Opening Gambit

[Starbelly Geek]

Originally Posted by Mightypeon

Indeed.
Also, concering the AI, put 10 PD into every province as soon as you conquer it. It really makes them more peacefull. The beeline making happenes when an AI scout sees a Human province with less then 10 PD. The AI thinks "Yay free province" and beelines for it.

Someone (I forget who) determined that the AI's thresholds for deciding how strong your PD is are 6, 11, 16, 21, not the multiples of 5 or 10. If that is true, the AI does not see a difference between a 6 and a 10 province defense.

[Zorfwaddle]

Triqui, I did not think of it that way... thank you for the insight.

I do not think I lose more than 1-2 mage-worth-of-research before I stumble into a scout province. I do plant a lab if feasible for the provinces w/ a magic site that generates something useful like a sage or mages I cannot generate, for a bootstrap into a path I don't have.

That is the great thing about Dominions... so many ways to do stuff :-)

[Zorfwaddle]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

@Zorfwaddle (what a name! )

Yeah thats a story from 1996. When I got back to the States, I got a real email account and tried everything with my real name... got frustrated, hit a bunch of keys, thought a little bit and added some vowels :-)

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Zorfwaddle

Triqui, I did not think of it that way... thank you for the insight.

I do not think I lose more than 1-2 mage-worth-of-research before I stumble into a scout province. I do plant a lab if feasible for the provinces w/ a magic site that generates something useful like a sage or mages I cannot generate, for a bootstrap into a path I don't have.

That is the great thing about Dominions... so many ways to do stuff :-)

That's not relevant, you still lose the 80 research per year per mage you didn't buy.

Quick math:

Lets suppose you don't buy a mage in turns 2, 3 and 4, where you could, to buy 3 scouts. Let's suppose you conquer a province with mages one of those turns, and you go and buy a lab in turn 5 to buy druids. Let's assume your mages have research 7. Druids and the like have research 5

So your research for the first 12 turns is:
0+0+0+0+7+(7+7+5)+ (7+7+7+5+5) + (7*4+5*3) + (7*5
5*4 ) + (7*6+5*5)+ (7*7+5*6) + (7*8+5*7) = 384 research

Let's suppose you now buy mages in those first turns, and then you buy the same lab and buy the same druids (there's nothing forbidding you to do so)
0+7+7*2+7*3+7*4+(7*5+5)+(7*6+5*2)+(7*7+5*3)+(7*8+5 *4)+(7*9+5*5)+(7*10+5*6)+(7*11+5*7)= 600 research.

The fault in your reasoning is that you think you are just losing 1 research turn. You arent. You are missing 1 researcher, which means you lose 1 research turn per turn after the turn you missed the researcher. That compounds through time, so a 7 point researcher you missed in turn 2, by the end of year 3, you would had lost 34*7=238 research, that mage alone. If you miss mages in the, say, first 5 turns, you will be 7*34+7*33+7*32+7*31= 910 research in turn 36.

That does not mean you should buy researchers every single turn of your life due to this opportunity cost you miss if you don't. But you should miss the buy only when what you are doing produces a benefit that is greater than the oportunity cost you miss. Buying a needed commander, maybe buying a H3 priest to prophetize into H4, buying extra troops first couple of turns to get 2 expansion parties, or going to site search with a mage are worth the research cost. Buying a scout, is not.

[JonBrave]

@Zorfwaddle
What triqui says above makes sense to me.

Not meaning to get at you all , just interested, but the bit I don't really get is what you do with these extra scouts early anyway?? You're gonna have 3 scouts in 5 or 6 turns, plus your starter, or thereabouts. You'll have one army or so. A single scout can more or less look around near to you for you, can't it? I can only see you going to scout provinces miles away. And you mostly need to conquer your immediate neighbours in the early days (IMHO), you mostly end up attacking them anyway.

