So since Dom 3 is being discussed

[Avoraciopoctules]

My RPG group picked up a copy of Dominions 3 a few months ago. Theres around 4 people semi-actively playing it in single-player and hotseat multiplayer games. We have never finished a multiplayer game, and 2 of our 4 active players have a understanding of the game only volumes more intricate than that of Phonelobster. I play pretty casually and keep the game around in significant part due to all of the nifty ideas I can steal from it for RPG games and the ability to generate political maps. Akula is probably the most "hardcore" Dom 3 player in the group.

This has led to a situation where everyone else is inclined to team up against him at the first opportunity in the hopes that they will crush him before he leverage the incredible advantage of vaguely knowing how everything works, enthusiastically practicing single-player, and (gasp) reading what people say about Dom 3 on the Internet to gain an overwhelming advantage.

Now, some context. One player has decided that he will play T'ien Ch'i in every age and every game. He says he is pretty decent, but has difficulty expanding against indie provinces. Another guy was the DM for the "racism instead of legs" campaign I posted about. He thinks that he has a killer strategy in casting Perpetual Storm as Absyia OR Man, allowing him an incredible advantage against his foes (He insists on playing Abysia in EA, ULM in MA, and Man in LA). Abysia is more pertinent to the moment, as I am going to ask a question about a game he is playing in. He begs the other players to send him whatever Air gems and blood slaves they find, so he can get the power to use his incredible sorceries against his foes. This may entail empowering his imprisoned Pretender up the the point that casting the spell is possible, then getting enough gems.

I consider myself a casual player. Discussing optimization of the game is fun, as is reading LPs/faction guides and playing semi-regularly, but I do not feel driven to develop my skills in the game very quickly. Akula can post about his own philosophy if he wants.


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That seems like a decent lead in. I am involved in a 3-player, 2 AI game. There are 2 landmasses (random map, Early Age), and one AI is on each of these. I am fighting with Mictlan over one, and am laughing at their lack of Jaguar Warriors. They seem to be fonder of legions of Jaguar TRIBE warriors, than their elite capital troops. After several games where everyone rushed Akula, I have made a quasi-secret alliance and shared victory with him for all of the games in the foreseeable near future. He is not doing too well, as the AI Arcoscephale declared war and rushed him as soon as he took out a nearby elephant province. He's Kailasa, and monkey PD was sadly insufficient to prevent them from dealing significant economic damage to him. They are now much less of a threat, but Akula feels that it is likely that the other player will end up taking the AI capital and continuing on through his provinces. If played well, this could take him out. It is possible, possible, that the other player will play well enough to take everything but the capital and then siege him.

I am sending financial support to Akula and have pledged gems if he needs them, as well as Skull Mentors if I get them soon enough to be useful. (me = C'tis) But there is something far deadlier I could do. Once I take Mictlan's capital, I will have a Blood Slave income. I could send these to Player 3, and it is likely that he will go "Cool, I can use blood magic now." He will then probably either split his research 50/50 or go all-out into starting a blood magic power base from level 0. This is the end of year 1 at least, he has no warlocks, he has armies of high gold-cost Salamanders parked in his capital, and I am not sure that he gets the fact that he needs to blood hunt for much of his Blood Income. As a side effect of his manic rush for Perpetual Storm, he has decent battlefield evocations, but this isn't going to be enough to carry him into the long game. Also, even if he does get access to decent blood magic, he is unlikely to script orders for his blood mages.

So, I could try a vaguely elegant approach to crippling the main enemy here. The question is whether this would be enough of a jerk move that I should have second thoughts.

EDIT: considering an avatar switch for this game, so I'm putting my old avatar's link here: http://i244.photobucket.com/albums/gg21 ... vatar1.png

[Username17]

Perpetual Storm as Abysia is kin of weird to me. Your casters are artillery platforms who already have shit precision and your demonbred soldiers fly. I admit that you don't have any national archery units, but it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. You certainly aren't getting the kind of unalloyed benefit to be enjoyed by some faction like Niefelheim. It makes a little more sense to me with Man because you can partially offset the storm penalties with Windguide. But Caelum works a lot better for that strategy too.

