How difficult is this game?

[Fenris99]

llamabeast said:
What nation are you playing?

I started a game as Marignon.

I don't see the pretenders as being powerful enough to conquer an indie by themselves. I got the Wyrm in my first game killed on turn 3 by attacking a province by himself.

[Torin]

you have to give the wyrm dominion 8 or more(the more the better)
it will gain awe ability.
and will be difficult to kill unless fighting the lizardmen shaman indies.

[Fenris99]

Torin said:
you have to give the wyrm dominion 8 or more(the more the better)
it will gain awe ability.
and will be difficult to kill unless fighting the lizardmen shaman indies.

How do you raise the dominion stat?

[thejeff]

In pretender design only. Dominion of 9+ gives awe.

He should be able to handle anything but knights and heavy cavalry. Avoid the lizardmen because they'll curse him.

[Shovah32]

At pretender creation. Dominion strength 9 gives awe+0, I think thats a 50% chance for a 10 morale unit not to attack you. At dominion 10 you get awe +2.

I personally like earth magic on my Wyrms. You can get the protection buff spells(20 protection from ironskin is nice. Later 25 from invunerability is great) from alteration and reinvigoration from summon earthpower in conjuration.

[llamabeast]

An alternative is to put a cool bless on your pretender. Or rather, you pick strong magic for your pretender so that your troops get a strong bless when they are blessed by a priest.

For Marignon, try F9S9 (fire-9 astral-9). The Baphomet is an ideal pretender for this. This will make your flagellants vicious, and your knights even more powerful. You can bless an entire army at once (well, all the sacred troops in it - non-sacred troops can't be blessed) using your holy-3 recruitable priests.

[Fenris99]

I didn't see where at pretender creation you can raise the dominion stat.

I'll try a new game tonight and I'll try to give my pretender a high dominion.

[Ironhawk]

Its under the Dominion section Fenris. Same place as the Scales. At the top of the dialog there are some candles and the text "Dominion Strength". Just click on that. Costs are similar to extra picks in magic paths.

[Nikolai]

Fenris99, there are many pretenders that are "powerful enough to conquer an indie by themselves", but they need research spells to use. For example, a ghost king with water, air and astral can go:

Air shield, personal luck, mirror image, quicken self, attack closest.

This is very powerful, enough to anihilate at least most indies, and takes only Alteration 2. At other paths/levels you will get other great self-buffs like Ironskin, Mistform, Body Etherial, Summon Earth Power, Fire shield, Personal Regenration, Soul Vortex, etc...

[KissBlade]

Marignon is quite easy to learn basics with. In the beginning pick a Wyrm or a Dragon. A Dragon can solo most indie provinces by just scripting fire x5 + attack (anything really).
Wyrms can solo with dom 9 or 10 (I prefer 10, magicless but 9 is almost as good too) Without high dom, take either astral or earth and sit him at home researching buffs till he can lead a small force of indies to start conquering himself. Once you get the right buffs for him, he should break off into soloing and let an indie commander to conquer stuff with the troops your wyrm was leading.
Regarding solo pretenders, avoid: Lizardmen, Barbarians (unless you have awe which really kills Barbs), Xbows, Heavy Cavalry/Knights <= though this last batch is pretty tough to deal with with standard troops even. Prepare a big line of militias to soak up the lances), and Amazons.
Your first army should pick up the first turn of troops (prophetize the commander), script him to fantacisim, smite, smite, smite, smite, cast spells.
You want to keep your pikemen on guard commander formation and put your commander right on front of your archer block.
Now the crucial thing to learn from all this is decoying. Always keep one (or two) seperate troops on front and a bit to the side on "hold and attack". These will soak up the first two volleys of archers and bad stuff. Constantly replace these decoys with your guys with battle wound, prioritizing battle fright (MAKE SURE THESE ARE NEVER IN YOUR MAIN GROUP) and diseased (they're going to die anyway).
Anyway, for the most part of the game, always make tons of archers + xbows. They are by far the most effective troops and your heavy infantries should mainly be there to soak up the extra resources you're not using. Learn to love your ranged guys when it comes to nations with standardized human troops. Also, always make pure mages from your fort provinces. Never recruit nation commanders and scouts since you can grab them from indies. Marignon can set up a secondary fort for spies so you might consider one just for that. Learn to love falling fires with marignon and look towards seraphs eventually. Another thing, when designing scales, ALWAYS take Order x3. (Unless you're LA Ermor ...), misfortune 1 is pretty safe and for the most part, so is Sloth 3 since you mainly need one or two mountain/forest neighboring provinces to conquer to give you all the resources you need. A point of cold/heat isn't bad either since the income penalty is effectively only 2.5% for the first point due to the changing temperature per season. I always take magic 3 as well but drain 2 is fairly common. GL =)