Eschatos does a Let's Play: Dominions 3

[Eschatos]

Hey all, out of a combination of boredom and interest in furthering my writing skills, I've been writing up a Let's Play for my latest obsession.  Feel free to critique my writing, express pleasure/disgust, or ask questions.

Post 1: Intro + Nation/Pretender Design
Hello, and welcome to Eschatos' Lets Play of Dominions 3!







At this point you might be feeling curious, what is Dominions 3?  To make a long story short, Dominions 3 is an incredibly complex turn based strategy game featuring gods warring with each other for control of all creation.  To make a long story long, read the rest of this LP.
 
Dominions 3 is primarily played as a multiplayer game. While AI exists, it's not exactly intelligent.  A typical multiplayer game is filled with desperate alliances, sudden betrayals, and wars I would not hesitate to describe as epic. Let me provide some context for this LP. The good folks of the Rock Paper Shotgun forums have recently arranged a large game of Dominons 3(henceforth referred to as Dom3) with your humble narrator as a player.  18 players will vie for domination. The majority of players, including me, are somewhat new to the game, so expect plenty of mistakes and unusual strategies. 

We will be playing with two mods enabled. First, Conceptual Balance Mod 1.94, which buffs the weak, nerfs the OP, and generally improves the quality of gameplay. Second, All Ages Mod, which allows the nations of all 3 Ages(~70 Nations Total) to be combined in the same game.  I'm personally not a fan of the second, but it should make the game more exciting. 

This LP is mainly intended for people who haven't played Dominions. I'll try to provide quick explanations of important gameplay concepts so that yall can tell what's going on.  Before I finally jump in, let me insert a quick advertisement. Dominions 3 is on Steam Greenlight right now, currently languishing in a sea of mediocre games. If you enjoy this LP, use Steam, and are interested in the game itself, please consider voting for Dom3 on Greenlight.

The first step for any player before starting a game is to pick a nation and god from the pool available. A typical game will take place in one of the three eras(Early, Middle or Late). Most nations exist in different forms throughout the three ages.

As a quick example, I've posted below the descriptions of a particular nation across the three ages.




As you can see, Ermor transitions from a relatively friendly Rome-inspired nation into a twisted hellscape of undead.  Other nations go through similar transitions, or are wiped out and replaced by new nations, creating a massive diversity of lore and play styles.  You want to play a race of ice giants capable of rushing the other players? Pick Neifelheim and watch as your sacred giant Jarls cleave and freeze their way across the land. Into Lovecraft? Play as R'lyeh, safe underneath the waves from the marauding land dwellers until your Ilithids and their mind-controlled slaves can march from beneath the waves to claim victory.  Are you a fan of hit and run tactics? Play as the birdmen of Caelum and let your Eagle Kings blast foes with lightning before flying away.

I chose to play the Middle Age incarnation of Arcoscephale, a fantasy version of Ancient Greece/Macedonia. 



Arcoscephale drew my eye because of two particular features. It has a strong early game with its elephants, and a strong late game from its wide variety of cheap, powerful mages.  As a general rule in Dominions, magic always dominates.  The players might begin the game with hordes of swordsmen or archers, but a late game battlefield will be dominated by summoned elementals, demons, and even dead gods returned from exile.



After a player picks their nation, the next step is to design their pretender, a being of godlike power aspiring to control the world. As with the various nations, there is a huge variety of gods to choose from.  The list you're about to see only has the selection of gods for one of the many available nations.



You want your god to be a two-headed serpent, or a dragon, or a statue? Any creature can be successful with a proper strategy.  When it comes to pretender design strategy, there are four primary options for building a pretender:

Supercombatant: Choose a powerful combat oriented god that can conquer provinces quickly in the early game to provide a massive land and income advantage over other players. Big creatures like a dragon or wyrm fit this role best. A wyrm is particularly nice because it regenerates 10% of its health every round in combat, and exudes an aura of fear that lowers enemy morale.



Blessing: When a pretender takes a high number of skill ranks in one of the eight paths of magic, sacred warriors serving them can be buffed with various abilities.  For example, a pretender god with nine or more ranks in fire magic can grant their followers increased accuracy and flaming weapons.  Almost any god can make a good bless, since the most important aspect to consider is which magic paths they start with.  With the right strategy, any bless can be effective, except air. Air blesses suck.



Bless nations tend to be extremely powerful in the early game, as their massively buffed sacred warriors stomp over anything opposing them.  The weakness of a bless nation is that the high magic paths required cost massive amounts of design points, and require tradeoffs in every other field of pretender design.

As a secondary weakness, bless nations are usually one trick ponies, as they'll spend most of the game relying on a single type of sacred unit.  If an enemy figures out how to counter your sacred warriors, you're in deep shit.

