Why am I not able to win the Orania Map ?

[Saxon]

Hmm, I will check tonight. I know that when it hits 100%, you can not recruit, which makes your tactic very effective. I have found against the AI, they do not agressivly patrol when you drop a spy or two on the capital. I have found it so effective that it is almost an exploit. Against a human who knows what they are doing, I suspect the spy would have a short life span...

[JimKnopf]

Saxon said:
The provincial defense issue appears to be a big problem for you. A couple of points on that might help. First, the troops you get for the money are generally pretty weak. I think of them as a deterrent to keep out very small armies and some cannon fodder to support the real defense army when it arrives.

Second, look at the cost of those weak troops. For each step in provincial defense, you pay one more gold than the current defense. That means to upgrade from 3 defense, you have to pay 4 gold. Not to bad. But to upgrade from 22, you have to pay 23 gold. That is getting pricy, especially compared to what you can get for that kind of money at your castle.

Now, if you were pushing provincial defense up to 60 or 70, you were paying 60 gold for each weak unit. A lot of your resources were not utilized in the best possible fashion.

Sure, there is no upkeep, but you also can not use these troops for anything except the defense of one province. Regular units can move on both offense and defense and are much more flexible. I keep my defense at 11 unless it is a active boarder, where I try to put it to 21. You get an extra commander at these two cut offs, so it is worth going up from 10 or 20.

The money I save goes into mobile troops, temples, labs and castles.

My other comment is about the immobile pretender. I personally prefer a mobile pretender, as it give me more flexibility. For the “super players” they can plan turns in advance and handle tricky things. I get things wrong on many occasions and sometimes need to rush a pretender to battle to help out. Again, I am not saying it is not possible to do it, but for those of us who need extra help, a mobile pretender is a nice extra resource. They don’t need to be a Super combatant (SC), just their spell powers can tip a battle.

One Ermor tip is that Eyes of Aiming put into the normal priest make them pretty good at cleaning up large numbers of the lesser undead. The normal one misses a lot, but the boost to precision increases their kill rate.

You mention you didn’t want to recruit Astrologers. They are one of Arco’s trademark magic units, which in Dominions is usually a clue that you should pay extra attention to them. They are strong in astral magic. With a starshine cap and the banner of the northern star, you can boost these guys to five astral, which is huge. (speaking of which, small is big in this game. A single extra level of magic goes a long way, it is different than games with huge bonuses that don’t mean much) If you get lucky and get a mage with four astral to start, you can boost him up to six. Have a look at the crystal matrix and slave matrix. You can turn these mages into powerful killing machines that do not tire. I mentioned mind burn, but should have said soul slay. I have created a firing squad of about 20 astral mages that will kill just about anything and can teleport in to do it. Dominions has lots of ways to power up mages and some commanders and the more you find, the more you will win.

I like the other unit, the Mystic, but they can not be powered up as far. I would suggest building only Astrologers and Hearts Companions at your home castle and recruit your mystics at secondary castles. If you do not have a bless strategy, you might ignore the Hearts Companions. Sorry, I don’t remember their cost compared to the regular Hoplite units.

Finally, sure, lots of people say the game is easy. But usually it is the hard core who post and not the normal folks like you and I. The postings are biased. Also, it is a human thing. Most folks don’t like to admit they get their butt handed to them by a game, so they don’t post their failures, they post their successes.

In the meantime I started implementing strategies from this Thread and I am doing much better. I even won the Map once (OK, to be honest I quit the game, when I contolled about 50% of the map and was convinced I would win).
Currently my local defence values range between 25 and 40 supported by as many mystics as I can build. Besides that I add summons or normal troops. That works well in most cases.

Mystics vs. Astrologers
In the beginning when I used mages only to research and almost not in battle I chose Mystics because they are slightly better in research.
Even now I still prefer Mystics. Especially in the early game their fire and water mages are very useful in battle. The astral battle spells looked rather weak to me.
Nevertheless I will have a closer look on the astrologers.

And thanks for the tip about eyes of aiming, because in my current game a war with ermor is unavoidable.

[Ironhawk]

JimKnopf said:
Mystics vs. Astrologers

As you have seen, Mystics are good vs the AI becuase the AI just mobs all its troops together and sends them out. This makes excellent targets for thier large AOE spells like Falling Fires, etc.

But Astrologers have strong astral which is very powerful against single targets even at low levels (like Paralyze!). This is not so useful versus AI, but is incredibly powerful vs. humans who will use SCs against you. Also, some of the really high level astral spells are powerful, like Master Enslave. Doom and Will of the Fates are also great high level grief/buff spells.

[shovah]

true but one of the greatest anti SC's any one can employ is petrify, boosted/empowered mystics handle that well.

[JimKnopf]

This is really a great community here. I think it will take me quite some time to to check out all the advice I got from you .
In the meantime I was able to start a new attempt and it looks pretty good for me this time.
Although I am at war with Pythium, Ermor and C´tis I don´t see any danger for my empire. Once C´tis was the strongest Empire regarding troops and provinces.
That has changed after they declared war on me. Now I am the strongest. I own about 25% percent of the map with 7 nations (includung mine remaining)
Now to the bad news
It´s turn 131: So it will be no fast victory. (If I should actually win )
I used a game setup that would hopefully be very disadvantageous to Ermor. (World richness rich + Independents 9). Apparently it worked.
All AIs are on Easy level.
So all in all it won´t be a glorious victory. But I think this time it will be a victory.

I will keep you up-to-date with my progress and will incorporate your advice into my strategy for my next game.

[Saxon]

If you are going after a SC, you generally need to worry about magic resistance. In cutting through magic resistance, that extra level of astral can sometimes make the difference. Also, the higher level of astral helps keep fatigue down, which is important if you are trying to cut through magic resistance through sheer volume of spells.

[shovah]

thats the thing, petrify kills if it isnt resisted and paralyzes even if it is resisted (so your vine ogre hordes can pummel the enemy)