Please point me in the right direction, help me get started!

[Wauthan]

Only barely Tex Pete. In Dominions 2 what you need is a few overall strategies as well as an emergency backup plan. You simply can't be flexible enough to cover all the available ways an opponent can come at you. Read General Tacticus "Fire and Blood" thread to get an idea of what problems you will be facing.

General advice:
The faster you expand/research/spread dominion the more enemies you will recive.
Enemies will attack you as soon as one of their borders touch yours.
If you want high magic and tough pretender (also known as a supercombat pretender) focus on earth magic on a pretender with high hp. Or nature on a pretender with regenerate (like the multipurpose Wyrm).
Know that the way of the combat pretender is one of high risk quick profit because of combat afflictions.
Never send your pretender into combat without using all available support/best protective spells/items.
Chose either Ulm or Jotunheim since they are the most straightforward and got strong provincial defence, letting you concentrate on building one main army to support your strong pretender.
Remember that no matter how tough your pretender is a lucky blow can take him or her down. Missile weapons ignore defence. Crossbows also ignore protection. Never let your pretender lead the charge and place it on a flank or further back in the army placement screen.
A dead pretender can be resurrected by its priests. THe more priests the faster it is returned. Plan accordingly.

Learn the basics. Learn the scales, learn what they do and how they compliment each other and ways to make them work with each other and with both your dominion and path adjustments.

Build an army in your mind before you start producing it and fill in the pieces for it. Figure out how you are going to place your formations and squads in order to take the most advantage vs your opponents.

Scout, scout, scout. Knowing your enemy will help you in finding their weaknesses.

Don't get impaitent

[Teraswaerto]

Originally posted by Wauthan:

Enemies will attack you as soon as one of their borders touch yours.

The AI usually won't attack, not right away at least, if one boosts the defense in all border provinces to 11.

[ January 10, 2004, 07:09: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Wauthan:
Missile weapons ignore defence. Crossbows also ignore protection. Never let your pretender lead the charge and place it on a flank or further back in the army placement screen.

To clarify:

All missiles ignore defense... but they do not ignore shield defense. Shields (especially defense 4 tower shields) help quite a bit against projectiles.

Crossbows halve protection... so even a protection 18 dragon will usually be hurt by crossbows.

Regeneration cuts affliction risk to 10% of normal - otherwise the risk is (damage/max HP).

All commanders, except immortals in friendly dominion or berserkers, rout if all underlings rout. So either send in a supercombattant with a strong army, or all alone, but not with a couple weak bodyguards.

-Cherry

[Taqwus]

Balance is very important. Don't just create *one* main army and run amok with that, for instance; if you concentrate your strength too much in one place, it will be difficult to respond to the inevitable incursions, and you're vulnerable to army-bLasting attacks. Expansion and defense must be balanced; so should magic and mundane, and the balance points will depend on the circumstances.
If you want to play with magic, for instance, try a large map with common magic sites to give the time, breathing room and magical resources to build a research machine. Focusing too much on research on a small map is a fairly simple way to die, while neglecting magic on a huge map is asking for trouble.
Remember the turn order. Magic and magically-caused battles take place before normal movement. So do assassinations. In addition, movement in friendly territory takes place before attacks, so a Last-minute reinforcement is possible *if* the reinforcing army is still in shape to move, e.g. did not lose its commanders during the magic or assassination phases.

[Tex Pete]

Thanks for all the tips. I went with the Wyrm Pythium first. It definately allowed me to conquer more provinces than I am used to, but I run short on cash. Basically I used my Wyrm pretender to clean up some provinces, but usually I accidentally get in him trouble like Last game he attacked some souless and undead which swarmed him and killed him. Also I have trouble building up my army. I am usually spending alot of gold on mercenaries or commanders. I might try again today with something different.