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| Earth attack - after the very first time you kill my vampire lord (as in use a powerful earth mage and some gems to send my guy back home for a turn) I'll start attack, then sneak, attack, then sneak meaning you're unable to target me with the earth attacks. As to the mind hunts, the vampire lord's MR is 17 (under the dreadfully bad assumption that I don't throw a armor of souls and amulet of MR on him) so how many pearls are you spending exactly to check the (several) vampire lords I have running around without ever actually killing any of them?
Yes, good points. As with anything in dominions there are certainly good counter and I can't think of a better one. 15 MR is a non-trivial resistance to undead mastery though, even assuming your antagonist has the indubitable +5 penetration or so it's "MR easily resists" so you've got a +4 to resist it, meaning that he'll not be snatching "all" the honey, particularly as you can get into a nice little tug of war over them. Certainly not the ideal situation, but nothing should be immune to everything! Plus, there are plenty of times you're fighting a nation quite unlikely to be able to cast undead mastery. As to the offense vs defense, anybody familiar with my playstyle knows I agree with you, but that doesn't mean that it's not a good idea to deploy your resources on purely defensive measures so long as you're getting a good enough effectiveness for the price to overcome the natural benefit of the best defense being a good offense. That is to say, if a gem spent on defense counters 10 that are spent attacking it then that's the way to go with some of your resources. So, I guess my point is its not always a bad idea to invest in defense if you get really good ones for pretty cheap. PS, yep, dom pushing is great. Particularly because many of the nations who would be looking at using vampires can also blood sacrifice. -> I'd actually batted around the idea of vamp hordes from MA Marignon for awhile based largely on what's in this thread. It seems like an odd choice, but you've actually got a few key things going for you. First and maybe foremost, you've got some of the best dominion control around. Stealthy preachers and inquisitors, stone idols forged for your high stealth spies while they cause their own havoc are a few of the cool tricks available. This gives you a good chance to push your dominion on offense and anything you take with non-vamp troops can be flipped almost immediately by the ensuing inquisition. Getting started in blood isn't too hard for you since you can take a fountain of blood to pop out SDRs for your dirt cheap friars. It'll take several of them per province, but once you get started you can free them up to go stealth preach and facilitate your offense. Astral and blood also have very nice synergy in communions and Marignon's got some of the biggest astral chops around. It's a minor side benefit, but getting into blood with Marignon means boots of youth for your old fogey casters. Marignon's mages also do well under darkness, with astral fires for 100 prec AoE and incinerate for single target obliteration. If you play around with hell power, it should also be noted that you can toss out horror marks and then incinerate any horrors left standing at the end. Finally, you're provided with wonderful counters to the biggest things plaguing vampires: astral lets you whip out antimagic for undead mastery and any undead/demon horde wanting to play under the cover of darkness with you? Well, you're freaking Marignon. Those demons can, quite literally, take their ball and go the hell home. -> Once you prophetize your vamp, give him a amr and lead shield astral cap - mr is 28 or so. Its not beyond the realm of possibility either that he will be returning the undead mastery favor. Vamps have so many great tools. Lamashtas, retreat. Summon Hell power. Give him a Black Heart. However Baalz you are a bit off on one thing: Vampire lords thrall freespawn will always give away position. So while the opponent may not be able to hit you while you are sneaking - he knows where you are. -> Nope, only Ulm's national summon make thralls -> No, you won't lose all your vamps to a mastery casting, but you're gonna lose about 20% of your horde per casting to someone with decent penetration. These traitor vamps will last for all of 1 spellcasting phase before being slaughtered by their former buddies since they're completely surrounded, so there's not going to be much of a tug of war even if you're firing off your own UM casts, just pure losses. This isn't to say vamps are worthless, they're actually quite good at specific roles, but this