First Post: Suggestions on Nation choices?

[Tyrant]

MA Marignon is a nice nation for learning. The army is decent and has combined arms, and they have excellent non-unique SC summons. Magic's kinda narrow and the age problem is annoying but they follow the "normal" progresion of power- arms - arms and casters - SCs.

[Networkingguru]

Hadrian_II said:
Man has also

Stealthy raiders (Warden or Cu Siddhe)
Knights (They are just strong units)
Good Nature magic --> Lots of army buffs like mass protection, relieve and mass regeneration
Look that you get some fire on the pretender for the flaming arrows.

Every nation is somehow competitive.

btw. i would succest to play some MP, as playing against the AI is not what makes Dom3 fun

Thanks Hadrian_II. I will give Man a try as well. I guess I have just been spoiled by playing thug nations against the AI, as I can't stand replenishing armies, and with Neifel, for example, that is a rare need. However, Lanka isn't so bad, as I can replinish anywhere, unlike Ermor or Neifel.

As for MP, I would love to play some MP, but I am really put off by what seems to be a very complicated process (find a game in the forum, get on IRC, play during certian times I am guessing, etc.). My wife is learning the game, and if I can get a buddy of mine to learn it, I can play MP with them. I guess I'll head into the forum and try to find a good game anyway, just kinda hate coming in and getting stomped, LOL.

[Networkingguru]

Edi said:
I would say that aside from Lanka and Niefelheim, the only out-of-the-box SC/thug nation would be Fomoria, unless you go for a double bless on some of the better bless nations.

Yea, I thoght about Fomoria, just skipped them as there aren't any good guides. I'm going to give them a shot anyhow though, looks like I will need to get GoH ASAP to deal with afflictions.

[Networkingguru]

Tyrant said:
MA Marignon is a nice nation for learning. The army is decent and has combined arms, and they have excellent non-unique SC summons. Magic's kinda narrow and the age problem is annoying but they follow the "normal" progresion of power- arms - arms and casters - SCs.

Thanks Tyrant, I will give them a try as well.

[quantum_mechani]

Networkingguru said:
Lanka

-Really, really bad PD. Most times, you need to have double the points in PD as the number of units attacking a city to be truly safe. This gets very expensive very fast.

I think this needs to be discussed in greater detail.

[Sir_Dr_D]

Yes, we haven't had any real long discussions about bad monkey PD for over a week.

[Networkingguru]

quantum_mechani said:

I think this needs to be discussed in greater detail.

Really, or is this an inside joke? I did see all the threads on mismatched PD, so I'm not real sure how to respond. I will say that I've seen Lanka's PD get crushed by a relatively small number of units on many occasions.

[vfb]

It's a joke! Better start talking about something else quick, or all your threads will belong to monkey PD.

If you do like to crank up PD --- which I personally don't, but hey, to each his own, then that's another good reason to go with K's suggestion of MA Man. (Not that you need to use Man's PD, since their army has good mobility).

[llamabeast]

It was an inside joke, just because a week or so back we had two or three threads talking about the monkey PD being bad in excruciating detail. Well, one guy was quite upset about it being so weak and talked about it at great length and the rest of us were just a bit bewildered.

Signing up to MP games is not very hard in fact. The difficulty is just in finding one. The trick is just to look at the MP forum every day or two, and see if any games are advertising players. If they are' just post to say you'd like to play and you'll be started in no time. Games start up pretty frequently, and both me and lch host games for new players quite often (although you will be welcome to join any game).

The IRC channel is largely for blitzes, i.e. "I have several hours free and want to play NOW". Personally I never go on there - I just don't tend to have time.

Games organised here tend to have one turn a day and last for several months. Although it sounds slow, trust me, it gets exciting. In many ways it adds to the experience as you have time to really think about your strategies.

[Networkingguru]

llamabeast said:
It was an inside joke, just because a week or so back we had two or three threads talking about the monkey PD being bad in excruciating detail. Well, one guy was quite upset about it being so weak and talked about it at great length and the rest of us were just a bit bewildered.

Signing up to MP games is not very hard in fact. The difficulty is just in finding one. The trick is just to look at the MP forum every day or two, and see if any games are advertising players. If they are' just post to say you'd like to play and you'll be started in no time. Games start up pretty frequently, and both me and lch host games for new players quite often (although you will be welcome to join any game).

The IRC channel is largely for blitzes, i.e. "I have several hours free and want to play NOW". Personally I never go on there - I just don't tend to have time.

Games organised here tend to have one turn a day and last for several months. Although it sounds slow, trust me, it gets exciting. In many ways it adds to the experience as you have time to really think about your strategies.

LOL, will do.

As far as man, I just started a game with them based on the previous suggestions, and I have to admit, I am enjoying it so far. However, I am intrigued that you do not use PD. I can't see how you get away with no PD unless you keep an army in every province, which doesn't really seem economically feasible. With all the random events, not to mention spells that can target from afar and flying units, I don't see how you can secure provinces without using PD. Can you elaborate?