Anyway,

Kailasa is in fact a pretty weak position. Of all the Monkey factions, it is the weakest. Not saying much, considering that Lanka is very strong (K plays hardly anything else) and Bandar Log is an upper-end mediocre position (in the middle era, where that's a pretty good thing to be). But seriously, you should tell people how blood incomes work. Demon armies are impressive and all, but only if you actually start blood hunting provinces. Blood slaves from sites basically don't happen.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

I admit that blood magic does pretty cool stuff. If I give Player 3 part of Mictlan's blood income in an attempt to sabotage his R&D, I will make a good-faith effort to, again, explain to him how blood hunting and sanguine dowsing rods work.

I will note that this guy may have some difficulty with the idea even if he gets what I'm saying this time. I don't think he really gets stuff like why setting taxes to 160 everywhere and then forgetting about it is a bad idea. I don't know what happens if you blood hunt in your capital like 5 turns in a row, but I am assuming that it might be problematic for him.

Then again, either extreme might serve the purposes of this exercise.

-----------

Since Akula has a phone but no internet, I will type for both of us.

AKULA: The last time I tried to give him strategy advice he told me I was being too big of a prick about it. He also told me to kick his ass.
AV: Player 3 says that Akula may be smart about dom 3 and all, but he is too much of a meanie, what with his abrasive speaking manner and all. Further, Player 3 says Akula should prove his superior knowledge and skill through victory.

EDIT: Lanka is pretty powerful. It has good flavor as well. Thing is, the sprites are hideous and that is a surprisingly good deterrent to me. Akula is more influenced by the fact that Mictlan is so rad as a comparative blood nation. I approve of this choice. Mictlan's sprites are great and skinshifter types are gnarly. Sacred ones that can use a Fire bless on all 3 weapons are perhaps more so, though I still think Jotun werewolves are the bee's knees as far as sheer coolness of concept is concerned.

[Akula]

Perpetual Storm as Abysia is kin of weird to me. Your casters are artillery platforms who already have shit precision and your demonbred soldiers fly. I admit that you don't have any national archery units, but it doesn't seem like that big of a deal. You certainly aren't getting the kind of unalloyed benefit to be enjoyed by some faction like Niefelheim. It makes a little more sense to me with Man because you can partially offset the storm penalties with Windguide. But Caelum works a lot better for that strategy too.

I was perplexed by this as a strategy. My main concern was wasted research and pretender design points. He has an imprisoned (CBM) phoenix and spent most of his points on scales, including both luck and order, notably excluding magic.
I generally plan on pushing for Const 6 for Lightless Lanterns as Abbysia. Since that greatly speeds the rest of my research, (Pure theory, I have not played multiplayer outside of hotseat in our gaming group.) The cost of a mage that will show up in year 3-4 and doesn't provide significant magical diversity and can't SC that well seems excessive to me.

Anyway,

Kailasa is in fact a pretty weak position. Of all the Monkey factions, it is the weakest. Not saying much, considering that Lanka is very strong (K plays hardly anything else) and Bandar Log is an upper-end mediocre position (in the middle era, where that's a pretty good thing to be). But seriously, you should tell people how blood incomes work. Demon armies are impressive and all, but only if you actually start blood hunting provinces. Blood slaves from sites basically don't happen.

-Username17

Yeah, if he realized what an easy target I am, I'd be fucked.
I'm trailing on forts and have cash issues, with two armies in my provinces I have to mop up.
I managed the game from turns 1-12. Abbysia is the largest nation, and got to two forts before anyone else; compounding that he had the most room to expand into along with a few very high population provinces next to his capital. So through no great cleverness of his own the Abbysian turnplayer has a strong position.
I wouldn't be able to stop a few small armies backed by 3-4 fireball spamming mages each. Or at least that is my analysis of the situation.
I do have Conjuration 5 and Alternation 3 researched; I am starting to move down the evocation tree. So I have access to my best troops. I haven't been able to site search with my pretender though (CBM F4W4E4S4D1N4B4 Greatsage Or3 Sl3 H3 D3 L0 M1) so my gem income is below where I hoped it would be.

