Jomon advice wanted

[Pablomatic]

Just seems like every nation should take a Ghost King, or a Cyclops, no matter what. Well, that's a slight exaggeration, but reading through the strategy guides, those seem to be the most common, with perhaps a vampire queen thrown in.

Guess I need to start powergaming if I want to try MP, or I won't last long.

[Micah]

sorry if I was grumping at you.

You're pretty much right on the pretender choice though...there's a choice between GK, clops, PoD and Wyrm for early SCs (with a few nation specific choices such as the risen oracle, gorgon, and colossal fetish as well.)

The fear/awe combo is just too damn good to pass up, and the celestial general doesn't have fear (he isn't as bad as I thought though, since he IS armored at least, but his encumberance value is a problem for extended fights, which will happen due to the lack of fear...Actually, if you give him enough death magic to have a fear value he might be a viable option, though it'd be somewhat inefficient. Play with it if you'd like, it might provide a decent compromise for theme.) If you haven't tried it go ahead and give it a shot, you'll be amazed at how well they go together against indy chaff.

If you don't have an awake SC you need to have an imprisoned bless chassis (and good units to use it with, Jomon's don't qualify), which is also confined to a handful of different choices.

[MaxWilson]

Micah said:
If you don't have an awake SC you need to have an imprisoned bless chassis (and good units to use it with, Jomon's don't qualify), which is also confined to a handful of different choices.

Is that really true? Bless is just a way of boosting certain unit stats so you get more killing power for a given pound of gold. If you have good, solid national troops, they can expand quite well even if they're not sacred. Functionally-speaking, a dual F9W9 bless in the early game is just a way of killing indies faster and more efficiently. You can get the same effect on expansion in some cases by having a 50% larger army from good scales. This is especially true if your army has access to good missile weapons, which scale better than footmen in heavy plate. (LA Agartha is lots of fun with a good bless but in practice armies of crossbowmen with some light infantry guards expand better than uber-blessed Blindfighters.)

Consider how valuable mercs are for expansion, and then consider that most mercs are pretty average as national troops go--and they're almost never used with a bless.

-Max

[Micah]

Max,

The problem is that production 3 will give you about 40 more resources in your cap. Taking a mountain province with an awake pretender will give you about 40 extra resources in your cap. And then the next province will add another 40, and so on. You also get more gold that way.

Sure, eventually your prod scale will spread out and give you more resources in the long-term, but by then you can have a second fort up. In the meantime you're forced to either attack with marginal forces that will take more casualties than you'd like in order to get resources, or wait longer to let your forces overpower the indies with little or no damage taken, losing expansion speed.

Going for a bless or an awake SC are almost always going to be the best options. Is there some exception? Of course. Perhaps "need to" was a bit strong, but the optimal strategy is generally going to be one of the two.

[MaxWilson]

Micah said:
Max,

The problem is that production 3 will give you about 40 more resources in your cap. Taking a mountain province with an awake pretender will give you about 40 extra resources in your cap. And then the next province will add another 40, and so on. You also get more gold that way.

Sure, eventually your prod scale will spread out and give you more resources in the long-term, but by then you can have a second fort up. In the meantime you're forced to either attack with marginal forces that will take more casualties than you'd like in order to get resources, or wait longer to let your forces overpower the indies with little or no damage taken, losing expansion speed.

Going for a bless or an awake SC are almost always going to be the best options. Is there some exception? Of course. Perhaps "need to" was a bit strong, but the optimal strategy is generally going to be one of the two.

Ah. Is it true that a Prod scale doesn't affect the resources you get from neighbors until your dominion spreads to those neighbors? Makes sense, and I hadn't thought of that. That does tend to make Sloth more attractive, because it won't hurt you for a while, and the beginning is when your home fort is most important.

-Max

[Pablomatic]

Thanks again to everyone who responded. I appreciate the advice, and it has helped me understand things better.

Of course Shrouds of the Battle Saint are perfect for mages. I balk at putting them on combatants, because they negate the units' inherent armor, but for mages they're perfect, and a good reason to go with an earth bless for nations that don't have holy mages.

I'm still going to keep trying to find a way to make the Celestial General viable. It's painful to spend all those points to get Dominion 10 for awe, so I'll work on something else.

JimMorrison wrote:
"I am kind of new-ish, so I don't see quite the necessity of such strict adherence to a small list of pretender choices. Obviously, some of the pretenders are just shabby or in no way cost effective, but it all comes down to strategy, and if you think yours through well enough, just about any pretender should be capable. Just don't get too pissed off when someone's cyclops shows up at your capital on turn 5."

