[Vicious Love]

Aracon said:
- There's a place when you can find all the "slang" terms? Like SC, and so. Some are "easy" i think (i figured SC = super-combatant) but others...

If you can't find the original slang thread, or if it's out of date by now, why not just ask for a few particular terms in this thread?

- I've seen there're lots of mods (or you name them at posts). Which one's are the most usually used in MP games? Where can i download them?

- Which are the most popular maps? Where can i find them if they're not on the original game (latest patch applied)

The Conceptual Balance mod is pretty much the only one regularly used in MP. There should be a thread for it, including download link, on this forum. As for maps, try both the forum and Illwinter's official site.

- Which are the most popular items? I know it must depend on race choice as requirements will change, but i've read things like "clams item (forgot name)" which generates astral pearls like being used a lot. There're some "common" items everybody uses if they can, and some specific ones worth knowing about?

I'm pretty sure there've been several threads about this. It's a bit of a tangled issue, at present; all of the items which were considered overpowered were substantially nerfed in the Conceptual Balance mod. Since the mod is about as popular as the base game, if not more so, any discussion of items is actually a discussion of two very different sets of items.

In the base game, you can seldom go wrong with gem-generating and unit-summoning items, specifically Clams of Pearls, Fever Fetishes(put 'em on cheap undead commanders of recuperating and regenerating troops) and Soul Contracts(put them on scouts, and expect to lose one occasionally to a Horror attack).

All of these (particularly the Soul Contract) are mad esubstantially more lucrative by Dwarven Hammers or, if you've reached Construction 8, the Hammer of the Forge Lord.

Absolutely everything else is nation-, opponent-, or SC-specific.

- I'm confused about PD (I assume its province defense from what i've read), sometimes people has claimed you need to invest 20 pd to have a commander, but manual says that 1 PD summons a commander (weaker that the 20 pd version) for your troops. Which one is right?

One commander with the first point of PD, another with either the 10th, 11th, 20th, or 21st. I forget which. Should be easy enough to test, anyway.

- In MP people usually uses strong-expensive troops, isn't it? They focus on research (for summoning) and hard troops right from the beginning (with adaptation to circumstance, as neighbors and so) or they make an initial army full of expendable troops to begin and evolve? Because some AAR seems like they do the first choice, but i don't see how to expand fast this way.

Some nations are better-equipped to expand with national troops than others. Also, the strength of independents varies from game to game. There's really no conclusive answer to this. However, you seem to have overlooked the possibility of using your Pretender for expansion in the very early game.

- Last question (by now ). I know it's specific (or should be) to each nation, but i've read people usually use rainbow pretenders (lots of path of magic to find sites), or SC ones. The games i've done (SP all of them) i usually max (or near to max) 1 magic path on my pretender so i can cast most powerful spells. Is that wrong? It's better to have 2-3 paths at 4-5-6 level?

Plenty of players use Pretenders with one (or even two) paths at level 9, generally because they're interested in the blessing this grants their sacred troops. As far as casting globals and forging items and artifacts goes, it's sufficient to have enough of a particular path to get one's god up to the requisite level using items (like Water Bracelets, Skulls of Flame, Starshine Skullcaps, Rings of Wizardry, etc).

Not that there aren't advantages to having a base rating of 9 or so, and boosting it yet further with magic items. A Pretender with a Rune Smasher, Spell Focus, and 15 death is just that much more effective when casting Undead Mastery, for instance. Still, most players (myself usually among them) don't consider it worth the cost.

As far as rainbow pretenders go, a level of 4 in a path is enough to find any and all sites of that path in a province, and a level of 3 will still find the vast majority (though not the rarest and most powerful ones.

oh, I forgot: Dominions 3 forum, is just for beta testers? When it's supposed to be released?

No, and soon.

Thanks for reading through this and answering if you can

Glad to be of assistance.