Dominions 3 and micromanagement

[alexti]

quantum_mechani said:
I tend to optimize as much possible as well (recruit indy x-bows etc.) but I can't say I've noticed an overall increase in micro management. I also don't really agree that the early spells were made useless.

I don't think that doing something like recruiting couple of indy units here and couple there was useful in Dom2 and I never did it (but maybe I was wrong about that). In Dom3 vanilla it seems quite helpful.

Not all early spell are useless, but a large part of them (if you ask me, some early spells - like blade wind or flaming arrows are *too* useful ). But in Dom2 it was often useful to have few mages casting one person damage spells (or single square ones). Not that they were causing that much damage, but they helped to demoralize the enemy before it came to contact with your melee troops thus helping you to route the opposition quickly without suffering too many losses. In Dom3, large squads seems to be pretty resistant to the minor damage mages can inflict and having 10-20 regular units instead of a mage tends to be more efficient. It's a bit of generalization, in some cases (like facing uber-blessed helherdings) mages are still better. Spammer mages are useful as well.

Do you know anybody playing long MPs with settings similar to mine (less gold, easier research)?