New to Dom 3

[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.

[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]

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.

[Edi]

If you want a tougher AI for single player games, try the Better Independents mod. Once you learn to deal with the AI, you will soon get tired of every AI nation having the same horde of independents and the BI mod forces the AI to use national troops due to ´cost issues.

Just be real careful with the enslave mind and charm spells if you use the gold version of BI or you'll go bankrupt in no time flat.

[Torin]

Wich bless is better is a personal matter to judge. I like B9 D9 with mictlan. Mainly because that scare off big monsters (other players combat pretenders). And regular armies are no problem for the jaguars.

Against the AI the standard F9 W9 is better as it adresses wiping hordes of weak units.

[Soyweiser]

Originally Posted by Doo

Check out this link:

http://game.dom3minions.com/bin/vsAI_chk.cgi

Humans vs AI games with a "how to join" link at the top of the page. These games are good to learn to play on as you can team up on the AI.

Cheers GP for that one

Wow, never seen that one. Looks like a lot of fun. And a great way to start to learn the game. Anybody want to try one?

Edit:

And more on topic, read the strategy index. The guides are pretty good. And the ones from Baalz are pure inspiration.