Alexander's Ever-Expanding Tome of Knowledge, pt 2

Foodstamp · #1 May 13th, 2007, 01:29 AM

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Meglobob said:

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Foodstamp said:

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Meglobob said:
In SP you can gain a advantage over the AI by buying all the mercenaries and never letting any AI nation have any.

Simply bid 1gp over asking price and they will be yours, everytime. When it comes to renewing there contract you after bid full price again +1gp, to 100% guarentee you keep them.

The AI it seems only ever bids the exact amount...

When you get a mercenary commander with a magic item, consider sending that mercenary to his death in the last month of his hire. Simply place him up front on his own and give attack closet orders. Have your own commanders in the rear with empty slots, with a little luck you will pick up the magic item off your former employees rotting corpse...

The bit about bidding 1 gold over the asking price does not always work. It seems to work 99.9% of the time, but in an EA game I just played as Kailasa, I bid on the amazon archers with the pegasus commander 1 gold over the asking price and was outbid. Other than that one incident, which happened a few hours ago, I have never had the AI outbid me on mercs if I go 1 gold over.

Foodstamp, I have done this 100's, perhaps 1,000's of times now in Dom 3. It's never let me down yet. Perhaps due to excessive Dom 3 playing

, you were tired and bid under by mistake?

This just happened to me again. EA game playing as Agartha. I bid 1 gold over the demanded price and I am absolutely positive I did it correctly. Ermor outbid me and got the mercenaries. The independents were Asparides (spelling?).

I was thinking, maybe this has to do with other nations getting special deals on certain mercenaries that fit their theme?

Ewierl · #2 May 13th, 2007, 03:51 PM

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Meglobob said:Simply bid 1gp over asking price and they will be yours, everytime. When it comes to renewing there contract you after bid full price again +1gp, to 100% guarentee you keep them.

The AI it seems only ever bids the exact amount...

I'm with those who have definitely seen the AI make higher bids on mercenary forces. It doesn't happen too often, but neither is it all that rare. I find that I can keep my mercs 95%+ of the time if I put my bid above the minimum by about 50 gold.

Ballbarian · #3 May 13th, 2007, 04:33 PM

At 6 gold over the minimum I have never, not once ever lost a bid against an AI opponent. Not in Dom2, and not in Dom3 (not sure about DomPPP since I only played the demo). Keep in mind that this is on normal difficulty and it may be a different story all together on higher difficulty where the AI gets gold boosts. The only time I have ever lost mercs was when I forget to bid. (Doh!)

UncleYee · #4 May 13th, 2007, 05:52 PM

Ever since learning about the 1G over trick, I've used it religiously on the harder difficulties, and I've NEVER lost a mercenary except by my own forgetfulness. And I usually end up with all 5 of them for much of the game. But that's just my experience.

SlipperyJim · #5 May 14th, 2007, 01:45 PM

FWIW, I usually bid about 10% over the asking price, and the AI never outbids me.

Edratman · #6 May 14th, 2007, 02:31 PM

When I first started I just bid the asking price and found that I had about a 50% success rate. Then I changed my method to bid 10 to 15G over the asking price and seemed to always win.

Then I read this thread, was impressed by successes people had with bidding 1G over and adapted that technique. I started to lose about half the bids again. I'm now at 5G over and to date I am back to 100% successful.