is a gaping hole in the strat that needs to be plugged by AoL or antimagic in any serious engagement, and I think that leaving it out of the guide was a significant oversight that I wanted to address. On the offense/defense debate it really depends on your position. In most cases when you're in a good position in the game you're able to dictate where major battles are fought (your victim's homeland), and thus have little need for defense, regardless of the value you can get for it. When you're overwhelming an opponent (and remember, fair wars are for suckers) the most you'll have to worry about is a few raiders which are generally better countered by spells than troops. On the other side of the coin, once you're being beat on by a larger opponent you're generally hard pressed to keep your blood flowing, and it's a bit late to invest in the vamp factory. So outside a scenario when you can dom-push well they're best in situations when you'll be fighting an even battle, or when you're expecting to get beat up by a larger opponent but have time to prepare. Neither of these comes up all that often, but when they do vamps are one of the perfect units to do some damage with. -> Tolkien is spot on! Bite and hold is the melody of LA Ulm, and you have everything you need to do it: *Strong castles with production bonus *Strong and sturdy, gold cheap infantry (meaning less upkeep allowing garrisons) with castle defence bonus. *Inquisitors *Vampires *Freespawns patrollers, keeping enemy spies out and your own people in check whilst you bloodhunt or tax them hard. *Stealthy astral infiltrators for that unsuspected surgical strike when the enemy is tied up with the above. *Stealthy rangers and villains to harass the enemy borders or retake land behind his advancing army. -> Claws of _____ hurts this strategy badly, as immortality doesn't seem to protect against imprisonment, and claws of _____ tends to target higher-HP units (such as the vampire lords) I'm also curious to see how well this does against other strategies that specialize in attrition- such as massive, cheap buffed swarms (undead are especially nice against vampires as far as combat goes...) -> Very fine material. Thank you Baalz for another great guide. Your guides are far more than a dried up articles about how to this or that. They actually capture the imagination and make you want to try the shiny new toys you describe Couple of comments: 1. I 2nd Micah's comment regarding undead mastery and wanted to add that there are a bunch of spells that will mess badly with your strat.i.e. DtD/wither bones spam, solar brilliance, master enslave, Purgatory. Worst are the enslave spells that will just steal your vamps. 2. Storm will kill the vamps flight. No more swarming the buffing SCs. An example: Imagine 3-4 colonies getting cloud trappezed by a mage squad. One carries the SoS, first turn the vamps start crawling towards them and the lords cast their B/D spells. Then the mages go and cast undead mastery/master enslaveX(# of mages -1), last mage casts VoR. Voila, I just stole (some/most of) your precious vamp Personally when I see an opponent in MP that has tons of Vamps running around I start to think hey, here's someone who won't stray away from his dominion and then I start making builds for undead mastery. 10.16 Unrest as weapon of war Article Author: Wraithlord I consider the tactic of raising unrest in enemy castles and mainly in capital to be a good opening move to a war. The advantage of this is that you can lay all the groundworks secretly. You place your spies using stealth and prepare your research, gems and mages for casting multiple times any of the spells below: Raging hearts (produces 60 unrest - it is the most effective remote unrest spell and one of the most cost-effective fire rituals). Rain of Toads (- by 40) Baleful star (- by 30) Hurricane (- by 25) Locust swarms (- by 20) Blight (increases unrest by 15)
Cast the remotes (they are annonymous). Now enemy castle production and income is sht down. If he is capital centric he will be badly hurt! Next turn, get your spies to new targets as he's sure to come patrolling. Heavily. Which is good b/c any troops or mages he uses for that could have been used against you. 10.17 Minimum dominion? 11. Troubleshoot 11.1 Command line 11.1.1 Why doesn't my command line parameters apply? It happens b/c dominions stores previous CLI configuration in a file, dom3config rename or delete that file and your parameters will appy. 12. Utilities 12.1 Battle Simulators 12.1.1 new Battle Simulator map
