Guide: Some basic notes on expansion

[Fantomen]

Expansion 101

This is for noobish newbies, don't expect to learn anything new unless you are one.

Some people have asked about expansion recently, so this is an effort to outline some general principles for successful expansion. Each nation will have different means to achieve the goals, but the goals and tactical baselines themselves are pretty generic. Expansion is the same in SP and MP, but I will assume that the goal is to play MP competitively.

What is the minimum required expansion rate?
This depends a bit on what your nation needs. Some nations need more provinces than others, and some are more dependant on getting early forts up, and some are more concerned with getting gems or blood slaves going fast. A general guideline is you need to get 12 - 16 provinces and 1- 3 forts under construction by late winter, which is turn 10.

That is assuming a game with 8+ players on a map with 13 - 20 provinces per player and normal settings. If the settings are different you will have to adjust your goals accordingly. Some nations or strategies may have different goals entirely.

Examples of national variation: Man wants many forts to lay a base for overtaxing, LA ulm wants blood slaves for counts as fast as possible but can deal with slow expansion, Caelum wants many provinces and gems, but can deal with relatively few forts because they are so mobile and cap centric, etc etc.

But they all want a minimum of 10 provinces and 1 new fort, that is the absolute baseline for most games. And you only go that low if there is important other goals to manage that warrants it.

Go the easy way first, kill all the weak indies and use the resources from them to build a more powerful squad to take the tought indies. Analyze which indies are weak in relation to your nation, it's not always the same, and go for those first. If your nation is resource heavy you can take the provs around your cap first to speed up recruitment, but if not then it is often better to move on, leaving the closest provs so that as many of your expansion parties as possible can take a province the turn they move out. Secure chokes and desired borders, then take the provinces left behind. Don't lose expansion parties, it's generally better to take a weak indie, stop and reinforce or combine two parties than fight a risky battle wher you might lose an entire expansion squad.

How do I beat the indies?
The indies are a number of varieties that may require different tactics. Some nations have sacreds or elite units that can beat all or most indie types, but some nations needs to build expansion squads tailored to each type of opposition, and some nations should avoid certain indies and expand around them to take them later.

Archer decoys i refer to is generally any troop with a decent shield placed in low numbers in front of other units to draw archer fire. This is a basic tactical element, even many powerful sacreds wants to have a few shielded units taking the arrows for them. Get used to using them most of the time. You can use indy infantry for it if you don't have any usable units in your national rooster.

Tribesmen
These come in a few varieties, but are quite similar. They are archers + weak melee units in large numbers backed by a nature mage. The mage will typically cast vine arrows while the melee units rudh forward and the archers fire closest.
Tribesmen are usually the easiest indie to beat, but sometimes they can swarm squads of heavy units in low numbers.
Killing tribesmen can be done in lots of ways, but a standard setup of a few shielded arrow catchers backed by lots of archers or just a squad of heavy units kills them easily. As will cavalry or flying high offense units. Awake SC gods or sacreds should have no problems with tribesmen. So there is a lot of leeway with this indie type.
Edit: Wolf tribe melee guys has dual daggers which can sometimes be a problem, protection is better than defense against low damage dual wielders, so think about that when choosing blockers for this one.

Infantry + archers
This is a very common indie. You can kill it with any squad of better quality. The general archer + arrow catcher works well because the AI doesn't know how to decoy. But you need a little stronger shielded frontline than against tribesmen, and punch enough to penetrate the heavy infantry protection. But generally this is an easy indie type to kill. Sacreds and SC gods should win 100% or they are just not good builds. Cavalry with lances is often a good choice too.

Barbarians
Barbarians hit hard, so they can kill a heavy or elite squad that lighter indies cannot touch. And they can also kill SC gods that don't have awe because their high attack and damage may cause afflictions and overcome the gods defences. But they have a glaring weakness in very low protection and morale and no shields. The trick to take barbarian provs without losses is to abuse these weaknesses. Either by using enough archers to rout them before they connect, use a god or units with awe, or get the first hit with fliers or cavalry or other high offense troop placed so it hits first. But archers is by far the cheapest and easiest, if you don't have them recruit some indie archers or tribesmen archers and kill them with that.

Horse Tribe Cavalries (Quoting Calahan)
These can be a little tricky sometimes due to the all-bowman line-up, meaning none of their troops come forward to engage your troops in melee. And if you go forwards to engage them in melee then you will find they are no pushover, due to high defence (of 16) and (in CBM) two attacks. But like a lot of Indys they are weak against projectiles, and have another glaring weakness in only having one unit with leadership, who will also be mixed into the bunch of troops shooting arrows at you. So it's not uncommon to beat these in just 2-3 turns if you manage to take out the leader with your own arrows and projectiles. (or damage him causing him to fail a morale check, forcing all the troops to flee).

