... to make the game run smoothly. This is not a strategy guide.
Tip 1: Code of personal conduct.
1) Don't berate the other players.
2) Do remember to draw a clear distinction between your in-game (role playing) persona and your out of game self. This is especially important if you are planning on lying and backstabbing.
3) Keep the wall between the game and the forums/real world. Someone can be a colossal jerk in the game without being one in reality. As long as they follow rule #2, this is perfectly fine.
4) There is no karma, there is no greed, everyone is trying to win the game and the only way to do that is to grow your nation at the expense of the others. Treating other players with fairness might help your nations get along, but nobody has a right to demand or even expect it.
Tip 2: Code of in-game conduct.
1) Don't make any agreements prior to the start of the game.
2) Don't bring alliances or enemies from one game into the next.
3) Don't trade things in one game for things in another game, or use position in one game as leverage to bargain in another one.
4) If you agree to a trade that requires several steps to complete or is otherwise more than simple gems or gold, you are obligated to complete the transaction once it has begun, even if you change your mind later. If something intervenes (a third party invades the province you were supposed to give away, for instance) you must make a good faith effort to come up with a mutually agreeable settlement.
5) Sometimes you will be ganged up on and lose. This is part of the price for playing with human opponents. On the other hand, sometimes you will be ganged up on and win anyway. This is part of the rewards of playing with human opponents
Tip 3: Offline turns.
When playing on a network server game, you can gain some flexibility by playing your turn offline. This is good if you pay per-minute for Internet access, are on dialup and don't want to tie up the phone, need to play your turn over several sessions, or want to play on a laptop where Internet access is not always available. Follow these instructions:
1) Connect to the server normally by putting in the IP, port, and password.
2) When you get to the screen that displays the flags of all nations, instead of clicking the name of your nation, click "quit" and go back to the main menu.
2a) You can disconnect from the Internet at this point.
3) Choose "Play an existing game" from the main menu. Choose the name of your game and play your turn. You can end turn, and your orders will be saved, but will NOT be uploaded to the server at this point. If you want to go back and change your orders, you can repeat this step as much as you want.
4) When ready to upload your turn, reconnect to the network server. You will see "2h file uploaded" and this is the signal that all is well. DO NOT FORGET to do this step, as if you do, your turn will be as stale as month-old Marignon hardtack.
Tip 4: Running multiple versions of the game (Windows, advanced).
If you are in several multiplayer games, and the games are running on different patch versions, you can maintain multiple versions of the game. This way, you can play each game in the correct version, and your battle replays will always be accurate. The same principles will work on Linux and Mac although the specifics will be different.
Once you have installed dominions, you can make a copy of the entire dominions3 directory. I usually name them by version, for instance dominions300, dominions301, dominions303, etc. Suppose you are starting from a fresh install and want to upgrade to the 3.01 patch, but still keep 3.00 because I'm hosting your game and won't upgrade it to 3.01.
You'll start with a directory in Program Files called dominions3. Make a complete copy of this folder and all its contents. You should then have two folders, "dominions3" and "Copy of dominions3". Rename the copy folder to "dominions300". Then install the patch, and if it asks, point it at the original "dominions3" folder. You'll now have the patched version installed in one directory, and the unpatched version in another.
You can run your patched version with your Dominions 3 shortcut, and the older version by double clicking the "dom3" file in the old directory. The game will display the version in the lower left corner when you launch the game, so you can make sure you have the right version.
You can create a shortcut to the old game version by right-clicking the copied old version's dom3 file and choosing "create shortcut." You can then rename this to, for example "Dominions 3.00" and drag it to the desktop, start menu or whatever.
Tip 5: Better Living Through Shortcuts (Windows, advanced).
There are some commonly used command line options that are useful to set on the game shortcut. If you have multiple versions because of Tip 4, you'll need to set this on all your shortcuts. Append these options to the end of your dominions command line. Examples forthcoming.
(note: These might be wrong until I get home and verify them, I just want to write them down so I don't forget)
"--nocredits": Don't show the credits when you quit game, speeds up exiting.
"--windowed" or "--fullscreen": start the game in windowed or fullscreen graphics, regardless of what you set in the game preferences
"--noclientstart": If you are planning on hosting, this will prevent suffering.