Hi, I'm new! And.. uh.. help?

[Taqwus]

Hmmm. I should offer one caveat with Sauromatia; it also applies to Pythium.

One has to be careful with hydras.

[Turin]

The easiest nation to play vs the AI is probably late era R´lyeh.
1)You are a water nation, so the AI can´t really invade you.
2)You get tons of freespawns, so the AI doesn´t want to declare war on you.
3)Setbacks don´t really hurt you, because of the many freespawns, which replace losses easily.
4) Your mages are very good at astral magic, which makes it easier to branch into other paths with rings of sorcery/wizardry to try out more stuff. Acashic record makes sitesearcing easy.
5) Void gate is a lot of fun.

Just make sure you take a dominion 10 pretender with good scales and you should be fine.

[nonsense]

Thanks for all the replies; judging by the fact that most everyone is recommending something different, I probably can't go too far wrong.

I have to say, avoiding R'lyeh is... well, it's something that won't last too long. Unleashing an army of shapeless ctulhoid horrors is probably what sold me on the game. Still, they sound fairly tricky, so I'll play around with more straight-forward stuff first.

So, to summarize:

1) I should research as much as I possibly can.
2) Temples everywhere.
3) Play a "standard" infantry-archer-cavalry race at first.

[Meglobob]

nonsense said:
Thanks for all the replies; judging by the fact that most everyone is recommending something different, I probably can't go too far wrong.

I have to say, avoiding R'lyeh is... well, it's something that won't last too long. Unleashing an army of shapeless ctulhoid horrors is probably what sold me on the game. Still, they sound fairly tricky, so I'll play around with more straight-forward stuff first.

So, to summarize:

1) I should research as much as I possibly can.
2) Temples everywhere.
3) Play a "standard" infantry-archer-cavalry race at first.

Good advice.

One last note, what I struggle with the most in Dominions (and continue to struggle with) is the magic system. Its so huge it takes alot to get yr head around it.

By this I mean what path of magic to research and in what order to be most effective, spells to aim for etc, etc...
It's also different for every nation as well, so only after playing 1 nation 3 - 4 times do u start being near 100% efficient in yr research/spell selection/gem spending choices.

[Tyrant]

nonsense said:

2) Temples everywhere.

Temples everywhere may be fine in SP, which is what we are talking about here, but FYI do NOT do this in MP. Expensive undefended temples will be burned. Build them only in forts or, rarely, in out of the way provences far from the enemy.

[Taqwus]

Early on, rapid expansion is far more important than leaving temples everywhere you go. That means putting money into troops, fast (well, unless you're AE Ermor) -- mercenaries, for instance. Even in SP.

400 gold will buy you a temple... or it might buy you a mage or two for research, or better yet, it'll cover most mercenary bands in SP which will let you capture more provinces faster for more income. Worry about more temples if your dominion is being stomped, or once you don't have as pressing a need for spending all your Au on troops and mages.

[NTJedi]

I completely agree with Taqwus

[Shovah32]

If you want a practice nation my number one suggestion is late LA Man. They have great archers (longbows and crossbows), nice mages for LA (who arent affected by drain), armoured troops and some of the best national troops in late era in the form of defenders (good armour, kite shields, broadswords and crossbows) and possibly wardens (crossbows and greatswords) for raiding. For a pretender set-up try:

Prince of Death with:
dominion 10
order 3
production 3
misfortune 2
drain 3
dormant (so you have time to forge items for him)
and with spare points boost his death magic as high as possible

For your strategy: expand with your starter army and defenders, buying lots of magister arcanes for research into construction (some cheap armour and a luck pendant for your PoD) for when your pretender awakens. Once your PoD wakes up, give him the armour and pendant and send him out to crush any indies (other than undead) and nationals (with average morale) with ease (his fear reduces enemy morale, meaning that with awe he is untouchable and he can also quickly rout enemies).

Your can get diverse magic (magisters arcane have lots of paths, your PoD gives you death which also lets you access other paths via spectres) which allows you to get decent battle magic, good support magic such as buffs for troops(if you can fit some nature onto that PoD you can summon vine kings with some boosters and then use them to give your troops even more buffs) and also some nice summons (the contruction and enchantment schools are good for LA man).

If you can get your pretender up to death 9 you can also use your wardens to help take down or atleast slow down thugs and SCs in the early-mid game atleast (massed crossbows and greatswords with a 350% chance to cause afflictions and an extra, mr negateable addition to each attack can badly cripple lone enemies) and since they are size 2 you can swarm the enemy (the crossbows are ap and the greatswords have high damage so if you can hit the enemy you can probably hurt them)