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[Kagus]

Yeah, I stated earlier in the thread about my liking of Ermor, and how I could at least stalemat a magically superior AI enemy.  Magically superior, as in, able ot research past level 4 (goddamn demo caps...).

[lumin]

I've been playing Dominions 3 for the past few days and I have to say, after playing 3 matches against the computer, this game isn't nearly as fun as CoEII (for single player matches).  CoEII is just so easy to get going and it seems that there are a lot more interesting things going on than in Dominions.  Dominions just takes forever to get your armies built up.  Even for multiplayer it seems like it would take forever to finish an entire game.

It does make me nostalgic for the old Heroes of Might and Magic games though.  I have HoMMIII complete edition or whatever, and I might just go blow the dust off it and give it a go again.  

[Kagus]

The main problem I've got with CoEII is that the maps are too small...  I have to create a mass amount of "wimp" AI goons to go off and get themselves killed in order to get a good-sized map to explore.  There's a really fascinating variety of things you can find, and other players inhibit that by "butting in" on your turf.  And then bee-lining for your citadel and running circles around it to eat up all your farms before running back into the hills again.

When in doubt, hit it again.

I summoned my first demon lord recently, and I haven't gotten a chance to try him out yet.  Are "Goat Sun"s any good?  He looks nifty.

EDIT:  Dominions.  What about Abysia?  They've got style points, are they any good in the later game?  Also, I don't take death scale on them.  Having your population trickle through your fingers is not something I happen to enjoy.

[ April 05, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

[Kagus]

Bumping this because I want attention.

CoEII:  I answered my own question as far as demon lords are concerned.  Goat Suns are definitely not good demon lords.  They've got "Heat From Hell" which serves only to kill you demonologist and annoy enemy troops with sweating.  Aside from that, they've got fire flash.  Whee.

Dominions:  I've been reading more on the subject, and I'm starting to think that I might give Pangaea a go-around sometime again (but not as my choice of mastery).  When I encountered them, I saw pointless front line troops, overly-expensive mages and archers, and freespawns that were worse than Ermor's.

But now I'm looking at it differently after a few good writeups.  They're certainly not my playstyle (carrion woods maybe, but not the others) since I've never been that great with the stealth units, but I figure I may as well learn to use stealthy troops with an entire nation of them.  And it had never occured to me to use black harpies as birdy-bombs, probably because it hadn't occured to me to use fire magic with Pangaea (watch the trees!).

Marignon:  They look cool, they've got a nice theme going if they're led by an angel (Dom3 version is one of the coolest sprites I've seen in the games, by the way), but are they actually any good?  I haven't been able to find much documentation on them, and it seems that the bless strategies (it's both thematic and useful, since so many units are holy) that would help the most are non-thematic (air=airshield and water for flagellant defense), while the ones that you could get and still feel atmospheric about are only so-so in actually helping (fire and astral).

It pains me that a game which appears to be so incredibly open really looks like it only has three strategies.  Supercombatant, bless, and rainbow.  Tell me I'm just missing something.

[Tommy2U]

If you're planning to use flagellants, Fire-9 is the way to go. They'll hit very hard (flail has 2 attacks, so they get 2 additional attacks from bless). It's no use trying to keep them alive with air or water blessing, they'll go down anyway. Put some armoured infatry in the front as arrow magnets. Marignon was my favourite nation in Dom2, it's fun and straighforward, I won several MP games with it. Baphomet is a great choice for pretender, you didn't think those crazed fanatics worship someone good, did you?

Regarding strategies, try for example Pythium, Arcoscephale or Shinuyama. These are strong nations thanks to tough troops and powerful mages, with little use for bless strategies and no pressing need for supercombatants.
Also you can try out communion if it suits your playing style, it can lead to impressive displays of battlefield magic.

Anyway, there is no one winning strategy in Dominions. Balance changes between subsequent parts of the saga, Dom2 is biased towards supercombatants, Dom3 is better balanced overall, with some bias towards bless strategies. Some nations are stronger in early game or on smaller maps, while other kick ass later on.

If you're playing SP, why would you try to find the 'optimal' setup? Choose a nation and pretender which suits your playing style and have fun, that's all.

[Kagus]

Why?  Because unless the AI has grown feebleminded with old age since the first Dominions, I'm dead if I play against it with anything less than Ermor.

