Help needed: How to defend? / Guides to nation

[fabio80mi]

Hello all !
First of all allow me to say i follow this forum since very long time and i know a little of the game itself (and DOM2 too) , however i never took the time to really dig the game itself and play competitevely and most of the game i played i become frustrated after 30-40 turns of so being attacked every turn by all ais on all fronts.

So considering i play SP once i have in a small map something like 6-8 province (turn 20 or so) what should i do to prevent my border pronvince being attacked and conquered every turn or so ?

I usually rely on pd of 11/21 and in core province 35 (chokepoints mostly) but it seems pd21 is too easily overcome and doesn't matter much at all..

Any general tip on how to defend is welcome !


Now on another question, i was looking for a megatopic listing all guides being posted for all nation, i've checked some in the wiki and some in the forum but still i think i missed a great deal of them.. so does it exist a website/list of all the guides posted to date as there is for the mods ?

Thanks!

Fabio

[thejeff]

Short answer: Expand faster. You should be able to average a province a turn for the first year and increase that as you can field more armies. As long as you are just take indy provinces at least.

Boosting the independent strength level will slow the AI down more than it does you, so that helps you get to a decent strength before running into other nations. Try playing a larger map.(Not more nations, just more provinces per)

PD will stop raids and some attack spells. Don't expect it to stop real armies. You'll need to meet those with armies and mages of your own. PD backed up with real troops, especially mages and archers, if your PD doesn't have any, does help. The PD serve as a disposable meat shield to give the archers and mages time to do their work.

The AI chooses to attack based largely on it's estimate of your strength, which is based mostly on troop numbers. PD does count toward this, so that helps. Having more provinces will let you build more PD in them to boost your numbers and give you more gold to buy real troops. The bulk of defense is reactive.

Strategically, take chokepoints and aim for short borders. Build forts in those chokepoints. I'd do that, rather than spend a ton of money on PD.

Most importantly, as said above, you're expanding too slowly. With more provinces/income, you'll have a lot more options. Take your nation and play through the first 10 turns or so a few times, trying different strategies and different pretender designs. Find what lets you expand quickly.

Bless strategies.

Awake SC pretenders. (For the simplest, try a no magic, dom9 Wyrm. He can take pretty much any indies except knights solo from turn 1.)

Random thoughts largely, but it's hard to offer specific strategies without specific nations.

[Baalz]

Well, the problem is I suspect much of the advice you'll receive about defending in SP it going to revolve around exploiting the AI's weaknesses. Once you know how to do this the AI rapidly become not too challenging because it can't adapt, so I'm not gonna give you any of that type of advice (other than to mention the AI is pretty superficial in deciding to declare war, and never un-declares war once it's started). Here's a couple pointers on general defensive strategy though that are universally applicable.

1) PD effectiveness varies a lot by the nation that you're playing, but is never going to be strong enough by itself to stop any real army. PD is generally useful for stopping light raiding and adding some support to your regular army (when it's defending). Dominions is designed to be a dynamic, offensive oriented game, not a defensive turtling type so offense is usually going to have the edge, which leads us to...

2) Offense is the best defense. It doesn't matter how many of your provinces the enemy can take if you can take two of theirs for every one they take from you. If your enemy is spreading out too much he's vulnerable to you dividing and conquering his armies, if he concentrates too much he's vulnerable to you overrunning him.

3) Depending on what nation you're playing and what units you have available often a small force (usual a mage with the right script) will greatly augment your PD. A cheap mage casting protection, body ethereal, raise dead, etc. can amplify the toughness of your PD considerably, and may be worthwhile to spread around if you're getting attacked on multiple fronts by not particularly strong armies.

4) Fortresses won't kill any invaders, but they are significant speed bumps. Don't underestimate their defensive value.

[MaxWilson]

It sounds like you have too few armies to defend your territory. The tips from Baalz and thejeff are very good (for your case you might especially benefit from building several forts so you're not chasing invading armies around the map), but it also sounds like you're trying to defend your borders with maybe a couple of big armies while the AIs nibble you to death. Once you develop a feel for exactly how much force is needed to defeat an enemy army you'll feel more comfortable splitting your armies into enough pieces that they can deal with several invaders at the same time. Don't underestimate the value of mages. In the right circumstances, 6 regular troops and 1 mage can defeat 70 invaders, and PD + a mage helps even more. Of course this depends upon what spells you've researched; toward the beginning of the game mages aren't as useful in battle, but once you get Iron Warriors, Blade Wind, Body Ethereal, Magma Eruption even PD can become quite tough. By the way, about PD: don't overlook the effect of morale. Spread friendly dominion where possible for the morale boost, and even a lowly H2 priest can cast Sermon of Courage which can tip the balance with PD quite frequently.

