Help needed: How to defend? / Guides to nation

[Folket]

The easiest way to defeat the AI is to use sacred units. The AI have no way to adapt. This could be fun to try a couple of times. It will also only work for certain nations.

I do find that some comments here are wrong.

The AI will stop attacking you if he looses interest and you are not attacking him. This has happened many time for me. I guess I play more defensively then other here. If you have a strong border the AI fails his attacks he might stop attacking. You will also get a new message about him declaring war if he is going to attack again.

I find pd to make or break a war. Always read in the manual on how strong your pd is. Nations with really strong pd like LA Then Chi is very easy to play against the computer since it will just send wave after wave to die. If the pd is fair I have no problem to buy it up to 35 or higher if I know there is going to be a battle.

When I play the AI I usually expand quickly and will then have war at 4-6 fronts. Then I start predicting his moves and crush his armies with as few looses as possible. Here tactical skills are important, learn your opponents units and device a ingenious battle plan. Fort are also very useful since the AI will never leave a siege. So once his army is stucked at a fort You may surround it and eliminate it.

[MaxWilson]

We could generalize that. The easiest way to defeat the AI is to win battles cost-effectively, be it with sacred units, supercombatants, cheap summons, or what-have-you. Since the AI doesn't adapt, setting the difficulty level higher gives the AI a cost break (bonuses to pretender points, research, income, resources, gem production), which raises the bar on how cost-effectively you have to defeat the AI (because its units are effectively cheaper, and also because it expands quicker and thus has a larger income base, and because the point break on the pretender means its units may have a better bless and/or be produced in greater quantities because of better scales). But the AI never adapts, it just sort of stumbles across good strategies sometimes, due in large part to the fact that certain strategies naturally fall out of certain nations.

When you're being crushed under an army of Illithids or Umbrals, it is cold comfort to note that the AI is not being clever, just rich. Generally being clever is the player's job, to make up for being poor.

-Max

P.S. I *have* found that the AI tends to field better units under Edi's NI (no independents) mod. That's where my armies-of-Illithids-and-armies-of-Umbrals-and-cave-drakes experience came from.

[fabio80mi]

I would like to thank you guys
I've tried to follow your advice , both as faster/better expansion both as trying to build a 2nd fortress soon and increase ind strenght.

My game style seems to have improved a lot and i'm beginning to do very good on game with only AI , at least till mid game. in late game i'm still quite lost but i'll work on it =)

Another matter.. is there some specific map which is particularly good/enjoyable to learn and improve the game? i usually generate new one each time but they seem quite dull and always the same, and i can't find many good map like there was in dominions 2, advice are always welcome =)

[Ironhawk]

Mid to Late game is tricky for a new player. You are presented with so many options in terms of spells/summons/forging that it can be difficult to form a coherent strategy. My suggestion to you is to look up a standard strategy for whatever nation you are playing on the forums. Use that strategy as a guide for how to get through the mid game and gain experience with the whole process.


Aran is the traditional first-game map since it comes with dominions. And while it is not a good map in the sense of balanced starting positions, it actually is a good map in terms of terrain training. It will teach you how to get into the water, how to survive in waste, why farmlands are so prized, etc.

[MaxWilson]

I enjoy Glory of the Gods (multiplayer), and I also had a lot of fun with world3 from Illwinter's map page. I tend not to use random maps, or if I do I generate one and use it multiple times. Of course you're aware that you can still use Dominions 2 maps?

Edit: one more thought. You're aware that when the AI has a really big army, it tends to rout before they're all dead. If you cut off his retreat provinces the same turn, all those routed troops have nowhere to flee to and die. This can be the difference between, say, 83 out of 284 enemy troops killed (and 0 of 6 commanders), and 284 out of 284 killed (and 6 of 6 commanders, some of them mages). This is another reason it's important to be able to split your army when necessary, so you don't have to keep defeating the same army over and over again (until it gets whittled down small enough to be defeated by PD). BTW, if you cut off the retreat provinces the battle will still tell you that 83 out of 284 were killed, but you'll know by looking at the map that the other 201 died, too.

-Max

[Edratman]

I also had difficulty learning the game. I tried to play it like Civilization and got crushed pretty much. I also tried playing real big maps because I thought they would be more interesting, but I found myself getting too tied up moving troops and ignoring the details of the game.

So I started playing small maps with 2 foes, 8 or 9 independent strength, normal AI, easy magic, 75 site frequency and high cash and resource factors. This accelerated a lot of factors and the reduced number of provinces I owned allowed me to play more with the magic, forging and other aspects of the games. This enabled me to learn much more about the game and incorporate a lot of what I read in the forums but never used because I was overwhelmed with micromanagement of the vast maps.

I'm now up to medium maps with 4 or 5 opponents and I'll probably stop there because it takes me 2+ weeks to complete a game. I have no idea how I would ever finish a 120+ province map. Now I have the opponents 1 level up from normal AI and magic back to normal. I leave the independent strength at 8 or 9 and use high cash, resources because I like them and don't feel a need to try other settings. I made my first SC's a couple weeks ago (wraith lords) and was pleased to no end with their success.

If you try to learn on a big map you will probably get frustrated like I did when you find yourself fighting on 3 fronts without enough armies to handle all the action and no real knowledge of the magic system to handle this much activity.