Winning Strategies: Always a Good Idea

[OmikronWarrior]

I notice a lot of posts discussing nation specific strategies, a lot of these posts mention some of the same tactics again. So, I thought it'd be nice to have a thread which discusses general tactics that are great for a large variety of civilizations.

Here are my contributions:

Have E2,

Why E2? Because you need E2 to build Earth boots, which then boosts you to E3, where the magic happens. Most importantly, you can build Dwarven hammers, which makes ALL your forging cheaper. Thats a huge advantage by late game when the good items cost 25, 40, and 65 gems to make. Also, E3 lets you summon a Troll King, who has E3 naturally, which can be boostsed to E4 with the boots and E5 in battle with summon Earth Power. Lots of fun magic can be cast at this level, such as army of gold and army of lead.

Also, have W2N2,

If you have W2N1 through your national mages, then you can settle for that. Yet, for the other nations, having a W2N2 Pretender can be a big longterm advantage. Add a Water and Nature Boosters (Water Bracelet and Thistle Mace) and you have W3N3, which allows you to summon Niaids, which are W3N3 naturally. What all this translates into is Clam (3WN1) forgers. Even building as little as 1 clam a turn during the mid game gives you a much larger astral income for the later game. This works best if you have some water mages to site search in the first place.

As with all Dom3 tactics, these have their time and place and opportunity costs, but I like to think their pretty good ideas in general. Anyone else have anything?

[KissBlade]

Not certain about the viability of clamming now if your nation doesn't start off with auto clam mages.

However, always make sure to cover yourself in death and astral. Those tend to be incredibly strong as the game progresses, especially death magic since the game more or less revolves around who gets the most undead thug/sc's as it reaches end game.

[Micah]

Clams are the best use I can come up with for a surplus of water gems after you forge equipment for your guys. I generally don't base my strategy around clams, but once I have 100 or so W lying around it's simple enough to empower a shaman and get your production started...even having to empower to W2 only costs you about 8 clams though, so basing your pretender around clamming is not worthwhile IMO.

Other strategy advice:
Raiding and diplomacy are both vital tools.

Early expansion is vital. A bless or an awake Pretender are generally the best design choices.

Never start a fair fight. Only attack someone if you have a good national matchup against them, are stronger than them, or have allies.

Plan your research and always know what you're heading for next in relation to who you might find yourself fighting against.

[cleveland]

If you expect to have a healthy income of astral, nature, or death gems, make sure you'll have access to S4D1, N5D2, or D3, respectively.

At conj6, you can cast "Ether Gate", "Contact Lammia Queen", or "Summon Spectre", respectively; all of these have random magic picks, and can be an easy way to diversify your magic.

And diverse magic = more options = winning strategy.

[Jazzepi]

I'm pretty sure Ether Gate is way too expensive to diversify your magic with unless you are desperate.

Jazzepi

[Torin]

The bonus is high astral magic + ether warriors.
The price is almost like empowering other mage from 0 to 1 in a non astral path.

[cleveland]

Jazzepi said:
I'm pretty sure Ether Gate is way too expensive to diversify your magic with unless you are desperate.

Summon spectre is by far the best bet.

But Ether Lords (and Lamia Queens) come with a minimum of D2, so add a skull staff and you have a spectre factory.

If you're clamming as below, it's really not a bad option, particularly given the 25% chance for a blood pick, iirc.

[Shovah32]

If you can get even blood 1, you can get access to alot of other blood things. If there are other blood nations in the game, your chance of getting the blood uniques is low, but theres still plenty you can do.

Blood Empowerment is both the best value empowerment(gems generally being worth more than slaves) and, in my opinion, the most thematic empowerful(mass sacrificing of pure virgins to increase ones power).
Once you have blood 1, you can hunt a bit, make a dousing rod, hunt more, empower someone else, and repeat.

If you empower certain mages, you get access to some great stuff - empowering a mage who can cast teleport/cloud trapeze and who has atleast W1 or F1(looking at you, R'lyeh) gives you a great SC killer to deal with end-game raids(once you finally hit blood 9) through Infernal Prison and Claws of Kokytos, although life for a life also works and doesn't require extra paths.
Empowerful and earth mage gives you access to blood stones(I like to think of them as clams on steroids, particularly for a nation who can spend earth gems well) and they are also handy boosters. Earth also gives demon knights(preferably via infernal crusade).

Every path has something to offer when combined with blood(some being more useful than others), with my personal favourites being earth(already covered), death(vampire lords, while expensive, can be very helpful) and astral(Accursed shield is nice, send horror is amazing).