MP: Power Beyond Comprehension aka "My power is still raising!" newbie game - Running

[jimbojones1971]

Originally Posted by Lung Drago

Is it just me or do we have provinces that potentially border +-3 capitols at once due to sea lanes?

That would certainly be ... interesting. I am not sure if this is the case or not - I would guess it depends on the Dom3 algorithm for placing capitals and how close the capitals can be to each other.

All I did with this map was to run a filter over the top to set any land province with less than four land neighbors to be a no-start area, and the same for sea provinces with sea neighbors.

Fingers crossed it works out OK!

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

Originally Posted by Lung Drago

Is it just me or do we have provinces that potentially border +-3 capitols at once due to sea lanes?

Yes, we do.

[Rejakor]

The oreiads only have like 10hp, that's why they stay thug level because there are a lot of spells that do non elemental AN damage (especially in blood) that just outright murder them.

[Legendary League]

Originally Posted by Rejakor

The oreiads only have like 10hp, that's why they stay thug level because there are a lot of spells that do non elemental AN damage (especially in blood) that just outright murder them.

Hm.

That is a problem, yes.

[Lung Drago]

Originally Posted by jimbojones1971

That would certainly be ... interesting. I am not sure if this is the case or not - I would guess it depends on the Dom3 algorithm for placing capitals and how close the capitals can be to each other.

All I did with this map was to run a filter over the top to set any land province with less than four land neighbors to be a no-start area, and the same for sea provinces with sea neighbors.

Fingers crossed it works out OK!

Hate to be a doomsayer, but I have a bad feeling. I can't say for everyone, but I already neighbor a capitol. It's 2 provinces away (unless Agartha managed to build a fort-temple in 5 turns). Yomi neighbors mine, almost from two sides actually. That's a useful little sea-lane backdoor I must say. Yomi conquered those Vines indies thanks to an awake pretender. Hate to be QQ'ing, but it doesn't take a genius to divine that Yomi has a considerable chance to one shot my capitol right this turn. The same thing propably applies for Agartha. Quickest game ever? Well, of course the sieging will take ages, but still it itches me the wrong way.
I cannot help but feel that this map isn't particularly tailored for my pretender build
I understand Yomi employed an effective rush strategy, but I doubt the most pro player could ever do better in my position, at least from my experience you don't conquer dark vine indies with usual starting armies. I wonder where is Yomi capitol, if I managed to conquer that particular province somehow, would the situaton be reversed?

EDIT: I still feel bad about myself here, but I hope you understand that a guy who thought 3 provinces are too close is stabbed in the back once he discovers the gaps are 2 provinces here That's insane...if this applies for the whole map, then I can say, if you picked the "right" direction you could just carved yourself a quick line to early capitol siege.

[BewareTheBarnacleGoose]

I agree that things are pretty tight here- Province 50 touches my capital, Pangea's and Nefilheilm's, though that's less of an issue than Aby and Yomi, since 50 is a sea province.

If people think that they wont be happy on this map, I wouldn't mind starting over with a different one. After all, the point is to have fun. Does anyone other than Lung Drago have a problem with the map?

[HoleyDooley]

I don't mind either way.

However with the grand total of 4 provinces under my control, I will be fighting 3 other nations to not only expand this number but to actually hold onto them as well.

Had I realized the style of this game, an awake SC pretender would have been the go.

[jimbojones1971]

I can't help but suspect that a restart would probably kill the game, but if a majority want it - power to the people, I guess?

[Rejakor]

Uh.

My capital is 2 sea provinces and one two three FOUR land provinces away from abysia's cap. And that's via a /cave/.

If someone is sited in the cap city of the empire (altdorf) then i'm a somewhat less comfortable 2 provs away from them but that's within tolerances.

As for my strat.. it's by no means a rush strat. It is an expansion strat, but a ****ing celestial general is not going to be rushing anyone's capital naked, I don't care who they are. ****ing MARKATA could kill this guy, his strength is his freespawn troops that let him just keep on rollin'. And if you think 18 TC spear and tower shield infantry can take the ~50 aby inf and heavy inf (+ PD) my scouting report says your cap has, well. If I won that battle I would probably convert to [insert religion of choice here] due to irrational universe.