My biggest hope is that he thinks he needs his ace in the hole to take me on. If he waits for perpetual storm before invading me I can make up the lost ground on gem income and forge some clams to fuel a number of nice little raiding forces and a big army backed by a communion/alteration/evocation spam. I'm hoping he doesn't realize that with Evo 3 and nothing else he is in the strongest position he will be in all game vis-a-vis the monkeys of Kailasa. I need time, and a good player won't let me have it.

[Username17]

Going for an Air god with Abyssia makes some sense to me. Handing out Staves of Storm to armies that are going to be threatened by ranged attacks is a decent enough idea and putting up Fata Morgana to get even more blood hunting going in the late game sounds pretty good. And of course, who can resist the siren's call of the totally broken Cloud Warriors in the late game?

But I am not really down with a Fire god for EA Abyssia. The Children of Rhuax get Fire 5 as a regular thing. One more powerful fire caster isn't going to be necessary at any point. Usually people just grab an Earth 9 Cyclops with a Nature minor and make really bad ass Burning Ones (for an Imprisoned Cyclops, you can get Earth 9, Nature 4, Dominion 7, Order 3, Productivity 3, Heat 3, Luck 1, Drain 2). But whatever.

Anyway, the bottom line is that if you put up Rain with a Yakshini water caster you can really put a damper on their fire casting. With the perpetual storm in play you'll be looking at Precision 4 Salamanders spending double fatigue. Abysia takes a LONG time to reinforce. If you ca hold off their first two assaults you will have virtually free reign to do whatever you want. What you want of course is to conjure Ghandarvas and your SCs. Monkey Krishna comes in at Conjuration 8 and should be able to butcher this guy's whole army, and the Rudra at Conjuration 9 is just obscenity.

But you have Ghandarvas right now and a Nature blessing at all, so you should be able to field a few castings of them and back them up with a Yaksha or two to boost their protection and grind the Abyssians down.

By the way: I hate CBM. I think it's really stupid on many many levels. Its effects are bad, its methodology is horse shit, and the reasoning for the changes are paper thin. Fuck that mod, and fuck that guy.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

Yo, Akula, I'm still at the library right now, but I just had a thought. You could post screenshots from the game in question. I don't remember whether your laptop is Mac or PC, but I know that at least the more recent versions of Windows have a program similar to Grab.

[name_here]

Okay, I'm a bit confused as to why he wants to take on Kalisia with perpetual storm, since Kalisia is not exactly an archer or evocation power and IIRC their only guys who fly without items have storm flight. What's the story there? Also, you should probably tell him that Man has good archers and doesn't like storms.

Incidentally, what's the major difference between Lanka and Kalisia? Is it just that it's a bit easier to collect enough blood slaves for the national summons, or what?

[Username17]

Okay, I'm a bit confused as to why he wants to take on Kalisia with perpetual storm, since Kalisia is not exactly an archer or evocation power and IIRC their only guys who fly without items have storm flight. What's the story there? Also, you should probably tell him that Man has good archers and doesn't like storms.

Kailasa has a whole set of longbowmen. But the usual Abysian response is "we have tower shields and your longbowmen cost 20 gold each and have a precision of 9." But they also have some sacred longbowmen too.

Incidentally, what's the major difference between Lanka and Kalisia? Is it just that it's a bit easier to collect enough blood slaves for the national summons, or what?

They have different spells, casters, and national elite troops.

Lanka has all the Blood Conjurations, Kailasa has all the Astral Conjurations. Lanka has a bunch of fearsomely powerful Rakshasa casters, Kailasa has Yaksha and Yakshini. Lanka has jaw droppingly powerful Palankasha warriors, Kailasa has some Yaksha warriors. They only overlap with their Atevi, Markata, and Bandar troops. Everything else is different. And grossly tilted towards Lanka.

-Username17

[Avoraciopoctules]

Okay, I'm a bit confused as to why he wants to take on Kalisia with perpetual storm, since Kalisia is not exactly an archer or evocation power and IIRC their only guys who fly without items have storm flight. What's the story there? Also, you should probably tell him that Man has good archers and doesn't like storms.

He doesn't want to take on Kailasa specifically with Perpetual Storm. He wants to take on everyone he faces by using Perpetual Storm in every game, usually by asking other nations to send him their Air gems so he he can cast it. Just like he wants to amass armies of high-gold, low-resource, low-armor salamanders in the early game regardless of what neighboring nations and indie provinces look like.