Scales nations: These emphasize the next aspect of pretender design.  The influence of a god can exert positive or negative effects on the land under their dominion. This screen is where the player picks what exact effect their god can spread, and how quickly their dominion can spread.



A high dominion strength is vital for survival.  If no one worships your god(aka they have no dominion), you immediately lose the game.  Aggressive temple building to spread dominion can be an effective strategy to weaken enemies. 

The further options are called Scales.  Why scales? Because they can tilt in two directions with opposing consequences.  A death scale will slowly kill your population, and a life scale will increase population growth.  Any scale can be increased to a maximum strength of 3 in either direction, which will either provide a positive effect to lands under your dominion and costs points, or causes a negative effect which grants you extra points to spend on more important aspects. 

Scales nations get a relatively small boost across all stages of the game. They tend to be more effective in the late game once the interest of their benefits has had a chance to compound. Cheap gods tend to be best for scales, allowing more points to be dumped into powerful dominion effects.

Rainbow pretenders: Pick a rainbow pretender when you want to try most or all magic paths at the same time.  Most nations only have inherent access to two or three paths of magic, and a rainbow pretender can allow access to the ones left over.  This allows a high level of versatility, but tends not to be especially powerful in any one aspect without a high level of magic gem investment and research. Mage pretenders tend to make the best rainbow mages, since they can most easily expand into new magic paths. The frost father's immunity to cold, freezing aura, and ability to move through mountains without penalty are just icing on the cake.



Concept: Magic gems.  Magic gems are the currency of magic.  Every item forging, noncombat ritual and many of the more powerful combat spells require gems of the appropriate path as reagents.  Each path has a corresponding gem type:



You might notice that the rightmost "gem" looks like a little stick figure.  Blood magic is the exception, instead of being powered with magic gems, it runs on human sacrifices.  Don't expect to make too many friends when your mages hunt through villages for virgins to sacrifice.

After at least 15 minutes worth of deliberating, I decided on a rainbow pretender with a hint of scales.  Rainbow gods are my favorite strategy.  Rainbow gods are excellent for searching for magic sites for increased gem income, and I love being able to switch between strategies easily.

Final build:






As you can see from the above pictures, I took one rank in fire and death magic, four in air, three in earth and astral, and two in nature.  I won't go into specifics right now, but suffice to say that these paths will allow what I think is the optimal compromise between gear forging, spell casting, and site searching.

Since this is a particularly large game(an average game will hold less than 10 players) I wanted to also plan for the long term, and good scales can be very strong long term.  After all, your subjects can't pay taxes if they've died due to a strong death scale, or fled due to misfortune scales. 

Dominion 8 will allow me to hold off on building temples until I can easily afford it, and protect me from domkills. As I mentioned previously, not having dominion over any provinces results in an instant game over. Some strategies revolve around spreading your god's dominion as quickly as possible to try and wipe out the dominion of your opponents.

Order, productivity, and growth have the net effect of gaining me more money(total +14% boost and growth will cause it to go up more over time).  Misfortune naturally complements order. The increase in bad random events is partially mitigated by the decrease in random events caused by order.  Luck and turmoil combined can also be highly effective. If you take those scales, expect a penalty to income, but a constant stream of random gold and gems.  I took Heat 1 because I needed more points, and there are a number of players in this game with cold loving nations. The income/supply penalty that I see will be much larger if a cold nation(like the frost giants of Neifelheim) manages to invade me and take my land.  Finally, Magic 1 will provide a boost to my researchers. Arcoscephale's strength is its mages, and mages are worthless if they don't know spells to cast.

To afford all those bonuses, I had to spend far more points than I was allocated.  To make back my deficit I set my pretender to start the game asleep, meaning that she won't wake up until a year has passed(12 turns).  If I wanted to truly go all out with bells and whistles I'd have to set my pretender to be imprisoned, which would leave me without a god for three years. 

Concept: magic sites
These are where you get magic gems from.  Every nation will start on base magic sites that complement their national magic paths, but the vast majority of sites lie in provinces that don't start filled with tens of thousands of your worshipers, and thus are hidden from view.  To find these magic sites and take advantage of their income, mages must search for them, either by trekking through provinces themselves or by scanning from afar with magic.  Increasing gem income as soon as possible is vital to playing effectively, you can NEVER have too many gems.

Magic sites can also provide other benefits in the form of special unit recruitment and scales bonuses.




And some magic sites are just bad.




Tune in next time for a look at the armies of Arcoscephale, and the first turn.

[Eschatos]

Welcome back to another installment of Eschatos Plays Dominions 3!  This post will mark the first turn of the game, as
well as an introduction of what my nation is capable of. 

Post 2: Unit Introduction + Turn 1



Every turn starts with a list of all the important events that happened over the last turn. Since this is the first
turn, all we have is the intro messages that display on game start. I'll show them below to set the tone. 




