Why am I not able to win the Orania Map ?

[Etaoin Shrdlu]

First suggestion: Leave Ermor out of the opponent pool. The other AIs can't handle 'em.
Or, if you insist: Make a Broken Empire Ermor (non-pop-killing style), play a few turns of them alongside the nation you actually intend to play out, then hand-off to AI.

[JimKnopf]

Etaoin Shrdlu said:
First suggestion: Leave Ermor out of the opponent pool. The other AIs can't handle 'em.
Or, if you insist: Make a Broken Empire Ermor (non-pop-killing style), play a few turns of them alongside the nation you actually intend to play out, then hand-off to AI.

Thanks for your answer, but I don´t think I should have to cheat to win on easy level. BTW: Ermor was just an example. Another problem for me is that the AI apparently never makes peace after declaring war once.

[Gandalf Parker]

Orania is a map large enough that the independents setting can be a big factor. Set it to 6 or 7. At the default setting of 3 the AIs will roll over you too fast. At the higher setting you should be able to make more sensible choices of who to attack and who to skip that the AI's wont make.

[Saber Cherry]

AIs will not attack you unless you attack them, or they declare war. Normally, they will not declare war unless you look weak. You can prevent yourself from looking weak by keeping your province defense on border provinces at 10+ (the higher the better, I think) and probably putting some units there too. I'm sure there are other factors as well, but I forget them.

The difference between Dominions and the other games you mentioned (I've played all of them, except AoW2:SM) is the the other games don't have magic, or don't require magic to win. You can win an easy game of Dominions (1-on-1 versus an AI) using troop strength, but to win a game versus multiple AIs or any multiplayer game, you will have to focus on a magical strategy (or, sometimes, a heavy bless strategy, but I'll ignore that for now). This means spending a substantial amount of money on research mages, possibly doing a lot of site-searching, forging some magical-path-boosting items like Thistle Mace, Earth Boots, or Skull Staff, and aiming your research toward specific spells. For example, if you did site-searching and found a magic site that lets you recruit Fire-3 mages, you would want to research Phoenix Power and Falling Fires, and buy one of those mages every turn until you can incinerate enemy armies before they get close enough to land a blow. But if you were Man (which has good archers) and found that site, maybe you would just spend money on archers, and cast flaming arrows (needing only one mage for the whole army), then annihilate the enemy.

If you ever play in multiplayer and field an immense army of Hoplites against an enemy (say, Vanheim) army a quarter of your size, you might be shocked to lose. Watching the replay, you might notice that 10% of your army routed or died from scary False Horrors, which are free battle summons; your entire peltast support wing was killed by Blade Wind; and the remaining 70% died in combat with inferior soldiers, because they had Fog Warriors (+mistform: nonmagical attacks usually do 1 damage), Weapons of Sharpness (+armor piercing), and Legions of Steel (+3 protection) while your troops were unbuffed.

Alternately, you would literally be shocked to lose to a lone Vanherse wielding a Staff of Storms, who casts Shimmering Fields for ~10 damage (armor negating) over area ~50 (which would be 150 hoplites, if they were packed).

In other words... play around with the spells. Flying Stones and Fireflies are not representative of their big brothers, Gifts from Heaven and Firestorm.

[JimKnopf]

Saber Cherry said:


In other words... play around with the spells. Flying Stones and Fireflies are not representative of their big brothers, Gifts from Heaven and Firestorm.

Thank you Saber Cherry this was a very interesting and enlightenzng read. I already read before that magic plays the key role but until now I always focuessed on summons or big spells line Enchanted forest.

Thank you very much.

[JimKnopf]

Gandalf Parker said:
Orania is a map large enough that the independents setting can be a big factor. Set it to 6 or 7. At the default setting of 3 the AIs will roll over you too fast. At the higher setting you should be able to make more sensible choices of who to attack and who to skip that the AI's wont make.

Until now I did not increase the strenghth of indies because of a comment on http://www.illwinter.com/dom2/maps.html
But I will try.

Thx for the advice.

--Quote---
Orania Nasty Edition
Peter Ebbesen has made a version of the Orania War scenario. In his own words:
As I really like the general Orania War setup, and especially the map, but despair because the AI nearly always loses to me in the magical site race, I have decided to write a new scenario based solidly on the old one but with each nation given certain initial advantages in the forms of sites or extra leaders, sometimes in line with their default theme, sometimes giving a unique boost for the hell of it. Independents have also been set to 9. In general, it seems that the AI performs better vs. humans at higher independent settings - possibly because rapid expansion as a human the first dozen turns is a bit harder.
Download: oraniane_1_0.zip.