Hi!

Well this is going to be a 'DAR' in blog format of 'Latif' (me) playing his first Dominions 3 game (just got the package in the mail). I played lots of Dom 2 in solo play and a bit of the Dom 3 demo.

In case you didn't read the top blurb, 'Dominions 3' is a fantasy turn-based-strategy computer game that is probably the deepest in the genre. There's about a zillion spells, units and items in the game. The graphics are very archaic, but that just means it will run on older computers (like mine). If you like fantasy TBS games like this it makes zero difference.

I will probably play Arcosephale in the Middle Age with an AWAKE pretender with a strategy of zipping for ACASHIC RECORD asap with I think a Great Sage. Idea is to BLAST OFF in research using basic troops and mercs to expand, then to NOT use mages to search rather a single astrologer casting Acashic Records everywhere. Then with all the gems we can do whatever :).

(I'm playing Arco because that's what I played first in Dom 2 and they are my sentimental favorite nation.)

For regular 'Blog' readers, the posts will be in reverse order (latest posts on the bottom) so that the entire AAR (when it's finished) can be read normally.

Well, went with a Great Sage Awakened, Arco, Middle Ages, and the bottom map on the list.

Game settings: 9 Indies, 15 HoFame, Very difficult research, 7 Victory points required (1 per capital). There are 12 players on the map in total all random except us. AI's were set to Impossible.

Dominion: 6 candles, Magic Paths: 1F 3A 1W 3E 1S 2D 3N 1B. Lots of research (26 pts) to start which I realize now I forgot to set for the first turn!
Scales: 1 Turmoil, 3 Sloth (I always do this - I want to focus on mages not conventional troops), 0 Heat, 1 Growth, 2 Luck (like to get the national heroes for flavor) and 1 Magic.

First turn sent off scout and mounted commander to attack and retreat from two nearby provinces. Scout got precision heroic ability and I think I'll prophetize him as I found out that priestesses won't be able to cast Fanatacism anyways.

Purchased 2 Hypaspists (sp?) and 1 Peltast, and hired Urgek Beast Brother for 33 gold. Cheap fodder.

2nd turn 2 Hypaspists and 1 Peltast, attempting to hire Fernando's Footmen.

I notice we get a LOT of gold in Dom 3 compared to Dom 2! Great I will get a 2nd castle ASAP and start buying more priestesses.

Hiya!

Well I think the map and location of my enemies dictates a certain strategy.

If you look at the map it looks like a good solid strategy is to try to control the entire peninsula to the southeast using the home fortress as a choke/defense point to the north, and RUSHING down to the southern province selected on the map and building a fort there. That entire peninsula has only two land ties to it and there are a good number of provinces there! So if I can just hold that and maybe the provinces around my capital that will be a very solid position.

I've circled my three nearest neighbors, including an ocean race just NE of the peninsula which is a bit of a kink in the plans as they'll have sea access to the peninsula, but I think overall the plan is sound.

Meanwhile back in the first province captured (with rather high losses to Ferdinando's Footmen to lowly archers! Urgek's troops were decimated also) there are some tribal priest/mages available to hire so I'm immediately building a temple and lab there to start pumping those guys out for research. There happened to be an Iron Mine there so my resources in the home province have gone way up. I bought about 20 archers and 7 hypaspists to bolster the army which waited a turn to regroup. They're gonna have to go a fair ways with limited help from home.

Hm... wondering a bit what the AI is doing as I've only used conventional troops thus far, no special tactics or tricks (not even using elephants just hypaspists, mercs, archers and the starting light infantries). Arco is leading in provinces by two over nearest competitor and top in income also even with turmoil 1. We are a little behind in research which is surprising, I thought with an awake Great Sage we'd be leading easily but that's not the case at least. I'm also finding it disappointingly easy to pick up all the mercenaries I want - the AI algorithm for hiring mercs seems not to have changed (from Dom 2).