I hope that's a suitably epic introduction. Now, the first action to take after the game starts is to figure out where
the hell my nation's capital is, and formulate a strategy for early expansion.  To be competitive with other decent
players I'm going to have to conquer at least one province every turn, and hopefully more than that once my economy
gets a decent boost.  That's easier said than done, though. Every neutral province starts off occupied by a neutral
army that will resist any attempts at annexation.  In almost every case it's a bad idea to expand on the very first
turn, as your scouts will not have had the chance to get any intel on the surrounding neutrals.  You could end up
expanding into a small group of militia that go down easy, or something much nastier like an army of heavy cavalry. 
I'll be holding off on expanding this turn and building up my forces.



I'm quite pleased with my starting position. A mountain range to the south will make attacks from that direction a slow
process and give me time to build up defenses.  The forests to the north will do the same, and both will give a hefty
boost to my capital's resources(which determine how many troops can be recruited each turn) once I conquer them.  I'm
especially pleased about the sea to my east. Only the water-dwelling nations will inherently be able to conquer
underwater provinces. I know for a fact that there isn't an underwater spawn in that sea.  With my god's skill in air
magic and my mage's chance to get water magic, I should be able to easily forge items that let my troops move and fight
underwater.  Now let's zoom out to get the bigger picture.



Once zoomed out, there are two unusual factors about this map that become obvious.  First, it's a wraparound map. you
might notice features repeating at the edges of the screen such as the cave system below and between the province box
and income box that also shows up at the bottom the screen.  Second, it's a fantasy version of Eastern Europe and the
Middle East.  I had hoped to be placed in the provinces corresponding to Greece, given that I'm playing a nation based
on them. Instead I got stuck in Azerbaijan. Due to the wraparound, Saudi Arabia is to the north of me.

That's enough geography for now. Let me introduce you to our starting army and the available units to be recruited.



Virtually every nation will have a comparable starting army to this. Typically something on the order of 30 low-quality
soldiers commanded by a mid-tier commander and a scout.



This here is the recruit screen for my capital, which we'll be seeing a lot of.  Standard soldiers are lined up on the
top, commanders and mages in the middle, and the three resources used for recruitment are listed at the bottom.  The
purpose of gold should be obvious. All units also have a resource cost, which represents the price of forging their
weapons and armor.  Resources will fill back up to maximum at the start of every turn and cannot be stored.  Finally,
holy represents the number of sacred units that can be recruted each turn.  Holy units are generally the most elite
soldiers of any nation and can be made even better with a bless. 



I'll introduce the available soldiers this post, and leave commanders for the next. To start we have the common
slinger.  Most nations have access to slingers. They're extremely cheap, but you get what you pay for. They do have the
distinction of being our best ranged unit. Arcoscephale is not a ranged-heavy nation.  I'll probably only recruit these
if I quickly need some extra defenders for a fort.



Peltasts are cheap hybrid infantry.  They can stab enemies in melee with their spears or throw javelins, but they don't
perform either role especially well. I can't see myself hiring any of these.



Cardaces are my light infantry.  They are still vastly inferior to our other troops. I don't plan on hiring any of
these either.



Finally we're getting into quality troops.  Hoplites make excellent frontline soldiers with their high protection and
decent morale.  They do have one crippling weakness, which is their map move one.  They can only move one province per
turn, while virtually everything else I can produce has at least map move two.  These will pretty much exclusively be
used as fort garrisons.



Hypaspists will be my main infantry.  They trade some protection for defense, morale, speed, and a lower resource cost.
They're too expensive in terms of resources to hire early game, but afterwords they'll make up the bulk of my armies.



Charioteers are something of a glass cannon. They can dish out tremendous amounts of damage to large numbers of enemies
with their trample ability, but they'll be lucky to survive more than one hit.  I may put swarms of these in midgame
armies to flank enemies with.



Elephants are the cornerstone of any early game Arcoscephale army.  They're fast and can take quite a punishment as
they trample through enemy ranks.  Six to 10 of these can take on virtually any independent army.  They do have one
huge weakness that makes them unsuitable for lategame play, however.  Their morale is awful, meaning that as they take
damage in battle they have a significant chance to rout, causing them to trample my troops on their way off the
battlefield.  If I were to use elephants against any competent opponent, they'd simply bring along a few mages to cast
fear spells and use my elephants against me. 



Finally we have my elite sacred soldiers, the Heart Companions. They love fighting as much as they love each other, but
they share the same weakness as hoplites with their map move 1 and high encumbrance.  They also can only be recruited
in my capital, so it'll be near impossible to build up a large number of them. 


The next step is to decide how to spend my starting cash. 400 gold is not going to go a long way.  I always like to
check the available mercenaries.  Most aren't worth buying for early expansion, but occasionally you get some
particularly good troops available to hire.



