Yet another new person with a question...

[fantasma]

Oh, sorry if it came like that, my point to make was that there are many different approaches and views what is intuitive and what is obvious and how to learn. I took Squirrels statement as an example of IMO invalid generalization, nothing personal intended at all.

[Daynarr]

Time for you guys to calm down. This is spinning out of control and I'm going to start giving infractions pretty soon if this keeps up. The OP asked two simple questions being new to the game, and you made a 7 pages of arguing about that simple question. You really are NOT helping him this way.

[Edi]

I'm going to second Daynarr. Tone it down and keep it civil.

If you want to cover all approaches, give some basic advice and point to resources where the new people can find out more (FAQ, strategy index etc etc).

Some new people will know more than others, but you're better off not making any kind of assumptions until you get to actually gauge the newbie's level of knowledge. If it's unclear, a simple "Can you please elaborate on how much you already know?" can work wonders.

[Cosian]

Munkie and I apparently stumbled on the same Elemental Post referencing DOM3. I ended up picking it up as well and am really enjoying the layer upon layer of strategy and things to do.

Prior to reading this post I had selected Niefelheim after reading a strategy guide somewhere on them. It seemed like a race that would move forward into understanding some key game concepts...

Bless and Sacred Units - Since the Frost Giants have a good Sacred Units and a Multi Bless strategy seemed to have quite a bit of support I dug into it and ended up creating an Imprisoned Cyclops E9N9W4. This coupled with Companies of 5 Niefel Giants and 1 Niefel Jarl seems to work pretty good.

Magic Item Creation and Spell Use- Buffing up with some good magic items or spells seems to be applicable to these units to augment some of thier weaknesses like suceptabilty to fire. So I explored that.

The Scales - Since the Niefel and Jotuns like cold, playing with the race got me into understanding the scales.

Anyway I like playing them and they got me into a few key game concepts in what seemed a logical manner. They seemed to be a decent choice for my first game.

[Kadelake]

Originally Posted by Cosian

Munkie and I apparently stumbled on the same Elemental Post referencing DOM3. I ended up picking it up as well and am really enjoying the layer upon layer of strategy and things to do.

Prior to reading this post I had selected Niefelheim after reading a strategy guide somewhere on them. It seemed like a race that would move forward into understanding some key game concepts...

Bless and Sacred Units - Since the Frost Giants have a good Sacred Units and a Multi Bless strategy seemed to have quite a bit of support I dug into it and ended up creating an Imprisoned Cyclops E9N9W4. This coupled with Companies of 5 Niefel Giants and 1 Niefel Jarl seems to work pretty good.

Magic Item Creation and Spell Use- Buffing up with some good magic items or spells seems to be applicable to these units to augment some of thier weaknesses like suceptabilty to fire. So I explored that.

The Scales - Since the Niefel and Jotuns like cold, playing with the race got me into understanding the scales.

Anyway I like playing them and they got me into a few key game concepts in what seemed a logical manner. They seemed to be a decent choice for my first game.

It looks like you made some very good choices for a first game and learned a lot. I think you might have proven that Niefelheim is a good nation for new players (One of the good nations, I'm sure there are others too...)

Regarding units: Niefel giants are great but don't forget the skinshifters. They are really powerful even though they are not sacred and their low resource cost means you can recruit a lot of them when you need them.

Regarding magic: I think you've got the right idea about using buffs and magic items. Niefelheim is great for that kind of stuff. The next step might be to learn damage spells and other battle magic. That's the order I learned things at least

[Cosian]

Originally Posted by Kadelake

It looks like you made some very good choices for a first game and learned a lot. I think you might have proven that Niefelheim is a good nation for new players (One of the good nations, I'm sure there are others too...)
......

Regarding magic: I think you've got the right idea about using buffs and magic items. Niefelheim is great for that kind of stuff. The next step might be to learn damage spells and other battle magic. That's the order I learned things at least

Right you are and thats exactly what came next ..... I was on my second game and I had kind of fell into a groove using combat teams of 1 Nifel Jarl and 5 Nifel Giants. That combo, coupled with having a pretender with strong bless bonuses seemed pretty unstoppable.

Lulled into a false sense of security, I had gained pretty good control of the map and was just starting to consolidate and do some mopping up. I sent 2 such groups into a couple provinces. I wasn't really paying too much attention. Each province had 50-80 of errr...something .....a veritable cakewake for my giants...

Next thing I knew I am trying to figure out where my giants went. Note I had long since stopped watching all my indy battles since the giants just dominated. Hmmm? They must have all died. I found 1 Nifel Jarl cowering in a province he must have retreated to. So I started looking at those indy provinces more carefully. They were predominately made of up of devils with some supporting troop. Well apparently those devils are pretty tough...at least against Frost Giants.