So from the MAPs link on www.Dom3Minions.com .... This is a better version of my Battle Simulator map. BattleSim_v3.zip Its a very tiny 10 province map providing the variety of terrains. Editing the ascii text file of BattleSim_v3.map makes it easy to set two nations next to each other with specific armies so that you can test tactics or how the game does things. And then you can either quickly easily start another game with the same settings to see if the results are the same, or edit the .map file to some small change to see if that makes a difference. Here is a link to a quicky-reference list of map commands. http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/map_qref.txt There is a very complete file in the dominions3/doc directory on your machine (thank-you Edi for the great work on that) Question: " Can you please give a quick and dirty tutorial of how to use your map for say simulating MA ULM vs. Abysia and set like two huge armies one for each side? Is it possible to control research levels for allowing mages to cast until certain level in certain schools? Is it possible to assign items to mages? TIA, WL " Answer: " Sure. I wont do like others and tell you its simple and read the manual. Id rather show you that its simple. Insert this into the BattleSim .map file: (stuff after - is just comments and can be left out)
#specstart 37 10 - start Abysia in nearby mountains #land 8 - wipe out the nearby swamp
#owner 31 #commander 114 - additional Commander of Ulm #units 20 67 - 20 infantry of Ulm to him #units 20 79 - 20 Pikeneers to him #units 20 67 - 20 infantry of Ulm to him #units 20 79 - 20 Pikeneers to him #commander 113- Lord Guardian #additem "Pendant of Luck" #units 20 66 - 10 Guardians assigned to him #setland 10 - say where the next lines are for #owner 37 #commander 119 - additional Warlord #units 20 81 - 20 infantry of type 81 to him #units 20 82 - 20 infantry of type 82 to him #units 20 81 - 20 infantry of type 81 to him #units 20 82 - 20 infantry of type 82 to him #commander 214 - Beast Trainer #additem "Pendant of Luck" #units 10 213 - 10 Salamanders assigned to him Now start a game with that map, join as Ulm and Abysia. Set the formations and scripts. Then have both armies meet in the nearby swamp (I cleared out the local defense so you can see just those two battle).
I got the nation numbers off this list... http://www.dom3minions.com/docs/nations.txt
" 12.2 13. Dominions III general, non-nations guides 13.1 Zen and the art of Thugging Article Author: Baalz 13.1.1 Article Taking a break from my usual M.O. of writing nation guides I decided to delve into some more general overall strategy applicable to all nations. Much like my communion guide this is intended to give you the theory and some tools with which you¿ll hopefully be able to do interesting things far beyond what¿s specifically spelled out here. This isn¿t anything revolutionary, but hopefully this will be helpful to some people and I do think even the more experience players tend to get set in their ways and miss some opportunities to field different things. Alright, everybody knows about the super combatants. Stick a couple artifacts on a tartarian and presto you¿re carving up the countryside. This is true, but not terribly interesting from a design point of view. What I¿m more concerned about is using tanks at a much earlier point, and in particular with a minimum of cost. It¿s almost always better to field 2 guys which are each 90% as effective as the one guy for the same price and fielding them in year two is not even in the same ballpark as fielding them after you¿ve got multiple level nine spells researched (and your opponent has equivalent counters). You could probably argue all day about what the difference is between a thug and a SC and I¿ve got no interest in doing that. Suffice to say I¿m focused on economical killing machines with things we can cludge together early rather than the top of the line jet fighters with all the bells and whistles. Before we start talking about specifics I wanted to clearly define the target we¿re shooting for. The ideal thug is one that¿s about 98% effective and doesn¿t cost one gem or gold more than it needs to. Cost is almost the most important factor in thugs, the whole point is to field something which gives you the most bang for the buck possible and that¿s a whole lot easier if you spend less bucks. Now, cost is a terribly relative thing and I wouldn¿t imagine to give cost targets. Is a Niefel jarl equipped with a frost brand more expensive than an Ulmish black lord fully loaded with lots of equipment forged at half price? It¿s a pointless question because Niefelheim can¿t get black lords and Ulm can¿t get giants. The question you should be asking is ¿what¿s the most cost effective thing I can field, given this nation, this gem supply, this research, and that expected opposition?