Alexander's ever-expanding Tome of Knowledge

These work well to teleport into back undead provinces, since commanders don't use food and most undead provinces don't have much supply.

[ January 13, 2004, 08:38: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Keir Maxwell]

Lots of entertaining stuff!

My favourite C'tis unit is Serpent Dancers. With a water9 blessing you can really cause havoc with these guys. Haven't tried fire9 with them yet but it could be interesting.

You can support Serpent Dancers with City Guard as Arrow catchers. City Guard may not be much good vs real troops but they have a strat move of 2, prot 14 and will do fine in the early expansion in a support role on hold and attack. Later they do better than you would think in BIG units to compensate for low morale and they do have good MR's. As they play such a light role in expansion you get alot of veterans with a decent def and they have a spear for repelling - its not their job to win the battle.

One of the things I really like about this approach is how light casulties are during expansion if you get it right. This means you get a really good ramping up of military strenght.

The other key advantage is that the cost work well together. With the Serent Dancers costing 20gps 5 res and the CG costing 10gps and 13 res its easy to build up a mixed army fast.

The Shamans are great fun with 50% quickness. If you can abuse them normally . . .

Alex will you be putting out a text/word copy of your Tome?

Cheers

Keir

[ January 15, 2004, 06:37: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[apoger]

This thread is the copy of the tome!

I intend to add a few stratagies to it every week. This game will be dead and forgotten before I run out of material.

[Wauthan]

THE HOLY BOLTS OF MARIGNON

A strategy so fiendish that its use has been Banned by Carmong the Cardinal of Marignon himself, under the pain of torturous death. It is still allowed to be used the holy wars against heretic faiths of course.

Take virtue pretender. Take air magic 10. Build three*10 crossbowmen. One on fire archers and two on fire closest. Build a group of Knights of the Chalise and put them in the front on hold and attack closest. Get a Friar to bless them.

The Knights are plenty tough so why waste such a high bless effect on them? Well since they are now nigh impervious to missile fire you can fire at will right into melee with your crossbows without fear of friendly casualities. They are also shock resistant so the Virtue pretender can idly toss chained lightning about.

My opponent had his archers on rearmost, cavalery, archers and closest. Putting a single knight in the far back flank solved two of these problems and attrition on the crossbows was not very severe at all.

I devastated the AI in this way using only five knights in the front, and five*10 crossbowmen. Almost looked like musketeer based wars are not so far off in Dominions 2.

This strategy can of course be used in different variations for the two other strong missile nations Man and T'ien Ch'i. Trouble is that their holy units don't have the staying power of Knights of the Chalice for the same investment in gold.

[General Tacticus]

re: THE HOLY BOLTS OF MARIGNON

I often use a (weaker) Version with Ulm : find yourself a province with nice and cheap shortbows. Build as many as you can, and fill the sky with arrows, while your nice big super-heavy infantry holds the line. Arrows just bounce off your infantry, but the enemy will take quite nice casualties...

[Taqwus]

Regarding Phoenix Pyre abuse, this might be very cheap and nasty with Communicants considering that the Phoenix Pyre, cast by a fire/astral mage, should also affect them too. It might be cheap enough to set up some bizarre chain-reactions just for kicks...

[Pocus]

IN THE SHADOWS WE WALK:

This is the standard operating procedure for nations which have an easy access to body etheral. The aim is to toughten quite a lot some choice units with BE. You dont need awesome units, good ones are sufficient.

Have a mage on BE thrice.

I) In front of him, put 3 Groups of 2 units on hold& attack (yes in the same square, the front one, see below). During battle, they will be placed by the dom2 tac engine with one unit in the square you requested, and one in the south-west square (below the mage, if you follow me). This give you a total of 6 units in 2 squares.

II) In his square put 2 Groups of 1 unit.

Overall you have 3 squares filled, each with 3 units (8 combatting, 1 mage). The hold&attack will make your combattants move on the third round. The mage will cast BE during the first three rounds, on each of the 3 squares. He will commences on his square, has the value is the highest (thus protecting him ASAP).