And I have told him about Man's longbowmen being good. As has Akula. Repeatedly. Occasionally he even recruits them. I haven't mentioned Wind Guide, though. That actually sounds pretty intriguing, and I will look into it the next time I play Caelum.

By the way, the reason that he likes LA Man is that its mages can function in Drain dominion. Same reason he plays MA Ulm and originally wanted to play Ulm in every age. He doesn't seem enormously fond of Dom 3 magic. He likes imprisoned Pretenders with very positive scales and minimal magic picks. He's slowly, painfully, developed more of an inclination to actually use magic, but he still goes for the Drain-inclined factions whenever possible.

Incidentally, what's the major difference between Lanka and Kalisia? Is it just that it's a bit easier to collect enough blood slaves for the national summons, or what?

Lanka is led by nefarious Rakshasas and Kailasa is led by quasidivine naked brown people. The brown people are great warriors and mages, especially when you put armor on the commanders through buff magic or equipment. Later on you can summon better brown people. Some have 4 arms or actually wear armor by default. Rakshasas have more variety in their special units, since they interbreed with their monkey minions, but I don't know much in the way of specifics for Lanka beyond them being ravenous demon types. I do hear that Lanka is generally better. They even have a generic Bandar commander that Kailasa doesn't get until Middle Age.

-----------------------------------

Question:

After I crush Mictlan, I will need to figure out what to do with my own forces. I am tempted to try conquering the oceans with legions of the walking dead, then supplement those with amphibious raiders in assaults on Abysia's coast. Thing is, that would cost research time and Death gems I could be using for a carefully timed casting of Burden of Time or something.

Once I take control of my landmass, I doubt I'll be directly involved in actual combat unless I attack Abysia myself. So I could go into full-on support mode for Kailasa and just send them stuff. But I'd like to do at least something interesting with my time. My pretender is a Mother of Serpents for the freespawn, so I don't think I have any incredibly unusual magic in my nation yet. I could ask Akula to send me waterbreathing items if he gets the time to do so.

EDIT: Actually, it looks like Frank covered the Lanka / Kailasa differences fairly well already. And I should summarize my questions.

What do people think might be cool options for C'tis right now? Is burning Death gems for longdead to use in underwater expansion as stupid as it seems right now after I take out Mictlan and am the sole claimant to my landmass?

EDIT 2: I should probably note that magic site frequency is set to 65-75 in all of our games, so magic sites are much more common. If I get a nature mage into the ocean, I might find a lot of Kelp Fortresses.

[name_here]

I'd sort of assumed that roughly equivalent guys between the two were at least somewhat more balanced than they are. Admittedly, Kailasa does slap awe on everything instead of fire vulnerable and gluttony, plus they have somewhat better access to protection buffing, but that doesn't quite cancel out. And then they have to go and give Lanka moon blades on their mid-range unit summon.

[Akula]

Okay, I'm a bit confused as to why he wants to take on Kalisia with perpetual storm, since Kalisia is not exactly an archer or evocation power and IIRC their only guys who fly without items have storm flight. What's the story there? Also, you should probably tell him that Man has good archers and doesn't like storms.

I would dispute that part about evocations. Yaksha are awesome EA evokers. You have access to massive bladewinds and gifts from heaven both backed up by eagle eyes to make them very precise instruments of death. Yakshini have easy access to all the water evocations and can self buff eagle eyes as well.

[name_here]

I would dispute that part about evocations. Yaksha are awesome EA evokers. You have access to massive bladewinds and gifts from heaven both backed up by eagle eyes to make them very precise instruments of death. Yakshini have easy access to all the water evocations and can self buff eagle eyes as well.

Okay, point taken. Still, they aren't strongly evocation-focused, and can do pretty well buffing up and beating holes in enemy formations. I tend to think of evocation powers as places that can get non-capital mages with enough in the way of paths to spam low-level evocations.

He doesn't seem enormously fond of Dom 3 magic.

Then Dom 3 is probably not for him, although admittedly I'm kind of lost on what things are worth summoning and what things aren't worth summoning. Also, always going salamander heavy is really, really stupid. Personally, perpetual storm as abysia strikes me as reasonable, but only if generically going for a rainbow pretender. Plus, unlike, say, Ulm, abysia does need decent income and so the penalty hurts. It also forces them to rely more on their infantry, but, well, abysian EA infantry are pretty awesome relative to other national troops.