[Zorfwaddle]

Guys, thank you for the suggestions. I started a new game and am playing using the research first/don't prophetize a heavy-duty mage strategy. I use the starting army to snatch up nearby provinces and as usual, finding one that produces scouts fairly quickly. I'm not fighting the math :-) I just like 6-7 scouts so I can get a feel as to where the AI enemy is.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally Posted by JonBrave;789443
Not meaning to get at you all :), just interested, but the bit I don't really get is what you [I

do[/i] with these extra scouts early anyway??

Beats me. From a practical perspective, in SP, it doesn't really matter as the AI is utterly incapable of keeping up with any half-way decent player, so somebody who wants to start finding all opponents early in the game isn't really hurting himself all that much as the opposition doesn't take advantage of his suboptimal playing.

In MP, it is very common to recruit a flood of independent scouts once you find an independent site or, if you fail to find such a site, to recruit a flood of independent scouts out of secondary fortresses once you cannot afford to recruit all mages everywhere every turn, since from the middle game onwards, detailed scouting is often essential to survival, but the capital should never, ever, recruit a scout during anything resembling normal gameplay in MP as there is (practically) always a better affordable capital-only commander mage or priest that should be recruited instead.

[triqui]

Originally Posted by Peter Ebbesen

Beats me. From a practical perspective, in SP, it doesn't really matter as the AI is utterly incapable of keeping up with any half-way decent player, so somebody who wants to start finding all opponents early in the game isn't really hurting himself all that much as the opposition doesn't take advantage of his suboptimal playing.

In MP, it is very common to recruit a flood of independent scouts once you find an independent site or, if you fail to find such a site, to recruit a flood of independent scouts out of secondary fortresses once you cannot afford to recruit all mages everywhere every turn, since from the middle game onwards, detailed scouting is often essential to survival, but the capital should never, ever, recruit a scout during anything resembling normal gameplay in MP as there is (practically) always a better affordable capital-only commander mage or priest that should be recruited instead.

you can beat the AI with no research at all (I have done). So sure, it is not needed to buy a mage in turn 2. However, it is (very) suboptimal, and I think we should make the new players to understand why. Then they can play as they want, as this is a game, and the goal is to have fun :-)

@zorfwaddle sure, in MP is even more important to have scouts. In my game with Marignon I have like 20 :-)

[Jarkko]

This is slightly off-topic, but I'll mention a few cases where I *always* recruit on turn 1 something I want to prophetise.

Nations who can recruit demon or undead commanders. Prophetise him and make him reanimate like there is no tomorrow. For example Oni General from Yomi, reanimate Longdead or preferably soulles (walk with an army, reanimate 25 soulless after the battle, attack next province, reanimate 25 soulles, etc -> you'll have a couple hundred soulless at the end of the year, excellent nice soulless who will be targeted by enemy banishes instead of your precious demons).

Nations who have excellent thugs who become even better thugs if they are prophetised. For example Machakan Hunter Lords (script Holy Avenger, Attack -> you actually *want* the rider to die eventually, because after the puny rider dies the spider remains prophet and in friendly dominion it has about 100 HP; not only that, once it eventually dies, it should be high enough in the Hall of Fame so that you can eventually Ritual of Rebirth him as a Giant Mummy).

Nations who can recruit H3 priests should in my opionion *always* prophetise one. For example Lizard King. Fanaticism is a powerful tool, Word of Power has its uses (it will be a memorable moment when you first time paralyse with Word of Power an enemy SC still buffing up), and a H4 Banishment is a hall-sweeper vs undead and demons.

Other than that I tend to either prophetise the first commander (I don't usually prophetise the first scout, usually I am too eager to find out where my enemies are to waste the first (and only, until I find an indy province from where to recruit scouts) scout into marching with the army), because of the Smites and Sermons of Courage (those both keep the initial army going), or wait a few turns until I have enough money to recruit some other prophet chassis (giants and super-mages cost an arm and leg, and as prophets are free from upkeep it makes IMO much sense to make one of them a prophet). In my opinion, on the first turns it is much too important to get expansion parties out rather than recruit a 500gold commander to be prophetised (and thus lose two turns of expanion, and then that super prophet might just as well die in the first combat to a lucky arrow rolling umpteen sixes in row, and all you would have left would be the sore forehead because of all the banging on the table/wall).