And I am looking for a setup that suits my playstyle.  I said so on the third page, and listed my playstyle to get help on it.  I know there's no "optimal" strategy, and so I wanted to know what nation would best complement my playstyle so that I could dedicate myself to it and become good enough at it.  See third page for details.

And I don't really see where you think the Baphomet is evil, or at least non-good...  It's a fiery radiance of faith and power, not evil.  It's when someone picks a moloch that I look at them strangely.  And where are you getting this "two additional attacks from blessing" thing from?  Is that yet another piece of information the dreadfully-equipped wiki is missing?  Bear in mind that I have practically no experience with Dominions 3, all this stuff is garnered from reading the threads linked to in the strategy index and the wiki, as well as stuff from Dom1.

And...  I thought Shinuyama had horrible troops that you had to really pay attention to in order to keep alive, and that the archer is really only good because he's got a pretty-good bow which can be easily massed due to low cost.  Same general reasoning as far as the kappa, good cost-to-stat ratio, but not that great a unit.

[Torak]

Abysia is a great country, it might be the Epic Heroes, and Worthy Heroes mod, but thwe Great Warlock is pretty much the most badass pretender you can get, especially with 4-5 in all magic paths. Also thier infantry is the best, just mass the axe heavy infantry, and noone can touch you. Who said you need ranged troops to win a battle? Just have a mage with Legion of Steel and about 50 infantry and watch them dominate.

[Kagus]

Again, there's that thematic issue.  First of all, the great warlock is a mere mortal, hardly godlike.  It would be nice if there were some high-level blood spell that could bestow upon the caster a body of demonic royalty so that he could at least look good at some point (note:  "good" as in "godly".  He already looks pretty damn cool).

Second, I'm having a hard time picturing a water/nature/air warlock.  "Behold!  The soup pot of Abysia!  The water is really really hot!  The steam can really sting your eyes, and the vegetables inside can feed an army!  MUAHAHAHAHAA!"

"...Well, okay, twenty people."

[Janne Joensuu]

Have you tried C'tis? Pretty much Egypt with lizards and necromancers. Dom3's MA C'tis would fit your defensive thoughts pretty well: every non-cold blooded unit in their dominion will be diseased eventualy AND they get more income from their dominion AND their combination of death and nature works perfectly with Enchantment research (Raise Skeletons, Gift of Health for dominion-based power-up for all your troops). Miasma is a theme in DomII and doesn't exist in Dom:PPP, where the basic nation has similar troops and more Death, less Nature. Enchantment and necromancy still works out pretty well.

You mentioned liking Kailasa. Outside of demo, it could summon sacred Gandharvas, which are one of the best sacred units in the early era with their multiple attacks and protection of 18. Basing your strategy around those would let you to also use your recruitable sacreds to the end game, because your bless would most likely benefit them as well.

I'm not quite sure what nations you have access to. What are you playing, what did you ask the suggestions for? Dom:PPP demo?

[Kagus]

Well, if I do decide to really get into this, I'd most likely want to go for Dom3.  Full version.  I remember playing miasma in Dom2, but never really had enough time to notice what all it did...

What I've got now is the demo version of Dom:PPP.  I'm only playing that one because it's the only demo of the series without a time limit, although it does have some nasty unit caps (Jotunheim can't get vaetti.  Huh?).  

I could list the nations it's got, but I figure you already know them better than I do.

But yeah, I'm asking about Dom3.  And as for Kailasa, I like it just for goofing around with.  Monkey hordes were great for messing with the independents in the demo.  I'm not really considering Kailasa, unless it really happens to be the golden nation for me.

I'll have to look into C'tis.  Can they still summon tomb kings in the middle era, or is that reserved for later times (man, late era is one depressing age)?

Frankly, reading about the R'lyeh dreamlands was pretty cool.  Even if they aren't my golden nation, I'll still mess around with them from time to time.  People seem to be resisting the void with their dominion/scale setups, I'd fully embrace it.  Work off of the starspawn in the early game, and then slowly shift everything over to the void...  Heh heh, maybe for singleplayer, if it's as gentle on non-optimal setups as you say it is.

I've tried every nation in the Dom1 and Dom2 demos. I've also tried all the ones in the Dom3 demo, but I don't remember their details as well as those from Dom1.

