How difficult is this game?

[KissBlade]

Marignon is quite easy to learn basics with. In the beginning pick a Wyrm or a Dragon. A Dragon can solo most indie provinces by just scripting fire x5 + attack (anything really).
Wyrms can solo with dom 9 or 10 (I prefer 10, magicless but 9 is almost as good too) Without high dom, take either astral or earth and sit him at home researching buffs till he can lead a small force of indies to start conquering himself. Once you get the right buffs for him, he should break off into soloing and let an indie commander to conquer stuff with the troops your wyrm was leading.
Regarding solo pretenders, avoid: Lizardmen, Barbarians (unless you have awe which really kills Barbs), Xbows, Heavy Cavalry/Knights <= though this last batch is pretty tough to deal with with standard troops even. Prepare a big line of militias to soak up the lances), and Amazons.
Your first army should pick up the first turn of troops (prophetize the commander), script him to fantacisim, smite, smite, smite, smite, cast spells.
You want to keep your pikemen on guard commander formation and put your commander right on front of your archer block.
Now the crucial thing to learn from all this is decoying. Always keep one (or two) seperate troops on front and a bit to the side on "hold and attack". These will soak up the first two volleys of archers and bad stuff. Constantly replace these decoys with your guys with battle wound, prioritizing battle fright (MAKE SURE THESE ARE NEVER IN YOUR MAIN GROUP) and diseased (they're going to die anyway).
Anyway, for the most part of the game, always make tons of archers + xbows. They are by far the most effective troops and your heavy infantries should mainly be there to soak up the extra resources you're not using. Learn to love your ranged guys when it comes to nations with standardized human troops. Also, always make pure mages from your fort provinces. Never recruit nation commanders and scouts since you can grab them from indies. Marignon can set up a secondary fort for spies so you might consider one just for that. Learn to love falling fires with marignon and look towards seraphs eventually. Another thing, when designing scales, ALWAYS take Order x3. (Unless you're LA Ermor ...), misfortune 1 is pretty safe and for the most part, so is Sloth 3 since you mainly need one or two mountain/forest neighboring provinces to conquer to give you all the resources you need. A point of cold/heat isn't bad either since the income penalty is effectively only 2.5% for the first point due to the changing temperature per season. I always take magic 3 as well but drain 2 is fairly common. GL =)

[jimkehn]

Except, I think if you prophetize your commander he will be a level 3 Priest. Isn't Fanatacism an H4 spell?? Maybe KB meant cast Divine Blessing, which an H3 Prophet can cast. Only helps if you have sacred troops on the battlefield, though.

[KissBlade]

My memory might be off, my laptop is sputtering so I can't play Dom lately but I thought h3 gave you Fanaticisim in Dom3?

[Sir_Dr_D]

No, it is H4.

[KissBlade]

Ah right, nevermind, it was smite that dom 3 took down. Yeah, just cast Sermon, Smite x4 then. =) Thanks, (haven't played dom for awhile cause my laptop with it went clunky >_> and it doesn't fly well on Vista)

[Fenris99]

Thank you for the advice, KissBlade .

The game is not easy. It seems I have to build up for at least 3 turns before I can start grabbing indie provinces. The Ai seems to be doing it sooner. It also seems that you have to have a long view on what you're going to do; you can't just face challenges as they come. You have to have some master plan.

And I'm playing on a small map with easy Ai.

[Meglobob]

Fenris99 said:The game is not easy. It seems I have to build up for at least 3 turns before I can start grabbing indie provinces. The Ai seems to be doing it sooner.

Look to be conquering 1 province per turn from turn 2 (ie...1 turn to strengthen your starting army), aim for 15+ provinces by early spring year 2.

This is minimium, some nations you should expand faster with.

[Edratman]

Fenris99 said:
The game is not easy.

That about sums up the game. The more you play, the more intracies you discover. If you read the threads from the MP gamers you will discover tricks and depths you will never have thought of on your own.

Pretender/magic/scales set up is almost a complete game within itself. If you ask 5 players what is best, you will be lucky to be offered only 7 opinions. Where you set your options regarding indy strength, and % gold/resources/supplies and research speed also significently alters the game strategy. And SP is an entirely different game from MP.

If you play SP, you will develop your own preferences for settings. They will be absolutely correct for you and your expansion/research strategies will develop to reflect these settings. I myself play very difficult or impossible AI, indy 9 and leave everything else at the default (except for renaming- always allow renaming - you can rename commanders to "prophet", "scout", "5 death", "6 Nature", "Rainbow shield maker" or whatever you choose to help minimize confusion because the stock names are confusing and will also repeat.) It took me months to work up to "Impossible" AI settings.

Slippery Jim's advice on expansion rate is right on the money in my opinion, based on my also using indy strength of 9. This changes somewhat depending on which nation you are playing (some have better/more affordable early game troops), what settings you have chosen and your starting location, but it is correct. The mercenary advice is also spot on. Bid 5 gold above the mercenary asking price and you will always get them.

My expansion standard is to be ahead of the AI by about turn 10 on the province chart if I don't use mercenaries. If there are good mercenaries available in the first 2 or 3 turns and I'm playing a game where I will buy them, I will be ahead of the AI at the outset of the game. (For my first 6 months of playing, I always bought the good mercenaries. Now it depends upon my mood and the affordable early troops of the nation I am playing.)

This is a great forum and community, as you should be able to discern from the responses. Ask any question and you will get sound advice.