.com.unity Forums
  The Official e-Store of Shrapnel Games

This Month's Specials

Air Assault Task Force- Save $8.00
Bronze- Save $10.00

   







Go Back   .com.unity Forums > Illwinter Game Design > Dominions 3: The Awakening

Reply
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old September 4th, 2010, 10:29 AM

thejeff thejeff is offline
General
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Posts: 3,327
Thanks: 4
Thanked 133 Times in 117 Posts
thejeff is on a distinguished road
Default Re: Yet another new person with a question...

As opposed to Neifelhiem, where you have essentially 2 useful troop types? Skinshifters and Neifel Giants? And Neifel Giants only if you've taken the right bless. Everything else might have some use as meatshields for your mages, except that your mages work better as thugs than artillery.

It's also not immediately obvious how lousy the troops are. Some of them look quite nice, but they're expensive and giant, which means they'll be easily swarmed and due to the way the combat mechanics work, they get slaughtered.


So your troops are capital only. For anything else you really need to rely on thugs. Which is fine. It's what Neifelhiem is about. But it's hardly an easy into to the game.

Neifelhiem is also pretty unforgiving of mistakes. Especially if you're running a bless. The Neifels are expensive. If you screw up and lose a group that really hurts. If you wait to recruit too many of them to be sure, it'll take forever to expand.
And as was said, the PD is crap. That may be a good thing to learn in training for MP, but it can turn a minor setback into a rout. Especially since PD helps convince the AI not to attack, even if the PD wouldn't stop it. Having little or no PD is an invitation for a multi-front war.

On a larger scale, if you're thinking of this as hard-core training for MP, Niefelheim might be a good choice. A lot of things you have to do with this nation are the basics you'll need to learn for MP. For a more general introduction, I'd recommend anything that doesn't rely on thugs or a bless. Good solid troops, maybe archers and mages that work well as artillery. And no blood. Play around with the basics first, then branch out. This may not be the quickest way to good MP, but a lot of people play SP more than MP anyway.

And who cares about the complication of subtly different troop types? You're fighting the AI. It's bringing pile of random junk at you anyway. Recruit some of each, maybe buff them a bit and rain destruction down on the enemy from behind them. Ulm is actually good at that. And it works well in SP.

I'd really echo Foodstamp's advice from earlier. Pick something that sounds interesting or just pick a random nation. See what you can do with it. If it gets boring or too frustrating, switch to someone else. Maybe the nation that was beating you. If the game does grab you, you'll soon have more nations you want to try out than you have time to try them.
Reply With Quote
  #2  
Old September 4th, 2010, 11:17 AM

rdonj rdonj is offline
General
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Posts: 3,007
Thanks: 171
Thanked 206 Times in 159 Posts
rdonj is on a distinguished road
Default Re: Yet another new person with a question...

...what? I've beaten impossible AIs before, without using niefel jarls in ANY capacity, using nothing but javelin troops, skinshifters, and a small number of meatshield guys as arrow catchers. So I have no idea where you're coming from. Besides, skinshifters may be cap only, but they also take completely negligible amounts of resources so are quite massable. Niefelheim's troop lineup may not be *great*, but it's completely usable and solid enough.

If I wanted to suggest hardcore MP training, I'd pick a kailasa or a bandar log before niefelheim. If you can beat full on impossible AIs with those nations, you are definitely ready for MP.
__________________
"Easy-slay(TM) is a whole new way of marketing violence. It cuts down on all the red tape and just butchers people. As a long-time savagery enthusiast myself, I'm very excited about the synergies that the easy-slay(TM) approach brings to the entire enterprise." -Dr DrP
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks


Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 10:25 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2025, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©1999 - 2025, Shrapnel Games, Inc. - All Rights Reserved.