Dormancy?

[Chazar]

Nevertheless, the size of the map is probably the major factor here.

[upstreamedge]

Ya I agree, I am going to be part of a newbie game which will theoretically be 20 people on cradle of dominion I am playing Oceania, any ideas?

[Twan]

I think the nation has a big importance too. In our cradle game the 2 players with the more provinces have an awake pretender of course, but we are also Man and Machaka. Man has his uber and cheap longbowmen, and Machaka (I) can produce lots of weaker archers per turn (their cost is only 3 ressouces... so why I've twice more troops than anybody is not a mystery). Taking an awake god allowed us to have a bigger income fast to make more archers and take more provinces with them in addition to what our pretenders take. Nations producing only heavy units can't compete with Man & Machaka before turn 10 or so in the number of provinces we can take, with or without an awake god. Later, when only provinces with heavy units will stay independant, we will have far more difficulties to expand than others and scales, magic, etc... will probably become more decisive than our good start.

[FAJ]

Dormancy against computers seems to be a no-brainer to me, as they are often slow to attack you and you generally play on your own terms.

In a faster paced multiplayer game the dormancy can kill your research, especially in high drain dominion. I am still trying to figure out the tradeoffs of dormancy on a high drain nation, or nations with poor researchers like Yomi.

Im not sure how important it is to rush research early on, but I tried a high drain dominion with abysia (to add MR to my demonbreds because due to old age problems I use them almost exclusivly). I have a dormant god so my research will be next to nill for the first 5-10 turns. Does this put me at a significant disadvantage?

Basically, how important are those first 10 turns?