Terrible Player.

[Conq]

I believe he was implying that you were "trolling" the forum looking to get a response out of people (look it up on wikipedia or urbandictionary).

I'm still playing dominions2 so im not sure how much help my advice would be but here's some of the things I did when I started out.

At the beginning get a good sized army together (roughly 25 or so "good" troops or around 50 "alright" troops depending on what you can afford and what nation you are etc) start taking the independents around you with that army, I usually put only 5 pd on each conquered province, 25 on any castles I build. Keep recruiting mages to research until you need to replenish some troops (note: while you are recruiting mages you can go ahead and recruit troops at the same time). You'll have to look at some guides to see whats best to research. Dont worry so much about defending your provinces, the computer (in dom2) tends to recruit a bunch of crap troops in all of their provinces and then snowball them together, so when you are facing a couple really big armies you should realize that behind them there is mostly open range for your stealth/flying/thugs/remote spells so if you can hold off the big armies you can trash their backyard.

Or if you are still getting stomped you can always download a mod and then go in and start editing some units so they are essentially unstoppable (but thats nots really much fun) if you take this approach I suggest editing a pretender only (give them all kinds of magic and abilities and all the bells and whistles) that will make it kinda more sporting for the AI because your pretender can only be in one place at a time.

Hope this helps.

*This is at lease 10 times longer than any one of my posts so far

[chrispedersen]

Um..

I'm an ok player =). I rarely put 20 Pd. I build 1 castle every 4-5 provinces - and I'm considered an aggressive castle builder.

Try starting with sauromatia, hinnom or niefle. These are 3 very strong races. Read Baalzs guides if necessary, but these nations can conquer with their starting troops, and only need to field 5 (niefle) to 30 troops (sauro) to conquer most indies.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Iry

I'll definitely give a try to buying a capital mage every single turn, but how do you keep down the massive upkeep of maintaining that many mages?

Skeli-spam does work on a military level, but getting it to work seems to cost massive upkeep that prevents me from doing other things. Infact, putting 125 into province PD is what seems to let the skeli-spam work because the mages have time to build up a massive force of skeletons while the enemy is whittling away the PD, and when I win I get to keep all the PD. I'm not defending the tactic, because I would like to stop needing so much PD, but I am explaining how I seem to use it.

I don't understand this second paragraph, and it makes me wonder if you're using skelly-spam to mean something different than I think. For instance, if you mean "raise a whole bunch of skeletons with undead priests and/or gem-costing spells," that's not skelly spam. Skelly spam, as commonly used, means "put several death mages on the battlefield and have them cast Raise Skeleton or Raise Dead repeatedly." Depending upon how many Death levels each one has and what your Reinvig rate is, you may need more or fewer mages, but basically this pumps out a never-ending stream of skeletons which can defeat any normal-sized army.

The way you deal with the massive upkeep of building mages is 1.) expand and take many provinces, 2.) buy cost-effective mages, 3.) live with it. The upkeep for mages will frequently be your single biggest expense, but on the plus side mages generate RP while they're eating gold (unless you have them busy fighting or site-searching) whereas regular armies do you no good at all unless they're fighting. You generally do want to pick mages that get you lots of RP for the gold cost though: upkeep is 1/15 of purchase cost per turn, unless you're sacred in which case it's 1/30. When it's time to get in a war, all or many of those mages come off of research duty and start skelly-spamming or whatever. Frequently a couple of mages can stiffen up PD to the point where you don't need anything close to 125 PD in order to repel attackers.

-Max

[sector24]

Just to suggest something slightly different...
It seems to me like you are challenging the AI using tactics that the AI excels at; lots of troops, very low magic. It's not surprising that you don't do well because the AI is probably as good as you are at raising large armies and you are probably fighting multiple AI nations at the same time. If you want to stand toe to toe with traditional armies, the best nations for that are EA Niefelheim and EA Lanka.

To get a leg up on the AI with other nations, you need to focus on things that they can't counter. That's thugs, super combatants (SCs), and battlefield magic. In particular, try Abysia with evocation magic, or a nation like C'tis or Sauromatia with conjuration magic. Summon Bane Lords, Ivy Kings, and Wraith Lords. Forge them a couple items (luck, regeneration, fire/frost brand, shield). A properly equipped Wraith Lord can kill hundreds of enemy troops, plus he's immortal so if you make a mistake and he does die, you don't lose him. Bane Lords are weaker, but cheap and they can supplement an army nicely.

Learning the magic system takes quite a bit of time because of the number of spells and their unique uses and interactivity, but it is probably the most rewarding part of the game. Hope this helps, let us know if you've been making progress.

[MaxWilson]

Thugs and SCs against the AI? That way lies madness!

DO NOT... SEEK THE TREASURE.

-Max
Channelling Cleveland...

[paarfi]

I'd like to second the suggestion of reading Baalz's guides. I started out playing Marverni, loading up on boar lords and carnute nobles, and throwing them straight into battle with a heavy bless. I'd avoid the druids for the most part because the old age scared me off. Of course I got beat down regularly by the AI.

Then I read Baalz's Marverni guide, and it was like discovering a whole new game. All those different ways to use a druid! Different ideas and strategies that seemed to fit that nation so well.

I read the rest of Baalz's guides, and some from others in this forum with great interest. I would never have thought to fit out Shide Lord thugs for Eiru or Tir like that. Amazing. The game stopped seeming like a bland bunch of nations with basically similar units and different themes just for flavor. The ways some seemingly minor spell or unit could transform the way you play a nation made me want to dive in and try them out. It also made me think about the possibilities, and how alter those strategies with my own ideas.

I thought the manual was very well written. But it wasn't until I started reading Baalz's guides and some of the others here that I really started to understand and appreciate Dominions. Highly recommended to all newbies and strugglers.

[Tollund]

You are spending almost 8000 gold when you put PD to 125. Don't do this. You want to expand to at least 10 provinces by the end of the tenth turn, then increase that expansion rate until there are no more provinces to expand into.

[thejeff]

As I alluded to above, the AI looks at PD. I believe it looks at PD in distinct levels, basically 1-10,11-20, 21+. I generally will put either 11 or 21 in provinces that border a so far peaceful AI. This helps convince them not to bother with me.

The reason upkeep is killing you is that you're not expanding fast enough. You don't have enough territory to to earn enough income to afford mages for the research you need. Though if you're burning that much money on PD and forts, some of it could go towards mage upkeep. Also remember that sacred mages are half upkeep. You're going to want the big guns anyway, but may affect which mages you buy for research.

This is a common problem early on. It seems like it should be easy, but figuring out what troops and formations to use to take indies with minimal losses, but without using more resources than needed is an art.

Also some of the tactics in the guides work better in MP than in SP. A lot of the raiding thugs (Sidhe Lord w/ E9N4 bless, Frost Brand & Vine Shield, for example) are designed to be cheap and effective against low PD and small forces. They'll get overwhelmed against the 100s of troops the AI has wandering around its backfield, much less its main armies.

[Squirrelloid]

I dunno, a sidhe lord with 4 reinvig, a frost brand, and a vine shield can kill a remarkably large amount of troops. I've seen one beat a veteran army (2-3 xp stars/unit) of ~200 demons and elite troops. Or you could ask Namad about his experience. =) Its epic. (Seriously, ballads should be written).

[Tollund]

The reason you can't afford mages is likely because you aren't expanding fast enough, and you aren't expanding fast enough because you are spending 8000 gold on province defense instead of hundreds of troops that can get you more provinces and more gold.