Questions by a MP Newb
 

Hello, I am planning on joining a multiplayer game soon. I want some advice please.

1) How necessary is it if I have a rainbow mage for a pretender to have them be awake. I have one designed but it currently starts asleep.

2) Any advice for Marignon: Fiery Justice, that is the nation I plan to play. So is their any advice for playing them?

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

i am also very new.

but one of the great things about a rainbow is you can sight search early and really get your gem income going. of course, you can still do this late, but you are going to miss out on a lot of early gems. everyone does it their own way, but i would say an asleep rainbow would be unconventional.

as for marignon, i have no idea. but you should definately check out the wiki on this sight. it will have lots of guides and great tips to help guys like us.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Early site searching is only half of it, early research the other. 150 extra points for scales and similar is a lot (that can buy Magic 3 from a net 0, which will outpace the rainbow over the long term), but early research can count for a lot as well. It really depends on the nation.

As for Marignon - Marignon is wonderful, for a few reasons. Not least of these is that their national summons are generally wonderful, and can benefit from an E-N bless, which also works reasonably well for their national troops (mostly due to the E) aspect, while both nature and earth are fairly valuable for Marignon. That does leave them with no death or blood, which is unfortunate.

Also of note - Mind Hunt. Sure, Marignon isn't exactly a Pythium grade astral nation, nor can they mind hunt at the Arcocephale level, but they aren't bad. Moreover, given the amount of fire Marignon is packing you want to research Evo some anyways.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Do you really need death/blood when you have harbringers and angels of fury?

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

You don't necessarily need it, but you want it. It's just that I value nature more highly - CMB dropped the cost of Gift of Reason to 6 N, and Angelic Host brings a lot of troop Harbringers. 6N for a Harbringer is a steal, even in the late game.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

What I am thinking of right now for a pretender is a

Great Enchantress
Dominion 6
F1A4E4S3D2
Order 3
Production 3
Heat 2
Growth 0
Misfortune 3
Magic 0

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Broadly speaking, I'd be wary of Misfortune 3. Moreover, you probably don't particularly need F1 on the pretender, and I'd hesitate to use a rainbow with Marignon in any case.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

What would you use?

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

E9N6 Imprisoned Cyclops, probably, with fairly high skills and moderate dominion. Inquisitors let you get by with a little less dominion than most, but I wouldn't go below 4, and even 4 is pushing it.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

MA Marignion is a difficult case. On one hand its a good newbie nation. It has simple solid tactics. Cavalry and crossbows for troops, fire and astral communions for battle magic. Angels for the endgame.

This is great for a noob because its easy to do and not at all complicated. But its not very good in a real game because real games are about outsmarting and outmaneuvering your enemies. And believe me, everyone with just a little experience will see what you are bringing from afar and act to counter it accordingly. And because of the nations limited diversity you will have problems adopting to the enemies changing.

Anyway there are two ways to play MA Marignion. One is to play to its strengths and take a bless for the angels and heavy chavalry. I dont remember their pretender choices of hand, but a Cyclops is a fine bless chassis that work for both angels and cavalry. I would skip the nature and just go with E9, dom 6, Imprisoned. E10 is doable. You dont have any giant though and the massive extra cost of the nature is not worth it just for the angels.

The other idea is to cover for the nations weakness and thus take a rainbow for the diversity. Thus you have more options and are less predictable.

The Cyclops is probably better in Vanilla and the rainbow is more viable in CBM. Because in CBM you can use your non-sacred, Royal Guards instead of your sacred cavalry and thus you dont need a cavalry bless.

I never take less than dom 5 on an awake pretender though. And never less than dom 6 on an asleep or imprisoned. Also you need atleast some growth because of your old mages. Otherwise they will catch disease in the winter and die for you. Misfortune 3 is another terrible idea. For many reasons, misfortune is actually much worse than luck is good. Misfortune 2 is doable with Order 3 in vanilla. Misfortune 1 with O3 is doable in CBM.

