Requesting a Pedantic Dom3 Guide

[TheDemon]

Originally Posted by shatner

What specific things do you do in the early game to expand, construct those first few forts and advance your early research? What are common early research goals? Around what turn would you consider the early phase over and the middle phase begun?

What constitutes a good combined arms army? Normally I get as far as a handful of bladewind or fireball casters hunkered down behind my wall of grunts and archers. What is the recipe for a good communion and when do you apply it?

Unfortunately it's difficult to write specific answers. You ask when to construct the first fort, I'll have to ask you when does your nation need it done: are your troops output gold or res dependent; are you using your mages to expand or to manufacture freespawn; if so do you need researchers recruited separately; do you need noncap national commanders or mages to defend yourself from a rush? Another example: As a first research goal, a nation with archers and F3 mages can go for flaming arrows at Ench 4 (or 5 with CBM). A nation with only F2 mages will also need Phoenix Power at Conj 3 to be able to cast Flaming Arrows. Wondering how a nation can cast Flaming Arrows at all without F4 mages? (an extra gem) Any guide that tried to cover all these little pointers would quickly swamp itself.

The During Action Report linked above is really good because he gives the reasoning behind his decisions.

I've another source for "over the shoulder" gamewatching. On the Something Awful forums we have two running Lets Plays of dom3, where the game admin is observing all the turns, and writing them up in a commentary/analysis form.

I have to warn you don't take what any of these players are doing as expert play. Some of the players are complete newbies, some are indeed experts, some are playing "for the crowd" rather than optimally, and all of them make miscalculations and mistakes.
This one is in endgame and is without mods:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/sho...readid=3302467
This one is still in early game and using CBM and a souped-up pretenders mod:
http://forums.somethingawful.com/sho...readid=3425051



I think the best way to learn though is to play multiplayer. You don't have to be super competitive to learn by playing.

[SsSam]

Originally Posted by TheDemon

All of them make miscalculations and mistakes.

I think that's true of most of us. It's part of the fun of multiplayer. Watching your plan get all bloodied and then trying to adapt.