My second attempt I tossed in a few priests set for Banishment x5. That should do the trick. I watched the combat and again saw my giant team get totally raped by about 30+ devils. The devils just fly in on round 1 and surround the giants and start blasting their hear aura. The Banishments did do some good, but not nearly enough. The devils seemed pretty resistant to the Banishments.

So it became a new game....figure out how to deal with those devils. And that drove me to start digging through spells and figuring out where I needed to research, what Nifel spellcasters to use, and what spells to script them with.

The Jotun Skratti with their 2 Water path seemed a good bet. I researched Evocation 2, gave them each some water gems and sent a number of them in with the team. Scripting a Rain along with Cold Bolts and Cold Blasts made the difference. I suspect there are a number of other approaches but it was cool figuring out how to counter specific mobs.

Now I need to see if there is way to heal afflictions...the victory was not without its costs...

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by Cosian

Now I need to see if there is way to heal afflictions...the victory was not without its costs...

There are a couple of ways to do this, pretty much all requiring nature magic and some research. Luckily for you you went with a N bless, so your pretender should be able to take care of this. (If he's broken free already?)

In SP probably the best way would be casting the global 'Gift of Health' (Enchantment5, Nature 5 to cast, costs 50N gems) This global increases the hit points of all units in friendly dominion by 10%/dominion candle - absolutely amazing for regenerating giants in it's own right - and also has a good chance of healing afflictions.

Second option would be to forge the artifact 'The Chalice'. This unique item becomes available at Contstrution 8 and requires N4S3 to forge. When equiped it checks to heal the affliciont of all the units in it's province.

These two option are the most powerful, and will quickly get rid of all afflictions in your dominion/in that particular province, so for single player they're your go-to options. Additionally, these are the only ways you can heal affliction on undead units. (Which will become very significant when you get to the stage you want to explore Tartarian factories.)

In multi-player though, these become less reliable, since you'll be competing with everybody else to get these. (Unique item and a global of which only can be up at one time.) And everybody really wants these, for the aforementioned Tartarians. (Some of the players might decide they don't want to dedicate the resources to compete for them, but everyone would love to have them nonetheless.)

Third option is to get a unit that's a healer, and give them the order to heal afflicions. (There's a specific icon for healers, so they're easy to recognize.) There's a few nations that have a recruitable healer. Most notably Arco's priestess, (all ages) but also Hinnoms Acha and Gaths Abba. Can't think of any others off the top of my head. For nations without recruitable healers there's the Fairy Queen. (Summonable at Conjuration 8, requires N5, costs 40N gems. She's not a very good healer*, but unless I'm mistaken it's the only (non-national) summonable healer? In most circumstances I wouldn't recommend summoning one 'just' for healing, but they're very capable mages, (A3N3, so they offer a way into air magic if you don't have it already) and quite a popular summon anyway, so if you have one and she's not otherwise occupied you can have her healing away.

* The way healing works is that first the game checks if your healing ability kicks in, depending on your 'healer' value. Arco's priestess has 100, while the fairy queen has... around 25 if I'm not mistaken. If this check succeeds then it checks each individual affliction to see if it's actually healed, some afflictions being harder to get rid of than others.

Edit: EA Ermor has healers too.

[Cosian]

Sweet! Thanks! New stuff to explore this weekend ..

[HoneyBadger]

I kind of throw my hands up at trying to help anyone with this thread, any longer.

I'll just point out that I never suggested that someone from China wouldn't understand English, so there's no misunderstanding. I only meant that they might be more interested in China's representation in the game.

The part where it was suggested (not by me!) that "Chinese people don't know how to speak English" was several steps beyond any place I ever took the argument, or intended it to go.

The thread has clearly gone beyond ridiculousness, or any desire for mutual understanding, or cooperative effort, which is pretty sad, since I initially felt it could have been quite useful.

[Knai]

I wouldn't say that, its still useful enough, there just aren't enough people posting. To rectify that.

I would consider early age Arcocephale a good way to learn. They have some magic variety, but more importantly high troop variety. Even things like Wind Riders, which are horribly overpriced, work wonders against the AI, and one can play around with infantry, massed slingers (sure, archers are better, but massing slingers on turn 1 can make an army nasty), chariots, and the aforementioned Wind Rider without even getting into the magic system. Once they do get into the magic system, they get a smattering of everything but death and blood, with very nice air and nature, both of which are easy paths to understand.