Question: Overcoming the barrier to understand Dom 3?

Cheers Yskonyn,
If you found a Dom PPP guide for Caelum with blood, that was most likely from Jacques Vidal (aka Nagot Gick Fel in these forums), I had the pleasure of getting my arse handed to me by his Blood Caelum in one of my first dominions game.

He was a top player so it's an excellent guide, but part of it no longer applies to Dom 3:

1)-IIRC, back in Dom PPP Caelum got 2 unrestricted random picks in its High Seraphs, so you could roll 1B or even 2B mages in every fort for 180 gold. Once the Dominions series evolved, Illwinter concluded that such unrestricted magical diversity in national mages resulted in all the nations playing more or less the same way by the end game, so the nations are nowadays restricted to picking their randoms from 4 or so types of magic, instead of all 8.

Also, back then scouts could be equipped with dousing rods to blood hunt, and at Blood4 you could summon Ice Devils for 30 slaves, and Fathers Illearth at Blood5 for 50 slaves IIRC, so getting into blood with a Fountain of Blood pretender was much easier than it is in Dom3, and much much easier than in Dom3 CBM.

2)-Back in Dom PPP the lesser elemental summoning in Conj3 did not require gems, and elemental mages would literally spam the spell.

Apart form the above, the rest of the guide should mostly apply nowadays.

Look at the strenghts of your nation: long range raiders, efficient patrollers, lightning resistant troops that synergize well with lightning spells, and the same with cold resistant troops & cold spells. Many troops carry magic weapons!

Your fliers have troop density issues, but your temple guards do not:
Do not underestimate your temple guards when it comes to holding the line, their ice armour gets better in cold3 provinces (their stats get much higher that what you see in the recruitment sheet), so name your pretender Prima Donna the Ice Queen and spread the cold love with a high dominion and liberal use of Wolven winter.
Add some winter wolves or undead with cold auras (ghosts, wights...) to your front line for some extra punch.

edit: I type slowly and did not see your last message: it's not Jacques then, but the advice looks similar.

Originally Posted by Yskonyn

Can levels be increased during gameplay? Because I always thought once you have a certain level chosen, you cannot increase it anymore and thus the maximum level spells are restricted to your initial build.
Am I mistaken?

Yes, you can empower spending gems. Getting from lv1 to lv2 costs 30 gems for example.

Or you can equip magic items that boost one or more particular paths. Take a look at Momfreek's excellent app for details, or check your manual.

[Soyweiser]

Sector24 also wrote a path booster guide: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:..._booster_guide

[Executor]

Originally Posted by Yskonyn

For the sake of argument here's the link to the guide I found fascinating; Why Caelum should go for Blood magic

Another thing I notice, is that you are talking about 3 to 4 levels of each magic path.
Can levels be increased during gameplay? Because I always thought once you have a certain level chosen, you cannot increase it anymore and thus the maximum level spells are restricted to your initial build.
Am I mistaken?

Another thing I notice, is that you are talking about 3 to 4 levels of each magic path.
Can levels be increased during gameplay? Because I always thought once you have a certain level chosen, you cannot increase it anymore and thus the maximum level spells are restricted to your initial build.
Am I mistaken?[/quote]

When picking a pretender for site searching people either take the minimum so they can forge boosters and remote site search with spells, like forging earth boots for Caelum for example. Or go as high as 3-4 levels for manual site searching and more powerful boosters and late game options.
I don't remember the exact numbers so I won't speculate but the odds to find a site manually increase with each level and a level 4 mage is guaranteed to find anything. It also helps that level 4 has boosters you couldn't get with lower levels with some paths, like the Winged Helmet for air, Flaming helmet for fire, etc.

Like Wendigo said you can empower to gain additional levels but the price increases drastically for each level. Initial empowerment is 50 into any magic path, including slaves, which is why blood empowerment is easiest and most common. Than it increases by 15 every additional level starting with level 2 which cost 30 I believe.

So starting a blood economy would require several hundreds slaves which isn't a lot for a non blood nation (nations like Mictlan or Lanka can easily pull in as much as 300 slaves per turn), but is very pricey when you're looking to get with a pretender.
Also, worth mentioning, any unit can blood hunt but there is only a 5% chance with non blood commanders to hunt successfully. So I guess you can always build 100 scouts and try to blood hunt.

