How difficult is this game?

[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)

[Fenris99]

Thank you for the advice, KissBlade .

The game is not easy. It seems I have to build up for at least 3 turns before I can start grabbing indie provinces. The Ai seems to be doing it sooner. It also seems that you have to have a long view on what you're going to do; you can't just face challenges as they come. You have to have some master plan.

And I'm playing on a small map with easy Ai.

[Meglobob]

Fenris99 said:The game is not easy. It seems I have to build up for at least 3 turns before I can start grabbing indie provinces. The Ai seems to be doing it sooner.

Look to be conquering 1 province per turn from turn 2 (ie...1 turn to strengthen your starting army), aim for 15+ provinces by early spring year 2.

This is minimium, some nations you should expand faster with.

[Endoperez]

That's the minimum in competitive multiplayer. In the beginning, and against the AI, you don't have to hurry. Depending on your tastes, you might never start playing against other people, and thus might never feel the need for such a rapid early expansion. It's easy to do with some tactics, and some nations have an easier time than others, so you'll probably manage to do it at some point even if you aren't going all out for it.

[Edi]

Meglobob said:

Look to be conquering 1 province per turn from turn 2 (ie...1 turn to strengthen your starting army), aim for 15+ provinces by early spring year 2.

This is minimium, some nations you should expand faster with.

Once more, minimum with what independent strength? Indies 5, doable. Indies 7+, forget it, province per turn from turn 3 and you're likely not going to be able to do more unless you have good luck with the neighbors and good quality units in decent numbers.

[SlipperyJim]

With strength-9 indies (all I ever play), I can usually take a province every two turns when I get started. I'll take a turn or two to beef up my starting army, and then I go a-conquering.

After I've conquered the ring of provinces around my home fortress, then I can usually put a second army in the field and speed up to one (or more) provinces per turn.

I probably wouldn't be competitive in multiplayer, but I'm more-than-fast enough for SP. Sometimes, the AI will get a little ahead of me in the early game, but I always overtake it once I can get the war machine rollin'....

---

PS:
As others have written, the key to fast early expansion is Mercenaries. Hire up any mercs that are worthwhile, and use them to snag provinces while you build up a solid army of national troops.

Remember that your mercs are generally disposable, so use them appropriately. Put the Brave Breakers, the Black Fists, and Dante's Stingers on the front lines and let them do the hard fighting for you. You're paying them to die for you! Meanwhile, you're recruiting a strong force of whatever your best national troops happen to be. Once the mercs are dead, you'll have a company of Helhirdlings (or whatever national troops are best for you) ready to go forth and spread the word of your Pretender.