Also if you go with heat you might as well go all the way and take heat 3 because you will have heat 3 anyway in the summer and might as well pocket the extra points.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

However, the nature also provides actual meaningful nature access, which is pretty key. There are a lot of good nature items, a fair few nature summons, so on and so forth, and you want that path. The other option is Earth-Death, for many of the same reasons.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I can't really comment on MA Marignon, but I heartily agree with Misfortune 3 being a bad idea even with order 3. I picked that in my first game as OceaniaI constantly had events where I had 60-80 Heavy Cavalry appearing on my land territories: I was literally losing far more troops fighting rebels than I did fighting the other gods. Can't forget about the lovely event that turns 99% of the population to mandragoras: I had a friend that had that happen to his capital. I'm sure there's even worse stuff that can happen at Misfortune 3, but what I've seen so far convinced me not to go Misfortune 3 ever again.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I have been a fan of blesses and low dominion score-5. I don't know for marignon but Luck/Misfortune scale is tied to the other scales so for example its a bad idea to pick death+ misfortune coz you unlock some naughty events.(plague every now and then) I'm so much used to taking misfortune 2 now that I don't care anymore it probably nets to something like -100 gold a turn(max might be even less) overall(considering everything). Also having low dominion means that at the beginning of the game those bad events are not going to be happening too much because you haven't spread your dominion everywhere yet. I'd consider taking neutral luck just so that I can get some of the national heroes for some nations but I don't remember MA marignon having any really impressive ones.
Misfortune 3 is quite a bad idea, but I feel that misf 2 and order 3 is bareable.(once you get used to it). Also In multiplayer people generally set some sort of borders, so even loosing a borther region to a barbarian attack/ knight attack is not that bad. If your neighbour takes that region that already means that he is prepered to go to war with you and will take more of your regions other than the one attacked by the barbarians.
Luck is more important late game when it nets you more gems and gives you diversity(having 2-3 +5-10 gem events a turn is nice)But since you already have order 3 you won't be getting as many events anyways, so I don't see much difference between misf 1 and misf 2

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

the 95% of your population dies only needs a forest province and some other random scale, not misf 3 iirc. The main reason not to pick misf-3 or misf + death is because it unlocks very nasty events.

It can happen even with luck. (With the nice event that gives misf scales).

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Now I'm curious... If 95% of your population dies is not a "very nasty event", what sort of horrible events comes from Misfortune 3?

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

it is a nasty event, it just isn't one of the nasty events unlocked by misf3/death

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I think, the only event that unlocks with Misfortune-3 is "A huge barbarian horde has unexpectedly attacked and pillaged our province.". But you get many more other bad events - random assasins, barbarian/knight attacks, Dream Horrors...

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Ugh, dream horrors are why you should never take more than Magic 1 and misfortune at the same time. I don't take more than magic 1 unless I have luck 3 or tons of fortunetellers. They're near impossible to deal with early unless you have recruitables with magic weapons, and a terrible pain to deal with even late since you have to commit mages to patrol them out.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Something I never knew but the barbarian hordes also kill off some population.

And the magic is fading events are the worst.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I think, fading magic comes with drain, not with misfortune. :)

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Don't care.

I just HATE the event.

With the fury of a thousand suns!

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Don`t take drain, and you`ll NEVER see it.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I happen to like drain! Don't you judge me!

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

You'll stop taking misfortune when your lab burns on the first turn...

Never again for me...

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I actually take drain reasonably often too, and not just when I'm playing drain immune nations. If you have a nation with high rp/mage you can generally get away with it, especially if you have access to research boosters. It's when you try to take drain with efficiency-reliant nations that have cheap, low rp/mage researchers that it becomes a problem. In CBM, I almost NEVER take misfortune, because it can be pretty punitive. I tend to take misfortune only if I plan on having modest levels of PD in all my provinces and absolutely need the points for other things. The problem is less attacks though and more things like labs and temples burning down, magic is fading, gem thieves and plagues. Although that troglodyte attack is a real ***** too, burning down a temple AND attacking with a force that mundane armies normally struggle with.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I see misfortune points as being a national advantage much like drain immunity. Nations with lots of archers in their pd can stop barbarians reliably, and a few can even stop troglodytes (read late TC). There are also a few who have fortunetellers as their standard mage, for which I've taken misfortune 2 with order 3 and ended up getting mostly positive luck, since the nastier bad events either get blocked by Order, or like lab and temple destruction, by fortunetellers. I end up with lots of witches cursing nothing and giving me a few nature gems.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Biggest issue with barbs isn't the random attacks but the pop loss. Which is a permanent gold drain. That basically convinced me to never take misf again. I rather have drain3 than misf1

