Happiness in Darkness -An Argatha Ktonian Dead AAR

[Boron]

BigJMoney said:
Yeah, I'll keep all this in mind when I get the game. To be honest, I don't even know the precise reason research costs were doubled. I don't know if the intent was to delay magic in the early game (in that case, it worked perfectly) or to make it harder to get to the powerful spells in general (in that case, more would need to be done). I'm kind of making a mathematical observation here - and I may draw a graph to show it - that going from high level spell to higher level spell will not be any different than it was in dom2. In fact, I'd predict the nations that will be hit the hardest from the research changes will actually be the same ones that suffered in Dom2 from not having the reseach potential of the other nations. Again, a graph would show that. Of course, if it's all intentional, it's all good.

Anyway, I don't want to go OT any more; I'm becoming rude. I'd start a new thread, but it's probably not worth it.

=$=

Feel free to further post here .

Hm all in all research is slower in Dom3. Not much slower than in Dom2 though in the lategame. But unlike in Dom2 in Dom3 magic diversity is harder to achieve with the new random system.
Most indy mages got nerfed a lot too. They are more valuable than before for diversifying your magic, but they are weaker than in Dom2. In this game i am very lucky to have found the loremasters.
But even with them it is harder than in Dom2 to diversify. Some booster items have higher requirements to forge, and then there is the old age, so eventually many of my loremasters and necros will die.

[Boron]

OT: New Screenshots look uglier than the old ones because i turned down graphics to a minimum. My PC is not the newest and has problems with mass battles.


Nothing important happens the next turns. We get averagely 2 provinces per turn but lose one province per turn through a random event attack. We have now 300 research points, so research is slowly progressing.

"Fall in the year 3 of the ascension wars"

Caelum dows and attacks 1 province in which it wins.
We have almost finished our war research though, magma eruption and the other toys are already ready. Here is the secret test vs. barbarian "volunteers"

Magma eruption is my favourite non-gem battlefield anti-troop spell. 1 successful hit kills 10+ troops often .

http://img98.imageshack.us/img98/8088/2xl2.jpg
The border situation with caelum. They took 1 province, but i have many castles there and they have not much troops there, 50-200 troops per province. I will need 2-3 turns to position my armies, but then my necros in combination with the blessed fighters should overwhelm caelum fine.

[B0rsuk]

Speaking about gold, income, blah blah... how about profits from Alchemy ? Were they increased, or has transforming gems to gold become comparatively useless ? Does it still matter that fire gems fetch best prices ?

[Boron]

B0rsuk said:
Speaking about gold, income, blah blah... how about profits from Alchemy ? Were they increased, or has transforming gems to gold become comparatively useless ? Does it still matter that fire gems fetch best prices ?

Alchemy was not changed.
The prices are still the same as in Dom2, and alchemists have a 50% bonus.
That means that it is much less useful than in Dom2, roughly 50% less useful.

In Dom2 for Abysia this was nice e.g., they had ca. 150-225 Gold capitol income, so the 5 fire gems were a nice boost, +75 Gold. Now they only boost your 350-500 Gold income +75 too, so they are really much less significant.
Or to speak in terms of normal provinces, 5 firegems are only worth 1-2 provinces income whereas in dom2 they were worth rather 3-5 provinces.

[Agrajag]

A shame really, getting Fire or Earth was a nice boost for AE or SG, now I guess its less effective.
Although I hardly know how the balance has changed, so I'm in no position to comment beyong my mild disappointment.

[NTJedi]

B0rsuk said:
Speaking about gold, income, blah blah... how about profits from Alchemy ? Were they increased, or has transforming gems to gold become comparatively useless ? Does it still matter that fire gems fetch best prices ?

Perhaps dominions_4 will add an option to play the game with a black market which manages the buying and selling of all gems. In multiplayer games the actions of each player would have an effect on the buying and selling of gems.

[Boron]

Warning:
This update is mainly about my planned midgame strategies and my reasoning why i plan to play midgame this way. If you want to explore Dom3 on your own better do not read this chapter, otherwise it might take away some SP fun from you while discovering Dom3.
So if you are new to dominions and want to explore some month on your own in SP better do not read this chapter.

Warning finished.


It is still "fall in the year 3 of the ascension wars":

We decide to already attack this turn because our research has progressed far enough and we have castled enough.


All orders for this turn:

After beeing quite peaceful the last couple of turns (only conquered some sea provinces) we feel ready to start some ambitious conquest programs.

More zoomed out:

To keep the visibility i just named the various for midgame important sectors with letters.
I will explain more detailed now what i plan for the different possible theaters:

A:
Ca. 15 land provinces still populated by Indies. I plan to conquer them slowly within the next ~10 turns.
B:
Ca. 10 indy sea provinces. I plan to conquer them slowly within the next 10-15 turns too.

A and B are the map borders, if i conquer them there is nothing more to conquer in these areas. So in the West and the South of the screenshot the map ends.
This is perfect, these hinterlands are then relatively save and not easily targetable by the AI, only via magic.
Since the AI does not build SCs and does only rarely use army teleportation spells this means that these hinterlands do not need too much forces to be guarded. PD will defend vs. weaker attack spells like call of the winds/wilds and 1 castle/medium army per ~10 provinces vs. i think occasionally occuring teleport attacks by the AI (the AI researches much better now, so these attacks can afaik indeed happen ) and vs. Indy Attacks via random events.

If this would be MP human enemies might also use SCs, so i would have to use even more resources on fortifying my hinterlands. In SP i can be more sloppy though .

C:
Lots of sea provinces. There might be somewhere Ryleh Dreamlands though. If i am lucky they are in the other big sea of the map which is not connected to this sea, if i am unlucky they are somewhere in this sea and eventually i will border them.