Oh well! We'll have to see if the AI picks up a bit as we go along. It's AMAZING the amount of troops you can amass in Dom 3 compared to Dom 2. I have sloth 3 and am buying all the conventional troops I want, and could afford lots more but am holding off for now (prefer to buy mages). Will probably build another fort on one or both of the farmland provinces to jack the income up even further.

Check out the current map here. The two green dots are the farmland provinces. I think Arco (or maybe everybody?) gets a Fortified City on farmland terrain so that's 50 admin - BIG bonus to income which should repay itself fairly quickly, as well as allow us to recruit more mages.

The red dot is the capital (starting province), while the light purple dots already have labs and temples and I'll be hiring one of those wolf shaman mages every turn (1N, 10% chance of 1E or 1A). Although with the amount of troops it's possible to buy I'm wondering if a super-research strategy is even needed. It seems like - SO FAR - that we'd be able to walk all over the AI just with conventional troops! (We're also among the top in troop counts, although we have been hiring mercs.) Hm, maybe jumping the gun here, we'll see.

I'm already thinking forward to NEXT GAME where I'll try the opposite strategy - MASSIVE CONVENTIONAL WARFARE with 3 order, 3 productivity and either a supercombatant pretender or maybe an ASLEEP pretender with awesome scales. ULM would seem to be the natural choice! Pretty fun to think about!

Hm... we're now leading or very close to the top in nearly all categories. We're 3 or 4 provinces ahead in expansion over Pythium who's our nearest competitor. Still just using conventional troops, no mages in battle although our scout prophet is smiting a few guys here and there.

Look at the map here if you'd like to see the current expansion of Arcosephale.

Interesting points on the map:

• Blue dots indicate Ichytid (sp?) provinces. Once these are captured I'll be able to build an army to start taking sea provinces.
• Darker blue dot (Darban's Deep) has 90 tough sea troops (Triton Guards I believe) which I'll leave alone as a sea border guard. The arrow points to the home province of Atlantis who's the only other sea-faring nation I believe. They're doing very poorly.
• Light purple dot (just captured) is another 'Wolf Tribe' - type province. Temple is being built and mage is on the way to build lab next turn. More mages for research.
• Green dot to the NE of home province is the next expansion province in that region. I'll have to decide how much further to proceed from there depending on what's around the area. That army isn't very big but the hypaspists have been good enough to deal with the rabble encountered thus far (Militia / Heavy Inf combos). Also, 'Blessed Gorge' (to the SW of green dot) is a Heavy Inf group - border guards which I'll leave for now.
• Red dots finally indicate some provinces that will be a little difficult to take. One is Militia/ L Cav/ Heavy Cav but I'll hire some L Inf fodder to absorb the Cav charge, the other is the other Ichytid province with about 90 or so of the guys, with the tougher armored once being the biggest group.

All in all though it looks like rapid expansion will continue, and that this game is gonna be a cakewalk! With the only sea nation very weak and bordered on my side by a TOUGH sea province, and with a large peninsula with only one southern access point it looks like Arcosephale will be able to control a large number of provinces with very few borders to guard.

We'll have to see how things progress but things are looking very good for the Arcosephalian nation!

Two enemy nations were spotted last turn, the new Japanese nation and Ulm. Shinuyuma I guess is the name, and they don't seem very strong (only one province taken as of last turn (about the 10th) and they don't have a big army). Ulm has taken maybe 4 provinces but they do have a very large army according to the score graphs, made up of their very heavily armored Ulmish troops as well as a bunch of longbowmen and other assorted rabble.

I will be attacking Shinuyama very soon as you can see from the map. We have a huge army there now with a ton of hypaspists and tribal archers. I also added in a small chariot corps (10 chariots) to help possibly clear out the Shinuyama fort entrance if it happens to get stuffed. I also added in an extra Strategos for the standard as well as to protect against some fluky arrow shot, as well as a priestess for morale spells plus to build a temple in the fort which we expect to be capturing in two turns.

Overall situation remains much the same as previous turns. We're now 2nd in research by a hair with the most RP's gained per turn. Two more 'tribal' provinces were just discovered so labs and temples will be built there also to hire more research mages.