¿ It¿s not always a single answer, you might field one thug with your fire gems and a totally different one using mostly pearls. Designing a good and efficient thug is one of the best aspects of dominions, let me share how I generally go about it. 13.1.1.1 *crowd control* Thugs come in many different flavors. The primary characteristic of a crowd control thug is that ¿normal¿ troops (whatever that means for your particular situation) can¿t damage him fast enough to kill him, and his secondary characteristic is that he lays out enough damage that he can carve through at least moderate amounts of troops before the turn limit runs out. Generally they¿re used for raiding or indie clearing, though they certainly can be valuable additions to a larger army. Let¿s look at the damage outlay first. Many people consider a frost or firebrand a necessity for a thug, and might condescend to look at a snake bladder stick or demon whip if they must. Well, these are all generally effective and there is a reason they¿re staples, but there¿s no reason to limit yourself to them. Does your thug chasis have a second attack (a hoof, a bite, etc.)? A high strength? A 0 encumbrance? How about a high magic path? All of this can often be translated into an offensive punch sufficient to go through the medium resistance these guys are intended to confront. As a general rule of thumb being reasonably sure to kill 30-40 humans over 50 turns is often enough to accomplish this task (depending, of course, on what you¿re attacking). Remember, you don¿t need to kill them all, just enough to start those morale checks, which they¿ll eventually fail. Once you realize how low this bar is you start realizing that as nice as the brands are they¿re often a bit overkill for what you need. Why spend 10 gems on a fire brand when your guy has a nice bane blade and high strength at default? Would an axe of sharpness or a serpent kryss accomplish the same thing for half the price and be more easily forgable? How about slapping on a horned helm or dancing trident? Don¿t limit yourself to the staples and tons of options start opening up for whatever gems you happen to have in surplus. Trampling is great, so long as you¿ve got a zero encumbrance. More than that and it¿s practically impossible kit yourself economically to handle the fatigue you¿ll rack up. 13.1.1.2 Point blank combat spells Another thing people tend to overlook is the very effective and very low fatigue point blank combat spells. If your intended thug has a 3 or 4 in one magic path without crippling spell casting encumbrance chances are he has a very effective point blank spell the AI will be kind enough to cast 50% of the time in melee if you just leave him scripted to ¿cast spells¿. Shock wave and immolation are the flagships, but don¿t overlook fists of iron, hand of death, cold blast, acid spray, & leeching touch. Really only astral and nature lack enough punch to lay some serious damage down as long as you¿re gonna be at short range anyway. The fatigue on these spells is so low and damage output so high that you can often count on simply routing your opponents before fatigue is an issue. Of course cheap reinvig is even better, so consider this angle for your earth bless, anybody who can summon earthpower and also consider investing 5 gems in boots of the messenger or a battle saint shroud rather than a weapon. Note, if you¿re using this sort of tactic it¿s important to be aware what the AI is going to try to cast by testing it out. If not having ie raise skeletons researched leaves open a useful thug for you it might be worthwhile to focus your research elsewhere for awhile. 13.1.1.3 Desired attributes 13.1.1.3.1 Fear Special consideration goes to a fear aura. As your whole goal is likely to route PD you don¿t care how many you kill, you just want the buggers to run. Fear auras cause morale checks, and it doesn¿t have to be a big fear aura. Fear-0 is often the only weapon you need to route PD¿you¿re gonna cause close to 50 morale checks and PD doesn¿t have great morale so they¿re gonna miss one of them. Feel free to terrorize them with that useless kick. Finally, consider that it¿s often a better idea to double up your thugs rather than equipping them better. If your damage output is too low and your opponent is pumping up his PD, but another thug is cheaper than a fire brand¿well just make sure you weigh your options before going with the default. By now you¿ll probably see my point that damage output can be almost inconsequential for this type of thug. The tricky part is being pretty sure that after 50 rounds of a whole lot of guys whacking at you you¿re still