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

But for a D nation if the have The Sickle that is 30D gems per attack:P

Also it all about a point of view if you use that misf 2 to get 3-4 more provinces in your inital expansion the heck with the gold loss you got it covered + you get more gems that possible you just need to play carefully(script site-searching mages to retreat etc).
I think that the whole point of it.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I still think that in both cases (the ridiculous sickle farming example, and the bonus gold from having more provinces). Are not viable in the long run. As you lose 10/20% of one provinces population each turn, need a standing army to fight the barbarians, lose control of invaded provinces for a few turns. Get destroyed temples (And, if you are really lucky, a fort under construction gets trashed). And your enemies see barbarian invaded provinces not as yours, but as indie provinces.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

No they don't if you already met them in a diplomacy game then if you haven't sent a message to arrange some sort of borther then you are doing something wrong.And if they still see it as an enemy province and invade then they don't care about you anyways and would have invaded you at the first place doesn't matter if its your province or indie(ex-yours).

Also 10-20% ? I never thought it would be that high (I think its 10 it cant be 20) and still having 3-4 provinces more = + 400% so thats 40 turns so you need quite a few turns for it to break even(not to mention that you have been gaining 400% more gold for 40 turns(decreasing ofc)).
About the temples yea its a bother to have to plan on how to build them and where but its doable (if you are at peace use armies and build forts in the same province to protect tehm).

I think you are exaggerating a bit about that. I can't see you ever taking drain 3 over misf 1 with Fomoria lets say:)

And about the comment with The sicle It was just a joke I wasn't serious giving it as an argument:) But the bonus gold is a valuable example.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Normal barbs is 10% huge is 20%.

And you make very dangerous assumptions about the diplomatic ties you have with your enemies.

And there are a lot of situations where the amount of provinces you get are not limited by your scales etc at the start, but by your location in the game and how your enemies expand. The 3-4 additional provinces might not even be there.

And your math is WAAYYYY off. 400% means you have 4 times the amount of provinces you normally have. Not 3-4.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

If you loose 10% of the population a turn from 1 barbarian attack. that means(also it becomes smaller) that means that you loose 10% income from the 100% income you get from one province. 400% is regarding the one province you loose population from a barbarian attack. (not to mention that if you have 3-4 of your starting armies already done with the expansion they can deal with attacks quite well loosing 10-20% of the income from 1 province every 5 turns (when you get an attack)lets say) so overall that would net to(its decreasing every time since 10% of 90% of the population is 9% the next time but you can ignore that for now for simplicity)
Anyways that would net to 320% of the output from 1 province for 80 turns.

If you have 4 more provinces from inital expansion that is + 400% of the income from 1 province(I refered to 1 province since you were talking about 10% of the province population)(That obviously does depend on location but thats why I said if you can use the scales to make it faster then thats better for you not to mention that if you are a bless fraction you need the points to roll over some other nation)

About diplomatic ties with your enemies. I use logic if someone is careless enough to attack a previously owned province of yours, thus making himself an enemy for you. Then he either doesn't care about you(meaning you are too weak to do anything) Or he is making a mistake and you get to choose wether to punish him by going to war or to gather more strengts.(I'd rather have someone take my ex-province if im at war rather than attacking me straight out)

And if I were on the other side and I dont have enough resources to go to war with someone who just had a barbarian attack taking a province of his at our borther. I wouldnt risk taking it and making an enemy(Unless I was already planning to attack him)In which case its irellevant anyways.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I find with misfortune the only acceptable option is to have enough PD that the barbs lose. Expensive, but with good order affordable and it does have benefits when you're getting invaded.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

What? Huh?

I really do not understand your math.

320% the output from one province?

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Any invasion that can be stopped in any way by pd isn't an invasion. It is an enemy telling you he should be destroyed.

If you cannot take pd, you didn't scout. If you didn't scout you are not prepared for war. If you are not prepared for war and start one, Sun Tzu cries. If Sun Tzu cries, you die.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Read it carefully again and you might get it. If you loose 10% of the population from a turn from a barbarian attack. And you have 4-5 armies everywhere it takes you 2 turns at most to get to the province to retake it right?
Also a barbarian attack happens every 5 turns lets say Although thats too often but we are assuming worst case scenario-avarege.(assuming order 3 ofc). So every 5 turns you'd loose 20% of the population which is 20$ less income right?(early game there arent huge hords and late game you have thugs to kill them off)

So you loose 20% of the income from a single average province every 5 turns.What does that make in 80 turns?

