Q: New to game, need advice - getting wrecked

[jutetrea]

Not a complete noob when it comes to strategy games, yet every time I play I'm going along doing fine - then BAM its all over.

Just have the demo for now, waiting for a bud to check it out and we'll grab 2 copies.

With normal AI, 1v1 was too easy, 1v2 was ok, decided to try more.

Just played as the apes, with the 4-armed skelly god. Large map, me + 4 AI, mid starting position on a narrow strip of land between 2 landmasses (took it because tried 3 games and had an enemy within 3 spaces).

Expanded, didn't use the pretender till she was kitted out with 1st stage magic EQ, had everything for at least 2 provinces around the capital. Had found 2 enemies so far, no incoming activity.

Went after the top one, abysmia? Doing fine, then stopped cold. I'd have 7 commanders, pretender and 200 troops and I'd lose to 50 troops with 5 commanders... no commander loss, but lose 40-50 troops and kill 5-6 of theirs. WTF?
I was using the biggest monkey, slingers, and the 2nd smallest archers with some cav support (like 12 or so), tried it a couple of times as i had handy reinforcements, no luck.

Suddenly 2 other enemies start pounding on my back door, 1 popping a fort down. So, I hit the fort with 6 more commanders + 200 troops, similar config and stall at the door, no problem - i'll just swing down with the experienced guys.

Put the top battle on hold, beef up a bottleneck and go south where 2 other pretenders appear, a drake, and a few trog lords. Proceed to get my butt handed to me, massive losses, few kills and then my pretender gets horror marked, hunted and insta'd as she tosses her second buff.

So, if you've survived that I have a few questions after playing about 4 1/2 times:

Do the enemies duke it out? Or is it all v. 1?

Is there any diplomacy? Will sending bribes actually do anything?

I'm assuming magic is the game breaker for me, I went to level two in all schools vs. specializing - and never jacked up my casters (empowerment?)

Should the pretender be used for combat? melee or magic?

What is up with their heavy cav whooping me and mine seeming to just stall and get cut down, even using it to flank and take out rearmost doesn't do much.

Where are they getting their big mobs? summoning? is summoning a ritual? do they last till they die or 1 combat?

I'd rather not look at "stategies"... but without a save its pretty painful to spend 2 hours and suddenly have it go poof. So at this point, any advice is welcome or even pointing out places to read till I get a manual.

love the game (although bunch of micro on the troop side, especially with getting defeated), feel i've just scratched the surface which is how it should be.

Help?

[Antpile]

I've been playing the game for a few weeks now, maybe a month. I am a newcomer to the Dominions series as well, so no prior knowledge. This is useful because I have very recently been in your shoes.

First off, the nature of a FFA vs many opponents is that sometimes you will just get screwed over. Not much you can do about it, it was just bad luck. If you end up in the middle of 2 or 3 comps and they need to go through you to get to anyone else, well, you are just plain in trouble.

The computers do fight eachother, yes. If you use scouts liberally you will see them fight.

There is no diplomacy as far as I know. The computer will often leave you alone until it feels it can beat you though and will send you a message letting you know it's about to open a can on you when it is ready.

Magic can definitely be a game breaker. However, you don't HAVE to be a heavy mage to win. This game has many strategies that can be quite potent if pulled off correctly.

This is a tough one. You need to design your pretender with a specific use in mind. Some are rainbow mages made mostly to find magic sites and cast a variety of spells, some you make with the idea of their bless being potent, some are for casting a specific high end spell or combo of spells, some are for combat, etc. The thing is, you have to know the race you are playing and the goal of your pretender and get them to work together, then design the pretender accordingly.

One thing that eventually just clicked with me is something akin to when building decks for Magic TCG finally clicks. At first you are just throwing together cards that look cool, but eventually you get to the point where you are building it with a specific purpose in mind and you cut out all the un-needed stuff. At first you are haphazardly building a pretender and tilting scales this way and that, but you don't really know what you are doing or what you are going for.

In your case with the monkeys, might I suggest taking a master lich (for his immortality, so you can use him in battle without worrying too much) with fire 3, air 2, astral 2, death 4, and nature 2. Give him a dominion of 8 (to spread his dominion quickly, since immortality does not work where you don't have dominion.) Put 2 into heat for your free points and 1 into magic to aid with research.

Now, you don't start with fire or air gem income, so this is a somewhat risky move, but your pretender will be a good site searcher and his immortality lets you move him around without worrying. If you don't get the gem income you need just alchemize them as you won't need many. The goal is to get to enchantment 4 quickly by recruiting a lot yogis when money is tight and guru's once you can afford it. While your white ones are researching away move your pretender to any squares you liberate to search for sites.

The monkeys have a plethora of ranged units and are one of the few early era races to get the longbow. This is a fact this pretender is built to capitalize on. Once you hit enchantment 4, give him some fire gems, put him in an army that has a lot of archers backing it up, and script him to cast flaming arrows first thing. Your archers should take care of the rest. Also, as soon as you hit enchantment 4 start researching alteration to level 4 for wind guide and script him to cast this as well. He'll need air gems for that one.

