Enlightenment of a SP Addict

[Caseus]

Time for some random thoughts.

I play Dominions 2 exclusively in single player mode. Reading this board makes me realize how much I’m missing in my approach to the game.

Races I can play well include Pythium, Caelum, Vanheim, Arco, Jotunheim, Man, Ulm, Ermor, and Marignon. Vanheim is by far my favorite. In most cases I pick a base strategy that works well (massed longbowmen with fodder in front & wind guide, mammoths & wingless, archbishops summoning horsemen, lots of van, etc) and build around that.

Abysia I’ve tried, but I haven’t found anything that works particularly well, especially versus high strength Indies. Ctis I’m determined to master, somehow. Both those races rate highly on this board and it annoys me I can’t make them work.

I get the impression that in MP it really helps to have a SC pretender. I have yet to be really successful with any SC pretender, excluding Arco/Nataraja. They invariably get horrible afflictions or die. I give them decent items, especially defensive ones. My failing here is likely not building them to take advantage of key defensive spells. Or maybe I just suck.

I like RPs. Great site searching, great research to start, and the ability to cast key spells or build key items. Without a RP, site searching becomes slow and painful. You don’t want to lose your RP, but against the AI you shouldn’t. I am finally beginning to think that a more focused approach to Pretender design is better. Going from Death 2 to Death 5 is not fun.

Mini SCs have been on my build list for a while. Wraith Lords and Ice Devils are particularly tasty. I confess I somehow managed to miss the potential of the Queen of Air. I’m quite curious about building a “Bane factory”. In my Last game I finally tried Tartarian Gate. Titans with GoR are so much fun! Anyone know how many different ones you can get?

A note about Conjuration 8: with Vanheim I build Doom Dwarves – basically, dwarves with earth boots. They search like crazy for every earth site in my dominion. Then I get Conjuration 8. Want to stop an invading army in its tracks? Earth Attack! Want to clean out all commanders in a castle? Earth Attack! You can even pick off Pretenders if you’re lucky. I usually have a dozen Doom Dwarves in my Vanheim games, so that’s 12 possible Earth Attacks per turn, gems permitting. I’m sure this tactic doesn’t work in MP, what with Domes everywhere, but in SP it is a bLast.

Someone made a comment about watchtowers being common in MP games. I found that most interesting. That would save a ton of design points, and the ability to build a tower in 2 turns for 300 gold is great. So where do you put the points? Order, Production and Dominion? More often than not, Growth, Luck and Magic are all 0 in my games. Watchtowers may not be great in games with strength 9 indies.

I think my biggest weaknesses in Dominions 2 are gem distribution and an appreciation of the most powerful combat spells. I’ve tried Thunder Ward/Wrathful Skies once or twice and was not hugely impressed. My mages don’t usually carry gems with them. With Man I had scouts with gems to resupply my mages, since mages take great delight in wasting my hard-earned gems. Maybe it's their revenge for not having a pension plan.

Okay, random thoughts all done. Comments are welcome!


Caseus

[Arryn]

Caseus said:
In my Last game I finally tried Tartarian Gate. Titans with GoR are so much fun! Anyone know how many different ones you can get?

Download Zen's SCQR (available from my website) and count them.

[Boron]

Caseus said:
Abysia I’ve tried, but I haven’t found anything that works particularly well, especially versus high strength Indies. Ctis I’m determined to master, somehow. Both those races rate highly on this board and it annoys me I can’t make them work.

I get the impression that in MP it really helps to have a SC pretender. I have yet to be really successful with any SC pretender, excluding Arco/Nataraja. They invariably get horrible afflictions or die. I give them decent items, especially defensive ones. My failing here is likely not building them to take advantage of key defensive spells. Or maybe I just suck.

Caseus

With Abysia you have to bloodhunt heavily . You can get then ice devils / arch devils easy and either hoard vampire lords or soul contracts .
The blood gives you good flexibility :
-The best overall weapon , the blood thorn .
-Arch/Ice devils .
-Best massproduceable troops , for Abysia's mages Devils and Fiends of Darkness are easy to produce in masses , especially a soul contract massproduction is attractive .
-Some of your warlocks can get Earth , then you can start hoarding earth bloodstones as well and plan on casting FotA / produce lots of dwarfen hammers .

With SC pretender : There is the VQ . Horrible expensive but because of her immortality she works extremely well .
In SP normally even an unequipped VQ is enough to reliable kill/rout 300-500 Ai troops .

A Ghostking works quite good as SC too and he is quite cheap so you save a lot of points for scales .

There are iirc 8 different tartarians .

A tip : Get the various good dominions documents if you don't already have , especially :
-Zen's MIQR + SCQR
-Edi's Unit's ID excel chart
-The unitattributes excel chart
-Saber Cherry's Dice Odds

All extremely helpful

[Vynd]

Some random responses to your random thoughts...

