New to Dom 3

[Eximius Sus]

Dom3 is a great game. Check out the semi-random program by Ballbarian (in his signature all over the place) for extra AI fun when you are ready. I think mods are best avoided when playing single player. The AI is already sort of crippled and most mods adjust things for multiplayer. For that, they are very worthwhile since a lot of them fix balance issues.

[Gandalf Parker]

The vanilla AI is a one-trick pony. Or rather, very limited tricks. Eventually you get feel for it and start beating it regularly (not knocking it, its still good enough to provide an opponent for most of the long learning curve)

But there are mods and maps designed to boost the AI. And program generators such as SemiRandom or Chaos. You tend to have to find the threads talking about it since its a different course than the "fixing" or "balancing" ones.

Personally, my favorites for "more more more" unbalance for solo play are Worthy Heroes and Epic Heroes (to get more heroes), Mytheology and Immortal Pretender mods (for more pretenders), the More Magic SItes mod, CPCS (more summons), SingleAge (more nations), and Streamers & Standards because the flags got old to look at. Also Amos modded nations make for new exciting AIs.

If those get old you can always join a multiplayer game with specifically boosted AIs

[sffrrrom]

I'd settle for winning first - yeesh. Got stomped again. Might have to abandon Mictlan, as I'm having trouble getting over the hump with them. Might try a less complicated strategy next.

[thejeff]

Though I would suggest some version of the Better Independents mod for SP. It changes the costs of some of the more useless indy troops so the AI won't recruit them. You see armies with a lot more national troops and a lot better troops overall.

[thejeff]

I'd avoid the VQ, especially in vanilla. Far too expensive for what you get.
With Mictlan, take whatever chassis you can cheaply get a W9F9 bless with high dominion. Recruit nothing but mages and Jaguar Warriors, slaughter everything. Go heavy into blood hunting, summon your national sacred summons and continue to slaughter everything. When you get bored with killing things, blood sacrifice everywhere and let your dominion win for you.

It's not quite that simple. It takes a little while to get the hang of balancing blood hunting with income and research. Still, Mictlan is a power and double bless sacreds are very hard for the AI to counter.

[sffrrrom]

I've been using that rebalancing MOD. That seemed like it just made a lot of decent changes. I might try a vanilla game without it next though, which I probably should have done from the start.

Anyway, I abandoned the VQ for this playthrough anyway. I forget what I picked - a big guy with Death and Blood magic. I went D9 B5 with high Turmoil and Strife and high Luck. My initial expansion went ok, and then I had to stop thanks to running into three different factions on my borders - I was scared to try to expand into one of them because I couldn't hold off the other two at the same time. So I tried to switch over to a blood economy, since I knew my long-term gold production would be crappy, and I kind of got stuck inbetween. I got up to level 5 or 6 in blood, I forget which, but couldn't generate enough oomph via summons to stave off the ravening hordes. I had some greenish faction led by the Great White Bull attacking my upper left with stacks of 3-400, and the Pale Ones in far fewer numbers, but still a problem, from my bottom right. Eventually a 50ish stack of tough Pale Ones broke through and went on a blood mage stomping fest. I just kind of got caught in the middle. Take 2 tomorrow I guess (with a non-blood faction this time).

[Nikelaos]

d9 isn't a particularly good bless, since the death weapons damage is MR negateable (i think), as for blood 5 you don't need the extra strength when you are using another offencive bless.

water 9, fire 9 is commonly used, though a case could be made for astral 9.

You'll need to rely on mages later on, especially with large hordes, aoe spells work wonders. Check out the blood spell Hellfire, castable by all sun priests. It gives 100 fatigue (lots) but has an extremely wide area of effect (4 groups of aoe3, or 3 groups of aoe4 I forget), a few sun priests can cause a little bit of havoc with that spell

you also have the spell reinvigoration, which basicly means you chop up 1 blood slave and get rid of all the fatigue from hellfire. That's all I'll say, experiment and see what other spells work.

[sffrrrom]

Yeah, I was getting pieces of that on my own, but just not putting it together. I took Blood and Death on my pretender because I was trying to be kind of thematic I guess. And I got the Hellfire Rejuvenation combo, but hadn't produced enough Sun Priests to take advantage of it. I might just try a straight F9W9 Pretender with some fairly vanilla faction next and just try to keep it simple.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by sffrrrom

I might just try a straight F9W9 Pretender with some fairly vanilla faction next and just try to keep it simple.

The F9W9 imprisoned pretender works for Mictlan because they have good cheap recruitable everywhere sacreds, plus sacred summons. (And even then it's a great bless against the AI, not so much against other players. It gives maximum killing power, but not much for survivability. A good player will use blockers, archers and spells to slaughter the jaguars before they reach anything important.) Since most nations don't have such good sacreds they won't benefit as much from it, so it's not worth it for them. Or they'll have few big tough sacreds who benefit more from being made even harder to kill.
Essentially you can't take a build for one nation and throw it onto another one.

[RadicalTurnip]

The easiest nation I learned on was Niefelheim. They're great with a Earth-9 Water-9 or Earth-9 Nature-9 or, my favorite, Earth-9 Water-6 Nature-6. They go into battle and their cold-aura just kills almost everything. Anything else out there gets killed by the giant axe. Because they're so big and have so many HPs, their protection lets them live a few rounds, and their regeneration lets them recoup back up to full (and reduces afflictions). This nation is also good for learning how to kit-out thugs. It's a bit expensive, though, so I would recommend Order 3.