Longdead aren't exactly good for underwater adventures, since they're poor amphibians and, well, they're fucking longdead who explode if you look at them funny. My personal experience with them is admittedly limited to some LA Ermor action where I threw a stupidly large number away trying to enter the ocean, but they hardly seem worth the gems. Then again, I tend to think of them as never being worth the gems even on the surface, which may or may not be correct. If you want to conquer the ocean you'd probably be better off giving 5 sauromancers amulets or something and skelespamming everything to death.

You're probably best off triggering burden of time once Abysia thinks they have their trump card ready, but before they start fighting, so even their normal infantry have time to start rotting to death. It's unlikely that he's got the thaut research or the pearls to try for a dispel, given his apparent playing style.


EDIT: Probably on account of not having played multiplayer yet, I'm honestly not too clear on what one does in the midgame for battles, beyond form voltron and lighting everything that isn't on your side. Any general tips for that, or specific MA Ulm, C'tis, and for that matter Bandar Log and LA atlantis?

[Username17]

Blade Wind won't put a dent in Abysian troops. But Gifts From Heavens and Falling Frost sure will.

Is burning Death gems for longdead to use in underwater expansion as stupid as it seems

Yes. If you're playing CBM, they made the various Shade monsters stupid cheap for some reason, and those things are way better at taking underwater areas.

-Username17

[Akula]

EDIT: Probably on account of not having played multiplayer yet, I'm honestly not too clear on what one does in the midgame for battles, beyond form voltron and lighting everything that isn't on your side. Any general tips for that, or specific MA Ulm, C'tis, and for that matter Bandar Log and LA atlantis?

MA Ulm is all about the thugs they could theoretically outfit each turn. You have a couple of choices here. Golden Shield+Fire Brand on a Black Lord is cheap as fuck and dovetails with your research goals. You will want to use them in groups of 3 or so with black knight support. If you have a Nature+Earth minor bless, the sacred smiths can be used as thugs with the same weapon/shield combo +armor, and winged boots. Use your spies to get a read on the PD you will airdrop your kinda fragile thugs into and generate unrest in enemy forts. Use your heavy evocations and E buffing to complement your main army. Bladewind, Magma Eruption, Iron Storm, Strength of Giants, and Legions of Steel are all castable by every smith with summon earthpower. Use that to take enemy forts as you lock them down and harass them. Subtle it ain't. Also, you really really want to get into blood, most of the earth magic evocations scale with level and bloodstones are great as both boosters and gem generators use them to get earth attack as you move into the long game. Blood also gets you boots of youth for any old smiths with a nice random.

Randoms on your smiths are pathetic but also your only real shot at a few key items. An A random smith with an empowerment can forge winged boots, and should every turn. The second A random smith should forge Eyes of Aiming every turn. Any other ones forge whatever strikes your fancy. S smiths can forge both boosters with an empowerment. And can then do astral travel. Two empowerments (or a pretender forged RoS) will get you dirt cheap rings of scorcery/wizardry.

Bandar log has all the summons of Kailasa, Patala, and Lanka. Get a good gem income from a rainbow pretender and summon some troops with astral pearls. Taking blood on your pretend gives a nice bless for your duel attacking sacred summons and easier access to Lanka's incredible blood stuff should you luck into one of the sites that makes blood OMGWTFBBQ cheap. Nature and earth blesses are good for sacred mages and thugs. You have some which can cast mistform and with some gear those guys are your best thugs. Summon Yakshini and Yaksha to forge clams and leverage earth buffs with the one saving grace of monkey troops, sticks and stones. All Rishi can mindhunt with a booster and you might get the Gift of Health or the chalice; if push comes to shove you can dispel and wish if you need them to save your mage corps. Nagarishi are awesome and you might want one if you are saturated on clams or just had some water gems fall into your lap. Late game is very similar to Kailasa in that you let your crazy celestial SCs cary you through, if you make it to this stage with 100+ pearls per turn you will probably win. Though none of this is needed against the AI.

