Quote:
Neophyte said:
Ok, I've had Dom II for about a year, but haven't played too much. I've decided that I like Arco, and have experimented with several pretenders using the Talis map.
I think I'm happy with Phoenix, F4A4D4, T1P1-G1F2M1, Dom 4 with fortress. This gives me a decent bless force (even just CotH is a good centerpiece unit) as well as a decent friendly dominion solo mage-pretender. I haven't done much with mercenary forces. Using this pretender I just won my first game against normal AI Man on Talis using indies 9 and sites 75.
I was able to get a vine ogre factory reasonably close to Man's main territory (6 VO/turn 2 turns with a 2 start move cmdr away). One of my conceptual issues is logistics - if everyone is going to be attacking you, where should you set up your bigger summon mages - for things like Drakes it would be hard to move them from capital to the front?
Or should the stay at home mages be strict researchers and you make labs on the front to summon those drake type units?
Should you empower your summon mystics to S3 for teleport?
Does teleport move the mage and associated troops, or just the mage (my manual has teleported)?
Another logistical question - against multiple opponents, how many armies (army meaning a main force group of cmdr's and troops) should one have per front (i.e. moving toward any given enemy)?
How many fronts do people tend to have at a time?
Granted this is very subjective, but when do you want to go from initial expansion to border defense and back to expansion?
I'm intrigued by the large Faerun map, but should probably use Orania to learn larger map issues. I tried some searches and found lots of god\od stuff, but maybe I didn't search correctly.
Thank's!
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Arco is a funny choice for a bless strategy. Thier blessable troops arent too great and they are all capitol only. You might have more luck by switching to a more powerful solo-mage pretender config, or over to an SC type config and exploit Arco's excellent forging abilities to kit it out with all the nice items.
1) Regarding the location of summon factories. Mages are very easy to move (via flying shoes), whereas most mass-production summons are not. So, what you want to do is have a base close to your front but not in direct danger, then build a lab there and fly in (or teleport in the case of Arco) all your mages and produce from there.
2) Do not empower any Arco mages for teleport. Forge Starshine Skullcaps and other Astral booster items to increase thier astral magic. Then trade them b/w mages when they need to teleport or cast some other interesting ritual.
3) Teleport moves only the mage. Gateway (i think?) moves the mage and his troops b/w two labs. And.. Astral Travel (?) moves the mage and his troops anywhere.
4) I usually have only 1-2 major armies per front. But it all depends on the map and how much money you have. If you have the money and the room? Deploy more!
5) Against the AI I usually have 2-3 fronts. Finish your wars quickly!