Are heavy bless strategies the best ones ?

[Graeme Dice]

Meglobob said:
No, bless strategies are NOT the best ones, especially if you want to win a MP game. That's the short answer.

It's also the incorrect answer. If you want to get a massive early game advantage over every other player, then the only way to do that is to use a dual-bless strategy. Unlike Dominions II where national troops took about 20 turns to become obsolete, national troops are obsolete from the very first turn in Dominions III, as dual-blessed troops can win with a third (or less) of the gold cost spent on them.

Essentially, it entirely depends what nation you are playing, for example EA T'ien Ch'i is a nation whose main strength is strong magic in many different paths.

Their main strength before turn 20 is blessed warriors of the five elements. Before turn 20, which is when the eventual winner of the game is decided, magic plays virtually no role in Dom 3.

There is mounting and strong evidence to suggest on maps of 15 provinces per player or higher, 50% magic sites and normal research anyone with a double lvl 9 bless or more is at a disadvantage to win in MP.

You have evidence? I'd love to see it.

They get dragged down by the culmative effect of bad scales like death-3, misfortune-3 and drain-3.

This statement illustrates how little you understand about the game. Dual-blesses are not particularly expensive, and do not require large sacrifices to your scales. Niefelheim, for example, can have an E9N9 Cyclops with Dominion 7, order 3, cold 3, death 1, misfortune 2, and drain 2.

Death 3 has almost no effect whatsoever on your game, unless you are playing a weak nation like Abysia or Marignon that relies on fire mages. You will have lost 24% of your population in your home province by turn 50 with death 3, and less than that in other provinces where your dominion spent less time. If misfortune 3 is going to screw up your game, it will do so in the first five turns. After that, with a dual-bless strategy, you'll have so many provinces that the negative impact will be spread throughout your empire. Drain 3 is typically not needed for a dual-bless strategy, but if you do choose it over the no-brainer choice of drain 2, you can power through the penalty by spending extra gold on mages.

[calmon]

Graeme Dice said:

It's also the incorrect answer. If you want to get a massive early game advantage over every other player, then the only way to do that is to use a dual-bless strategy. Unlike Dominions II where national troops took about 20 turns to become obsolete, national troops are obsolete from the very first turn in Dominions III, as dual-blessed troops can win with a third (or less) of the gold cost spent on them.

[/quote]

I can agree that a bless strategy can win a game if used by a good player.

But i disagree that this is the only way to get an early game advantage. Building an awe/fear pretender helps a lot to expand from start on, too. You could combine him with a single bless 9 if you want.
The advantage of such a strategy is that you are not forced to use most of your money for sacred troops every turn and normally have better scales than a double bless. You can expand and have gold left for building castles very early.

I wouldn't say national troops are obsolete even by turn 20. What are the alternatives?

However for me its also no question that vanheim/helheim with glamour on sacreds needs some nerf. This in combination with double bless, a good player and neighbours who don't alliance against such a nation will be a powerfull threat for winning the game.

[Eressil3]

I forgot to specify the question is MP games related. And I appreciate to see the debate growing and to read a variety of opinions.

[Gandalf Parker]

Even with MP I would be leary of an absolute answer that didnt also mention map sizes, number of players, and victory conditions. Though it is likely that it would reflect small maps, under 6 players, and kill-all victory since those games play quick and therefore are the most common.

Have we had an extreme contest yet? In Dom2 I achieved all 4's with 2 or 3 9's while taking all harsh scales (no sleepers back then). It would be interesting to see how that works against a pretender with just 2 9's and scales that allowed stronger troop building

[KissBlade]

Graeme Dice said:


Their main strength before turn 20 is blessed warriors of the five elements. Before turn 20, which is when the eventual winner of the game is decided, magic plays virtually no role in Dom 3.

Agree for the most part on most points save this one. I find once it gets past the nitty gritty early game, even dual bless nations use magics to augment their armies. For example, alteration tree for luck/body eth, summons such as jag fiends and river demons, etc. However, if your nation doesn't have strong expansion abilities (of which heavy bless strategies /is one/), it is harder to compete in a normal game without at least a good solid awe or dragon pretender. Effectively enough, good players who stumbles upon you early will recognize you have no real credible threat to them by choosing a "late game" path, and just attack you. Often it only takes 4-6 turns to meet your first neighbor, 8-10 roughly for borders to solidify. Once borders solidify, there are almost NO more expansion into indies. Which generally means at this stage, people start looking for "soft targets" to hit. You don't want to be one of them by having no bless, a human pretender and only average national troops. All the scales in the world won't help you then.

[Teraswaerto]

KissBlade,

What you say is true, however in larger games diplomacy can keep a soft target from getting into early wars. Granted, it's a gamble, and you're leaving survival up to things you can't really control.

[Gandalf Parker]

On larger maps most of that becomes untrue also. Drain? magic plays no role? Death has no affect? Im not sure if Victory Point games might also make a difference on some of it and since the devs love VP games I sure wouldnt write those off. And thats not to mention games that might crank up the magic, or crank down the resources, or boost magic sites.

Some people tend to play Dom3 with the same settings all the time. Same map size, same number of players, same victory conditions. That cant help but paint a "do this and always win every game" feeling.

Interestingly many of the same people tell Solo players that staying inside that limitation will get old and ruin the game for them.

[Graeme Dice]

Gandalf Parker said:
Drain? magic plays no role?

Magic plays a very large role if the game lasts to turn 40 or so. The drain scale, on the other hand, has almost no effect on the power of magic.

Death has no affect?

The death scale has precisely the effects I just listed. It reduces your population in your home province by 24% over 50 turns, and by a lesser amount in other provinces. Otherwise it has little effect on any nation other than those with mages that were made old arbitrarily (ie. the fire nations).

Im not sure if Victory Point games might also make a difference on some of it and since the devs love VP games I sure wouldnt write those off.

Victory points make games finish sooner, not later.

[Velusion]

Gandalf Parker said:
Some people tend to play Dom3 with the same settings all the time. Same map size, same number of players, same victory conditions. That cant help but paint a "do this and always win every game" feeling.

And some people don't even play multi-player games but still paint a "MP in dominions 3 is perfect" picture...

And I don't play blitz. I'm not sure why you assume that everyone who critques the balance of Dom3 only plays on small maps with a few people.

[Tyrant]

For all the forum chatter about dual 9 bless i've so far only seen it twice in 6 net games. In both cases it was 9W9S. Once it worked great (MA Ermor), the other guy (Lanka) got clobbered straight away.