Don't know about LA atlantis. Or MA C'tis.

EDIT: While Bladewind is lackluster against Abbysia, Bladewind+Ironbane is sorta effective. (But so are buffed gorillas+Ironbane so this isn't saying much.) I still intend to lean on Yakshini for the major battles, but against PD destruction spam and bladewinds might work fairly well and put those Yaksha to good use.

[K]

EDIT: Probably on account of not having played multiplayer yet, I'm honestly not too clear on what one does in the midgame for battles, beyond form voltron and lighting everything that isn't on your side. Any general tips for that, or specific MA Ulm, C'tis, and for that matter Bandar Log and LA atlantis?

Middle game tends to devolve into three strategies, of which two work:

1. Build big-ass armies: I decided to get this out of the way because it's the one that doesn't work.

2. Thugs/Supercombatants: Find a good commander, and equip him with items made out of whatever gems your nation does, usually customized for your enemies.

3. Elite Armies: So you find one of the great units that comes out of summons or some lucky nations, and you back them up with spellcasters designed to cast spells that back up what you do.

So let's say you did Bandar Log. The Ghandarvas are expensive with Astral, but with the proper support they can take any armies with no losses. Bandar Log also gets some tasty undead whose name escapes me right now, and Lanka demons.

Late game tends to focus on supercasters tossing around super-buffs like Army of Lead, Fog Warriors, Master Enslave, and various other ways to turn even crap units into unstoppable armies. At this point you are using the crap summons just to get bodies on the field.

[Username17]

MA Ulm sucks. Do not play them in multiplayer, because you will get owned. MA Ulm is one of the worst factions in any era. They are distinguished by having poor troops, poor research, poor site searching and poor casters. You get a moderately decent low-end thug in the Black Lord and a decentish mid-tier battle mage in the Smith. But those are also supposed to be your high end, and they just aren't. Did I mention how your only national archer is custom crafted to hurt slow heavy infantry, which defines your troops and not the enemy? It's truly awful. Also you have low MR just to grin salt in the wounds.

LA Atlantis on the other hand is made out of awesome. You get amphibious sailors, which opens up the absolutely weirdest fucking attack in the game - the assault that bypasses a water province to attack a coastal province from a non-adjacent water province. It's insane. But beyond that, your basic troops are just incredibly solid. Atlanteans are genetically superior and you get high quality ice armor and harpoons to go with it. You don't even really need your god to do anything in particular because your basic troops handle things just fine and your Angakoks are powerful Water/Death casters. But I got a fair amount of mileage out of throwing down a Titan. You get enough Earth and Air to find sites but not to really do anything, so an Earth 4 Air 4 Titan can make Elemental Staves and Air boosters and get you where you need to be in side suits.

It tells you that you prefer Cold 1 or some shit, but that's a lie. You need Cold 3. Your heavy infantry wears magical ice armor and their protection goes up when it gets colder.

-Username17

[Orion]

So I downloaded the demo. Played the tutorial level (where you're Maverni) okay, not bad. I didn't know what Carnutes were for, I'm actually *offended* that Maverni and Ambibates are both in the game, and holy crap! Druids can cast a lot of spells. Rolled up the enemy pretty easily.

After that, it got rocky. I played Agartha, conquered the seas, found some hydromancers, did some research, rocked the enemy R'lyeh. Issue arose when he was down to his capitol. It was an underwater city in a one-province lake, meanings that I couldn't use summoned Sea Serpents OR summoned Ice Drakes. I farmed up enough trogs to storm it eventually with a squad of hydromancers behind them. I killed *everything* in the city except for their Monolith, which somehow routed us without killing anyone. I think we lost morale from missing attacks and eventually ran away. I came back repeatedly, but apparently 100 soldiers vs. 1 rock is a losing proposition. even when it didn't know any attack spells.

I seriously don't know how to kill it.

Then I played Kailasa for fun (who doesn't love monkeys?). I Imprisoned my Pretender, got a giant Air/Water blessing and went to town with a Yaksha Prophet and like 10 Yavanas. They massacred independent without losses even when outnumbered 5-to-1.

