My first Dominions II Demo game - long

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by DominionsFAN:
You had posted nothing new.
It is too easy to beat the crap out of the AI.
Even I can do it against impossible AIs, and I am very very very new.

You did notice that he is an experienced Dom player and had indeps set at 5? Is that your experience as "too easy to beat" and "I am very new"? Or are you running Impossible AI on Indep of 2?

[Keir Maxwell]

Apologies for being so suspicious DomFan. I figured that if you find the AI crap even at imnpossible you would know alot about the game. I didn't exactly beat the crap out of the AI in my game - I had a good game.

As Gandalf points out game settings have a major effect on difficulty and so picking a mid range independant strength works well as the computer AI's still get good expansion but your expansion is slowed. The other issue is density of AI's. I played with 7+ me on Aran which is moderately dense - add in another 5 impossible AI's and the difficulty level takes a big hike up. Ohh and of course then theres the luck of how it goes.

Anyway to your question. Here's an my first look at something like you suggest.

"Terror of the Tomb"
Ctis tomb option
Prince of Death, death 9
Order +3, Prod -3, Heat +2, Death -3, Luck +1, Magic +3.
40 admin castle, Dom 6

I would note I have never played Ermor so I don't really know how to run undead nations. The Tombs option of Ctis really appeals so its time I left the comfort zone and tried again - my previous Ctis undead nations attempts were not successes in test beddding.

The above race attempts to keep your idea of death 9 but leaves the earth out as too big an ask, no use to your Sauromancers, and nor much to the unholy priests.

Death 9 is actually fairly cheap for the Prince of Death - 168 pts.

I'm not sure about the scales but the "logic" is something like this:
- need gold, rather not have many random events so order +3
- No big resource cost so prod -3
- max death because thats what the race is sorta about
- luck +1 because a bad start can be a disaster
- magic +3 for fast start to research
- middling Dominion at 6 so the magic +3 doesn't prove to much a problem for undead and the death doesn't make to many enemies
- Castle for extra admin and so that there's a little supply for using sacred troops - could go for the Mausoleim instead.

Death 9 gives the Prince of Fear fear(19) plus the fear bonus for holy/unholy - my guess is +1 at 4 and +1 more per furthur level. Death 9 also allows you to buy a few sacred troops early on and maximum use of them.

Looking at magic the earliest death spell I found that increased with magic level is Terror - the one you start with! The you have Arouse Hunger at alteration 4, Pale Riders enchantment 5 and followed by a whole raft of good pumpy spells at lvl 6 and higher.

Whats makes the race worth furthur effort to me is that it does have a fast start philosophy - scare them all away! Its a matter of testing the race and then adjusting to tighten the focus on getting out there early and putting the fright on people - fundamentally a very interesting idea regardless of wether or not it will work in a competitive mp environment.

don't worry, be happy . . .

Keir