standing. There¿s several ways to accomplish this, and ideally you¿ll combine more than one, but never forget our goal is to pay for only exactly as much as we need. 13.1.1.3.2 Fatigue Before I get into hitpoint preservation I wanted to discuss fatigue. Fatigue is the downfall of many a newbie thug swinging their quickened self into a coma. After their initial blunders many people consider getting their reinvig to equal encumbrance the whole issue and don¿t give fatigue another thought. This misses several subtleties which should be considered for optimal thugging. The first thing you need to consider is that merely keeping yourself from climbing to 100 fatigue and passing out isn¿t enough. The chance of critical hits rises with your fatigue, as your defense drops. This nasty one-two punch means that a thug who would easily wade through the chaff consistently dies with a fatigue of 50. This is a very important consideration for thugs who self buff as this lands them in the first round of combat with a heaping of fatigue even if their encumbrance is low and can often mean it¿s just a matter of time until somebody gets a good roll and chops their head off. Fatigue is so important it¿s often a better idea to skip one or two of the self buffs you thought you wanted and instead meet those pitchfork waving peasants refreshed and ready for mayhem. It¿s also not a bad idea to consider giving reinvig to zero encumbrance guys who plan to self-buff for this reason. Another thing to consider on fatigue is external things which cause fatigue. Heat/cold auras, stellar cascades, grip of winter, etc. Having a strong reinvigoration is not going to make you immune to this by a long shot, but it can make you considerably resistant if you¿re working with an army and not being focused on. Having several thugs resistant to everything (but immune to nothing) laying in the bodyblows while your mainline troops take the licks is a great tactic. Finally, consider the opposite angle, it¿s not always necessary to mitigate your encumbrance at all. If you¿ve got a 3 encumbrance and hit like a ton of bricks without self buffing, you can often just count on squishing everybody before you need to worry about tiring out. Adding quickness in this situation can make a lot of sense as well, which is something that is often the bane of thugs with non-zero encumbrance. 13.1.1.3.3 Hitpoints So, finally we get to the most obvious way people are going to try to kill your thugs, hitpoints, and I¿ll start with the most straightforward way to protect them protection. Protection is your last line of defense and a factor that you¿ll want to carefully consider for most thugs. Even if you¿re focusing primarily on other methods of hitpoint preservation, protection is important because it¿s going to change that one lucky hit from a catastrophe to a scratch. The amount of protection you¿re gonna need is obviously going to vary quite a bit, but most of the time you¿ll want to aim for at least 20 (don¿t forget your helmet!). This will put you in the range that a hit from most ¿normal¿ troops will have to be pretty lucky to damage you. Note: protection alone is almost never enough to keep you alive by itself no matter how high it is. This is because you¿ll obviously be taking a *lot* of hits, and even with 0 fatigue you have a small chance of taking a critical hit which will halve your proctection. An awesome 30 protection is then just a nice 15 and not all that hard to puncture by a human wielding a spear. Trust me, it¿ll happen with more regularity than you want to replace your thugs. 13.1.1.3.4 Reducing attacks This leads to the next concept: successful thug preservation is all about reducing the number of attacks you take. Dominions uses open ended dice rolls, and that means no matter how good your defenses are, if you get attacked enough times you¿re gonna take it in a place you¿d rather not. Increasing your protection is a diminishing return prospect, at some point it¿s a much better idea to focus on stopping those attacks from ever occurring. This is really the very heart of what makes a thug more so than anything else. The primary ways this is accomplished are awe, etherealness, luck, and a vine shield, though there are some more exotic avenues like blood vengeance. Each of these options shines in different situations but generally it¿s not possible to make a crowd control thug without one of them. Certainly their effects stack beautifully together and having two or more is generally enough to guarantee successful thugging (assuming you satisfy the other requirements). Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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