Requesting a Pedantic Dom3 Guide

[rdonj]

I started writing up a long and drawn out guide but then I realized I needed to ask a question first. Are you playing a CBM version with clams or are you playing vanilla :P

Part of the problem with this is that there's no good generic way to lay out a strategy guide like this, because each nation plays differently. Without specifics though, I can tell you for the early game that if you aren't able to create an expansion army every 2 turns, or 3 at the utmost, then you're doing it wrong because pretty much every nation should be able to do this. Some can make an expansion army every 1 turn, even. You start building forts as soon as you can plausibly afford it. With a nation that can expand faster than it necessarily wants to in multiplayer, it may be feasible to skip a turn of recruitment early on just to get an extra fort up faster. In SP, just keep your expansion armies down to a reasonable size and don't build any more troops than you actually need to take provinces, and once you have 5ish expansion armies out you can really stop worrying about the expansion phase. Then devote your money towards cap only commanders and forts. Depending on the nation, it may be worth sacrificing a cap only mage for a fort, or for a nation that doesn't really do cap only mages you can easily sacrifice one of your best mages to build a fort a turn or two earlier. If you have a powerful cap only sacred and went with a bless strategy you'll need to keep buying those as well, but the mages are more important in most cases.

Middle game: Direct your research towards a spell or spells that will allow you to achieve a long term goal or that will enable you to defeat one of your neighbors. I don't think I can really describe this stage better without more specifics on nation/mods/etc.

Late game: You pretty much have this part down, except of course it's easier said than done.

I'll leave your other questions for others to answer.