This is how I *want* the game to be. The reason I don't play simpler but flashier games is that I want deep, subtle, and varied strategy choices, rather than rushes with one powerful unit. I want there to be a use for most or all units and spells in the game--otherwise why have them? Whether Dominions 3 is this type of game is debatable though I guess.

I've read some posts that claim MP boils down to a "rush for Tartarians." With everybody going for more or less the same spells and everybody having a Cyclops pretender or something similar, I'm not sure I'll enjoy MP as much as I had hoped. I'll try it out and see. I'd like to be the one who surprises my opponents with an effective ORIGINAL strategy. Is that a losing cause?

Also, nobody said anything about the two Jomon sacred samurais not working together, as implied in the unit description. I've never had a problem (that I discovered anyway) so I'll keep doing that.

[johan osterman]

Pablomatic said:
I've read some posts that claim MP boils down to a "rush for Tartarians." With everybody going for more or less the same spells and everybody having a Cyclops pretender or something similar, I'm not sure I'll enjoy MP as much as I had hoped. I'll try it out and see. I'd like to be the one who surprises my opponents with an effective ORIGINAL strategy. Is that a losing cause?

You are probably late to the party to be able to come up with an original overarching strategy at first try. I think you will have better luck with coming up with original and creative solutions to particular obstacles.

[cleveland]

I highly, HIGHLY recommend trying out the Conceptual Balance mod, available here: Post#578909
Its philosophy is to make the unused/underused units, commanders, and pretenders viable, usually by adding or expanding some thematic feature. So for example, I believe the Celestial Master autosummons troops each turn. It really expands your options, I'll bet you'll love it.

Pablomatic said:
I've read some posts that claim MP boils down to a "rush for Tartarians."

Unfortunately this is mostly true, but it looks like the new patch will mitigate that somewhat. DON'T LET THIS PUT YOU OFF FROM MP!!! MP is the home of subtlety & cleverness, and if you find a game with Difficult or Very Difficult Research settings, you'll have literally months before SCs become common...and it turns out that kitting & maneuvering SCs is actually very fun & challenging, as the game is cleverly designed such that no SC can ever be truly invulnerable.

[Hoplosternum]

Pablomatic said:
I've read some posts that claim MP boils down to a "rush for Tartarians." With everybody going for more or less the same spells and everybody having a Cyclops pretender or something similar, I'm not sure I'll enjoy MP as much as I had hoped. I'll try it out and see. I'd like to be the one who surprises my opponents with an effective ORIGINAL strategy. Is that a losing cause?

I don't think all mp is like that exactly. The end game (where Tartarians are) is dominated by them and certain powerful magic schools and so can be a bit samey by all accounts.

But before you get there there are many strategies and ways of playing. the different races play very differently. Some like Jomon are slow starters and therefore really need awake SC pretenders. Others want double blesses, others have the troops capable of expanding quickly anyway (Elephants, Hydras etc.)

But you do need a good start in mp. You will find some of your opponents are taking more than a province a turn in the first year. You can't afford to be taking one every two turns in those circumstances.

I highly recommend mp. I started in the new year to play mp and there are plenty of inexperienced mp people to play against. Avoid Micah he is one of the very best mp players. Look for the newbie games. You learn a lot very quickly.

[MaxWilson]

Pablomatic said:
I've read some posts that claim MP boils down to a "rush for Tartarians." With everybody going for more or less the same spells and everybody having a Cyclops pretender or something similar, I'm not sure I'll enjoy MP as much as I had hoped. I'll try it out and see. I'd like to be the one who surprises my opponents with an effective ORIGINAL strategy. Is that a losing cause?

I have found that Tartarians are great for 1.) giving death/nature nations access to earth/fire/astral/air, 2.) supercombatant duty. In the end game, SCs largely replace national armies, in the sense that SCs can be easily and trivially beaten by mages, but can also easily and trivially beat mages (depends on the tactics each side chooses), and SCs can easily and trivially beat armies while armies have a tough time beating mages (with a small army to support them). What I'm trying to say here is that Tartarian access is an escalation in the use of force, not a bland "I win" card that makes all end games look the same. Still, I like the upcoming Tartarian nerf because it's thematic, and I'm certainly sympathetic to the idea that endgames are boring. Mine would be if I didn't make them fun, because I play against the AI.

-Max