Newbie Tactics

[kyre]

Before I ask all these questions, I've looked through the forum and the FAQ's, but if there's somewhere that already has the answer to my questions, please point me in that direction.

I've been playing Dominion II for a couple days, and can't seem to do anything succcessfully. I think I understand the basic concepts, but obviously I need some help on tactics. Generally I prefer to play strategy games pretty defensively, and I'm wondering if that's just not a good idea in this one.

Typically I play as Arco (not GE), on the Urgaia map. My Pretender is a Great Sage, with 5 Astral , 2 Earth, and 1 Nature. Dominion is 7, with +1 order, +1 productivity, and +2 magic. My fortress is a watch tower. I've played around with different setups, but so far this has been the one giving me the best (limited) success.

My problem is that if I play defensively, the AI players expand rapidly and them can overwhelm my small number of provinces. I've tried expanding quickly, after I get 6 or 7 provinces I start losing them to the AI (I am investing in the province defense up to at least 20 as soon as I can after taking them over). Here are my basic questions.

Are there other cultures/Pretenders that might be better suited to a defensive style of play?

In a typical game on Urgaia with 4 or 5 AI opponents, how quickly do you take over other provinces?

Do you leave commanders in each province after it's been conquered?

Do you build fortresses and temples in each province?

What is a typical squad size/type to take over independent provinces?

I want to build more magic using commanders in the early game, but their low leadership doesn't seem to make that practical. If I try to team a mage commander up with a regular commander, I start having gold problems from supporting two commanders per province. Which type/combination do you use?

Are there some general tactics to use so that I can "get on my feet" and establish a decent base to grow from?

Thanks in advance for any help!

[Agrajag]

Ahhh, the noturious unknown gendered hero from HoMM.
Anyway, I don't know that much about the game (pretty much of a newbie as well, even though Ive been trolling here for a long time) but here are some things I'd like to say about your post:
1) PD (Provincial Defense) is pretty bad for most nations, its just the chaff units that get killed in a blow, you don't want a lot of that guarding your provinces (though atleast 1 is almost a must, just so you can see what attacked you). I much prefer saving my money for troops that can retake the province or protect it.
2) A strong offense is also a strong defense, since by pushing the borders in the direction of the enemy, you prevent him from directly attacking you with armies (unfortunatly, he can still use flying/teleporting/stealthy (etc.) troops to cross the borders, but while your main army can advance forwards, the second army marching to the front can take care of intruders.
3) 7 dominion sounds a bit too high for such scales, in my opinion. If you don't have good scales, you don't have to have a positive dominion score in all of your provinces.

From what I hear here, most games are won by use of magic, which means that regular armies tend to become obsolete as the game progressess, so relying solely on national armies isnt a good idea, but I wouldn't know much about alternatives with Arco, being a newb and all P=

[Manuk]

First you want to do is to read the documentation that´s already been written. check out the links

http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...t=&Board=UBB74

Then, always remember to place units in the right place and with what you want them to do. Fast units could be on the sides ordering them to attack rearmost. Heavy infantry in front followed by javeliners and then archers.

I understand that Arco´s mages have lots off randoms. use different kind of mages to search for magic sites first. then they can help you casting attack spells during battle. Defensive players like to research a lot(sages are best), grab a water 2 mage and build clam of pearls item to equip as much pearls as they can on they researchers (when you have pearls on them press f7 and pool them to take them to your reserve.)

Thaumaturgy school is good for your astral mages.

Initially build pelstasts in combination with something, they are good against weak things.

[Alneyan]

Welcome aboard! Answers given in random order; I was contemplating writing some sort of introductory guide, with some explanations on how things work, what is worth it, and the like. Hmm.

- On the Pretender: your main problem here is that the Pretender virtually mirrors your native mages: your Mystics will have Earth 2, your Priestesses have Nature 1, and your Astrologers can reach Astral 5 with a lucky pick and an item. If you want to focus on your national magic, you should pick higher magic levels, such as an Astral level around 9, for example (and some Nature magic, at least 3, to be able to increase the Nature magic of your Priestesses). If you focus strongly on one path, you will likely want to look at the Pretenders strong in this one path, when available. I cannot think of an Astral mobile Pretender however, besides your national Shedu.

Another alternative is to get a Pretender with offensive capabilities. I have described one such setup (among many) in a recent thread (Looking for a good PBEM setup), with some generic explanations; this setup was a Virtue with multiple paths, perfectly able to take provinces on her own, and a competent mage. She will allow you to defend yourself more easily, while giving you a wider array of magic spells. Another option for a fighting Pretender involves the use of a tough melee fighter, relying on hitpoints and protection, rather than spells for defence; examples include the Nataraja or the Dragons. In this case, you should still consider giving them a path of magic or two to augment their offensive capabilities.