There's two ways to keep your Pretender from getting mangled fighting Indies. One is to take a Pretender with Immortality or Recuperation. Either ability means that they will eventually heal whatever afflictions they get. Regeneration reduces the chances of getting afflictions, I think, but doesn't prevent it entirely.

The other way is to keep your Pretender from getting hit very much. This is why most people who are building a Pretender for early game expansion give him/her air magic to cast mistform and mirror image. High protection or Earth magic to cast Ironskin is also important. Etherealness helps a lot too. Combine all of this stuff and you can get through battles with barely a scratch.

Wrathful skies is more effective if there's a storm. Try bringing a Staff of Storms along with you next time you want to use it.

Earth Attack is a just plain nasty spell.

[Boron]

Vynd said:
Earth Attack is a just plain nasty spell.

Yeah normally Ghost Riders is more effective because it can kill SCs too .
Earth Attack only kills the weaker commanders but e.g. Sauromancers / Dusk Elders / Demilichs who can cast drain life will very often defeat the Earth elemental as well as SCs of course

[Caseus]

I thought Ghost Riders attacked a province. If so, a SC inside a castle or protected by a decent army is likely safe. Earth Attack avoids the army issue entirely.

I haven't seen a lot of commanders that can withstand multiple Earth Attacks. I saw one Pretender, may have been Ctis, with Ritual of Returning and some spell that turns him into a wight when he dies. I cast 6 earth attacks that turn, and he died on the 5th. All it takes is a couple of hits per elemental.


Caseus

[Caseus]

Vynd said:
This is why most people who are building a Pretender for early game expansion give him/her air magic to cast mistform and mirror image. High protection or Earth magic to cast Ironskin is also important. Etherealness helps a lot too.

Well, I've used Body Ethereal. That works great. Mistform? Mirror Image? Umm...used those all the time! Yeah! *coughs*


Caseus

[Caseus]

Boron said:
With Abysia you have to bloodhunt heavily . You can get then ice devils / arch devils easy and either hoard vampire lords or soul contracts .
The blood gives you good flexibility :
-The best overall weapon , the blood thorn .
-Arch/Ice devils .
-Best massproduceable troops , for Abysia's mages Devils and Fiends of Darkness are easy to produce in masses , especially a soul contract massproduction is attractive .
-Some of your warlocks can get Earth , then you can start hoarding earth bloodstones as well and plan on casting FotA / produce lots of dwarfen hammers .

Okay, now I just have to try Abysia. It'll give me a good excuse to try those bloodhunting scouts I've heard so much about.

What kind of growth scale do you use? I know Abysia isn't affected by growth/death scales, but their population does die if you take death, and bloodhunting doesn't help matters.

Blood thorn is the best overall weapon? *blinks* I thought that was the +1 blood weapon.

I'm really itching to try a VQ. A friend told me he loved Moloch as a SC for Abysia, but that was in Dom1. I think Moloch has changed since then.

I can tell Dominions is going to win out over work today. And I refuse to feel guilty about it.

[Soapyfrog]

Blood thorn is an outstanding weapon becuase it has life drain and it is single-handed, so can be used in conjunction with a shield.

It's low stats are not a huge hindrance for most proper SCs, which should have high strength anyway, and in case usually outwieghed by the benefit of being able to use a shield, like the lucky coin or shield of gleaming gold.

[Gandalf Parker]

Caseus said:
Abysia I’ve tried, but I haven’t found anything that works particularly well, especially versus high strength Indies. Ctis I’m determined to master, somehow. Both those races rate highly on this board and it annoys me I can’t make them work.

One of the big advantages of Abysia is the heat scale. If you can push strong dominion ahead of you then it will drastically fatigue high strength (usually hvy armor) indies. Capitalize on it by not charging them. Stand firm and let them charge you.

Ctis has mage/assassins which can be useful. Strong dominion can help them also.

I get the impression that in MP it really helps to have a SC pretender. I have yet to be really successful with any SC pretender, excluding Arco/Nataraja. They invariably get horrible afflictions or die. I give them decent items, especially defensive ones. My failing here is likely not building them to take advantage of key defensive spells. Or maybe I just suck.

I find SC gods to be handy in small crowded maps. It takes a larger map with more space between opponents to make a rainbow pretenders work well.

I like RPs. Great site searching, great research to start, and the ability to cast key spells or build key items. Without a RP, site searching becomes slow and painful. You don’t want to lose your RP, but against the AI you shouldn’t. I am finally beginning to think that a more focused approach to Pretender design is better. Going from Death 2 to Death 5 is not fun.

My problem with RPs is that I tend to search too long and too far away from the castle. Learning when to switch from site-search to home/summon/contruct is important.