This lead to 8 etheralized units attacking on round 3.
This formation can be repeated for several mages,depending on mage availability and toughness of opposition. Against indep, you can generally win a battle at 1 against 3 w/o too much problem.

A further interest is that your small Groups prevent you from a total rout. Groups will rout one by one, when some soldiers are wounded. On high end units, like paladins or knights they will rout if direly wounded, and this is what you want : each wounded retreat, thus preventing the loss of the unit.

By the way, for cavalry, adapt the formation, as they are size 3. You can BE 5 cavalry for each mage, put one horseman in each square.

Yes, it asks for some micromanaging

edit : typos.

[ January 17, 2004, 07:35: Message edited by: Pocus ]

[void]

DEADLY SWARM

create GE Haunted forest first.
most ppl(93%) will not go to dispel it(view here: http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...=000999#000001 )

put a nature mage into combat. Nature 1 is enough,more levels more better.
give she some emerald---you can only give one.
have she cast "swarm" in the battle.
yes, a nature 1 mage + 1 emerald..what will happen?

it's not a scheme of attacking,but a good tactics for defending(only effective in your dominions).

[ January 27, 2004, 02:43: Message edited by: void ]

[Tuna-Fish]

Originally posted by apoger:
EVERYONE LOVES DRAGONS

BLUE DRAGON

Early research provides Quickness and Breath of Winter, which make the dragon much more formidable.

Water-9 provides the bless effect of +4 defense and "50% quickness". Not bad at all.

In the midgame the spell Grip of Winter might help deal with large forces. This is not as dangerous as the red dragon, but the reserach will be done ages earlier.

Water-9 caster also has a very nice spell that can deal massive damage versus both normal armies and big creatures and cannot be resisted. What is it? Falling Frost!

It has area = 5+ AND damage 18+. When cast by a water-9 mage, it deals damage to an area of 11 and does enough damage to kill all normal troops and severely wound all better ones. And unlike most water/fire spells, it just cannot be resisted with anything but high protection.

I mainly use it with the Jotunheim Son of Niefel, who can easily power himself up a level or two with robe of the sea and sea king's goblet. W-11 falling frost tested against heavies of ulm, nothing survived the first bLast and it has the area of 13.

Instant damage

[Graeme Dice]

AS YOUR LIFE GOES DOWN THE DRAIN.

THis is a strategy that is only really useful with the nations that have easy access to death 3 and death 4 mages. The nations that can reach death 3 fairly easily include:
C'Tis: Sauromancers(Default/Tombs) and 1/8 Marshmasters(Miasma)
Ermor: 1/8 Grand Thaumaturgs(Broken Empire), Dusk Elders(Ashen Empire/Soul Gate)
Jotunheim: 1/16 Gygia(Iron Woods, Niefelheim), 1/4 Norna(Utgard)
Vanheim: Hangadrott(Helheim)

Any nation that can reach death 3 can also summon a mound fiend for 28 gems, which is a death 3 and unholy 3 mage. This is very expensive in gems however, and you may be better off using them otherwise.

What this strategy involves is the alteration 5 spell "Drain Life". This is a range 25, precision 100, 14+ unresistable damage, armor negating spell requiring a death skill of 4 that both heals and removes fatigue from the caster when cast on a living target. Drain life will damage any creature, but will not provide healing or fatigue reduction against non-living creatures. To reach death 4 costs only ten gems for a skull staff for the above nations, so it is a very good investment.

This synergizes very well with quickness, as the mage will get tired only if they face an army almost exclusively of undead. The mages are also usually smart enough to start raising skeletons (enchantment 3) to protecct themselves and overwhelm the enemy. The AI will then alter its spellcasting to use drain life when its fatigue reaches high levels, and go back to summoning more undead, or casting high level spells such as banefire or cloud of death.