D:
Caelum territory. I hope to wipe them out in the next 10-20 turns. I have no idea how big caelum actually is, somehow i am always a bit thrifty when spending money for intelligence. I have only my starting scout, who is somewhere in nowhereland in A and i constantly forget to move him .

E:
Ermors lands. If Caelum turns out to be a pushover i might start an offensive into their lands as well .

F:
Once i have conquered the seas i can use my Ichtyids for raiding the coastal areas

Planned battle tactics:
In SP i am always the lazy powergamer type. So i powergame, but in the laziest possible way. This means it is not as effective as if QM or Arch would do SP powergaming, but i only need a fraction of the time they need since i try to minimize micromanagement.

Because of that my battle tactics are really really boring. Sorry fellow readers.
In fact i simply abuse only 1 single spell, magma eruption.
Magma eruption is the best non-gem-needing battle spell vs. troop hordes. Hm maaaaaybe astral fires is even better in this field, but i cannot cast astral fires and astral fires has a MR savethrow.
So for ALL my necros the script is the same:
Summon Earthpower, blessing, 3x Magma Eruption, cast spells.

If it would be MP i would diversify more and use all D3 Necros for Banefire and all astral Necros for either Body Etheralizing my Blindfighters or for Gifts from Heaven.
And when fighting vs. troop hordes the missing 50% would still be scripted to magma eruption, if fighting rather vs. SCs or lots of enemy mages they would be scripted to skeleton spamming instead.

Since the AI doesn't use SCs though but troop hordes, i think the above script is hard to top. And it suits my lazyness well, so i do not have to script much. Once my troops get depleted i will throw in some skeleton spamming, but i do not plan to use any other spell than those 2 for the whole midgame.

There might still be tough monsters the ai summoned or quite tough gods they chose, which almost classify as SCs, but those should be dealt with after turn 5 then when the tactical ai picks the spells. So really no need to script vs. SCs and Thugs in SP imho.

Summon EP and the blessing gives me 8 reinvigoration, so this is almost like relief. And the blessing also blesses my blindfighters.
So my mages can cast spells much longer than usual and without equipment .

Finally noteworthy is also QMs favourite spell, blade wind. I could use this spell too, but i personally find magma eruption more useful in SP. In MP Bladewind would be probably better though.
But in SP i mainly fight troop hordes. And magma eruption works much better at killing troop hordes than bladewind.
Bladewinds big advantage is though the 5 greater range and the huge straying effect. Lucky bladewinds can stray so much that they hit enemy mages .
If you ever played with QM you know how annoying that is, especially when your mages are frail. So if you play e.g. Pythium vs. QM playing an earth nation your pain tolerance has to be immense .

Since most ranges were nerfed in Dom3 my 2 reinvigoration spells also serve the purpose to let the enemy get into range to get mowed down by magma eruption .

So for midgame i plan to mainly rely on the above mentioned strat. For lategame i plan to build a few SCs and lots of national summons and some good battlemages.

But midgame combat will be a bit boring, since i powergame too much. But it is imho necessary, otherwise there is the danger that i get bogged down too much and get killed by the AI in lategame then.

Sorry about this rather boring update, but i think it was necessary nontheless. Unfortunately you might get the impression that SP is boring by this update, but that is not the truth. No it is interesting.
See it this way: The AI is now imho so challenging that you are forced to abuse a lot to survive vs. the AI.
So if you draw the conclusion that the Dom3 AI sucks this conclusion is wrong, no it improved a lot compared to Dom2.
And i do not even play on the highest setting, i play only with very difficult AIs (60% bonus to gold/gems/supply/resources). There is still left the impossible setting where the AI gets +100% bonus.
And you can take a weaker nation for yourself .

Imho the AI is good enough for many joyful SP experiences .

[Agrajag]

Are you sure its a wise plan to attack Caelum with X-Bows and necroes? Wouldn't they just fly over and eliminate your weak X-Bowers in melee?

(Hehe, apparently XBow and Xbox aren't that far away on the keyboard )

[Nerfix]

I found the update interesting. How soon it will be untill we will be seeing more summons?

[Boron]

The comments are this time almost an update also.

Agrajag said:
Are you sure its a wise plan to attack Caelum with X-Bows and necroes? Wouldn't they just fly over and eliminate your weak X-Bowers in melee?

(Hehe, apparently XBow and Xbox aren't that far away on the keyboard )

Hehe that might be true .

If Caelum had many fliers on my border . They AI is playing a ground based Caelum though on my border.
http://img228.imageshack.us/img228/4531/1ah9.jpg

So there are only a few fliers mentioned in the spy reports. The 2 fliertypes in the caelum castle are only mediocre.



So my X-bows should have 2-3 times higher numbers and should defeat them hopefully. At least i am taking this risk .

JaydedOne said:
*smile* I really like the map, by the way. I think the possibilities of playing a water nation on it look like a lot of fun.

And thank you for the detailed write-up of strategy. I'm personally happy to see that much insight into how you're playing the game.

Yeah the map is done by Jason Lutes. He did some excellent Maps for Dom2 already, but this map he did for Dom3 is imho even better. It is fair and beautiful .

Glad that you and Nerfix liked my strategy chapter .

Nerfix said:
I found the update interesting. How soon it will be untill we will be seeing more summons?

I am right now researching conjuration and have gathered ~15 Necros already in the gateway province, so in a few turns i should be able to summon umbrals .
And quite a horde . I have currently 195 deathgem, one umbral costs 2 deathgems, so 1 deathgem thanks to the gateway, so i can summon about 200 umbrals soon .