The 2011 Dominions 3 Thread

[Austen]

I can't say I have a lot of experience with end-games, but I think that gearing up thugs is more of a mid-game strategy. Either way, getting to construction 8 first is always nice, and if you can get the chalice, you might want to go for tartarians next. :)

I thought tarts were just big thugs? I can prob make/cast just about anything with a little notice.. my total gem income is 107 right now. I guess I've never played with healthy tarts, so I don't really grasp the diff between them and Melqvarts..

[Austen]

Good stuff dfs. I should have mentioned its a CBM game. Your gear list is pretty close to what I had on my Melqvarts, but I lost 3 of them to my enemy (who now has all that lovely gear)

I don't have a dwarven hammer at this time.. I have Cons 6 done and could get Cons 8 pretty quick. It's unique, so if someone else has it, will I just lose my gems, or will it not be available?

I will go read up on blood hunting. I was having success with just having my hunters hunting while being followed by a good little stack of patrollers to clean up, but they either got raided and killed, or were converted to thugs that then got killed :(

[Nate]

you dont have score file on?
I think even when you are not using victory points, that count on the scores file gives at least a guess about it. Arent capitals always a vp? (or have I been out of things too long?)

I see five VP points total on the QT3RAND game. Seven nations to begin with. The five locations are random, it seems, and have no relevance to the game or relation to the capitals. Must be a llamaserver thing.

[tenuki]

or were converted to thugs that then got killed :(

What did you equip the thugs with?

[pyrhic]

Congrats to Bogarus on your win!

[Evil Steve]

the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away: wish He'd make his bloody mind up... ;)

[Kelan]

.....

AND there are blood summons. Not just the Lords of civilization, but the Heliophagus, Demon Lords and the Se'irim. You will need to look at the boosters for blood magic in order to get there. Frankly the Blood summons can go toe to toe with tarts. They don't give you the magical diversity that tarts can give you, but then you don't need that.

.....

I have also had great luck making SC/thugs out of Ice Devils and Arch Devils. Equip them with life drain weapon, quickness (if can't cast), elemental armor to try to fill in resist holes and increase defense/protection, MR cap, lucky pendant, regen ring and go to town. You may also get lucky and get Magoth who has 3F 3S and can cast Astral Fires and all sorts of wickedness. All of the Ice Devils have water magic and there is a 3W 3S one also I seem to recall. Granted my success using them is in single player and against predictable AI armies, but they can easily take out an indy province alone and even be a decent thug in multiplayer I would imagine. I also haven't tried them using the CBM mod, so not sure how that would affect their usefulness.

Those Lords of Civ are seriously wicked. With quickness those buggers sure do dart around the battlefield wiping out entire squares of enemies quite a few times a turn. The high movement points they get really make them deadly in melee combat if you equip them for that use. Makes me want to fire up that late game map save I have when I was in mop up duty with multiple summons of these :).

[Nate]

the Lord giveth, the Lord taketh away: wish He'd make his bloody mind up... ;)

Reading this is pure torture, as I have no idea what game you're talking about and I can't view the Hugin turn for another 8 hours or so.

[Austen]

Any tips on killing a Dom 10 Wyrm that regens 70/turn. Has horror helm, Black steel helmet, pendant of luck and amulet or resilience.

I'm mid Van without access to Mind Hunt. His fatigue doesn't seem to build, but in one fight, I lost 15 skinshifters and had him down about 100 hp before I routed.

He's only got a couple provs left, but wherever his Wyrm goes, I have to clear out or get wrecked. He's Dom 10, so preaching him out will be awfully difficult.

Just not sure how to pile on that much damage..

[Scribble]

A barrage of lightning spells (especially chain lightning) should take it down in short order, combined with troops. Another idea, buff your skinshifters with strength of giants using a dwarven smith, that adds on a lot of damage. A third idea, forge some good anti-SC weapons to use on a couple of vanjarls to wail on the Wyrm from the sides while your troops engage from the front. Flesh eaters are cheap and cause a chest wound that is painful for non-undead SCs.

