Terrible Player.

[Iry]

I just borrowed this game from a friend to give it a try and see if it is worth buying. The game is very interesting and seems to possess more depth than I can currently imagine.

Which is precisely the problem. I'm apparently terrible at this game. I've put about 40 hours into this game so far and I only seem to manage to win when I use good scales, leverage massive armies, and jack up PD to 125 in every single front-line province. It's a horribly slow march that involves thousands of clicks on recruit able units and I'm not very happy with that.

I have no clue how to make freshly recruited units automatically go to a different province. I have no clue how to make the spell system really work in my favor. I seem to have terrible luck doing any kind of site-searching and just wait for Akashic Records. And, most importantly, I have absolutely no clue how to stop the massively aggressive computer AI that throws hundreds and hundreds of units at me WITHOUT having a big army and PD 125.

Any help or suggestions?

[Squirrelloid]

What nations have you tried playing?

AFAIK, there is no way to automatically make newly recruited units go somewhere. You can, however, hire batches by 10s by clicking while holding shift.

Elite units do perform much better than cheap units, although whether they are worth the cost in gold or resources is a decision you'll need to make on a unit by unit basis.

Baalz's post on 'How to not lose' is informative on how to make victories more favorable. You might also try skimming some of the guides in the Strategy index for ideas.

Site searching may only turn up a site every 7th or 8th time. That's ok, just keep at it. Manual searching can work, but remotes save mage time and always find a site in that path if its present. To duplicate this by wandering around and searching you generally want 4 in the path of interest (although sometimes you can get away with less, depending on terrain - see the strategy index second post first section - there's a link to a useful post there).

Acashics is rarely worth it, except for a few nations (and then used sparingly and carefully). In fact, the only nation for whom acashic gets my approval in any general context at the moment is EA Ermor (because you have *all* the paths except blood, and only have income for 2 of them, one of which is astral).

[Omnirizon]

hmmm...

pick a nation, read the guide in the strategy index (maybe pick on of Baalz's nation's guides), and follow it. You will learn a slice of the way to play Dominions.

as a general tip: don't by 125 PD. generally, don't buy more than 1 PD (but always do buy one PD) unless you have bad luck scales, then buy just enough to resist the barbarian random event. Only buy more if you are anticipating a big defensive battle where having some extra (and renewing) chaff will help you win.)

EDIT: yeah, and like the above poster says, Acashic is rarely (if ever) worth it. Do all the automated site searching you can using Dark Knowledge, Arcane Probing, Gnome Lore, etc. It can take a lot of it to find anything, but any thing you find is very worth it, and occasionally you will get big hits.

[Gandalf Parker]

TURN UP THE INDEPENDENTS
People tend to turn the independents down in order to try and make the game easier but that has just the opposite effect. Turn the independents up. You can make more intelligent choices about who to attack and when than the AI can. This will allow you to expand more slowly and carefully. And it will keep the AI from swarming you too soon.

Also play on larger maps with fewer AIs.

[thejeff]

"How not to die" is probably more advanced than needed.

Dominions is a very variable game. We really need more data to know how to help.
What nations have you tried? How far do you usually get before you start getting overwhelmed? What turn? How many provinces?
Standard expansion against the default independent level of 5 is taking 1 province a turn starting on turn 2, reinforcing that starting army and sending out more expansion parties every other turn or so. 10-15 provinces by the end of the first year (unless you're running into other nations) and picking up speed.

Against the AI, some PD is actually useful. It doesn't help much in actual battles, but the AI bases its decision on whether or not to attack you in part on whether it thinks it can take your border provinces and PD plays a role in that.

Agreed that Akashic usually isn't worth it, use the individual searching spells. But if you haven't figured out the magic system enough to make use of those gems yet, it doesn't really matter.

Dominions is a game of counters and counter-counters. The AI is widely considered to be terrible, despite thrashing most of us when we started playing, because it doesn't know how to counter tactics used against it. Its favorite technique is the huge armies you've run into. The counter to that is not to fight a war of attrition against it, but to fight it with things that huge armies can't really hurt. SuperCombatants and/or Elite sacred troops, mostly. Trickier is artillery mages behind a shieldwall.
Try a nation with strong sacreds, give them an appropriate bless and watch how they cut through huge armies.
Try playing with an awake SC pretender. There are better ones, but try a Dom10 Wyrm with no magic. That's about the simplest to use. Put him in the back of the field with orders to Hold, Hold, attack. If he dies, call him back.