Meanwhile Conj 4 will be researched next turn then Conj 5 should be available in around 5 or so turns after that which means we can start casting Acashic Record and start pumping up our gem income.

It's quite exciting to look at the current map and think about future plans. I'm looking forward to some BIG BATTLES later on with some big AI armies - hopefully. The AI players seem to be playing fairly weakly so far... or has the rapid expansion of Arcosephale over the weakly held independent kingdoms swelled the Arcosephalian leaders' heads?

... didn't go as well as expected. He had just a few militia in his bordering province and I wasn't expecting much of a fight. But the province was reinforced that same turn by a lot of archers plus a bunch of other TOUGH national troops. Shinuyama have some armored longbow guys who inflicted quite a bit of damage from afar (and up close), not to mention a bunch of stealthy goblin troops armed with shortbows. Plus they had 3 big giant-type national troops which took a little while to take down, which meant more turns getting raked by arrow fire.

Some of my own archers meanwhile wandered out in front of the main battle lines trying to shoot at the armored longbowmen. Lost a few in hand-to-hand combat but it wasn't as bad as it could have been as the AI frontline troops remained 'bee-lined' on my own frontline troops. I may have to position my archers a bit further back.

The battle itself took place on the red dot on the map in the province of Northwest Valenwood. We have to regroup for a bit as we lost quite a few troops in that battle (something like 45). Our chariot group was devastated (down to 3 out of 12) although they did a LOT of damage. More troops from home are on the way.

I'm not sure how much reinforcements I'll need to take their castle. They have a Manticore pretender and I bet their home fortress has towers that shoot longbows (I better check). We did do a good amount of damage to their army last turn although I think actually we lost more troops in the battle than they did. I'd better watch the replay again before deciding what to do.

A few turns have been played since last update. The biggest events were Shinuyama sallying twice from their capital to attack me in the bordering province which I was attacking from. Both times the battle took place in my province rather than his which may have been fortunate for me as then they didn't have the benefit of their 25 capital provincial defense.

The second battle they threw their pretender, a fairly high-magic Manticore with 8S and two other high paths (I don't remember which). He didn't have many personal buff spells researched so he was whittled down and killed fairly easily.

We took heavy losses in both fights, although many of them were just those low-resource wolf tribe archer units that we can amass literally by the hundreds. They still cost 10 gold apiece though. I kind of miss the popular Dom 2 mod (Unit Rebalance Mod?) where I felt that the gold cost of some units was more in line with their utility. (Just my current opinion.) Chariots for example cost 40 gold each and while they do inflict a pretty good amount of damage they die real quick! (Also to note for Arco players - it seems that Chariot units as well as Elephants will trample your own troops when fleeing the battlefield. Makes them a LOT less appealing!!!)

If you take a look at the current map you can see I've spent ALL my gold this turn. Buying 6 mages a turn does that although we are now first in research by a decent margin and our research rate climbs each turn while the other nations' research rates are levelling off. Now currently stocking our armies with the less pricey Hoplites (11 gold and more resources) instead of the Hypaspists (15 gold). The Hoplites have a bit more armor and less defense, morale, and move speed, but are fine frontline troops.

Back to the map. Northwest Valenwood (red dot) is where the battles with Shinuyama have been taking place. His army is now much less formidable, but we still have to regroup (again) and pick up all the guys that fled the last battle. Also worth noting is that we've captured our first sea province (lighter blue dot) by amassing a bunch of Ichytids. Gained a bit of income there. Also our new fort has gone up in another Ichytid province so we will be expanding further into the sea to gain more income and hopefully magic sites.

The dark blue dots on top and bottom of this wraparound map are on the SAME province showing Ulm's northern border province. He JUST captured that province this turn which held some dark vines and those Bloodhenge Druids who would be VERY USEFUL mages to hire.