Heavy Cavalry
This is one of the harder indies. The lance charge can often kill stuff that other indies can't, and archers don't work so well because the heavy cav connects and breaks your frontline and then kills your archers. You need some way to deal with that lance charge. This can be done in a number of ways, swarms of size 1 high defense units will tie up heavy cavalry. Flying squads on attack closest will stop the charge as well. A frontline with high enough HP to take a lance to the face, like a number of giants, will get to hit back and kill the cavalry, or you can just buy some cheap units to die for you with your real troops behind going in for the kill. Squads of roops with awe works well, but a single god with low awe isn't good enough. Astral blessed sacreds of any type can take a lance charge due to the twist fate effect. Basically you don't want the lance charge to kill valuable elite heavy units or sacreds, or to get first strike on your awake SC. Once the charge is negated you deal with the cavalry as any heavy troops, you need something that can punch through the armour. So some types of expansion squads simply shoudn't try to take heavy cav, but adding a little something to negate the lances is often enough for them to do it. You also need your squad to be big enough since the heavy cav is ofte backed by many regular troops and archers, so if you lack the numbers just wait and expand another way in the meanwhile.

Knights
Knights and longbowmen are probably the toughest indie. The same principles as heavy cav applies but you need more numbers and a good archer decoy.

Amazons
Amazons are a bit like heavy cav in that they often have lance cavalry. But they also have mages with some different spells. Here it is important to be careful with valuable units. But generally you just deal with them like with heavy cavalry.

Lizardmen
Those are a bit like the barbarians with their high offense and no shields. But you should never ever send a SC god against them because the shaman will invariably curse him. Send archers instead.

Woodsmen
Those are like tribesmen, weak archers. But with blowpipe troops that can paralyze and fatigue and therefore sometimes do well against a few elite units or a SC god. Archer decoy + mass archers is a good choice. Or just enough troops of almost any type.

Bloodhenge druids
These are really hard and can do lot's of damage. The mages will spam agony, a quite dangerous AOE spell, at your frontline. And the dark vines are terrifying monsters. Plus the blowpipes will fatigue the frontline from behind the vines. The trick to beating them is to combine a tough frontline that can take some agony (pun intended) and go toe to toe with the dark vines with something that can flank and kill the weaker troops and mages. An example would be giants flanked by cavalry. This is non trivial for some nations and they should wait with this indie, don't be dissapointed if your regular expansion squads can't take it. Lifeless units work well because they are immune to agony and blowpipes.

Elephants
These can be tricky to kill early if you can't make an elephant counter of some sort, they kill most any number of normal infantry with trample. Countering elephants can be done either by frontlining a few size 6 blockers, size 4 or 5 works in a pinch too but will be pushed around and take some damage. Ethereal units are ok as well, and anything with animal awe halts them full stop. Animal awe can be either a national troop or commander (Pan, beast trainer etc) or a commander given a rat tail whip. You can also rout elephants with critical mass of crossbows or other source of high damage ranged attack. They can also be dealt with using magic in a pinch, spells to hold them in place or single target damage spells or paralyze spam are examples of usable anti elephant magic, you have to look at what you can cast. Elephant provinces are often good targets for awake size 6 SC gods.

There is more to say of course, and lots of scripting tricks you can learn. And countless specific national expansion tactics. But following these general guidelines you should be able to exapand with most nations.

Please complement with your own wonderful insights.

This is a good topic. Some comments:

Uncommon indeps:
There are some uncommon indy forces that show up occasionally (and you will usually get a clue that they might be dangerous when you see some uncommon troops in the province, like living statues). In these cases the most prudent course of action is to probe first with a scout before committing your army.

Two exceptions to the above:
-Independent commanders some times get random magic items, from time to time, fortune results in one of them getting a soul contract. If you start seeing devils in an independent province, it is a sign of this. This province should be taken soonest, because the longer you go the more devils you will have to face.

-Ever since the times of Dominions PPP, there are 3 air mages which have an habit of showing in provinces that just report as light infantry & militia defenders (can anyone confirm that this is still the case in Dom3? it's been a while). These 3 air mages with their armor negating spells have been the bane of countless expansion armies & pretenders. So, careful about sending your precious awake pretender against such targets.

Finally, always keep your eyes open for indy populations that complement your nation, and make sure you claim those provinces if they show nearby. Getting some Garnet amazons for example, can be huge for your game.

Underwater expansion:
The defining factor in underwater expansion is poison: many troops carry poisonous weapons, or even a poisoning barbed armour. You have to be able to deal with this to avoid suffering heavy loses when expanding underwater.

Thus, expansion pretenders without at least some poison resistance or regeneration are not a good idea, because even if they have a lot of hit points they will stack up afflictions from so many damage ticks.

When it comes to troops, you might not want to use either heavily armoured elite troops with low defense in expansion, because being hit every turn with a poisoning spear hurts. You particularly do not want to use troops with pincer/punch (low reach attacks) vs triton troopers, because you will get poisoned by their armour every time you hit them. Surprisingly, you do not get poisoned if you trample, running them over. I guess Dominions is weird at times.

