How difficult is this game?

[Fenris99]

I didn't see where at pretender creation you can raise the dominion stat.

I'll try a new game tonight and I'll try to give my pretender a high dominion.

[Ironhawk]

Its under the Dominion section Fenris. Same place as the Scales. At the top of the dialog there are some candles and the text "Dominion Strength". Just click on that. Costs are similar to extra picks in magic paths.

[Nikolai]

Fenris99, there are many pretenders that are "powerful enough to conquer an indie by themselves", but they need research spells to use. For example, a ghost king with water, air and astral can go:

Air shield, personal luck, mirror image, quicken self, attack closest.

This is very powerful, enough to anihilate at least most indies, and takes only Alteration 2. At other paths/levels you will get other great self-buffs like Ironskin, Mistform, Body Etherial, Summon Earth Power, Fire shield, Personal Regenration, Soul Vortex, etc...

[KissBlade]

Marignon is quite easy to learn basics with. In the beginning pick a Wyrm or a Dragon. A Dragon can solo most indie provinces by just scripting fire x5 + attack (anything really).
Wyrms can solo with dom 9 or 10 (I prefer 10, magicless but 9 is almost as good too) Without high dom, take either astral or earth and sit him at home researching buffs till he can lead a small force of indies to start conquering himself. Once you get the right buffs for him, he should break off into soloing and let an indie commander to conquer stuff with the troops your wyrm was leading.
Regarding solo pretenders, avoid: Lizardmen, Barbarians (unless you have awe which really kills Barbs), Xbows, Heavy Cavalry/Knights <= though this last batch is pretty tough to deal with with standard troops even. Prepare a big line of militias to soak up the lances), and Amazons.
Your first army should pick up the first turn of troops (prophetize the commander), script him to fantacisim, smite, smite, smite, smite, cast spells.
You want to keep your pikemen on guard commander formation and put your commander right on front of your archer block.
Now the crucial thing to learn from all this is decoying. Always keep one (or two) seperate troops on front and a bit to the side on "hold and attack". These will soak up the first two volleys of archers and bad stuff. Constantly replace these decoys with your guys with battle wound, prioritizing battle fright (MAKE SURE THESE ARE NEVER IN YOUR MAIN GROUP) and diseased (they're going to die anyway).
Anyway, for the most part of the game, always make tons of archers + xbows. They are by far the most effective troops and your heavy infantries should mainly be there to soak up the extra resources you're not using. Learn to love your ranged guys when it comes to nations with standardized human troops. Also, always make pure mages from your fort provinces. Never recruit nation commanders and scouts since you can grab them from indies. Marignon can set up a secondary fort for spies so you might consider one just for that. Learn to love falling fires with marignon and look towards seraphs eventually. Another thing, when designing scales, ALWAYS take Order x3. (Unless you're LA Ermor ...), misfortune 1 is pretty safe and for the most part, so is Sloth 3 since you mainly need one or two mountain/forest neighboring provinces to conquer to give you all the resources you need. A point of cold/heat isn't bad either since the income penalty is effectively only 2.5% for the first point due to the changing temperature per season. I always take magic 3 as well but drain 2 is fairly common. GL =)

[jimkehn]

Except, I think if you prophetize your commander he will be a level 3 Priest. Isn't Fanatacism an H4 spell?? Maybe KB meant cast Divine Blessing, which an H3 Prophet can cast. Only helps if you have sacred troops on the battlefield, though.

[KissBlade]

My memory might be off, my laptop is sputtering so I can't play Dom lately but I thought h3 gave you Fanaticisim in Dom3?

[Sir_Dr_D]

No, it is H4.

[KissBlade]

Ah right, nevermind, it was smite that dom 3 took down. Yeah, just cast Sermon, Smite x4 then. =) Thanks, (haven't played dom for awhile cause my laptop with it went clunky >_> and it doesn't fly well on Vista)