CURRENT PLANS:

• To expand further into independently held provinces, both sea and land.
• Think about attacking Ulm after Shinuyama is finished OR when we can get mass a large enough army on Ulm's southern border

MAGIC RESEARCH: I'm a bit lost here to be honest. Had the plan of Acashic (Conj 5) which was our first target and now what? We'll never be able to Acashic everything because we don't have the Astral income. Hm maybe Evo for the Arcane Probing spell. A good long-term research target might be Alteration 8 as that has 'Fata Morgana' which grants all troops Luck for the whole battle which seems pretty potent. (We already have a 5S astrologer which is pretty lucky.) Enchantment has the +5 astral gems global somewhere (maybe Ench 6?). Thaum has the Mind Burn line but with armies this large it doesn't seem very potent. Right now we're researching Construction by default as wineskins at least are at Const 4, and at Const 6 are Starshine Skullcaps (+1S) and other path boosters. (Yeah we really don't have a clue what to research - Suggestions?)

Our gem income is something like +4S, +6W, +2E, +2N with two provinces Acashic'ed. Lots of Water gems which we might just convert (for now) into astral to be able to Acashic more provinces.

Comments Welcome!

Few more turns played. Shinuyama was wiped out pretty easily although I haven't checked out the fortress battle yet.

But have a look at the map - specifically, at the Ulmish province highlighted to the south. 390 troops! Granted they are fodder-type troops but with 390 they are gonna do a LOT of damage.

While in the shower I had the thought to beef up the provincial defense to some insane number - like 40 or 50 perhaps. Problem with that is, the troops you get with Arco (light infantry) have fairly low protection and would be DECIMATED by the enemy archer arrow fire and would probably rout fairly quickly.

I think what we're going to have to do is defend along the two provinces marked by red dots until we can build up a decent force there. This will keep our temples from being destroyed. If he wants to seige our castle that's fine. Unfortunately I think I will have to use the Ichytid troops I had planned to take some easy sea provinces with and throw them into the battle.

Ah well. So much for a CAKEWALK! But there should be some BIG FUN battles coming up.

It looks like we're going to lose part of the southern peninsula but we'll see how we can do up north where we already have large armies massed. Also our magic research is flying and we'll have some evocation or other spells for the mystics/astrologers to cast in battle.

Finally decided against falling back at the southern tip of our peninsula, and instead built up provincial defense to 30 at the choke point and stocked it with as many troops as were available, including teleporting in my 5S mage. The reason I decided to do this was because in the prior turn when Ulm attacked he lost 4 of 4 commanders who led 315! troops into that same province. I figured even though he had 390 troops built up across the bridge he probably didn't have the means to lead them all. In fact the next turn there was no attack across the bridge.

We were pretty fortunate to win that battle (in the previous turn vs 315 troops) at all. We were outnumbered 3 to 1 but luckily had been building up a fairly large cavalry wing composed of heavy cavalry and chariots, something like 15 of each. When those guys hit the front line a LOT of Ulmish troops died!

It seems like chariots are really something like cruise missiles. One shot attackers, they die like flies.

Here's the map from last turn. Making progress to the north where Ulm really didn't really have much in the way of troops. Although that may change as this turn we've captured another Ulm province revealing ANOTHER Ulm fort. I don't know if Ulm built those or not but if they did that's a HUGE HUGE AI improvement over Dom 2. I think they probably did built at least one of those forts to the north as I see other AIs with more forts now as well. Good stuff.

Here's the current map centered this time on the southern area at the chokepoint to our peninsula. We now have a F2 E1 W1 S1 mystic there as well as our 5S astrologer, 2 priestesses (will arrive next turn), 2 Strategos (with +10 standards), my prophet, some raptor mercs, plus a fairly standard mix of Arco troops with lots of tribal archers and a heavy cavalry wing. The Ulm pretender is in the area, a Prince of Death and he's got a LOT of longdeads - this is why I brought up the Priestesses. I may forge a herald lance first (Solar Rays) before I move forward.

Oh yeah I have about 100 Ichytids there as well. They captured the neighboring sea province there and can possibly be used as raiders.

One final thing of note is we have increased our gem income considerably, finding about 6 or 7 magic sites including one VERY important site where we'll be able to hire sorcerors (1D 1B 2?(D,B,S)) - time to start getting some blood summons!