Trouble is, My opponent is Atlantis. I own all the land on this map, but not one coast province got Ichtyds or Pale Ones or anything Amphibious. I was able to give my Yaksha water-breathing armor, but seriously what am I supposed to do now? Build a Yaksini every turn and spam Sea Dogs until I can capture some ocean? I don't know what else I can do.

[name_here]

Construction gives access to items that grant waterbreathing to troops. As Kailasa, you can summon air mages at conjuration 6 who can forge pills of water breathing, letting you take 20 size units of troops underwater. Also, most lifeless summons (undead and constructs) are at least capable of going underwater. Specifically, Crushers are good.

EDIT: As for your game as Agartha, the attacker autoroutes after a stupidly large number of turns. What you need is either some magic weaponry with armor peircing or armor negating on ancient lords, or an underwater attack spell with armor negating. It's probably best to give swords of sharpness to a whole bunch of ancient lords. Also, I belatedly realized that in the demo, Kailasa is pretty much unable to get underwater.

Your complaints about marverni and ambibates are pretty valid. Carnutes can go berserk if wounded, giving bonuses and penalties to certain attributes and becoming unbreakable. I'm not sure what happens with berserk units when all the commanders route off the field. Mindless and undead units dissolve when no one is left to lead them, but that might not be the same for berserkers.

[angelfromanotherpin]

Is there anywhere I can see a simple rundown of the factions? I don't need strategy guides or anything, just an idea of what each of their deals is, and maybe whether or not they're considered playable. (The official forums do not seem to provide this. )

[name_here]

You can get a reasonable idea of what their deal is by skimming the main nation guide pages, where they've got stuff like:
Race Radiates heat, fire resistance, prefers Heat scale +3, wasteland survival
Military Heavy infantry, no missile weapons, salamanders
Magic Fire, Blood, Astral, some Earth
Priests Powerful, can perform blood sacrifices

Unfortunately, you need to dig a bit deeper to figure out if they're actually any good. Generally, the better nations are the ones with more powerful mages, but Shinuyama, for instance, manages to cancel out having recruit-anywhere mages that look like most people's capital only mages by having national troops who are so terrible you can't get enough provinces to make a second fort anyway. Meanwhile, R'leyh has mages on about the same level and national troops who are actually pretty effective underwater. Plus, they've got vastnesses, which are the most awesome thing ever.

[Red_Rob]

Have you tried the wiki?

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Nation_guide

Lists each faction, links to a fairly comprehensive overview and most nations have a link to a more in depth strategy guide at the bottom.

[Kaelik]

Is there any kind of actual fucking tutorial to this game, or do you just have to fucking hope for the best while stumbling around a giant interface making decisions with no knowledge and a billion arbitrary acronyms that cover things you can't actually know what they are for?

EDIT: Example, I am currently reading about pretender creation.

Every five seconds it talks about different Pretender chassis. And shit. And then it says... SC pretender. Is SC a chassis? How is that different from the other chassis? What are the other Chassis, since literally 90% of them are called SC pretenders, and the other ones don't say anything.

FUCKING TELL ME SOMETHING YOU GODDAM MOTHERFUCKERS! What good is a Wiki if it doesn't actually convey any information?

Even Frank says in this thread: "MA Ulm sucks." "LA Atlantis is the shit."

I assume that means "Middle Age" and "Late Age" but then, what the fuck does SC mean?

GODDAMIT!

[Red_Rob]

Short answer: Yes. There is a tutorial.

Long answer: Click on "Game Tools" from the main menu, then click on "Tutorial". Open your manual to page 7, titled "The Tutorial" and listed on the contents page as such.

Follow the instructions. I believe the demo also comes with the Tutorial and relevant sections of the manual.

Also, for some useful information:

http://www.quartertothree.com/game-talk ... hp?t=58744

[Kaelik]

Red Rob, welcome to the 21st century, I don't have a goddam manual, and neither does anyone else. But if I did have it, holding it in my hand and reading what it says while looking at my computer screen with text on it is not acceptable.

Fuck, put tutorial text in the goddam game you bastards!

[angelfromanotherpin]

Have you tried the wiki?

http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Nation_guide

Lists each faction, links to a fairly comprehensive overview and most nations have a link to a more in depth strategy guide at the bottom.

Huh. Google led me to some other, far less helpful, wiki. That's excellent, thanks.