Dominion 3 Strategy & Questions

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 4:15 am

angelfromanotherpin wrote:I'd prefer a stock map. Cradle seems a touch big, though. The general guidelines I heard were 10/player for a fast game, 20/player for a long one. (That could be BS, I don't know.)

At ~15/player and 8 players, stock maps are The Desert Eye and Parganos. Any reason to reject those?

Can I get someone to email me these maps? it's <myforumusernamewithoutbrackets>.dreams@gmail.com

This install is done from a demo install so it doesn't have all the maps.

However, we also have 9 players now

name_here
Akula
Orca
angelfromanotherpin
korwin
Cthulhu
K
FrankTrollman
Endovior

I don't know if that effects things at all. I do think 15 proviences a player is a good benchmark to shoot for, the idealic dream boat being 130/12-15
Land/sea split or a 105+26-30 or so split.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 4:43 am

Akula wrote:I hate to break it to you, but if it were me, I would rush you on that map too. On the other maps it would be a necessity to survive, but here I could win me the game by making me the largest nation while no one else can really attack me.

Perhaps so, but Urraparrand makes that harder to do, since the different water powers start notably farther apart, with lots of terrain between them. Since water means 'strategic move 1', it's harder to pull off a rush. Not 'impossible', by any means... just harder.

It won't be especially obvious where it is you need to be rushing to, at the very least, and by the time you get there, there'll be enough time to have built up enough troops to obviate an easy SC pretender victory... and if you decided to go there more-or-less alone, you'll be facing a credible army of mindblasters single-handedly.

That said, any thoughts on game settings?

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:05 am

EA

Stock everything except:

Hall of Fame 15
Renaming on.

If people want to fight to the death over it, we could increase site frequency by 5%.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:20 am

I would be down with 50% site frequency.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:21 am

I would not at all object to higher site frequency, no.

Yay for gems!

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:45 am

Is that the same as wanting it? My preference is stock.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:06 am

I approve of more magic sites.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:10 am

I'll cast my vote for Standard site frequency.

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 8:05 am

5% difference in site frequency isn't a big deal, surely? I'll cast my vote in favour on the basis that more cool stuff is fun.

I get ancient wire-fu mages, yes!

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 5:55 pm

Just now red the description of Helheim.
Had to double check, that I wasnt reading Vanheim.
Whats the deal?
Looks to me like MA Vanheim got the troops from EA Vanheim and EA Helheim...

Username17 · Post by **Username17** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 6:12 pm

Korwin wrote:Just now red the description of Helheim.
Had to double check, that I wasnt reading Vanheim.
Whats the deal?
Looks to me like MA Vanheim got the troops from EA Vanheim and EA Helheim...

Helheim is another part of Norse Mythology. Game mechanically, it's basically Vanheim on crack. You get access to a bunch of powerful death mages and your sacred capitol only warriors are super ninjas on horseback. You lose a point of Earth and the 1/10th random on your Dwarf (but gain two death), and you don't get an Air 4 caster at all. But your Hangadrott comes out with Death 4 fairly frequently.

Bottom line: you'll have to finagle some way to get Air Boosters off your god or just not worry about while you are fucking murdering people with helhirdings and valkyrie. Also instead of almost never getting F2 before you can make Flame Skulls you actually never get F2 until you get flame skulls. But you are now guaranteed the ability to make flame skulls.

But yes, there is a reason that Helheim is rated as OMGWTFBBQ and Vanheim is rated as "OK". Vanheim's advantages as regards late game elemental access is nerd lore and the ass stomping immediacy of Helheim's Helhirding is sung from shore to shore.

-Username17

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Fri Nov 12, 2010 10:19 pm

As Frank has said, Helheim is super good. Huge death and moderate earth, blood, and air make for excellent mages. And you have the best capital only sacreds in the game. If I was inclined to play them, I would go for a E9W9N4 bless. Technically this would go smoother with a F9W9 bless, but E is better for my thugs. Head for skull mentors and thug gear while I let my glamoured thugs and cavalry expand and scare my enemies. I would seriously spend 100+ death gems on skull mentors to make my research super good in the early mid game.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:27 am

How do you actually queue up site searches or any other ritual spell, so that it occurs each turn? I know it's possible, and Frank gave a detailed account of how it prioritizes targets when automated, but no one said how to queue up, here or elsewhere on the internets.