Comments Most Welcome!

Here's the current map focused on the northern part of our empire. There are the two Ulmish forts. We've held the bordering provinces for a couple of turns and as can be seen the eastern 'choke point' is held very thinly. We may have to abandon that province as a large longdead army is probably heading that direction led by the Ulmish Prince of Death pretender (see red dot - the arrow is my scout and also indicates a likely direction for that army to take).

Meanwhile just off the map to the left are Pythium and Abysia who appear to be at war with other nations (perhaps even each other), thankfully. What they do is actually the most important single factor determining how much further we'll be able to expand in the next turns. Obviously we'd like to continue to fight one nation at a time!

Unfortunately for this 'DAR', it's more fun to play than to write about it. :)

Things are progressing extremely well for the Arcosephalian nation. Our dedication to buying mages every turn has paid off and we now have more than DOUBLE the next nation's total research. We currently generate over 1000 RP's a turn, so even on 'very difficult' research we are researching new stuff at a fairly good pace.

Meanwhile Ulm is falling province by province. Haven't felt the need to watch any of the battles as they've all been pretty lopsided, some due to the poor AI targeting choices (firing archers at the Prot 17 Hoplites for example) and more due to the quality of troops on both sides. Arco now has a couple of decent-sized (say 20-30) cavalry wings which continue to grow. We can if necessary (if money permits) add a LOT of offensive firepower in the form of chariots or even elephants and add those to the solid heavy cav groups.

Our enemies meanwhile battle each other while Arco gains control over more and more provinces. We lead in income and have about 5 times the gem income of the next nation.

Still there's gonna be some big battles. Machaka has the largest armies (about 1.6 times ours or so) but probably with a lot of fodder. Marignon also has big armies. After Ulm is finished though most likely Pythium will be our next target, or at this point we are probably strong enough to take on multiple enemies at once.

Ulm has been eliminated, Machaka is next! Well we will be attacking them anyways, we may not need to eliminate them. They are just in the way. ;)

We have 3 capitals and thus Victory Points now; I think I chose 7 needed to win. Thus I have to capture 4 more capitals.

Pythium is currently seiging Abysia's last province, and is currently at war with Machaka. Machaka attacked Pythium last turn in a HUGE HUGE fun-to-watch battle on Abysia's capital. LOTS of Machakan casualties, mostly fodder-type archer troops. Pythium has a pretty high-quality army there consisting mostly of their tough national troops. So, we may have to go to war with them as well although I'd prefer to avoid that if possible.

One thing I have been meaning to note about playing Arcosephale. PRIESTESSES are ABSOLUTELY GREAT!!! My armies now consist of MANY MANY three-star troops with NO AFFLICTIONS. Hypaspists are great as they are 'out-of-the-box' but with 3-stars they have some excellent stats! I also have lots of heavy cavs with 2 and 3-stars. Those guys are gonna lay down some hurt!

Ok gotta play the next turn now. Attack on Machaka commences.

Well Machaka has a LOT of crappy troops. Tribal archers and the like. All my guys are top Arco troops and independents - Hypaspists, Hoplites, Heavy Infantries, Knights (!), Heavy Cavs. I also have huge numbers of archers, targeted properly. Lots of those guys have 3 stars too! Not to mention two castings of Troll King's Court. Capable Blade Wind casters (the 4E Troll Kings (w/boots of Earth + reinvig. items)) plus heavily armed and armored (and regenerating) trolls versus lots of very lightly armored Machakan troops. Um, IT'S GONNA GET UGLY!!!

Machaka is already taking grievous losses trying to lift the seige of Abysia's capital - I watched another battle there last turn. They do have a lot of spider guys but they aren't very effective by themselves as they mostly seem to like to shoot their webs, but then there's no other troops around to attack the webbed enemies.

Here's the current map: Click here to view the current game situation. The red circle is Abysia's capital which is being seiged by Pythium. That's the province that Machaka has attacked and been bleeding itself on for the last two turns.

