Questions regarding my strategies

[superdestructo]

Hi, i've been playing dom for a little while and have even tried making a mod.

While I know a lot about the basics, I am still unclear on some specifics. Even though my tactics seem to work against a couple people I play, they are even less experienced than I am. Anyway...

Frankly speaking, my usual mode of play involves rapid expansion and swarm tactics. I like my dominions to be as productive as possible and I try to choose races that have good base troops that can be massed quickly. (Such as various Ulms, MA pithium)

So far, i've usually been able to expand quicker than my opponents and use the basic strategy of minimizing border states and maintaining strong defense. My most frequently used spells are Ash. Record, Call of the Wild, Call of the Wind, Blight and Sea King's Court.

Generally i lag behind in magic research and magic items, but having the largest and most productive country allows me to "smother" invaders by avoiding their strong armies and attacking their territory in many places at once. I'll have a lot more resources and gem income as well, so I will generally get to the point where I can be a bit liberal with these resources and will summon werewolves and springhawks each turn to aid my conquests.


Basically, my question is... will these tactics be disastrous against more apt opponents? Why and How? I mean, in a recent game I was getting like 500 free summon wolves by the end, and even though they were slaughtered almost as fast... the sheer number of them overwhelmed my opponents. Basically, it was more of a war of logistics and supply than of countering my opponents moves.

While my early game micro is pretty good and I conquer independents quickly and reliably, as I move into the later game I pretty much just group archers, have my basic shielded frontline troops, some fodder troops, some fast attakers, etc... and rely on mass numbers. Is there a more effective way to play races like Ulm?

Another time I was in a stalemate with Oceana on land/sea. They kept putting up lure of the sea and far-summoning against me but they were were unable to beat me on land as I was unable to beat them in the sea. I only had a few provences with fishmen at first, and even later when I had undead and sea-trolls I could not hold any ocean provinces. Eventually, I just started mass-blighting the oceans about a dozen times per turn and generally trying to win by attrition. Is there a better way?

Finally, I was recently in a game where an opponent was able to beat numerical odds of about 10 to 1 in frequent cases. Yet I was able to keep sending troops to harass them and capture or pressure their less defended territories while avoiding engaging the strong armies directly. While this happened, I built an army of about 60 Iron dragons commanded by several iron dragons with gift of reason and fire or earth magic. These dragon swarms were basically unbeatable in that game. I had them cast that fire-based fatigue spell to which they are immune, while others used earth buffs. In the grand scheme of things... exactly how strong are a bunch of such iron dragons? Is there a counter to them I should be aware of?

So, that's as far as I've gone strategy-wise.


PS. As funny as this may sound, some of the most fun games i've played were 2-3 PCs vs a strong CPU with some kind of advantage. For example, teaming up against LA Ermor with a 20-turn head start was often a fun co-op challenge. Other than a basic 2v2 or whatever, anyone have any good ideas for co-op multiplayer?