Yet another setup, this time geared for expansion, is the use of blessed troops. If your Pretender has level 4 or more in any given path, your holy troops (when blessed) will gain additional bonuses; at level 9, another bonus is gained. For example, a Moloch with Fire-9 will give your Heart Companions +4 to attack, and flaming weapons, allowing them to deal more damage. You will need a Priestess to bless them, however, but once they are in the field, ten of them or so should do some very nice damage against the independents. The Moloch has also access to Fire Darts (Evocation 1), a Fire spell whose firepower increases quickly with magic levels. The Moloch can cast this spell *very* easily, and do some real damage with it.

Note that this last setup is specialised for expansion, and will likely be hard put against the AI early game tactics. Any Pretender able to take down independents alone should work well, however. Which brings me to my second point...

- Some players considered the AI to be too weak and too easy to figure out. More specifically, the AI has trouble as the game draws on, but it does a fairly good job at swarming you early on. Having a Pretender able to deal with those troops should be helpful, since the AI will almost only field mundane troops, the kind of which a fighting Pretender can take down quite easily.

Your nation is likely at a disadvantage in this stage of the game too: Arcoscephale is not the best nation for building up troops quickly, and a swarm army can be annoying indeed. An option to deal with such "nuisances" is to deploy Elephants, very potent creatures when it comes to destroy an enemy army quickly. However, Elephants are prone to rout, and so you should put other troops in their squad. If you have Hoplites and Elephants in the same squad, the morale of the whole squad will take into account both units: one creature at 20 morale and two at 10 morale will result in a squad morale of... 13.67, much better than the basic 10.

- Speed of expansion: A tough one to answer, as it mostly depends on your strategy. It is possible to go at full speed, and to have more than 20 provinces after turn 10; it is also possible to go more slowly, and search your provinces for magic sites, while building up your forteresses. Usually though, you will want to conquer one province per turn on average at least, and more when possible (when you have two armies in the field).

- Defending provinces: The most common approach is to leave them alone, and to go on ahead, unless said province happens to be a choke point. If you want to protect a province and do not have a fort there yet, you should station troops and mages/fighting commanders (the Super-combattants, or SC in short, able to deal a lot of punishment by themselves); a Strategos will not do much to protect a province. Every single province should have one point of Province Defence, allowing you to have a report of the enemy forces taking the province. If you are planning on leaving defence forces in the province, you should not raise PD however, as it can actually harm you.

Again, the AI tends to be bloodthirsty in the early game, and is likely to attack you very soon. A possible way of reducing this is by raising PD to "strategic" levels: the AI will be less likely to attack provinces with a PD of 11 (and higher), or a PD of 21+. This is unlikely to deter major assaults though, and PD should never be expected of winning against all but the most minor raids alone. The AI will *not* take into account the power of your commanders, and will likely attack your lone Pretender whenever given the opportunity, regardless of the actual power of the Pretender.

- Building: A fort serves several purposes, namely defence (it has to be stormed first), protection of your magic sites and temples, and recruitment of units and commanders. If you build a temple, you should put a fort in the same province, as otherwise raiders can burn your temple to the ground. Multiple forts will also allow you to recruit more troops everywhere, and, above all, more commanders, from scouts to the mages. Arcoscephale can recruit two mages everywhere, and you should use this ability as much as possible (your Astrologers can only be recruited at home).

Exactly how many you should be building depends on your situation, the worth of the province, and your needs, but you should try to protect those provinces you deem the most important first. If you will barely feel the loss of a province, it is probably not worth the trouble of protecting it. Temples are another matter, and you should not need to build many of those: your Dominion strength is of 7, high enough to make you fairly safe from enemy Dominion.

- Commanders: whenever possible, you should recruit mages instead of mundane commanders, especially if you only have one fort. Once you take another province, you will be able to recruit their basic commander(s) there, freeing your fort for mage recruitment. If you need to command troops with your mages, Mystics are your best bet: their Leadership is of 10, but any level of Fire will give them +5 to (regular) Leadership, so a Fire-2 Mystic will have a Leadership of 20.

You should not feel duty-bound to protecting all your provinces however, mainly because you will never have the means of doing so: even if you only have five provinces (without a fort), protecting all five of them will result in only having 20% of your forts in all those provinces, making you much more vulnerable to enemy attack. Mages are best kept in laboratories for research, though you may want/need to use them to fuel expansion too.

The only reasonable defence is to build more forts where you need them, and to keep a reaction squad ready. Arcoscephale has an easier time here, since they have good Astral mages and cheap labs. With Thaumaturgy 3, an Astral 3 commander will be able to teleport around anywhere, and with Thaumaturgy 5 (Gateway), an Astral 4 commander will be able to teleport to a friendly province with all his troops (so long as said province has a lab). So, if a host of enemy troops are going to storm one of your forts, you could Gateway an Astrologer with a bunch of troops, and perhaps a few other mages, to help the defenders.