More generally, bump up the independent difficulty. That'll slow your start down, but it'll slow the AI down more, since it's not good about picking which provinces it can take.
I did better using maps with more provinces/player so I had more room to expand before getting ganged up on by the AI.

[Tolkien]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

What nations have you tried playing?

AFAIK, there is no way to automatically make newly recruited units go somewhere. You can, however, hire batches by 10s by clicking while holding shift.

Elite units do perform much better than cheap units, although whether they are worth the cost in gold or resources is a decision you'll need to make on a unit by unit basis.

Baalz's post on 'How to not lose' is informative on how to make victories more favorable. You might also try skimming some of the guides in the Strategy index for ideas.

Site searching may only turn up a site every 7th or 8th time. That's ok, just keep at it. Manual searching can work, but remotes save mage time and always find a site in that path if its present. To duplicate this by wandering around and searching you generally want 4 in the path of interest (although sometimes you can get away with less, depending on terrain - see the strategy index second post first section - there's a link to a useful post there).

Acashics is rarely worth it, except for a few nations (and then used sparingly and carefully). In fact, the only nation for whom acashic gets my approval in any general context at the moment is EA Ermor (because you have *all* the paths except blood, and only have income for 2 of them, one of which is astral).

Wait, you can hire in batches of ten?

Oh for the love of...

[Iry]

I thought I would start simple and stick to a single era. I've played every single EA nation a couple of times and mostly lost. I've noticed I prefer a few bigger units as opposed to numerous smaller units because I dislike losses, but those bigger units tend to come from the Capital and have logistics problems getting to the front line.

I've tried to avoid using numerous commanders because they really clog up my screen, but that seems to be a bad idea. I usually get about 4-5 provinces by the first year and about 9-10 by the second year and maybe one more province each additional year with the computer hammering me all the while. At that point I'd like to sit and do research to try and learn the magic system, but unless I press my military offensive the AI will beat down my defensive forces and I get bored of constantly shuttling reinforcements to the front lines.

I've tried using mages for Skeli-spam a couple of times, but once I've got about 20 I've consumed almost all of my income with upkeep even with Order 3. I don't really know any other spells to spam except maybe Wind Blade, and it still doesn't solve the upkeep problem. I've started to favor Death Magic not because I like the thematics, but because it seems to avoid all my units becoming old and dying of diseases.

Also, I started building a fortress/castle/rampart in every single province I own because it seemed like the right thing to do since it buys me a few turns to prepare a counter offensive incase I almost lose a province.

[Omnirizon]

I think what's consuming all your money is spending it on 125 PD and fortresses.

It is generally agreed that hiring a cap only mage EVERY turn, starting as soon as you have the money to do so, is the best option. Don't forego buying these mages to build forts until you can afford to hire a mage and build a fort. MAGES ARE YOUR LIFEBLOOD. Pound for pound, they get you more than anything else.

Skeli-spam is actually an effective and easy tactic, so I can't believe you can't get it to work. What is really strange is that you know about the skeli-spam tactic, and are still putting 125 PD and building forts in every province. Any player that knows enough to know what 'skeli-spam' is would have figured out enough to not buy 125 PD or build forts in every province.

I'm a bit tempted to call troll here.

But at any rate, buy more mages, build less forts/less PD. three 2D mages will produce what? at least 45 longdead in before passing out?

[Tollund]

You are spending almost 8000 gold when you put PD to 125. Don't do this. You want to expand to at least 10 provinces by the end of the tenth turn, then increase that expansion rate until there are no more provinces to expand into.

[Iry]

I'll definitely give a try to buying a capital mage every single turn, but how do you keep down the massive upkeep of maintaining that many mages?

Skeli-spam does work on a military level, but getting it to work seems to cost massive upkeep that prevents me from doing other things. Infact, putting 125 into province PD is what seems to let the skeli-spam work because the mages have time to build up a massive force of skeletons while the enemy is whittling away the PD, and when I win I get to keep all the PD. I'm not defending the tactic, because I would like to stop needing so much PD, but I am explaining how I seem to use it.

As for your comment about knowing what Skeli-Spam is, I actually read several strategy guides in this forum and tried a few of the tactics before I decided to bother you all with a post. Most of the strategy goes over my head, honestly, but I do pick up a few gems here and there. I am unfamiliar with the call troll spell, though.