[Austen]

What did you equip the thugs with?

Usually like a Melgvart with Shield of Gleaming Gold or Vine Shield, Frost Brand, Boots of Messenger, Ring of Regen and Pendant of Luck.

Kinda painful yo lose that x3 :(

Edit: Maybe I was using it wrong... I lost them using them in support on a big fight, and maybe I should only use them to route PD?

[Austen]

A barrage of lightning spells (especially chain lightning) should take it down in short order, combined with troops. Another idea, buff your skinshifters with strength of giants using a dwarven smith, that adds on a lot of damage. A third idea, forge some good anti-SC weapons to use on a couple of vanjarls to wail on the Wyrm from the sides while your troops engage from the front. Flesh eaters are cheap and cause a chest wound that is painful for non-undead SCs.

I like this.. in two turns I can have Evo 5 and con drop an awful lot of lightning bolts at that point.

[Austen]

Oh...yeah, if you have the gems....set a horite shaman to reanimate. About half the corpses that he brings up will be giant corpses. They don't suffer from moral or fatigue and they can go underwater. It's an expensive trick, but if you are rolling in gems, it can catch your foe unaware.

Casting Reanimation? Is it just Himmon that gets the giants from this, or is it all giant races? Have a game where I'm Fomoria (not doing well) and this would seem really good there too. Does it work in any province? Or is it just in the capitol or someplace where there are giants?

[dfs]

Casting Reanimation? Is it just Himmon that gets the giants from this, or is it all giant races? Have a game where I'm Fomoria (not doing well) and this would seem really good there too. Does it work in any province? Or is it just in the capitol or someplace where there are giants?

I believe the same is true of Jotun. I don't know about Fomoria. Pretty Easy to test.

[tenuki]

With Spring Lion winding up to wind down one way or the other, I believe I'm ready to maybe start thinking about joining another MP game soon-ish.

Anybody up for some Late Age CBM?

[Nate]

With Spring Lion winding up to wind down one way or the other, I believe I'm ready to maybe start thinking about joining another MP game soon-ish.

Anybody up for some Late Age CBM?

You're strangely fascinated with LA LAtely. I could possibly be interested.

[pyrhic]

think id be in

[Brooski]

Hugin: I am at work and will not be home until tomorrow around noon Eastern. If the turn deadline is before that I need an extension. Sorry.

[tenuki]

You're strangely fascinated with LA LAtely. I could possibly be interested.

It's my penchant for declining things.

So, pyrhic and Nate so far. I was thinking of maybe giving the Foss map, whatsisname, another go if we get the numbers for it.

[dfs]

It's my penchant for declining things.

So, pyrhic and Nate so far. I was thinking of maybe giving the Foss map, whatsisname, another go if we get the numbers for it.

Plane of the Rusty Nail 155 provinces?

I'm trying to not play in anything with more than 7 players. If you're going to be in that range or below, I would think about it. I will likely need to arrange a sub or a break in July.

[Austen]

I'd be up for another thrashing as Munin is over! :)

[farfrael]

I'd be up for another thrashing as Munin is over! :)

Yeah, sorry. 1st time ever I "rushed" somebody
I basically badly misread the map/situation and made the wrong choices early on. At that point, the available options were extremely limited.

[tenuki]

Plane of the Rusty Nail 155 provinces?

Uh. Well, maybe that's a little too ambitious.

[Austen]

Sorry for spamming all the time, but I have couple other games going and have lots of questions.. posting here doesn't let my opponents know what's up! :)

1. I guess Mind Hunt isn't so hot? From everything I've read, it seems like it's supposed to kill folks handily. If they don't have Astral Mages or crazy resists. But over half of mine hat have been successful (the message says it was successful, not resisted, not failed to find target or intercepted) have failed to kill the target.

Was this nerfed at some point, or was it always kind of a "sometimes it might kill a guy" sort of thing? It seems like I end up spending 4-5 attempts just to get one kill. Not sure how effective that is. Is there some other trick to using it that I don't know about? Does it not kill guys with a certain health or gear or something?

