Tactics: Principles, Tips, Tricks, and Traps

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

16. The Center. Put either cheap crud units or heavily armored units in the center, and put your power units on the flanks. The center usually attracts the arrows and the spells.
17. Flanking. I like to put cavalry, tramplers, or fast units on the flank. They have a clear line of retreat if routed. They have a clear line to the rear echelons of the enemy to engage the mages and commanders if you so choose. The can fall upon the enemy's gooie sides for positional scissor attacks if you so wish....

[PDF]

Re Tramplers
I agree with Etaoin, don't put them on the flanks but rather in the center, because they often move towards the center when attacking, and then rout in your center squads.
Unless they're undead (Behemoth) or you Berserk them, obviously

[Manuk]

or you Berserk them, obviously

duh... i never did this. good idea.

[Taqwus]

Know thy enemy -- be familiar with a nation's likely abilities, read their Pretender's titles, check the mercenary listings, perhaps use stealth to observe their battles.

Storms, darkness, fliers, unexpected mercenary heavy cavalry, tramplers, mages with area-effect spells, and so forth can really ruin your day if you're not prepared. Storms in particular shuts down most fliers and hampers missiles and fire magic, while darkness hampers most of the living in both melee and ranged combat. Of course, if you're casting the storms and you have fliers that will be grounded, you can have the fliers strike first while your storms caster waits.

Use misdirection. Some effects tend to target units with high HP, and there's also a 'target large monsters' option, so if your Pretender is on the scene, you may want to present other high-HP targets (elephants, some constructs, et al) to attract curses and horror marks. There's a 'target archers' command, as well as 'target fliers', so one can place sacrificial groups...

...and never, ever lead a horde of mindless units (ex. low-end undead) with just a handful of commanders with minds, against an illithid army, because the mindblasts will all target the commanders -- and if all commanders are dead, the mindless units will vaporize.

Be aware of how friendly mages might hurt you -- casting 'Touch of Madness' on your missile troops, casting 'Protection' on your Abysians, and so forth. Position and script accordingly. In some cases, it may be safest not to bring along a mage with an particularly dangerous path.

Be wary of relying too much on awe, fear, tramplers, and etherealness. While these can be powerful... awe and fear are morale effects, and there are many mindless units that will ignore them; tramplers have a hard time trampling ethereal units; and ethereals should recall that there are even national troops with magical weapons.

With Communion, self-effects also affect the communion slaves; this includes such things as Summon Earthpower's reinvigoration, Invulnerability, and Body Ethereal. The first makes your communion even more efficient in dealing with fatigue (reinvig 4 x number of communicants, rather than just reinvig 4), while others make them harder to kill. Even Phoenix Pyre carries over, but this is... dangerous, unless your army is fire-immune.

Ritual magic, including remote summons and any resulting battles, take place before all non-magical movements and attack; this allows one to catch enemy forces and disrupt them, while riddling their commanders with Seeking Arrows. There's a reason why Ghost Riders is Conj-9.

[Gandalf Parker]

xx. Flying Armies:
Take the provinces that directly connect to your castle for the added resources. Then use scouts to find weak provinces within flight range. Also drop-in armies (Call of the Wild, Call of the Winds, etc) can help. By "polka-dotting" a large map you can move fast and extend your reach. But anyone coming at you must plow thru 2 indept provinces for each one of yours that they get.

yy. Stealth Armies:
Teach the other guy that local defense is a good idea. Sneak past his army, take the provinces behind him. Crank them to maximum gold and sneak out. Possibly buy local defense and local militia units to hold it longer. If you have time then blood search or pillage. If you get it over 100 unrest then even if they take it back they get little from it.

zz. Stealth Armies:
Keep a sizeable army standing at the conflict border between two other players. Wait until they weaken each other then kill who is left and grab as much as possible very quickly.

[Gandalf Parker]

Bursting Dam:
in a game with many people who tend to play barbarian horde armies sweeping across the map..
Take only the provinces that connect to your castle. Build up and build up and build up. Everyone will stretch thin coming your direction. When they finally reach you then burst forth like a dam breaking.

[RamsHead]

Peek-a-boo:
Have your scouts attack large incoming armies to see their exact troop compositions, formations, and attack orders. The sacrifice of 30 gold can easily be worth the knowledge.

[Graeme Dice]

Gandalf Parker said:
zz. Stealth Armies:
Keep a sizeable army standing at the conflict border between two other players. Wait until they weaken each other then kill who is left and grab as much as possible very quickly.

I imagine you must like playing Helheim.

[Ironhawk]

I disagree with a lot of what you have to say. Some of your general advice is ok but a lot of it is also naive and will lead noobs down the wrong path.

Uh-Nu-Buh said:
2. Place your strongest defense/armor/resistance units in the middle. This is where the majority of arrows and spells hit.

Like this for example. Why would you put your heaviest units in the place where they are likely to take the most fire? This is where your chaff goes.

4. Missileers. You can put these forward on the flanks and tell them to fire 3 times then retreat.

Don't ever do this. The fire and flee command effectively causes the units given that order to rout, making them next to impossible to collect when the battle is over as they will be scattered all over the adjacent provinces. This will be particularly disasterous if you are on the offensive.

6. Mages. In general put these in the middle of packs instead of to the rear. They can augment nearby troops, send out lightning bolts and fire darts, and not get as targetted.

Not true. Troop blocks actually draw MORE fire, not less. If you really want to protect your mages you put them with 2 bodyguards in a large empty area which is bordered by blocks of troops. In this way you trick the AI targetting routine into not firing at them because they are too loose of a target.

8. Mages. Giving field mages personal gems can make them far more powerful.

Path buff spells are the more commonly used and less expensive route to increase magical power on the battlefield.

13. Elephants. Elephants and other big units that are powerful, but lightly armored should be protected appropriately.

Reasonable advice here actually but the key thing with Elephants (and any trample) is morale, rather than position. You need to make sure that the squad containing tramplers has a morale which is next to unbreakable by adding in really high morale units. Helps if they are really slow to so the tramplers outdistance them and the "morale base" of your squad cannot be attacked.

Generally speaking tho, if you want tactical advice you should just go back to the dom2 forum and do a search. There are reams of data there from old veterans on all the tried and true tactics. 95% of them still apply to dom3, trust me. Additionally, going to the IRC channel will be exceptionally useful for new players to get gameplay advice

[KissBlade]

Pretty much echoing what Ironhawk says, Elephants work remarkably well with vine ogres by the way. Also learning HOW to raid and how to bait an army is much more important advice. Troop placement is actually very simple. Archers behind heavies, chaff out on front followed by heavies. To use fliers without them getting murdered right away, just keep a commander on hold hold attack closest while the fliers on guard commander. Mages should ALWAYS be spread out otherwise you risk a lucky spell smacking them all. Best strategy tip, come to mirc and chat witht he vets.