A last suggestion: if you like a more defensive play, what about picking one of the two underwater nations? (Atlantis and R'lyeh) If you play Atlantis and R'lyeh isn't in the game, you will have a much easier time, since going underwater is hard. You should be left alone then, especially as the AI is going to have trouble fielding a serious offensive under the seas.

[Ygorl]

Agrajag, you're thinking of Kyrre the Androgynous!

[PDF]

What Al says
Additionally, IMHO, Arco is not a very good choice for a newbie magic-wise : as the Arco mages have a very wide array of path combos it's pretty hard to define a magic strategy with them unless you've a good knowledge of the game.
To start with, I'd recommend some more straightforward nations such as Man, Marignon or Caelum .

[Endoperez]

Try different game settings. Take a map with more provinces and less enemies. About 20 provinces/nation should give you more time to get ready for them. Use independents setting of 5-7, as this slows down your enemies more than you. You might also want to up the richness and magic of the world, so that you will have more things to play with and learn about in your first games. Some nations that aren't too hard to play against: Man & Marignon (beware their longbows/crossbows), Ulm (bypass armor with lightning or Thaum. attack spells), Machaka (hordes and some tough units, aim for Blade Wind, E2 is enough if you give mage earth gem or two). Avoid these: Abysia & Jotunheim (tough units with elemental immunities), Caelum (flying -> hard to defend against), Ermor (undead themes are deadly to AI), C'tis and Pangaea might turn out as undead nations so you might want to avoid them for the first few games.
Also, Jotunheim and Ulm have very strong provincial defence. Arbalestmen with decent protection for Ulm, Giant Militia for Jotunheim. You might want to try them out if strong defence is your thing.


You should make Priestess your prophet and have her cast Fanaticism in your best army. Research either Evocation (Fire Darts, Lightning bolt,Acid Bolt, Magma Bolts...) or Thaumaturgy (Paralyze, Mind Burn, Soul Slay, Enslave Mind) so that your mages (Mystics and Astrologers, respectively) have some offensive punch. Alteration would give your casters some utility spells: Quickness helps lucky Mystic turn the tide of battle if he has any offensive spell to cast besides that, Eagle Eyes helps your Priestesses a little, Personal Luck is good protection, Body Ethereal affects one grid of units (3 humans, 2 horses, 1 giant and 1 human... 6 size-units at max) and can help your Hoplites to rack up some skills with even less risk.

If you need extra meat for your armies, have Priestesses summoning Vine Men (Conj. 1 or 2). They are not as buff as their bigger brothers, Vine Ogres, but they are good meat shields. Build Ivy Crown (Constr. 2) for the summoners when you can afford it, and you will get even more of them for every gem you spend.

And when you think you are doing well and have found some magic sites, research some Construction and build some items. Earth Boots, Starshine Skullcap, Thistle Mace (Nature 2, so you mightn't be able to build it) and some others help your mages to boost their magics further. Dwarven Hammer helps you build items more cheaply, but E3 mage and 20 earth gems might be hard to get.

If you have army next to enemy border, he won't be as likely to attack you. In these cases, quantity is better than quality, so recruit some cheap units like archers that are of some use. Then recruit few points of PD (11 makes the AI even less likely to attack). Your PD will harass the enemy and your arhcers are hopefully able to finish them off.

[Chazar]

One should also recall that any losses to PD are for free, since PD is only decreased by loosing the entire province. So buying some PD in order to have some upkeep free meat shields might be sensible for some provinces which need to be defended often against weaker armies like those sent by the AI.

However, the PD must be backed up by mages and maybe some archers or other better troops in order to successfully defend a province from any attack. So before your "PD-mages" get bored, one might consider building a lab to keep those mages occupied, while they are still defending the province.

However, once you decide to forify even further by building a fortress, the PD rather becomes a liabilty: the researching mages will not fight anymore alongside the PD in a fortified province, so the PD will be lost to an attack without further protection by mages. Thus it is usually a bad idea to buy PD.

[Boron]

Endoperez said:
Abysia & Jotunheim (tough units with elemental immunities), Caelum (flying -> hard to defend against), Ermor (undead themes are deadly to AI), C'tis and Pangaea might turn out as undead nations so you might want to avoid them for the first few games.

Consider to play without C'Tis.
The AI loves to rush to Burden of Time.
In at least 5 of 10 games C'Tis casts Burden of Time very quickly. No Human opponent would do that. The Burden of Time is not too bad but it is extremely annoying. So better play without C'Tis as AI-Nation otherwise you have always to rush for dispel and be sure that you are able to dispel their Burden of Times.

[kyre]

Thanks for all the suggestions everyone. I'll try all of the ideas sooner or later and hopefully see some better success. This seems like a great game, I've just got to get past the learning curve and have the fun outweigh the frustration.