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I get what you are trying to say. But your math is simply wrong. getting 3-4 provinces more than your enemies is a 30-40% overall increase in gold. (Assuming normal 10 provinces each). Not 400% (or 320% or whatever).

Add to that the upkeep and hiring costs of the armies, the replacement cost of units that get killed by the barbs. Temples, forts under construction. Costs you lose by getting pd killed again and again. population loss by events (10% each time) increase of unrest by the attacks in your lands. And the amount of gold you get isn't that great.

Saying and then defending some sort of magical 400% increase is stupid.

The only real bonuses the additional provinces give are denial of those provinces to your enemies, and sites (and thus gems).

The huge horde of barbarians and the normal one get unlocked at turn 10 and 5. So both of them are available early game.

And having one or more SCs tied up fighting random invasions is a huge cost.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

You obviously don't get what I'm saying. Ok really simple now:

I'll give an example. You have a 10 provinces. each one of them produces 100 gold. Then you get a barbarian attack(reducing the population of 1 province by 10% for each turn it stays there).
It takes you 2 turns to deal with an invasion. So that is 20% less population from one of your provinces. Now you have 9 provinces producing 100 gold and 1 producing 80. ok?
That process happens every 5 turns. so by turn 10 one more province would have 80 gold income rather than 100. So that is 20% loss of the income of ONE PROVINCE every 5 turns. By turn 80 of the game time, because of the barbarian attacks happening every 5 turns that would make you have a 320% loss of the income of ONE PROVINCE = 320 gold less. (obviously not accurate but for the purpouse of giving you example) So your income by turn 80 having 10 provinces that initailly produced 1000 gold would be 680. So we are at turn 80 and your income has dropped by 320% of the income of ONE PROVINCE. That is an overall income drop of about 30%(not accurate).

Now about the case where you convert those misfortune scales into 4 more provinces. I

if you get 4 more provinces producing 100 gold(generic province lets say) that would mean that you'd be getting 1400 gold.
After the first barbarian attack(as with the example above) you would be getting 1380 gold. After 80 turns of barbarian attacks you'd be getting 1080 gold. So overall if you manage to convert those 80 points of design scales into 4 more provinces you'd overall be getting more gold than with taking misfortune even at turn 80.(and then you can convert that gold you have gotten into much more)

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I agree about it having costs like replacement for units and other stuff but I was just showning that its not as bad as you presented it to be. And I'd take denying 6.4 (assuming default 40% magic sites and that each magic site produces 1 gem) gem income to my enemy for 80 turns(that is 512 gems) than all the gold you loose by replacing army members(if you are loosing any but with a good precision strike you shouldnt be loosing many)(with 512 gems you can have 5 well equipted SC's patrolling by turn 80 and you only need 2 to cover everything:))

About the upkeep, you cannot really disband your early game expansion armies so you loose that upkeep even if you dont get the attacks, getting attacks actually can reduce your upkeep(suicide unwanted units with high upkeep if you insist about being precise about the upkeep.) (That is assuming you are at peace) Otherwise having 1 army at the back ensuring you recapture provinces might be troublesome.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

P.s @Soyweiser: I didn't mean to sound patronising or bad in any way. I just can't let things go and I have to make other people understand what I mean or what I wanted to say. Which sometimes leads to what happened now:)

I hope now after all that you'd get what I mean and where I was comming from:)

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Barb attacks happen a lot more than once every 5 turns. You also don't calculate gold upkeep costs, unrest costs, army hiring costs. Lost turns by having to constantly move armies around, pd costs. The fact that provinces are not equal, and with misf your cap has a high chance of getting hit by unrest events. (your cap is your highest income province, bad events there hit you very hard. And with only 1 province at the start guess where all the bad events go). Having forts locked down for a few turns (or even one).

If we lived in magical fairy land where all provinces are equal and there is only one bad event which are barbarians, and they only destroy population, unrest doesn't exist. You might have a point.

In real games you have unrest, your cap gets hit by bad events first. (And you always get turn 2 or 3 30 unrest events, cutting your gold income by more than 70%). There is no way you are even getting an increase in total gold after 80 turns with such a handicap at the start.

