Why am I not able to win the Orania Map ?

[JimKnopf]

This is really a great community here. I think it will take me quite some time to to check out all the advice I got from you .
In the meantime I was able to start a new attempt and it looks pretty good for me this time.
Although I am at war with Pythium, Ermor and C´tis I don´t see any danger for my empire. Once C´tis was the strongest Empire regarding troops and provinces.
That has changed after they declared war on me. Now I am the strongest. I own about 25% percent of the map with 7 nations (includung mine remaining)
Now to the bad news
It´s turn 131: So it will be no fast victory. (If I should actually win )
I used a game setup that would hopefully be very disadvantageous to Ermor. (World richness rich + Independents 9). Apparently it worked.
All AIs are on Easy level.
So all in all it won´t be a glorious victory. But I think this time it will be a victory.

I will keep you up-to-date with my progress and will incorporate your advice into my strategy for my next game.

[Saxon]

Last night I played Oriana again. One thing that stood out was that you run into AI empires pretty quick and have fighting on all sides. Many of the suggestions on this thread are excellent, but most focus on how to build a stronger nation, rather than how to deal with the particular map.

Can anyone share how they deal with the multiple front war? It was mentioned that the AI tends not to attack when the PD is set around 11. That can help stabilize a front, but not stop a grumpy army. What other tactics and strategies have people found useful?

[Ironhawk]

Whatever map you are on doesnt really matter after a certain point as the tactics are pretty much all the same. Once you know how to handle the AI you should be able to do it anywhere. In your case, the best advice is the old adage: the best way to win a two front war is not to get in one.

-Keep your PD high on all AI or potential AI borders.
-Keep your troop numbers at #2 or #3 rank.
-When you do declare war on an AI (or they do on you) go straight for the throat! Take thier capital and crush thier production capacity and then mop up the rest of thier provs.

If you do find yourself in a two front war (as i agree is often the case vs. AI) the best things to do are to just get to the chokepoints and fortify them. Place good sized garrisons there and just let the AI impale itself trying to attack you every 5-10 turns there. It doesnt know any better. Keep the defensive posture until you are finished with your primary opponent. Only then come back and wipe out the secondary.

One other note about fighting the AI. Try to keep the size of your front to as few provinces as possible (like 2-3 if you can do it!). This will keep the AI from randomly breaking out and wandering around aimlessly in your backcountry. Use lulls in the fighting after big battles to capture territory and move the front forward thru wide areas (where you might need to defend 5+ front provs) and back to a more managable size.

[Tharivol_Street_Prince]

And never forget that one of the swiftest ways to subdue an enemy offense is raising Unrest to all hell in their home province. It won't win you the game, but it can sure as hell make it a lot easier on you if you have couple spies in each neighboring kingdom's capital (with a liberal sprinkling of disaster spells on their more lucrative provinces, of course

[JimKnopf]

Graeme Dice said:

Never take turmoil unless your theme requires it. Similarly, do not take restless worshippers.

Growth provides little to no benefit in the unmodded game unless you plan to play for several hundred turns. Order 3 provides a far greater boost to income.

These are mistakes. You spent hundreds or thousands of gold on province defense instead of building a castle or buying mobile troops with greater combat effectiveness.

You are right. It was really a mistake to raise local defense that high. During my last successful attempt to beat the map I nowhere had local defense higher than 40. Maybe even that was too high. This I reinforced with with a squad of good troops (about 20 to 30 heart companions or heavy infantry) and as many mystics I could produce. Later on I reinforced them with hordes of vine men from enchanted forest. That worked pretty good.

Regarding Growth vs Order: I planned to have a strong dominion that spreads fast. Thats why I chose the restless worshippers theme. So I had to choose turmoil 1.
I will check out your advice, regarding using Order instead of growth.

[JimKnopf]

Saxon said:
The provincial defense issue appears to be a big problem for you. A couple of points on that might help. First, the troops you get for the money are generally pretty weak. I think of them as a deterrent to keep out very small armies and some cannon fodder to support the real defense army when it arrives.

Second, look at the cost of those weak troops. For each step in provincial defense, you pay one more gold than the current defense. That means to upgrade from 3 defense, you have to pay 4 gold. Not to bad. But to upgrade from 22, you have to pay 23 gold. That is getting pricy, especially compared to what you can get for that kind of money at your castle.

Now, if you were pushing provincial defense up to 60 or 70, you were paying 60 gold for each weak unit. A lot of your resources were not utilized in the best possible fashion.