EDIT:  Random question and related more to just goofing around than actually play, but which magic would you say is best for dedicated battle magic (as in, one path exceptionally high)?  The obvious one would be fire, due to its reputation as a combat path, but air seems pretty nasty under the right circumstances.  Orb lightning with that high a skill seems like it would be absolute murder, and thunder strike is always fun if you can cough up the endurance for it.  But then again, having been mostly restricted to a level four and below, my experience is rather limited.  For instance, I've only been on the recieving end of orb lightning, since it's higher than level four.

[ April 07, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

EDIT2:  Has anyone made a water-based map?  Seems like the main problem with aquatic races is the fact that they've got to push in order to take the land provinces before they get swamped by the greater resources of a land empire attacking their sea empire.  A large sectioned sea map with speckled islands sounds like it might be fun, so has anyone made one?

Also, I can't find a scrap of info on Fomoria or Bogarus, but I've heard of them.  I must say, this is one of the worst-updated wikis I have ever seen...  I guess you lot are too busy playing to actually write up the info on there.

[ April 07, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

EDIT3:  In completely unrelated news, I just got my warty nose handed to me by a wimpy-level cardinal of El in CoEII.  Inquisition took over all three of my forts.  And, after I lost, the game fought itself for a while until it froze up.  During that time, the four horsemen were summoned.

All this on the lowest possible AI difficulty.  That really says something about ol' El.  This was even in the dark ages, when I thought there weren't even enough people to fund the kind of mass worship required for the higher-level El boosts.

[ April 07, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

EDIT4:  Well, this is getting to be one very long post.  Anyways, I summoned Great Lord Baal in CoEII, and was messing around with having a god under my control.  Frankly, I'd expected him to be a bit more, uh...  Y'know, destructive.  

He relies on fear.  In fact, you could even say his chief weapon was fear and surprise- his two chief weapons were fear, surprise and some really nice summonable creatures- his...

Anyways, I just set him up against a small army of skeletons and zombies.  Pushover, right?  Well, that's the first time I've ever seen a god die.  He couldn't scare them off, and neither could his angel-of-death cronies, so he perished at the rotting hands of a few braineaters.  I reverted to a previous save.

Heh, the god of death destroyed by his own minions (the skellies were there due to a casting of armageddon).  Really impressive god, eh?  212 health points for a freakin' diety...

Yeah, Baal's a bit of an oddbaal (sorry).  Some of his minions are really great (eye of the gods), and others can really make you wonder why so damn many sacrificial people had to die to get you the blighter (tiny spiders, manticore, messenger of the gods).  I was expecting more from the god of terror than just a gaze of fear spell and two powerword: kills.  Although, against living foes, it is one really scary gaze.  But even so, a necromancer-turned-lich has the death spell, which can destroy as many troops as he can scare away.  I mean, they don't even die of fear, they just get spooked and run away, so if your god happens to die, all the ones who got gazed away come trudging back embarrassed at running away.  But at least they're really embarrassed.

Still though, he can be powerful.  It took me a while before I could find an army big enough to last him longer than just a couple turns, the others all got swept away.  

And also...  I was kinda hoping he'd look cooler.  But as it is, he actually looks kinda good.  He just gets a bit dull after a while, unlike some of the demon or elemental lords.

[ April 07, 2008: Message edited by: Kagus ]

[Janne Joensuu]

For your nation question... Dom:PPP's Jotunheim would probably work. Your provincial defence is very tough, and you have good mages. Your Seithkonas are very good researchers, especially with magic, and can protect elite giants with Luck and Body Ethereal (alteration 1-2) or attack the enemy with Nether Bolt (evoc 4). Your Skratti can either blood-hunt and start summoning Frost Fiends/Fiends of Darkness, or you can boost them in Water and cast Sailors' Death, AoE 1 save-or-die spell that only works on breathing units. You can negate friendly fire by using it with undead, and your Nornas are very good at creating undead. even in the demo, you can cast Reanimation and Raise Skeletons, and both bring in about half the dead as giants. All your mages can also join communion, because they can all cast either the astral (communion master/slave) or blood (sabbath master/slave) versions of the spell, which lets you cast all kinds of spells that'd be out of your reach without communions. I don't remember whether you lose Skratti or Norna in the demo. so adjust accordingly.

While being too defensive can't really help you in the demo, where you can't wait until you get something like Falling Frost or Nether Darts (evoc 5 and 7 or thereabout), you can still buff your very tough nationals while expendable chaff (undead or pd) slows the enemy down and your other mages pepper them with nasty spells. Being able to recruit tough national commanders will let you try equipping the commanders in the best gear you can build, and you can build most of the good stuff.