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:27 am

Shift-M then selec the spell

Orca · Post by **Orca** » Sat Nov 13, 2010 2:44 am

I like the look of the Urraparrand with harbors map. Does anyone know why it's recommended with a 150% money multiple?

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Sat Nov 13, 2010 3:07 am

Lots of low-pop, low-income provinces, IIRC.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 5:49 am

Are we going to use Llamaserver?
I like that the game is automatically hosted, when the last player submits his turn.

Btw. like this to browse the maps:
http://www.llamaserver.net/mapModBrowser.cgi

cthulhu · Post by **cthulhu** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 6:57 am

Yeah llamaserver is clearly the way to go, minimal fucking around.

Korwin · Post by **Korwin** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 8:57 pm

Whats lab filling?

Red it on an Thread about banned cheese...

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 9:50 pm

Korwin wrote:Whats lab filling?

Read it on an Thread about banned cheese...

Sending someone a bunch of items when you had no agreement to do so. There is a limit to the amount of stuff that can be put in the lab at once, so they cannot forge anything and anything they forged that turn is destroyed. The only time I can think of that this would be nasty would be with items that cannot be unequipped, or are unusable for the receiving player. Mostly this is stupid and a waste of mage turns and gems, but maybe someone could make it work.

Endovior · Post by **Endovior** » Tue Nov 16, 2010 10:11 pm

Hmph. That's a 50 mage-turn strategy... which costs 250 gems (possibly less with hammers)... and is furthermore totally pointless because it's a strategy you've just given to your opponent.

Seriously, if you fill someone's inventory with something really terrible like slave collars or whatever, they're just going to turn around and give them away again.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 12:07 am

Endovior wrote:Hmph. That's a 50 mage-turn strategy... which costs 250 gems (possibly less with hammers)... and is furthermore totally pointless because it's a strategy you've just given to your opponent.

Seriously, if you fill someone's inventory with something really terrible like slave collars or whatever, they're just going to turn around and give them away again.

But if you think that they are going to put up Forge of the Ancients and forge like 3 RoW, 2 RoS, 5 SotE, as well as a few artifacts and some SC gear, filling that treasury with shit that you find in the crease of your couch could give you a significant advantage, with the right timing.

I don't think it is a good strategy, but once it is done, one player per turn gets to have his forging locked down. If you have a coalition and they are a lone power (that happens to have a huge lead on you) this could really fuck them.

name_here · Post by **name_here** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 12:37 am

It seems more like a giant dick move than a viable strategy, meaning it should probably be banned out of basic courtesy.

Actually, it seems like the sort of thing that should be patched out by having forging happen before gifts are recieved. However, Dominions 3 is a gigantic pile of nested if/else statements, presumably making that really really hard.

K · Post by K » Wed Nov 17, 2010 5:48 am

The list of Banned tactics tend to be based more on prejudice than on any rational reasons.

I mean, one of the most common ones is that ban against using Orders copied from Bogus and his friends. Those orders look really good on paper, but I've done a lot of testing on them and can tell you they kinda suck.

Akula · Post by **Akula** » Wed Nov 17, 2010 6:46 am

K wrote:The list of Banned tactics tend to be based more on prejudice than on any rational reasons.

I mean, one of the most common ones is that ban against using Orders copied from Bogus and his friends. Those orders look really good on paper, but I've done a lot of testing on them and can tell you they kinda suck.

Or take a fair amount of gems to be made useful, and generally have cheaper counters that your opponent might be getting anyway.

I mean, it sounds deadly to have like 8 indy commanders with longbows of accuracy and eyes of aiming all getting a wind guide with fire commander orders, but if arrow fend goes down you are SOL and you have 80 air gems that you could have put to better use. And giants and shit are just immune to it with some shields.