Sure, there is no upkeep, but you also can not use these troops for anything except the defense of one province. Regular units can move on both offense and defense and are much more flexible. I keep my defense at 11 unless it is a active boarder, where I try to put it to 21. You get an extra commander at these two cut offs, so it is worth going up from 10 or 20.

The money I save goes into mobile troops, temples, labs and castles.

My other comment is about the immobile pretender. I personally prefer a mobile pretender, as it give me more flexibility. For the “super players” they can plan turns in advance and handle tricky things. I get things wrong on many occasions and sometimes need to rush a pretender to battle to help out. Again, I am not saying it is not possible to do it, but for those of us who need extra help, a mobile pretender is a nice extra resource. They don’t need to be a Super combatant (SC), just their spell powers can tip a battle.

One Ermor tip is that Eyes of Aiming put into the normal priest make them pretty good at cleaning up large numbers of the lesser undead. The normal one misses a lot, but the boost to precision increases their kill rate.

You mention you didn’t want to recruit Astrologers. They are one of Arco’s trademark magic units, which in Dominions is usually a clue that you should pay extra attention to them. They are strong in astral magic. With a starshine cap and the banner of the northern star, you can boost these guys to five astral, which is huge. (speaking of which, small is big in this game. A single extra level of magic goes a long way, it is different than games with huge bonuses that don’t mean much) If you get lucky and get a mage with four astral to start, you can boost him up to six. Have a look at the crystal matrix and slave matrix. You can turn these mages into powerful killing machines that do not tire. I mentioned mind burn, but should have said soul slay. I have created a firing squad of about 20 astral mages that will kill just about anything and can teleport in to do it. Dominions has lots of ways to power up mages and some commanders and the more you find, the more you will win.

I like the other unit, the Mystic, but they can not be powered up as far. I would suggest building only Astrologers and Hearts Companions at your home castle and recruit your mystics at secondary castles. If you do not have a bless strategy, you might ignore the Hearts Companions. Sorry, I don’t remember their cost compared to the regular Hoplite units.

Finally, sure, lots of people say the game is easy. But usually it is the hard core who post and not the normal folks like you and I. The postings are biased. Also, it is a human thing. Most folks don’t like to admit they get their butt handed to them by a game, so they don’t post their failures, they post their successes.

In the meantime I started implementing strategies from this Thread and I am doing much better. I even won the Map once (OK, to be honest I quit the game, when I contolled about 50% of the map and was convinced I would win).
Currently my local defence values range between 25 and 40 supported by as many mystics as I can build. Besides that I add summons or normal troops. That works well in most cases.

Mystics vs. Astrologers
In the beginning when I used mages only to research and almost not in battle I chose Mystics because they are slightly better in research.
Even now I still prefer Mystics. Especially in the early game their fire and water mages are very useful in battle. The astral battle spells looked rather weak to me.
Nevertheless I will have a closer look on the astrologers.

And thanks for the tip about eyes of aiming, because in my current game a war with ermor is unavoidable.

[JimKnopf]

Morkilus said:
I've failed plenty of times against the AI, usually when there's an AE Ermor or C'tis involved. Dunno why I lose to C'tis. I find that I have alot more fun playing when there ISN'T a death theme to have to deal with, since the other AI nations never have a chance. It's pretty much given that you'll be fighting Ermor and probably be crushed. It's not cheating to leave them out, but if you want to fight them you better beat them early in the game, and have a solid plan to do so. In multiplayer, it's not unusual to gang up on a death theme just so the dominion doesn't spoil the... spoils

You are right. Actually it was stupid from me calling it cheating to leave Ermor out. I would never play without Ermor because it simply makes me feel good to save the world from the undead.
What I do is to change the world setup in a way I hope is disadvantageous to ermor. (Independents: 9 + Richness: rich).

[Sandman]

Even 25 PD is probably too much.

[shovah]

yes, the best defence for anyone other than ulm is to mass indie archers/crossbows (or possibly others if you have longbows ect) with a few units up front to take damage and possibly more archers or a flaming arrows/wind guide mage. Vrs the ai mystics are better than astrologers except for mind hunting ect but in mp where people go for quality over quantity those astral spells become very viable.

[Agrajag]

Regarding PD, think about it this way, for each point you put in PD you get a unit that's worth... X gold (lets say 10), that means that if you got 11 PD you paid 11 gold for a unit worth 10 gold.
Obviously its more complicated than that (these units don't cost upkeep, and if they win the battle they get to regenerate), but that's an interesting approach to PD.