Once you have those two spells going on a mass of archers there isn't much they can't handle. The only things you'd have to be real careful of at this point would be caelum using flying units to get to your archers or abysia and their fire immunity. There are some magical spells that can render your archers useless, but the computer is unlikely to use those and a human player might not reallize what you are doing until it is too late.

After this you can always use your probably huge gem income to empower your pretender up a few more levels to cast some of your national summons if you like or just clean it up the ol' fashion way.

[Nick_K]

Diplomacy in the dominions series takes a bit of getting used to...
Basically, the AI will consider itself at peace with you at the start of the game. If you end up at war for any reason it will then attack you quite relentlessly, so all it takes is one battle to trigger a big war.

If the AI attacks you, you attack the AI, you use a non-anonymous province attack spell (e.g. call of the wilds), or (probably) you assasinate a commander of theirs (no 100% about this last one) then you're at war. If you both attack an independant province on the same turn and end up fighting you're not at war. Also, the AI will sometimes attack provinces you're sieging if they're at war with the guys in the fort.

The key is to choose your wars so you don't fight on each front. The way to stop the AI attacking you is to have a strong (especially numerically) force in every border province that they can attack. In the early game I'll build border PD to 20 and try to put a commander or two with troops in each such province to discourage attack. Later you'll need bigger armies and more PD.
This is only really possible if your borders are not large. Try planning your expansion so that you get to bottlenecks and then stop and fortify. Ideally put fortresses in the border provinces so that the AI will be slowed even if they do attack.
Once you have strong borders, choose one enemy - maybe someone you have too large a border with - and attack.
Sending bribes doesn't do anything - I think it's mainly there for multiplayer diplomacy

[jutetrea]

Thanks guys!

Good analogy on the MTG as well, it does seem very similar especially with the multiple magic paths.

I obviously haven't been dealing with magic effectively yet, I'll end a game with a ton of gems, rarely alchemize them, never empower, never search. Being on the demo and limited to lvl 4 spells I thought I wouldn't need to...oops (especially while the AI doesn't seem to be limited

Someone mentioned in another thread that a possible way to stave off multi thrashings is to stay on top of the army graph, even if its just with your cheapest units stockpiled.

Other than the greeks (ascepolis?) siege guys, are there specific strategies for breaking into forts? I can have an overwhelming # of troops, and still get stuck on the door forever.

How much does itemization (forging) play into everything? Is it generally better to rush research or initially get your main guys geared up then research? I'm assuming the construction path buffs your available forging recipes, is it worth hitting early?

Thanks again, i'll try the buffing of the archers approach. (I'm assuming longbow gives a better range/damage then shortbow/slings and thus more attacks before melee go at it.)

[Teraswaerto]

jutetrea said:
Thanks guys!
Other than the greeks (ascepolis?) siege guys, are there specific strategies for breaking into forts? I can have an overwhelming # of troops, and still get stuck on the door forever.

When storming a castle you should have some kind of elite troops charging the gate. A few elite defenders can hold the gate against huge hordes of inferior troops, at least until they collapse from fatigue, since the attackers come at them only a few at a time.

[thejeff]

Other alternative is to hold back and let the defenders come out.

Since there's no way to order defenders to hold the gate, they'll charge out where you can surround them.

That and fliers to attack the rear.

Fliers also help with breaking down the gate in the first place.

[jutetrea]

If you hold back, do you generally get pummeled with ranged?

How many holds do you generally script?

Fatigue... yet another thing I need to get a handle on

My bud took too long to check it out, I ordered it today

[Baalz]

Well, the answers to your questions is, of course, it depends! Troops with shields fare a lot better against arrows, some fortresses have no arrow towers, some have a bunch. Is your enemy using archers or mages, if so how many, how powerful? Do you have stronger ranged troops than your enemy? Do you have any resistances you can throw down, like for instance fire resistance if you're expecting fire mages pummeling you? Do you have a small number of tough guys who you can buff, or a huge army of chaff? Do you expect them to send a never ending wave of undead out the front gate? Do you/they have cavalry or flyers? Etc, etc, etc. This game has very deep strategy, you can't really give a one size fits all answer to questions like that.

As far as fatigue goes, you'll start getting a handle on that when you get more powerful in magic and start summoning big bad dudes who are basically invincible...until they pass out from exhaustion. It's not usually a big deal with your swarms of regular units. Just one more dimension you have to ballance.

[thejeff]

Just pull the troops back to the rear of the field and put them on hold and attack.

It depends on what troops you have and what you expect them to have.

I've been playing Man lately, so I'm likely to have serious missile superiority. I'm fighting Jotuns so I'm not likely to break through the gate easily. Solution: let them come out, swarm them with smaller troops and pound them with arrows. If you've got better artillery mages, the same strategy can work.

If you've got better troops who can break through the gate defenders and get inside, do that.

[Shovah32]

Im not sure if this has been mentioned(not enough time to read everything) but the reason your being crushes by abysian troops is their heat aura, above average stats and great prot(they are even better in EA incase your playing there)