This map has big sea provinces, but so do many other maps, it's because sea provinces are mapmove1 and it's nice to give a map ocean without overpowering water nations. Even then all the amphib nations (LA Atlantis and uh... jomon?) get some minor boost out of that but who even cares those are some of the weaker nations in the game.

Awake SC pretenders are so nerfed in CBM anyway that I don't think any pretender rush strats would work against anything other than maybe a monkey nation with sloth. Even then you can usually research something to scare them off. Even earth meld works if you spam it.

The fundamental reality of playing with 15 provinces per player is that sometimes your cap is going to be two squares away from another cap. That's all the game ever checks for, and no-one has ever found a way to solve it other than fixed starts.

Lung Drago, what you SHOULD be worrying about is that everyone got sardined into one section of the map and someone else is carving up indie provinces like no tomorrow but even then that means everyone who neighbours them should /gang up/ on them because their province growth chart will reveal that they're snaking all the lands.

If caps are further apart the only thing you're really defended from is a turn 4 pretender rush. Because if someone finds you or your lands on turn 8, and they're a rush build, they're going to rush you. And your thau 2 research is not going to save you. Or rather you'll still end up locked in your cap with whatever you've been able to build. All the best rush builds are great at expanding too. If they have to cut through 2 provinces of yours to reach your cap, they don't care. You're going to need your whole army to fight them anyway.

And considering it's turn 6 and no-one has complained of a carrion dragon landing on their cap, i'm pretty sure that the dreaded small map turn 4 rush has not materialized.

I was really enjoying this game and map so far. I have an interesting position where i'm isolated on an isthmus with enemy candles (yours and someone elses) on my two possible routes out so I need to get as much as I can quickly and look into maybe trying to reach the islands or something.

If there's a restart I won't be playing again.

[Rejakor]

Originally Posted by HoleyDooley

I don't mind either way.

However with the grand total of 4 provinces under my control, I will be fighting 3 other nations to not only expand this number but to actually hold onto them as well.

Had I realized the style of this game, an awake SC pretender would have been the go.

That sucks, holey, but it's also kind of an opportunity.

Make diplomatic ties with one neighbour and gang up on the other.

It's unfortunate that we're not playing DE (Dominions Enhanced) because i'm playing as nief in that right now and I had to fight three people at once (Kailasa, Ermor, and Aby) and I won thanks to Jotun troops being size 3 instead of 4 (2 per square) and having better atk and def stats (means that the huskarls are really mean melee infantry in DE instead of worthless jokes). I don't know what your build is like, but i've played CBM nief with some success with friends using a E/n bless and trashed several AI nations in quick succession in the earlygame thanks to the huge Chill aura (that sadly got nerfed in DE.. my poor niefels) a jarl and 4 niefels make around themselves. Even without a bless if you used jotuns with shields to tank for a back line of niefel giants you could wear down your enemy. Gygjas make surprisingly good battlemages, too, Tangle Vines holds enemies in place for jotuns to give the coup de grace, Dust to Dust is great against PoDs etc, and they can communion up if truly necessary to cast terror or wither bones (this is all earlygame). Later you get fun stuff like enslave mind and shadow blast. Jarls have base 3 water and Skratti can have 3 as well, this means they can fire off 3 lesser water elementals in a siege or something which could be useful.

Boulder throwers are equally good in CBM and DE - if you place your troops right, you can kill all your enemies with boulders and not even have to worry about the fact that your huskarls apparently don't know which end of a sword to hold.

There's a LP over at somethingawful where a good player (TheDemon) holds off a concerted rush attack from three other players while only having 5 provinces for about 12 turns (and longer but it's not written up). He kills huge amounts of enemies and enemy mages while losing basically nothing of his own. That's seriously doable in dom3. You just have to stretch yourself to have the battlemagic and the troops available so you fight battles where you don't get hurt and your enemies do.

In your position people are actually more likely to ally with you too, because because you're smaller than them and likely weaker you don't pose a threat of backstab as much as if they ally with someone of equal strength - if they get half of a nation you collaborate on murdering, and so do you, you're still smaller so they can worry about other neighbours and not so much about you.

EDIT: And on the way to one of your key spells (Grip of Winter) in enchantment there is a great spell called raise dead. Guess what else your jarls and gygjas can cast in battles! They're also immune to cold so you can put a couple niefel giants in there and watch your enemy choke to fatigue-death on an unending tide of undead and cold auras.