Yet another new person with a question...

[HoneyBadger]

I'm not talking about what shiny thing attracts them. I'm talking about what's best for educating a new player.

And no, you don't need to do anything fancy, because I've tested it out myself.

The AI can't keep up with a human player throwing TC numbers at them. It isn't that "smart", and the troops TC has, while they may seem similar, are nonetheless superior enough to win against the AI's poor to nonexistant strategies.


You're both looking at Niefelheim from the viewpoint of experience. There's a ton of mistakes that can easily and repeatedly be made with Niefelheim, that aren't obvious right out of the box.

Those cool looking guys with the plate armour? I thought they were great, when I first started playing. Yeah, they suck. The skinshifters? Well, how's your income? You don't have any? And they aren't even sacred? Why are the other guys archers putting all those holes in them? How about Niefels? You went with a triple 10 bless??? (alt: Oh, you didn't do any bless at all?) How about those guys that throw boulders? Why are the other guys' archers putting all those holes in them?! How come my hags keep dying? Old age what the hell? What's blood magic? Wait, what are blood slaves? Demons hell yeah! How do I get those? I can't, because my population is dead??? Wtf they all froze to death? Ok, so maybe I can make some undead...who are those little grey guys? Where did those yellow lines come from? oh crap, my undead guys just blew up. Those were priests??? Ok, so I'll build my own priests to zap them back. Wait, that only works on undead? Why are the other guys' archers putting all those holes in my priests? Well, everybody else has a damn shield, why not the giant priests? I guess I should have stuck with the (sucky) dudes in platemail. Ok, so I guess I'll build a giant king guy... Yeah, I could only afford one, but he's got a 10/10/10 bless! I'll just go attack these little wolf tribe dudes, they look easy....WTF?!?!? IHATEDOM3!!!

[sector24]

You could probably do it that way, but it's certainly not how I approached my first game of Dom3. Here was my first experience:

Day 1: Received game in the mail. Started up a new game with EA Agartha, max opponents, large map. Messed around for a bit, didn't really know what I was doing. Crushed the independents with large armies of trampling troglodytes, but got massacred by EA Helheim.

Day 2: Brought the game manual to work. Read the entire thing on the sly between meetings. Did a little forum searching. Went home, fired up EA Niefelheim. Took a N10 bless. Built 1 Jarl, 5 Niefel Giants. Destroyed all independents, felt like a big man.

Day 3: Continued my EA Niefelheim game, small armies from AI nations moved around my army and stole all my provinces. Eventually caught them, then HULK SMASH! Built ridiculous amounts of Jarl/Niefel Giant armies, basically one group for every province on my border. Slowly crawled across the map until I felt confident enough to start over with another nation.

That was it in a nutshell, the only spell I ever cast was bless, I didn't forge much of any equipment or try the other units. My main battle was with the game mechanics and the interface, not so much the other nations. Niefelheim (and some other nations) let you do that. I don't think you could win as EA T'ien C'hi using military might alone, you would have to figure out enough battle magic to beat the AI once they start using Mass Protection, Shadow Blast, etc. Elephants would crush you, causing you to post about how overpowered they are.

I think TC would be ok in a small game, but it's my experience that players typically put in the max # of opponents and the largest map possible for that "epic" feeling and in those situations TC would crumble when 3+ AIs all attack you at the same time.