How difficult is this game?

[Taqwus]

Just note that blood magic is different. Non-trivially useful blood-magic magic sites are quite rare. The vast majority of your sacrificial blood slaves will need to be gathered by your commanders (preferably blood mages -- everybody else is bad at it) spending their turns to do so, thus costing you commander-turns as well as a mix of population/income as you patrol to keep the resulting unrest down.

Mictlan (EA,LA) is a bit difficult to start with, as it's completely dependent on blood for even spreading dominion.

[KissBlade]

Fenris99 said:
This is all great advice, thank you

Hey I noticed you mentioned buying the game in downtown NYC. I live in Astoria, NYC just so ya know. =)

[Fenris99]

KissBlade said:

Hey I noticed you mentioned buying the game in downtown NYC. I live in Astoria, NYC just so ya know. =)

Well hello neighbor. I live upstate but I work in Manhattan.

[Ubercat]

Nikolai said:
> How do I get gems?

And there are spells that give you gems periodically or in one go. And if you are total bastard, you can hunt your population down to sacrifice them as slaves, or you can kill them to send crows to collect death gems (not recommeded)

There are no simple answers in Dominions III. :-)

How do you kill your population for death gems? I never heard of that. Can any faction do it?

-Ubercat

[Nikolai]

Taxes at 200% and pillage, then send the crows (air spell) I did say it was not recommended. :-) But I have done it with Cealum because I had air gems to burn, and no death income.

[Meglobob]

Nikolai said:
Taxes at 200% and pillage, then send the crows (air spell) I did say it was not recommended. :-) But I have done it with Cealum because I had air gems to burn, and no death income.

How many death gems could you pull in doing this?

Surely you cant get enough death gems to be a useful strategy? Wouldn't alchemy be better? Even at air-->astral-->death, ie...1/4 the air in death gems.

[HotNifeThruButr]

I think a good way to start getting some perspective on things in the game is to start by picking a unit that has reasonably strong troops (cough MA Vanheim cough) and a pretender design with good enough scales to use those troops (probably a stay-at-home or site searching pretender, for now).

Play on a map that's not overwhelming big with not an overwhelming number of people (cough Aran, six people cough cough).

Set the enemy nations to those nations that you think are interesting, because you'll get to see a glimpse of what they have to offer.

Now, once you've started your game, look at your mages and then look at your spellbook. Pick one or two spells that are either low or middle tech and that seem interesting to you (Thunder Strike is always fun) and research straight for it.

Fight, search for sites, build temples, and do whatever you would do while you're waiting to get the spell researched. Once you have gotten the spell researched, bring your mages who can cast it along with your army and play with the spell a little, as well as any other spells you happened to pick up.

You should have met your neighbors by now and seen a bit of what they can do. If any of their troops look interesting, you can start the next game as that nation and start the process over.

It might also be helpful to make three games wherein you choose and control all the nations in the early, middle, and late eras, so you can have a quick reference to all their units and mages.

[Nikolai]

> How many death gems could you pull in doing this?
> Surely you cant get enough death gems to be a useful strategy? Wouldn't alchemy be better? Even at air-->astral-->death, ie...1/4 the air in death gems.

I do not rememeber exact ratio. I know I was not satisfied, and decided not to do it. Which is why I said 'Not recommended'. I think that spell needs balance.

[Fenris99]

Thanks for th advice, HotNifeThruButr . I shall try that tonight.

I played out a game last night. I didn't lose but I was losing when I went to bed. It seems to me that after turn 2 or 3 you have to conquer a new territory every couple of turns to stay competitive. Because that's what the AI will be doing.

In RTS I tend to be a turtler but I see that's not really an option here.

[VedalkenBear]

Re: Raven Feast, the formula is right in the book. 'The exchange rate is gems = sqrt(corpses)/3.' (DomIII Rulebook, p.208). Since it is 4 gems, the 'normal' conversion rate from Aireath is 4:1. Substituting that into the formula, you can solve for how many corpses you need to generate how many gems. Here is a quick table.

Gem Corpses
1 9
2 36
3 81
4 144
5 225
6 324
etc.

Note this means that if there are 36+ corpses in a province, you will receive more gems than through alchemy. The really interesting part is that at 144+ corpses, you get at least a 1:1 ratio.

This is in addition to the fact that it eliminates all corpses in the territory, which can be useful in its own right.

The nations I can see this primarily useful for are EA Caelum (definitely can cast it, have Death mages with no Death income, IIRC), EA Ermor (would need pretender, but same dilemma), and, ironically, LA Ermor. Again, needs a Pretender, but their entire engine runs on Death gems, and they have the corpses to burn (almost literally).

Fenris: In regard to expansion, you generally want to take one province _or more_ starting from the third turn.