2. How do you kill someone in their castle? In Munin, I took all my guys outside the castle rather than barricading in and just having one province. But in a game where I am doing well with Hinnom, my opponent is Tir N'a N'og and he's been at just his capitol for a really long time. I can't even kind of hurt him.

Last try, I had double the mages he had, threw up lots of the Shock Resist Ward (He is mostly air) and had twice the troops and I got annihilated. Is there something to being in your castle that give you an advantage?

His spells were all deadly accurate. I bet I cast 20 Blade Winds for a total of 0 damage. I saw him cast exactly one and it took out about 10 of my archers. This same thing continued with Thunder Strikes. Mine did almost nothing, his hit multiple guys every time.

I had every buff up I could cast and it all did nothing. I killed one of his 23 commanders and he killed 16 of my 43. I killed his Vine Men, but that was about it. Pretty much none of his sacred Glamour guys and one commander. I can come back with 60 mages, but I'm not sure that will do much for me.

I have better research and more units and everything, but nothing seems to be terribly effective.

I've seen a few other Capitol sieges go similarly. How do you finish off a guy in a capitol like that?

I was thinking about lots of flying and attack rear.. would that be useful?

[Aceris]

1. There might be stealthed units in teh same province. Just be grateful they aren't stealthed units with astral :)

2. fort attacks are just rough. You've got to mix up the scripting, and force your opponent to deal with more threats in his scripting - if he's just scripting against a knock down the front doors army and that's what you do he'll bottleneck you and shred you unless you have a solid advantage. Fliers are good, but they get swarmed so they have to be real SCs that can deal with that or somethign that can do a lot of damage in the brief time it has before it dies. Small forces that put up Battlefield enchantment damage spells can be hilarious (poison fog is a winner).

Or you can always just bottle up his army and take out the rest of his territory.

[Nate]

1. I guess Mind Hunt isn't so hot? From everything I've read, it seems like it's supposed to kill folks handily. If they don't have Astral Mages or crazy resists. But over half of mine hat have been successful (the message says it was successful, not resisted, not failed to find target or intercepted) have failed to kill the target.

Was this nerfed at some point, or was it always kind of a "sometimes it might kill a guy" sort of thing? It seems like I end up spending 4-5 attempts just to get one kill. Not sure how effective that is. Is there some other trick to using it that I don't know about? Does it not kill guys with a certain health or gear or something?

Do you have Soul Slay researched? If not, Mind Hunts default to a Mind Burn. Unless you don't have that researched either, in which case I have no idea what it would do.

[dfs]

1. I guess Mind Hunt isn't so hot? From everything I've read, it seems like it's supposed to kill folks handily. If they don't have Astral Mages or crazy resists. But over half of mine hat have been successful (the message says it was successful, not resisted, not failed to find target or intercepted) have failed to kill the target.

Without doing the math this seems about right to me. Mind Hunt can be devastating in turning back raiders w/out astral, but I don't think it's a game winner.

2. How do you kill someone in their castle?

Tough to support a large army if you only have one province. The upkeep will kill you eventually. Be patient.

[Austen]

Fliers are good, but they get swarmed so they have to be real SCs that can deal with that or somethign that can do a lot of damage in the brief time it has before it dies. Small forces that put up Battlefield enchantment damage spells can be hilarious (poison fog is a winner).

Or you can always just bottle up his army and take out the rest of his territory.

Why do the fliers get swarmed? It seems like they get immediately into the enemies back rows where the casters are all spread out...

Also, I have the rest of his territory.. cap is all he has left.

Do you have Soul Slay researched? If not, Mind Hunts default to a Mind Burn. Unless you don't have that researched either, in which case I have no idea what it would do.

Good Grief... No.. I don't have it researched. I just read the spell description. Screw me! LOL!

[Austen]

Also... I can't find the pdf of the manual anywhere and my copy is not with me. Can someone e-mail it to me? Pretty please?

[pyrhic]

the other thing you can do is dom-kill