Basic Multiplayer tips wanted

[Eressil3]

Some things I learned the hard way :

- having an early fast expansion in a line can be desastrous. At the end, your army is weakened by this expansion. If you meet no agressive opponent, everything is fine. But if you meet one, he will take all your new conquered provinces one by one since the PD is often not enough to repel him.
And all the gold you wasted on PD means less gold for buying new soldiers...

- finding a good ally is hard. Trying to convince people to crush the winning guy can be hard too. People are often involved with their own affairs/struggle.

- when the game reachs his mid-part, PD is almost useless since you can see 300+ people army wandering around. Spells unleashed are so powerfull at this time, you can see a 100 PD make only 20 deaths to the attacker's army. The PD can be good though to support any army of yours, especially on chock-point.

- underwater nations are usually a good way to not be rushed in the early turns (especially if you got the chance to be alone underwater). Unfortunately getting on land is usually very hard too. At least for me !

- diversify your troops or you may face a special counter.

- it may be good to not make early research and to make your early military expansion a priority.

- Don't play as Lanka near vfb because he will attack you just to make a good story and for fun !!

[vfb]

Nice points, except for the last one . And I'm going to blame that on K anyway.

Admit it though, it was fun for you too!

[Velusion]

Eressil3 said:
Some things I learned the hard way :

- having an early fast expansion in a line can be desastrous. At the end, your army is weakened by this expansion. If you meet no agressive opponent, everything is fine. But if you meet one, he will take all your new conquered provinces one by one since the PD is often not enough to repel him.
And all the gold you wasted on PD means less gold for buying new soldiers...

I agree with everything but this one (though I'm not sure what you mean by "too fast". In my experience it is almost never worth investing in more than 1 PD unless you plan on catching enemy spies/scouts or you *know* you will be attacked in that province. Spend the that PD money on real military units instead.

Also - most of your attacks against indy forces should go off with very minimal losses so it shouldn't really damage your troop count too much. Obviously, sometimes you can't help it but if you are losing significant forces to indy provinces regularly you might be doing something wrong...

[Dedas]

I would say, whether it is pointless or not, that it depends on what the PD is composed of.

[TwoBits]

Here's a basic tip for early game SP or MP:

Keep at least one commander (an indie is fine) behind your army(s) of expansion. If you do suffer some sort of setback (I've often captured a province, but had significant portions of my army rout back the way it came before the outcome was settled), it will minimize your "downtime" before you can get offensive operations back on track.

Pause a turn to recruit reinforcements with your main army, while your trailing commander brings up the stragglers/cowards, and then you're back on the move.

Actually works best on those risky "line" expansions, as your routers have only one way to flee

[jutetrea]

Score graphs: good or bad?

The impression that I'm getting is that unless you can get a very early, very large lead in provinces its best to just be in the top third? otherwise you'll get ganged? To small and you get gobbled up?

Research - do you generally find a huge research lead is grounds for a gang up?

Forts - probably not so much

Income - ?

gem income - ?

Seems like you almost have to play the graphs along with your diplomacy game. For example, I took my last expandable province in a game just to have my main army doing something... the previous province leader lost a province and it put me on top. Oh crap So then diplomacy comes into play.

---------------

Random - are elephants/mammoths worth it for the late game? Do you have to jack the morale significantly or does it not make a difference? Is there enough magic floating around that the investment and routing possibilities isn't worth it?

[Ironhawk]

In order to win multiplayer games, you need three things. They are all of equal value and if you dont have any one of them, likely your nation will be destroyed by someone who does:

1) Technical skill
2) Diplomatic skill
3) A coherent Full-Game plan

Technical skill is largely a factor of experience and there have been plenty of technical tips above so I wont go into it.

Diplomatic Tips:
* Every MP dominions game is fought on two fronts: Military and Diplomacy. Respect diplomacy as much as you respect the military and you will go far.

* There is no mercy in MP play (unless you are playing an RP-style game). It is perfectly acceptable to invade someone for the simple reason of "you are weak" or "I need to invade you before someone else does"

* Unless you are absolutely gauranteed victory, make war pacts against an enemy instead of going in alone.

* Always join a war pact in the early game or you will quickly find yourself on the receiving end of one.

* Diplomactically "scout" your neighbors (and thier neighbors) often to see what thier alliances/wars are and how you can navigate them to benefit your nation

* Diplomacy is the strongest defense of the super-nation


Game Plan Tips:
* Before you even choose a nation, decide on an overall strategy you want to play.

* Select the key spells which will support your strategy.

* Choose the nation with the best units and magic paths to support your military and magical choices above.

* Design a pretender which specifically augments a strength or shores up a weakness of your nation.

* Make sure your setup has a specific strategy for killing indies and expanding quickly. Test it.

* Choose an overall battle-field strategy for your setup and always push for it.

* Make sure your nation has a way to trap/kill enemy SCs

* Make sure you can summon and equip your own SCs

[jutetrea]

1. Getting there
2. We'll see shortly
3. Wait..what?

Yeah, I only have kind of a general idea of what I like and think works. Seems things change too often to have a concrete plan.

[jutetrea]

Globals

Pump them up disgustingly to start so they stay up or just keep playing the GoH arms race?

Don't bother till later or earlier is better?

Dispel any others out there? Or try to overpower with your own?

Obvious generic good ones
GoH
Any gem producers (other than stellar)
FoTA
Gift of Nature(?)
Others?