First Impressions of a Newbie

[Zeldor]

I wouldn't play too much with blesses in the beginning as you need to take bad scales and play nations that are not easy. Good scales + dormant rainbow pretender + nation with good national army should be the best choice.

[Wikd Thots]

Slowing down the computer players:

#1 Turn the independent strength UP when you start a game. The AI is not as smart as you about choosing who he should attack.

#2 Turn the resources up. It makes the AI spend money on cheap independent troops. To make the AI smarter later on you turn resources down so that he makes more national troops.

#3 Start with more AIs. Not too many but if you start with only one or two then you become a target fast.

#4 Play on bigger maps

#5 Play for Victory points. The AI is not as smart about going for the provinces with stars on them.

[HJFudge]

Now a quick question about victory points.

I looked in the manual but it had very little on it.

So I pulled up the option on the create game menu and it gave me a ton of different options, such as dominion, total provinces, VP total and VP cumulative. Under the cumulative and total options it gave me MORE options.

I guess my question is...what VP settings are good for a mid sized map with 6-10 players? Should I go cumulative with lots of 1 point sites or lots of 2-3 point sites? What effect does it have on the length of the game?

[jutetrea]

The last 2 pages of the item section of the manual give all the boosting items - invaluable for planning out how to get higher level casting

There are a few posts on the board which detail how to avoid becoming an AI target early, although they'll still just randomly declare war on you sometimes. Its fun when you're playing vs 5 AI and 4 of them are at war with each other and leave you to take them down 1 by 1. Not as fun when all 5 are at war with you (at least early).

The demo limits you to lvl 4 magic I believe, while the AI is unlimited. I'm wondering if using one of the magic cutoff mods (limits to 4 or 6 or 8) may be good to start, as it should limit AI and player to lvl 6 magic say. Might let you become more familiar with the levels/paths and included spells.

Many many players don't finish SP games, frequently they become a chore as micromanagement gets too hefty. Save the game, try another nation/setup and maybe go back to the long game to get to epic stuff later.

Late age has less magic generally, and better troops when compared with early age - might make it easier by limiting some the crazy magic paths available in EA.

The nation descriptions in the manual are great for a first run (most of them), if you follow the guidelines and play for ~20 turns you'll get an ok idea on a nation.

I've had the game for almost a year and still haven't played some nations.

Try a few turns of different combos - good scales + high/low dominion, bad scales + high/low dominion, Heavy dominion + preaching, bless, awake fighting pretender vs. an asleep heavy magic pretender. Even a few turns of the above will give you a good idea of how you like to play.

Most importantly, have fun!

[Endoperez]

You might want to go for 1 VP per capital, normal victory points, and control of most of the capitals required to win. This has the side-effect of letting you see where your enemies are, but it gives the game a sensible ending.

[HJFudge]

Ive been messing around with MA C'Tis lately, and have discovered that I really like summoning spells. Especially undead!

The Behemoths are my favorite. 3 of em in front of my main force taking all the attention and smooshing the little troops is way cool.

Another discovery I have made is that big games with tons of nations take FOREVER for each turn to process! Oh and to cast some battle spells I need to give the commander gems. Annoying micromanagement, that is.

[NTJedi]

HJFudge said:
Especially undead!

The Behemoths are my favorite. 3 of em in front of my main force taking all the attention and smooshing the little troops is way cool.

Unfortunately in my opinion the cost of the Behemoth is too high. For the price of 2 Behemoths you could also have one spectral mage OR 75 dispossed spirits OR 40+ pale riders OR 40 undead archers which carry those banefire bows!
I would enjoy casting/testing other summoning spells like Behemoth or Ziz... unfortunately the gem/cost ratio makes them a bad investment.

HJFudge said:
Another discovery I have made is that big games with tons of nations take FOREVER for each turn to process!

I've noticed the 'AI Thinking' phase takes the longest for these huge games. I've heard if you temporarily turn off the battlefield graphics the turns process faster... yet I haven't tried it myself.

[Folket]

Strange, AI thinking never takes long time for me.

[Edi]

Depends on your machine specs, game size and number of units in play. My old machine would have run Dom3, but would have had serious trouble on big maps in late game (it already did with Dom2). My current one doesn't really care much. I have yet to see it struggle with Dom3, but it's just a year old and topline for that time.

[Edratman]

My 3 year old machine takes about 3 or 4 minutes to resolve end turn when there are many battles. But I don't consider that a problem having spent 20 to 30 minutes doing my turn. It is a welcome respite allowing me to get a cold one, burn one, or whatever.

The time spent doing my turn is why I seldom (if ever anymore) finish games and I really wish that there was some way to reduce the turn time. Most nights I only get about 1.5 to 2 hours to play. When I only complete 2 turns in a session I usually start a new game.