-Max

[Ironhawk]

The key to keeping the AI off your back is to stay competitive in the Scoring Charts. The most deciding factor for the AI being troop numbers. Make sure you keep your numbers up and the AI will be less prone to just default to war with you.

And once an AI does decide to declare war on you? Immediately move in and wipe them out. Don't wait for another AI to declare war also and force you to defend another front.

[fabio80mi]

Guys thanks for all your tips, you're right i usually didn't 'spread' thin my armies to defend i usually had 2-3 moving army and that was all.

I'll try to adopt this strategy in my current game =)

Of course any more advice is always welcome


As for my other request is there any cool container for all national guides posted here?

[MaxWilson]

Some of the good guides have gotten posted on StrategyWiki, but for the others search the forum using the "Search" link at the top of the page for "Guide" in the subject in the "Dominions 3" forum and you'll probably get most of them.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

One more thought on quicker expansion--it may be that you're jumping the gun and trying to expand too quickly at first, before your army is quite big enough. Depending upon what nation you're playing, waiting an extra turn or two to build some extra crossbowmen/archers can mean the difference between taking 10 losses per province and 1-2 per province. It's also possible that you're doing the opposite, taking several turns to build resource-heavy sacred troops (e.g. Living Pillars for Atlantis) when all you need for expansion are enough cheap troops to rout the indies. Some nations have terrific sacred troops, and for others they're just a distraction, at least until you're done expanding and are actually in a war of attrition with an enemy nation. (Sometimes not even then, depending upon the unit and your bless.)

I should also mention that building another fort early (with a mercenary if necessary) is a great boost to expansion because you can crank out twice as many national troops per turn. Obviously you have to have enough gold income to afford twice as many troops, but you should probably have a second fort by mid-Winter of the first year.

-Max

P.S. Also, about defense: 21 PD is usually only about 30-40 cheap units, in smallish squads that rout pretty easily. Instead of boosting PD to 35-40 levels, just add detach some troops from a moving army and leave them in the province. PD has a commander, so the garrison troops will still fight, and if they rout they'll flee into adjacent provinces instead of evaporating like defeated PD does. Works best with support troops like archers, but may be worth doing even with normal troops. The downside is that unlike PD, garrison troops cost upkeep.

[Folket]

The easiest way to defeat the AI is to use sacred units. The AI have no way to adapt. This could be fun to try a couple of times. It will also only work for certain nations.

I do find that some comments here are wrong.

The AI will stop attacking you if he looses interest and you are not attacking him. This has happened many time for me. I guess I play more defensively then other here. If you have a strong border the AI fails his attacks he might stop attacking. You will also get a new message about him declaring war if he is going to attack again.

I find pd to make or break a war. Always read in the manual on how strong your pd is. Nations with really strong pd like LA Then Chi is very easy to play against the computer since it will just send wave after wave to die. If the pd is fair I have no problem to buy it up to 35 or higher if I know there is going to be a battle.

When I play the AI I usually expand quickly and will then have war at 4-6 fronts. Then I start predicting his moves and crush his armies with as few looses as possible. Here tactical skills are important, learn your opponents units and device a ingenious battle plan. Fort are also very useful since the AI will never leave a siege. So once his army is stucked at a fort You may surround it and eliminate it.

[MaxWilson]

We could generalize that. The easiest way to defeat the AI is to win battles cost-effectively, be it with sacred units, supercombatants, cheap summons, or what-have-you. Since the AI doesn't adapt, setting the difficulty level higher gives the AI a cost break (bonuses to pretender points, research, income, resources, gem production), which raises the bar on how cost-effectively you have to defeat the AI (because its units are effectively cheaper, and also because it expands quicker and thus has a larger income base, and because the point break on the pretender means its units may have a better bless and/or be produced in greater quantities because of better scales). But the AI never adapts, it just sort of stumbles across good strategies sometimes, due in large part to the fact that certain strategies naturally fall out of certain nations.

When you're being crushed under an army of Illithids or Umbrals, it is cold comfort to note that the AI is not being clever, just rich. Generally being clever is the player's job, to make up for being poor.

-Max

P.S. I *have* found that the AI tends to field better units under Edi's NI (no independents) mod. That's where my armies-of-Illithids-and-armies-of-Umbrals-and-cave-drakes experience came from.