High PD kinda useless.

[Patriot]

I just purchased this game and have only begun to play my first game, so I am a total newbie. I've yet to play another person, so bumping up your Province Defense high and turtling up might lose you the game against a human. I don't know.

But in my game, where I'm playing against several computers, I up my Province Defense to the max in every province and use my army to snatch weakly-defended provinces, trying to avoid a costly battle. Since I've scaled towards a high income, it's somewhat easy. I'm trying to kill off my opponents with temples and a 10 dominion pretender. It's pretty anticlimatic way of playing though. These are normal computers too, so that may be the problem.

Anyway, if the computers actually defended each province well or ranked up a high Province Defense, I might avoid attacking, as replacing 200-300 men and merging them takes time. I think the biggest thing about Province Defense, and it explains it in the loading screen between turns is that, Province Defense returns full force if not defeated and at no cost to the player.

This is a great game by the way.

[DominionsFan]

Meglobob said:

This was true in Dom2 but is it correct in Dom3?

Jotunheim only get 1/2 a Jotun militia upto PD 20 ie...10 units. Easy to defeat I have found.

Compare to Man, same era, gets 1 Spearman, 2xMilitia ie 60 units at PD 20. Tough to defeat especially eary game.

Things have changed. How worthwhile PD is, depends on the individual nation now.

Also at 21+ u r getting better quality troops for yr PD, which also effect things.

Yep, Jotun milita is like 1/2 compared to the other nation PDs.

[Hadrian_II]

I think PD is very effective against the AI as it tends to send every turn lots of troops to attack but never enough to win. My PD killed about 400 enemy troops each turn (in ca. 5 provinces). I had a PD strength of about 60+ and supported it with mages (i used trollkings and each of them got in the hall of fame after 10 turns with 500 kills each )

[Sammual]

DominionsFan said:

Yep, Jotun milita is like 1/2 compared to the other nation PDs.

They were WAY to strong in Dom2 so they got hit hard with the nerf stick (A bit too hard I think). I have a feeling that they will get a bit better in a patch sometime in the future.

In Don2 a PD of 31 with the Mechanical PD global enchantment was able to stop large armies on it's own. If you added a priest with 5 archer bodyguards you could even stop most Undead hordes that came your way.

Sammual

[bleach168]

Graeme Dice said:

Are you aware that that much province defense is costing you 1830 gold? You could have bought 183 troops for that cost.

Yes I realize that. I don't want to pay the upkeep on 183 troops or have to replace losses.

I guess I will take Kissblade's advice and add some battlemages or something. At least until PD commanders don't suicide into the enemy.

[Ironhawk]

bleach168 said:
I'm playing Pythium and I have lots of money so I invest in PD usually up to 50-60 in provinces bordering my enemies.

...

I suppose I could add extra commanders and have them guarded by extra troops but I feel this defeats the purpose of no upkeep PD.

Putting so much money into PD isnt the answer. If you are having to defend a front against an enemy then you should be stationing real armies there to do the defending. Since PD is usually so weak and (as you have just seen) extremely easy to defeat by any non-trivial force, its best to keep your levels b/w 10-20 for spy catching and maybe repelling the odd raid. Beyond that it loses all its bang for the buck and you are better off recruiting more national mages and troops.

[Endoperez]

An occassional higher level can be good, but those are just occassional. Raising PD over, say, level 40 by paying for it is very expensive, and shouldn't really be done. Level 40 is already very high, but I quess it might have a situational use any way.

[bleach168]

You know what, instead of spending all that gold on PD, I think I will just spam forts (and labs) all along my borders. Once Gateway is fixed, it should be easy to defend my borders.

[Ironhawk]

A much better use of your money

[Forrest]

I think it is great at choke points. You shove it up to 40 and you have top level infantry. If you back them with a good archer squad they become hard to beat.

I had a 194 man force in a 40 PD provine and was hit by almost 400 troops. They lost 176 to my 1 man. Yes, I was using flaming arrows and had 100 longbowmen. All my infantry was set on guard commander and the enemy troops never made it to my troops. I was planning to make them pay for that choke point and never thought I could win.

Over 1000 troops and two Gods died trying to take that province. I held with minimal reinforcements and just a three or four spell casters. That 40 PD was the best spent money of the game.