40 I would save for really large armies and only when you *know* you're going to be fighting over the spot a lot.

Re: Nerf
 

Even without Soul Vortex, which is 6th level and might not be available yet if you're focused on other paths, Fomorian Kings are tough enough to take an AI army of that size with Mistform, Mirror Image, and standard thug gear.
Other than that, chaff and Thunderstrike spam?

Fomoria is pretty limited in mage power outside the capital, so it's hard to rely on standard army+artillery/buff mage tactics. It's really designed to be a blessed thug nation.

Re: Nerf
 

Yes, I am planning to use Fomorian kings later, with soul vortex, gear, mistform, etc. But obviously my research hasn't gotten that far yet. (Well, Mistform yes, worthwhile gear no. Gleaming shields are Const-6)

I bypassed the bless strategy because my real objective this game is to try something differnet -- Golems laying down Astral Tempest on AI superarmies. The Golem will teleport in, cast, and then recall out. Simultanously, the kings will cloud trapeze in and stand around while AT does its work killing.

Since this is going to take a while to research, I need to survive long enough to get there. Which is why I started with a dormant E2S2 Wyrm to exterminate any armies threatening my capital, instead of a more typical imprisoned W9N6 pretender.

Re: Nerf
 

Construction 6 isn't necessary to create worthwhile thugs. Especially since fomoria has nature. Consider a poison immune FK wielding a snake bladder stick. If you had gone with an e/n bless you could pretty much just give him said gear, have him buff up and call it a day. You might need a few of such minimalist geared thugs to defeat an AI army of that size though.

thejeff - you forget you're talking to the guy who thinks thunderstrike is useless.

Re: Nerf
 

Incidentally, for my own enjoyment i've started using RanDom then eliminating map independents. It's not exactly a user-friendly method, but I find it really pumps up the difficulty and my enjoyment of the game. Even just the better start locations helps a lot. I can actually and honestly lose and the RanDom provinces are far more interesting/ slow player expansion.

One thing that makes AI games a lot easier is starting in a corner or safe map edge, I find that happens a lot with random starts for some reason. The AIs tear eachother up while the player just picks out targets and cleans up the mess which makes it 90000% easier.

Re: Nerf
 

In fairness, thunderstrike is less useful in SP than MP. It's small area and fatiguing, while the AI tends to use large hordes of chaff rather than smaller armies of better units.

Re: Nerf
 

Yeah, I try to play wraparound maps to avoid this advantage. With a corner start where I only have to deal with 1-2 AIs, it's not too hard to chew them up, digest, and expand with a monstrous empire base.

With random "ribbon" maps you can force this advantage. Just play with something 100 pixels tall and 2000 wide -- you'll only have 2AIs to deal with on either side at any time.

Re: Nerf
 

Then try playing something like Asia Twist, and you can be attacked from all sides pretty easily.

Re: Nerf
 

Well it's already been said but AI are really bad and with a game with so many different strategies AI will never be good. So I never compete against the AI instead I compete against myself. Usually I play on smaller maps (my favorite are without a doubt Dawn of Dominions which is the closest to a scenario there is) I choose a nation and then trying to "win" as fast as possible. Next time I play the same map with the same settings and trying to beat my last my record for winning as fast as possible. Yeah boring to most but that's how I always played games since the early '80s. :)

Re: Nerf
 

Provided your game is up to date, battlefield wide spells go down if the caster dies or leaves the battlefield. So your golems have to stick around during the entire battle for this to work. But it's a fun idea.

My own advice to deal with the big AI armies early on is skip the power playing and go the hard but fun way. Make advanced forces with a mix of troops for different purposes (arrow catchers, frontline, artillery, flankers etc), and support them with those mages you feel like trying out new tricks with. This way you'll learn the most about battlefield tactics, placement and how to use the less obvious magic. Which in conjunction with testing out MP builds and expansion techniques, is the whole point of playing the AI at all.

Re: Nerf
 

Yeah, I forgot about that little detail. That pretty much torched that plan.