The psychology of expansion:
Guides often tell you that you have to get X provinces by Y turn, or you are a bad player. This is not written on stone, it really depends on the game settings.

Obviously, you do not want to be the guy surrounded by neighbours who are twice your size, because then you are just food.

But hyperexpanding in a game with graphics on & diplomacy will just paint a big target on your chest. Really, the most basic diplomacy move is: "look how big & aggressive this player is, let's gang up on him before he attacks us"

Thus, never forget the game settings when planning your expansion: Games with no diplo &/or no graphs favour hyperexpansion strategies. In games with diplomacy &/or graphs enabled, drawing too much attention might actually work against you.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by Wendigo_reloaded

-Ever since the times of Dominions PPP, there are 3 air mages which have an habit of showing in provinces that just report as light infantry & militia defenders (can anyone confirm that this is still the case in Dom3? it's been a while). These 3 air mages with their armor negating spells have been the bane of countless expansion armies & pretenders. So, careful about sending your precious awake pretender against such targets.

Yes, they're still around destroying expansion parties. When the battle report indicates a squad of Vans was destroyed in what should have been an easy battle I know I've run into them.


Nice guide, Fantomen.

It might be worth mentioning elephants as well.

Also, I agree with your assessment of the tribesmen - except for deer tribe. Those dual daggers can be dangerous. Probably safest to treat them similarly to barbarians.

[Fantomen]

Updated with horse tribes and elephants, plus a note on wolf tribes.

I suppose there are also cavemen, pale ones, bakemono, raptors, hoburgs and detailed underwater expansion to do (wendigo reloaded has underwater pretty much covered, but a note on each poptype might be useful to some).

Feel free to write those and I'll add them in the OP with credits.

[SsSam]

"Guides often tell you that you have to get X provinces by Y turn, or you are a bad player. This is not written on stone, it really depends on the game settings."

Another worry here is that if you do end up with X provinces by turn Y....you may just be putting a big fat target on your back.

You want to know HOW to get X provinces by turn y (on normal settings) but doing it isn't always the best strategy.

[Deadnature]

Yeah, its always good to imagine your position once you have achieved your initial expansion target.

For example: It's like, "ok, by late winter in the first year I should have 15 provinces and a fort.

I can reliably accoumplish that with X strategy. So far, so good.

But what happens if I run into a strong or weak neighbor at that point? Would X strategy enable me to survive after initial expansion? Fight off a bless-rush? Overtake a weak-early-game-nation?" etc...

This guide is great, a must for mp-beginners and it begs a companion-piece: "your first war" or something to that extent.

[Fantomen]

Ideally, a strategy that enables good expansion can also be tweaked on the spot to make a strong first war. It's not quite the same of course, but a bunch of effective expansion parties can often be turned into early game armies when stacked and combined with a few mages, or one by one as raiders.

You should have a research plan that gives you a few key spells against rushes early on, and think about how to tweak that plan depending on the nature of the rush in question.

A "your first war" guide is hard to write, because the actual strategies would be different for each nation. It might be possible to make general outlines for fighting different types of opponents and rushes though. Sort of: this is how to counter giant E/N sacreds, this is how to deal with large amounts of troops, this is hoe to counter elephants etc. But searching the fora will give you a lot of such threads already. Maybe it would be an idea to collect all early game advice into a sort of general early game guide. Lots of work though...

Honestly, fighting your first war is like fighting any war. Game specific knowledge only takes you so far, because the basic skill is strategic thinking in general. Setting up traps, making diversions, lying convincingly, playing dirty. Sun Tzu for the win. I've run into a lot of "newbs" that I could beat on a dom3 knowledge basis, but that turned out to be crazy tough opponents anyway because they were anything but newbs on strategy games and knew how strategy works.

[Shardphoenix]

Units with really high def (Tir-na-nog sacreds with w9 bless, for example) are good against elephants, since trample has low attack value. Works against troglodytes/minotaurs too.

[Fantomen]

Note that the defense roll for trample is against a standard, it the same regardless of attack value of the trampler. Which is why turning low attack construct summons like golems or siege golems into tramplers is a pretty good idea at times.

High defense units can stand against elephants, but nowhere near as well as ethereal or large size units. Also don't be confused by high parry shields giving the illusion of high defense. Only the "real" defense value counts for avoiding trample, so a unit with a tower shield (which gives a -2 to defense and parry 7) will be worse of against a trampler than the same unit without a shield despite showing a higher defense value on the surface.

That means that the high defense approach to blocking tramplers really only applies to rare cases, as you'll want to get up to around 18-20 or so "real" defense for it to work. Water blessed warriors of five elements would be an example. And you'll still have some attrition. IMO you can usually find a cheaper counter and avoid casualties all together.

Not meaning to be nitpicky, I just don't want newbs to mass tower shield infantry against elephants and wonder why they lose. (displays def 15, but real def is 8. So they get slaughtered)

[parone]

reading this stuff makes me want to play again...