Meanwhile the three provinces circled in green are where we initiated or will initiate attacks on Machaka. Basically Machaka is in a WORLD OF HURT! They still have the *largest* armies but filled with crappy troops. If they'd research 'Flaming Arrows' we'd have something to worry about but I haven't seen them cast it thus far.

Also of note on the map: Ermor (purple circle) and R'lyeh (blue circle) are at war, and we now border R'lyeh's capital province (the two blue dots on the right are the same province).

Ultimately this game is winding down a bit in excitement as the AI's aren't presenting much in the way of challenge. I'll try to finish it though for sake of completeness (plus some fun battles are ahead) - 4 more capitals to capture for the victory.

Have any comments or questions? Love to hear from you!

Ok well the game is getting fun again. Pythium attacked us last turn so we are definitely at war with them as well. That's fine as actually their capital is not too far away on our Western borders and most of their armies are tied up seiging Abysia's capital. I'll just let that army sit there (I've never seen the AI break off armies that are seiging) and hopefully they'll storm the castle and take grievous casualties - Abysia has somehow been able to build up a pretty decent army there with no provinces. I suppose it must be fire summons.

To the east, R'yleh and us (Arco) both attacked the same indy sea province. We captured the province then they attacked us. So, we're not sure if that means war or not (in Dom 2 I think it usually didn't). But we have a MASSIVE water income now and I'll cast the Sea Troll's Court a couple times at least. Still have to build LOTS of sea fodder to deal with all the mind blasts. Even if we're not at war now we'll be attacking them eventually.

One thing I only briefly mentioned before is that we have also got a good blood income going now, some 40-60 slaves per turn and buying one blood mage per turn. We captured a province where you can buy sorcerers (1D 1B 2? (D,B,S) I think) - those guys are VERY NICE. Can blood hunt, cast death rituals, the 2B guys can summon fiends (which require only Blood 2 research) or if you had to use them in battle you have Nether Darts.

I got a 3B 1D guy and empowered him to 4B so he could forge the blood boosters. So he has the Blood Thorn for 5B and is now casting 'Ritual of the Five Gates' which is a nice addition to Dom 3 - you get the five solid demon troops (frost, devil, fiend, knight, and storm) in one cast. I also cast Horde from Hell so now I have a devil commander and a flying squad which is VERY handy. He has about 15 fiends and those demon guys (plus his imps).

Our gem income is HUGE now also thanks to thoroughly searching a LOT of provinces, both sea and land. Land ones get Acashic'ed of course, for the sea if you don't know this 'trick' you can cast 'Voice of Tiamat' (must be cast underwater) which fully searches a sea province for the elemental sites, then you can cast Arcane Probing, Haruspex and Dark Knowledge to take care of the sorcery sites (I don't think there are blood sites underwater). That's equal to Acashic Record for sea provinces.

BIG BATTLES AHEAD! Looking forward to the carnage. This next turn is going to be pretty complicated as I border Pythium by the sea provinces also so I have to figure out whether I want to raid him with my amphibious guys or not. (Perhaps not as I have lots of guys on land and I need the amphibious guys to continue our sea expansion.)

Comments welcome as always! Next post I'll put up a screenshot.

Quick update here showing the current battle plans in the West versus Pythium and Machaka.

As mentioned in the previous post Pythium is at war with us now so we have to guard Trollhome and Ivory Keep - we've 'Move-Patrolled' a bunch of troops to both castles so they should be safe. Also have the flying corps coming up (devil with fiends/demons) to lend a hand.

Only a few things to note on the map here really, although you might find just looking at it interesting to see the logistics involved. One is the Abysian home province at Desert's Edge. There are 500 Pythium troops there of pretty decent overall quality. Lots of archers to be sure but many of Pythium's solid nationals as well.

Second province of note is 'Pitfall'. There's a lot of spider troops there! However the way the AI uses them (see one of the above posts), they don't seem to be all that effective. Still we expect them to attack and attempt to lift the seige of 'Sleeper's Embrace' which we are also storming this turn. Should be a fun battle to watch.