Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question

[Olive]

For a first game, you should't select Atlantis, R'lyeh or Ermor as enemies.

[OG_Gleep]

Hehe the thread I pointed you to was your thread =)

Here is the maps section on the Illwinter site. http://www.illwinter.com/dom2/maps.html. Download the maps and extract them to you dominions/map directory.

As Endo said, map setting can make a huge impact on the game. Once you are comfortable, I would play at normal richness, and hard (or higher) research. These settings can make an impact on how you design your pretender.

Once you are comfortable with the basic mechanics, I would go into the MP/AAR section, and duplicate some of the settings from those MP games. Anyone but The Winnowing (Thread title is The Winnowing) and Manifesty Destiny (Thread title New Noob Game). Reason being they were intended for MP noobs, and thus had more relaxed setttings.

Endo made a great suggestion. If you pack a ton of AI on a small map, you will be in a world of trouble. But once I had a handle on the game, try enabling one less or equal to the recommended AI's. I find this to be a relaxing setting, while still having a good variety to play with.

GL
OG

[OG_Gleep]

Actually go a step further, don't pick any nations that have access to death mages. Death mages tend to summon load and loads of undead/eth troops. If your only dealing with a pool of 6-7 nations, why include them?

Also I'm sure this has been mentioned, but don't pick races that have "Death" themes to fight against.

Ulm (Black forest)
Pangea (Carrion Woods)
Ermor (Cuz they are Ermor)

I think I am forgetting one.

As Olive said, including the Water races can be frustrating because its very hard to defend entire coastlines, and even harder to hit them back as certian nations.

GL
OG

[Cainehill]

Also, you probably want to leave Caelum out, since they can attack provinces you think are safe.

[how786]

Thanks guys for all this excellent help!

[shovah]

personally i dont find ulm black forest that hard to fight, id suggest fighting vrs ulm at start

[Zen]

Black Forest requires a different pattern of thoughts in order to be effective. Standard Ulm is very good for newbies, but in the hands of an experienced analyzed gamer it can be very difficult to handle.

[how786]

Thanks for the continued input. It's all very useful for a new player like myself.
The game is so complex. A few more questiosn come to mind:
When is it good to do things like Pillage, Preach, Blood Hunt, Blood Sacrifice and Monthly Ritual Spell.
The challenge of when/where to use these spells is daunting for the newbie.
Best
How786

[shovah]

pillage should only be used imo if you took an enemy province and you know it will be taken back soon. preach is good for raising your own dominion if its low and for reducing nemy dominion. blood hunt gets blood slaves but increases unrest (reduce taxes+patrol to counter unrest) blood sacrifice is a bit like preaching but you need blood slaves and monthly ritual cost gems and cast a spell (huge variety there)

[Endoperez]

Monthly Ritual is of most use when you want to cast a cheap spell for many turns. Awaken Vine Men and Awaken Vine Ogre are two very good examples.
Note that if the spell defines a target province, it won't change, so monthly ritual order is useless for site-searching spells.

Blood Hunt is only useful if you want to use Blood magic. Generally, there are no sites from which you get blood slaves, the blood equivalent of gems. You have to hunt for them. In common circustances only blood mages can hunt effectively, although if your only blood mages are very expensive (e.g. Skrattis of Jotunheim) it might be worth it to have dozens of Scouts hunting slaves.
The most common method of blood hunting is to have a province with big population but not too high income (i.e. not capital, big Farmlands province, but with population of maybe 7000-10000), lower the taxes, build a lab, and leave few commanders hunting. If you don't want to lower taxes, you can Patrol the raising unrest away, but that will lower the population even faster, and you might run out of good hunting provinces if the game continued really, really long.
If you have blood mages earching, forge them Blood Dousing Rods ASAP. They help as much as another level of Blood magic. They don't work on non-blood hunters.
Remember that you can press Pool from F7 menu. This takes most of the micromanagement out of blood.

I'm not sure which Blood nation is best to try it out. Iron Woods Jotunheim might work - they have Vaetti Hags to use as hunters, Skratti to summon some Fiends of Darkness and Frost Fiends, and later Ice Devils. And if you get Angerboda, Jotunheim hero, you can do lots more. Like cast Reascendance, and get B3F3 Fallen Angel, or send Horrors to attack your enemies.
Cross Breeding is also fun, although not very useful.

Preaching and Blood Sacrifice (improved Preaching which uses Blood Slaves) are useful to negate enemy dominion, and to strengthen your own. You lose if your dominions dies, and you can avoid storming a heavily-defended enemy capital if you preach him to death.
Dominion also affects your pretender's and prophet's toughness, morale of your own and enemy units, and changes the world to work under the scales you chose.

Choosing high dominion is often all you have to do, except in special cases and against enemy border.
If you chose Production and Order, you'll want positive dominion of 4-5 in your forts so that the scales stay at maximum. Strong dominion also lessens the seasonal temperature changes, which lower your income a little.
Also, against Ermor themes or Pangaean Carrion Woods you'll want to keep their dominion as far from you as possible. Those special dominions kill population VERY, very quickly.
If you play as either, you'll want as high dominion as possible. It weakens your enemies, and gives you more free units.

Mictlan is a special case. Their dominion DOES NOT spread in normal ways. Temples won't help, although they still slow the spread of your enemies' dominion. For you to stay alive, The Blood Must Flow. That is, your priests have to use Blood Sacrifice. Jade Knives help, and stronger priests can be very powerful once you have enough slaves to burn. In the early game you'll be in trouble, though. And Mictlan needs rather high base dominion, because it affects the power of Blood Sacrifice.


Pillage is useful for taking money away from the enemy. It is often easier to just raise taxes to 200, but if you e.g. have a weak army in his capital, with no way out, you could pillage it and do the most harm you can. I don't think I have ever actually used pillage for strategical reason.