Now back to magic paths, one of the reason why diversity is very important is the more diverse a nation is the higher level magic it can get, and the higher level magic you can get the more powerful the monster are you can summon, not to mention battle magic.
For example having S4/B4/A4 insures you'll be able to forge Robe of the Magi, Ring of Wizardry and Ring of Sorcery, all of which can increase you base paths drastically. Those boosters can be used on other mages to get additional high level boosts, Sceptre of Dark Regency, the Forbidden Light and so on, which insures you can cast and forge pretty mcuh anything.

So there is a very important trade off when choosing a pretender. Do you want an awake super combating pretender to expand well and orient on early game, hoping to compensate your lack of magic or diversity by successful early wars and plunder you'd gain by it, or do you want to cover all paths and magic at the risk of being a target of one of those who is focusing on early expansion?

Of course there are cross between nations but every nations has to make a trade off somewhere, scales for a bless, awake SC pretender for scales and diversity, scales for diversity... etc.

Caelum like any nation has a choice there. The good thing with Caelum is that you can kick the crap out of any nation that can't deal with archers, like Mictlan, or anyone who can't counter air magic (lightning evocation). But those who can will probably kick the crap out of you. So you can chose a pretender to compensate for your weakness here. Take a Prince of Death or maybe a Vamp Queen if you want blood.

A word of adivce from me; Caleum troops are generally not good. Melee troops in any case, so don't rely they'll be able to deal with anything other than archers and your archers won't be able to deal with anything other than lightly armored troops. You have temple guards but they are painfully slow for Caelum and you have Mamoths who are easily counterable with almost any magic researched. Though temple guards and mammoths are good when combined since the temple guards with their high morale keep the mammoths from routing and killing your troops.

[Stagger Lee]

Hi Yskonyn. You organized my first MP game a few years back, David and Goliath. I learned a few things in that game, but we got sidetracked by a couple of bad rollbacks and an odd combination of new and experienced players which led to a slightly unbalanced game. It was still fun, but I got the sense that you were focusing more on the admin part than on actual gameplay. A couple of games where you only think about your own nation and position might help you over the hump. Anyway, thanks again for that!

Originally Posted by Yskonyn

For the sake of argument here's the link to the guide I found fascinating; Why Caelum should go for Blood magic

Another thing I notice, is that you are talking about 3 to 4 levels of each magic path.
Can levels be increased during gameplay? Because I always thought once you have a certain level chosen, you cannot increase it anymore and thus the maximum level spells are restricted to your initial build.
Am I mistaken?

First, I think playing Caelum (or any non blood nation) with a blood magic strategy is more of a vet (if it works),or total noob (when it doesn't) move. What people are telling you is to pick a nation which can focus on one type of magic, so that you can learn how to use that magic. Once you've learned the value of (in this case) air magic, those lessons will stick with you and help you whenever you play a nation with any level of air access.

Second, I get the feeling that you are mixing two concepts that are separate. When you build your pretender, the magic paths you put on him count toward your bless. If the pretender has E3, there is no earth bless, and empowering him or giving him earth boots won't change that. If he has E4, your sacreds will get some reinvig, and even if your pretender is killed and he drops to E3, the bless stays the same. For all other purposes, you can empower or add items to improve him, and magic research is never limited by level unless there is a specific mod in use. (I've seen games where magic was limited to level 6) The ability to research and cast spells is not a function of initial magic level on a pretender.

Oh, and remember - Executor's suggested build is for a good rainbow, not a bless chassis (in case you were wondering why E3/D3). His job will be to go out and find stuff that your national mages can't, forge stuff that your national mages can't, and cast rituals that your national mages can't. And research in his spare time.

[Yskonyn]

A lot to take in, but tremendously appreciated, gentlemen!
I need some time to take it all in and then I am sure more questions will arise. Please keep an eye open.

[John_Madlock]

Is MA Marignon easy faction to play? They have very limited mages (fire and some astral) and very ordinary units. Only "difficult" thing may be understanding and management of communions.

[Fantomen]

I think a nation with limited magic is typically harder to play successfully in multiplayer, not easier.

[Admiral_Aorta]

Marignon's "very ordinary" units are also quite bad, so no they aren't really a good beginners choice. If you want to go with mostly fire magic and spam evocations then Abysia(any age really) is a far better choice since they actually have decent troops.

[John_Madlock]

Geez, is it true even with CBM? You sound like MA Marignon is simply bad faction, not only bad for beginners.