And even without that, a barb attack normally takes away 10 - 20% of the population, gives around 15 points of unrest due to the combat. (So the turn after you take it back is worth only 50% of income). You lose the province for a turn (no gold).

All the little things add up. (Turmoil also unlocks earthquakes, hurricanes, vulcanoes, rebels, lab destruction event). Not taking turmoil is the best way to increase your gold income. It is even better than taking order.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

First: why are you talking about Turmoil, when we are arguing about Order3 misf2?

We are talking about the synnergy between Order misfortune.

If you take unrest into account its not going to change the whole picture as much you'd still be getting more gold. If you take all the things you said into account you'd still break even by turn 80.
I can't be bothered to explain it to you now though it is really tedeous and there is a chance that you wouldn't get me.

Also I am not talking about ideal world I am generalizing. Yes you will get 1 in 10 times hit in the capital. But the rest 9/10 you won't get hit. Thats why we need the concept of generalization because if you average all your games the overall result will be the average one.(hence all provinces being the same in my example)

If we wanted to get to the end of it. I'd take many hours of calculating chances to see the overall result and to see which is better to have(and that still will be the average case).OFc you can get lucky and only have nice events and not loose a single province from a barbarian attack. Or get attacked more often. But you cannot use that as an example for general case. General case is governed by statistics I was merely trying to show you some basic calculation(which are off by quite a bit because there are as you said so many factors). But as I said My guess would be that if you manage to get 4 more provinces for the cost of 80 desing points put in misfortune provided that you have taken Order3. Then you'd be on the winning side of the deal or break even.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

My bad, I was very busy, and was having a lot of trouble getting the events excel sheet from staying open. Ignore that.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Yea no prob.:)

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

kind of funny. soy talking about "if we lived in a magical fairie land". ummm, soy, what exactly do you think dominions is?

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

A computer game with fairly clearly set rules and boundaries. No map has provinces that all have 100 income. So there is little use in using that as an example.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

Ok so you still didn't understand why I used it as an example. Imagine a map where you have around 10 provinces. for each player. So you get your share of 10 provinces and those 10 provinces provide 1000 gold income Between all of them. What is the difference between the 10 provinces providing 10 100 gold and say the new case: 2 provinces providin 25 1 providing 50 1 providing 400 3 providing 75 and 2 providing 125. There is no difference. The avarege ammount of gold you are going to loose due to barbarian attacks is the same over the game or over couple of games, as it is with the 100 gold example. Since those events are supposed to be random they are supposed to be be happening with an equal chance over all your provinces.
Giving you 1000 gold income as an example is the easiest example to be more realistic empires get around 15 provinces (in MP expansion phase of the game) with income of around 1500(Ofcourse it depends on many other factors like if you take production or not if you take death or not but if you want to compare two things its better to abstract yourself from those details for a better comparison) so a Net income of 1500 would have been easier for you to understand. But there is no difference between between getting 10 provinces with 1000 overall income and 15 provinces with overall income 1500. the average is 100 gold per province.


P.s I by no means mean that 100gold per province is the average gold income for multiplayer. To check this you'd have to take statistics from all the multiplayer games ever played. And to average them(something which is impossible) So you have to work with rough data. For some games it could be 125 gold per province for others it would be 75 but that wouldnt change my calculations in any way since they are percentage based (how many luck events/ unlucky events are happening)(so at the end it would end up to be the same gain)

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

But thats enough on the topic from me. If you still don't get what I mean we can agree to disagree:)

@ parone: I loved the comment:P it made me smile.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I get what you are trying to say. I just disagree. And I disagree with how you selectively leave away information to build your point.

In your fantasy fairy simulation of the dominions game your points are valid. But not in the real dominions game.

If your capital gets hit on turn 5 with a 10% population reduction which also gives a healthy dose of unrest, you are set back a lot. Income wise. The earlier the game the higher the chance this happens. I already mentioned a lot of other bad effects of losing provinces, and I have thought of more, losing control of a province wrecks supply lines, and can make your movement harder.

You also only focus on barbarians. There are a lot more bad events. Misf unlocks new bad events, make events more likely, and makes bad events more likely.

I do not like that bad event synergy. And no fake math is going to convince me otherwise.

Re: Questions by a MP Newb
 

I guess you can't force somebody to learn. Its his own choice:).