Why am I not able to win the Orania Map ?

[JimKnopf]

Graeme Dice said:

Never take turmoil unless your theme requires it. Similarly, do not take restless worshippers.

Growth provides little to no benefit in the unmodded game unless you plan to play for several hundred turns. Order 3 provides a far greater boost to income.

These are mistakes. You spent hundreds or thousands of gold on province defense instead of building a castle or buying mobile troops with greater combat effectiveness.

You are right. It was really a mistake to raise local defense that high. During my last successful attempt to beat the map I nowhere had local defense higher than 40. Maybe even that was too high. This I reinforced with with a squad of good troops (about 20 to 30 heart companions or heavy infantry) and as many mystics I could produce. Later on I reinforced them with hordes of vine men from enchanted forest. That worked pretty good.

Regarding Growth vs Order: I planned to have a strong dominion that spreads fast. Thats why I chose the restless worshippers theme. So I had to choose turmoil 1.
I will check out your advice, regarding using Order instead of growth.

[Ironhawk]

JimKnopf said:
Now to my curent setup

....

Any stupid choices in your opinion ?

You've made some odd scale choices for a Pretender which was clearly designed to be focused on Dominion. In particular, you note that you cannot keep your troop production up with the AI, and yet you have neither Order nor Productivity. Keep in mind that in head-to-head combat, Arco troops are better than average. So even if you went for a purely military victory vs the AI, you should have decent chances. To me, this indicates that you may be recruiting the wrong troops or be deploying your armies with bad makeups?

My suggestion for you is to use a "canned" setup and playstyle for Arco. Then, after you win a full game with that setup, you will have plenty of experience to continue on with any other SP game (as Arco or other nation). But first a few points when playing the AI.

1) The AI percieves low PD provinces as "weak" and will attack them. Keep good PD in your border provinces (say 11-15pd).
2) The AI percieves your overall strength only by number of troops. Consult the stats constantly and do not let yourself fall behind. Build garbage troops (like slingers or militia) to boost your numbers and keep yourself in the 2nd or 3rd rank of troop numbers.
3) AI never declares peace but may turn its attention elsewhere (like to fighting a different AI). Watch your neighbors carefully and if it looks like an AI is letting up on you, then you may be safe to let up on them for a while.

As for the canned setup, try something like this:
Inidies: 6
Sites: 75
A Strong Combat Pretender, like a Wyrm or Red Dragon to help with initial expansion.
Order 3, Prod 3, Death 3, Misf 3, Magic 3
(Order 3 minimizes Misf 3. Death3 is safe base dom2)

Early Game:
Build hypaptists and elephants in a 3:1 or 4:1 ratio and group them in the same squad (high hypaptist morale keeps the elephants from routing). Fill out the rest of your ranks with hypaptists or (if you are low on resources) the javelin-wielding inf that arco gets. Spearhead formation with the elephant/hyp squad at the front. Focus on your research and buy Mystics non-stop to try and get Mystic with 3 magic in a single path.

Mid Game:
Same troop loadout as before but augmented with Mystics to employ the Arco battlemagic. Research level 3 conj (i believe?) to get the combat magic path booster spells and then as much Evocation as you can. The spells you want are: Blade Wind (incredible vs. the ai), Falling Fires, Falling Frost, Fireball, etc. Use Gifts from Heaven or Lightning spells only vs heavy armor troops. Cast quickness if you can. Forge booster items for your 3magic mystics to get them to 4 and 5 (do not risk these mystics in combat!!).

Late Game:
Use your boosted Mystics to summon the Elemental Royalty and forge up equipment for them to be SCs. Additionally you should now be able to cast the mega artillery spells like Murdering Winter and Flames from the Sky. These spells in particular will devastate the ai which relys on troop numbers and cannot adapt its strategy to avoid bombardment.

[Vicious Love]

What, no astrologers? Magical versatility may be Arcoscephale's greatest strength, but raw astral oomph really isn't that far behind. And can be remarkably synergistic with their elemental magic.

[Ironhawk]

Astrologers are great, but he's playing vs the AI so he needs AoE spells, not single target. I suppose I could have covered some astral buffs but I was trying to trim things down to the bare minimum for a new player.

[Saxon]

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.

[Morkilus]

I've failed plenty of times against the AI, usually when there's an AE Ermor or C'tis involved. Dunno why I lose to C'tis. I find that I have alot more fun playing when there ISN'T a death theme to have to deal with, since the other AI nations never have a chance. It's pretty much given that you'll be fighting Ermor and probably be crushed. It's not cheating to leave them out, but if you want to fight them you better beat them early in the game, and have a solid plan to do so. In multiplayer, it's not unusual to gang up on a death theme just so the dominion doesn't spoil the... spoils

[Sandman]

Dominion Theme: Restless worshippers

I'm not sure if this even works. Ceremonial faith is better, IMO.

[JimKnopf]

Morkilus said:
I've failed plenty of times against the AI, usually when there's an AE Ermor or C'tis involved. Dunno why I lose to C'tis. I find that I have alot more fun playing when there ISN'T a death theme to have to deal with, since the other AI nations never have a chance. It's pretty much given that you'll be fighting Ermor and probably be crushed. It's not cheating to leave them out, but if you want to fight them you better beat them early in the game, and have a solid plan to do so. In multiplayer, it's not unusual to gang up on a death theme just so the dominion doesn't spoil the... spoils

You are right. Actually it was stupid from me calling it cheating to leave Ermor out. I would never play without Ermor because it simply makes me feel good to save the world from the undead.
What I do is to change the world setup in a way I hope is disadvantageous to ermor. (Independents: 9 + Richness: rich).

[Sandman]

Even 25 PD is probably too much.

[shovah]

yes, the best defence for anyone other than ulm is to mass indie archers/crossbows (or possibly others if you have longbows ect) with a few units up front to take damage and possibly more archers or a flaming arrows/wind guide mage. Vrs the ai mystics are better than astrologers except for mind hunting ect but in mp where people go for quality over quantity those astral spells become very viable.