Looking for tips from the pros

[darkchampion3d]

I'm pretty new to dom3 though I think I've got most of the basics down of how to play. Can thoroughly trounce the AI on normal so decided to move it up to hard.

The result: I get destroyed. Here's a screenshot of my latest game. Turn 37. Right before I got crushed between 3 AIs.



Tried a few games and I keep getting wrecked and I'm not really seeing what I do wrong. So maybe some of you folks who yawn while killing impossible AIs will have some pointers Warning this post is extremely long as I put in whatever info I thought may be relevant so someone can tell me where I went wrong. Thanks in advance to anyone who bothers reading the whole thing

Playing as EA Mictlan. Random map w/ 15 provinces per player. I have a bless oriented (f9/w9/b4) imprisoned fountain of blood pretender with turmoil 3,sloth 3,heat 3,growth 1,luck 1,magic 1.

My research went construction 4->blood 2->thau 2->evocation 2->blood 6->was going for construction 6 when the roof fell in.

Had a decent start, spamming out jaguar warriors to go take land and putting down 3 forts (cheap 800g ramparts) by the end of the first year. They are all within 2 provinces of eachother to allow me to quickly consolidate the jaguars that are built. Had ~15 provinces by then with 2 main groups finishing up the last few unclaimed lands. Doing a few random site searches with the high priest whenever I stop to buy random units to reinforce them, but other than that, none. Waiting for Thau2/Evocation2 before I bother looking for any.

Right about here is when Helheim declares war on me. He has 6 provinces and one fort... ok. His first army was destroyed by mine on accident when we went for the same independent province around turn 3 so it's not looking good for him.

He gets a few of my province defense 1 border areas. So I quickly crank up the province defense in threatened areas to about 25-30 to stop him while my 2 armies move back towards his lands. This works great thanks to the Jaguars you get on defense and they stop his advance cold. My main groups get there in a few turns and pick up reinforcements before quickly pushing straight toward his capital (around 20-30 jaguars and 10-20 eagle warriors in each group) with 5 tribal kings creating slave hordes behind them to catch arrows later and provide a block of troops to knock down his walls faster.

By now I've got 4 forts with blood slaves just starting to come in. I've got Ermor on my left, Sauromatia above, Atlantis below and Fomoria to my right behind Helheim. Oceana is above Sauromatia and declared war on me by like turn 5 (hadnt even scouted them yet) but they haven't done anything of importance since I let Sauromatia get the 2 independent coastal provinces up there to block them off. Building priests and jaguar warriors at all of my forts and various high priests/eagle warriors at the capital. I notice the only nations at war besides me and Helheim are fighting halfway across the map while all of my neighbors are at peace with eachother.

Things look good for now. If they stay nice just a few more turns while my blood starts to ramp up I should be able to hold off anything they throw at me. I wonder if maybe this game I'll actually survive...

No.

Next turn Sauromatia attacks my northern front and quickly captures my front line provinces with huge stacks of archers and random infantry. I get an army out and stop them at a 2 province wide choke point above Mictlan while another 200 strong force of theirs walks down my western edge. A 2nd army augmented with my first 30 beast bats heads over to stop them.

Both the western and northern Sauromatian forces are stopped, though it ends up costing me quite a few eagle warriors and beast bats to kill their masses of archers. The jags fared ok thanks to them though and I still have most of them ready to fight. By now Vanheim has 2 provinces (both forts) divided by Fomoria (the province in between got a barbarian attack and Fomoria snapped it up the next turn). They can't do anything while I sit on their capital so I send one of my two armies up to help with Sauromatia. The combined force proceeds to push them back up to roughly where we were before the whole thing started. Then I see new massive reinforcement stacks and crank up the PD to 20 on the lands my armies ended on to hold them off. They hold (barely in one case).

While this is going on I'm continually streaming in more jags, bats, and eagle warriors to replace the lost and Helheim's gates finally fall.

Unfortunately this costs me in research and blood as I can't afford everything at once. So there are a few turns where I'm only getting 0-2 priests in addition to the jags. Notice some huge armies wandering about Ermor and Fomoria... I hope they go bother someone else.

Yeah right. Next turn, just as things stabilize with Sauromatia and I get ready to send up a force of 120 jags, 30 bats and 50 eagle warriors to punch a hole, Ermor attacks my entire western side with over a thousand troops all put together. All of my provinces have at least 10 defense, with most having 20 and the 2 blood hunting lands having 30. Everything but one blood hunter province collapses immediately (30pd w/ 4 priests casting imps and such actually did amazing against even 200 guys) I am forced to split my huge group into two armies to try and stop them. Also notice Sauromatia has brought down a stack of 30+ hydras to attack with next turn... great. I consolidate 2 border armies together onto the 30pd province the hydras are coming to to try and hold them off.

Next turn... the Hydras take a beating but punch through (they HURT) and Ermor takes a few more provinces and besieges one of my forts. The bigger of my two armies (80 troops w/ about 40 slave arrow catchers) positions to intercept their biggest group of about 300 while the other goes to relieve the fort. By now I'm making bats as fast as I can and spamming out Jags. The armies are each led by a priest king or two along with a sun priest. Scripted as follows: (blood lust)(reinvigoration)(summon imp)(summon imp) and the sun priest has (divine bless)(hellfire)(hellfire)(smite)(smite).

Next turn, the hydras push further, I lift the Ermor siege on my fort and kill about 200 of their men in another battle with moderate losses. There is another wave coming for the fort so I set my group to patrol and crank up PD as high as I can while the other group holds their ground as well. Also send another group of jags/bats to finish off those damn hydras.

Next turn, the group at the fort routes and the freaking hydras ARE STILL ALIVE (7 left). Move 30 bats up to kill them. My westernmost army kills another 200 or so. Next wave has ~300 -_- My southern provinces seem to be holding fine after that one blood hunting group managed to kill everything that was thrown at it.

Next turn.... Fomoria declares war and backs it up with huge armies crashing down on me. I have nothing to send to try and stop them. There is no choke point... Dead.

So what did I do wrong?