Help needed: How to defend? / Guides to nation

[fabio80mi]

Guys thanks for all your tips, you're right i usually didn't 'spread' thin my armies to defend i usually had 2-3 moving army and that was all.

I'll try to adopt this strategy in my current game =)

Of course any more advice is always welcome


As for my other request is there any cool container for all national guides posted here?

[MaxWilson]

Some of the good guides have gotten posted on StrategyWiki, but for the others search the forum using the "Search" link at the top of the page for "Guide" in the subject in the "Dominions 3" forum and you'll probably get most of them.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

One more thought on quicker expansion--it may be that you're jumping the gun and trying to expand too quickly at first, before your army is quite big enough. Depending upon what nation you're playing, waiting an extra turn or two to build some extra crossbowmen/archers can mean the difference between taking 10 losses per province and 1-2 per province. It's also possible that you're doing the opposite, taking several turns to build resource-heavy sacred troops (e.g. Living Pillars for Atlantis) when all you need for expansion are enough cheap troops to rout the indies. Some nations have terrific sacred troops, and for others they're just a distraction, at least until you're done expanding and are actually in a war of attrition with an enemy nation. (Sometimes not even then, depending upon the unit and your bless.)

I should also mention that building another fort early (with a mercenary if necessary) is a great boost to expansion because you can crank out twice as many national troops per turn. Obviously you have to have enough gold income to afford twice as many troops, but you should probably have a second fort by mid-Winter of the first year.

-Max

P.S. Also, about defense: 21 PD is usually only about 30-40 cheap units, in smallish squads that rout pretty easily. Instead of boosting PD to 35-40 levels, just add detach some troops from a moving army and leave them in the province. PD has a commander, so the garrison troops will still fight, and if they rout they'll flee into adjacent provinces instead of evaporating like defeated PD does. Works best with support troops like archers, but may be worth doing even with normal troops. The downside is that unlike PD, garrison troops cost upkeep.

[Folket]

The easiest way to defeat the AI is to use sacred units. The AI have no way to adapt. This could be fun to try a couple of times. It will also only work for certain nations.

I do find that some comments here are wrong.

The AI will stop attacking you if he looses interest and you are not attacking him. This has happened many time for me. I guess I play more defensively then other here. If you have a strong border the AI fails his attacks he might stop attacking. You will also get a new message about him declaring war if he is going to attack again.

I find pd to make or break a war. Always read in the manual on how strong your pd is. Nations with really strong pd like LA Then Chi is very easy to play against the computer since it will just send wave after wave to die. If the pd is fair I have no problem to buy it up to 35 or higher if I know there is going to be a battle.

When I play the AI I usually expand quickly and will then have war at 4-6 fronts. Then I start predicting his moves and crush his armies with as few looses as possible. Here tactical skills are important, learn your opponents units and device a ingenious battle plan. Fort are also very useful since the AI will never leave a siege. So once his army is stucked at a fort You may surround it and eliminate it.

[MaxWilson]

We could generalize that. The easiest way to defeat the AI is to win battles cost-effectively, be it with sacred units, supercombatants, cheap summons, or what-have-you. Since the AI doesn't adapt, setting the difficulty level higher gives the AI a cost break (bonuses to pretender points, research, income, resources, gem production), which raises the bar on how cost-effectively you have to defeat the AI (because its units are effectively cheaper, and also because it expands quicker and thus has a larger income base, and because the point break on the pretender means its units may have a better bless and/or be produced in greater quantities because of better scales). But the AI never adapts, it just sort of stumbles across good strategies sometimes, due in large part to the fact that certain strategies naturally fall out of certain nations.

When you're being crushed under an army of Illithids or Umbrals, it is cold comfort to note that the AI is not being clever, just rich. Generally being clever is the player's job, to make up for being poor.

-Max

P.S. I *have* found that the AI tends to field better units under Edi's NI (no independents) mod. That's where my armies-of-Illithids-and-armies-of-Umbrals-and-cave-drakes experience came from.

[fabio80mi]

I would like to thank you guys
I've tried to follow your advice , both as faster/better expansion both as trying to build a 2nd fortress soon and increase ind strenght.

My game style seems to have improved a lot and i'm beginning to do very good on game with only AI , at least till mid game. in late game i'm still quite lost but i'll work on it =)

Another matter.. is there some specific map which is particularly good/enjoyable to learn and improve the game? i usually generate new one each time but they seem quite dull and always the same, and i can't find many good map like there was in dominions 2, advice are always welcome =)

[Ironhawk]

Mid to Late game is tricky for a new player. You are presented with so many options in terms of spells/summons/forging that it can be difficult to form a coherent strategy. My suggestion to you is to look up a standard strategy for whatever nation you are playing on the forums. Use that strategy as a guide for how to get through the mid game and gain experience with the whole process.


Aran is the traditional first-game map since it comes with dominions. And while it is not a good map in the sense of balanced starting positions, it actually is a good map in terms of terrain training. It will teach you how to get into the water, how to survive in waste, why farmlands are so prized, etc.