Sadly these are not some of those good troops.  I believe the Farstrikers are archers, which can be nice, but they
won't contribute as much to early expansion as my other options. 

Gameplay concept: Mercenaries

Mercenaries are independent bands of soldiers that offer their services to the highest bidder. There's a huge level of
variety, everything from powerful mages to near worthless militia.  Mercenaries are generally worth hiring if you can
get them for their base price, but in a multiplayer game as large as this one that'll be near impossible. 



Here's my final hiring decision.  Elephants are so expensive that I can only afford three with my starting cash.  To
make up for this, I ordered my starting soldiers to patrol the capital this turn to reduce unrest, and raised taxes
heavily, which raises unrest. Hopefully the two will cancel out and I'll end up with a nice boost in money in exchange
for some dead citizens.  You can't make an omeleot without slaughtering some bandits and all that.

I also hired a scout. He's the only useful commander unit that I can afford with my leftover cash, and intel is
extremely important in this game.  I want to be able to determine which neutrals are guarding the most desirable
provinces and where my closest neighbors are. 

Finally, I ordered my starting scout to become my prophet.  Each nation can have one unit as their prophet, which gives
several significant advantages. A prophet will automatically spread their gods dominion around them, gets bonus stats
based on dominion, and gains an automatic level 3 in holy magic, which allows them to bless an entire army and smite
heathens.  I like to make an expendable unit my prophet for early game, then when mid-game rolls around get him killed
and give prophetship to a decently powerful unit.  Having a prophet on turn 2, even if he's only a scout, will help a
lot with early expansion.



That's it for turn one.  Things will get a lot livelier once I have a few provinces and meet my neighbors, but I'll end
it here for now.

[Eschatos]

Hello again! It's time for yet another post in the chronicle of my journey to world domination.

Post 3: Commander Introduction + Turn 2



As would be expected, this turn's event log is crowded, as every nation expands, or prepares to begin expanding.  The events go as follows:

The first three events are diplomatic messages sent to all players of the world, one from me, and the rest from other players.




Everyone's starting off acting friendly. Unsurprising, as no one wants to be singled out as a warmonger in a game this large. I did expect more messages though. 
The next 10 messages are all of players announcing their prophets, all scouts or starting leaders. Next, I got my first random event. Let's see what it is.



Looks like I was unlucky and got a negative event on the first turn. This one reduces income and increases unrest. This will be a major setback for my expansion. I think I can still expand fairly quickly despite this. It will delay my research start, however.



This is a fairly common message. My patrolling soldiers have significantly reduced the unrest generated by my raised taxes, but with the hurricane it wasn't enough to completely bring peace to the land. Let's take a look at the turn starting situation.




Nothing unusual other than a lot less gold than I had hoped for.  I do get to see my independent neighbors.  Luckily for me, they're all quite weak.  I can't get an exact count of what makes up their forces, but they're all primarily militia, which are about the weakest possible enemy to face.  That doesn't mean they're not dangerous though. All four adjacent land forces are backed up by other tougher troops.



I definitely won't be invading the sea anytime soon. Even if I did have amphibious units, those amber clan tritons are both nasty and present in high numbers. 
Before I reveal my orders for the turn, allow me to introduce the various commanders available to my nation:



Scouts are super important for gathering intel.  That's about all they can do. Stealth lets them move through neutral and enemy territory with a very low chance of being caught and murdered.



This is basically a generic commander given to Arcoscephale to round out their roster.  Their only distinguishing feature is that they're very fast.



A decently tough commander, but it isn't the commander's job to fight. That map move 1 is killer. Don't expect to ever see one of these.



This guy is much better, losing two protection for speed, morale, defence, and a cheaper price.  It's a shame that the next commander overshadows him.



Strategos are perfect for my armies. They can command a ton of soldiers, they can take care of themselves in a fight, and they give a morale boost to nearby units, which will help a lot with my elephants.



My first mage and only priest.  Their main jobs will be building temples and healing injured units. The latter ability will be vital for a strategy I hope to implement later on.




These guys are who make Arcoscephale a powerhouse.  They only start with one level in astral magic, but they're guaranteed one path bonus and have a good shot at three more.  These will make up the bulk of my researchers and make formidable battlemages in large groups.




And finally we have my elite mages, the astrologers. Their high astral power will allow both deadly battle magic and a number of other sneaky strategies, and if I get lucky enough to get an astral rank 5 mage I can forge a number of vital magic items.  They also help prevent bad events, which is just icing on the cake.

Now it's time to go over orders for this turn.



I can't afford to hire many units, a single commander and elephant will be all I'm getting. I could afford to get another two elephants, but I'd rather spend the money on...



the Ship Wreckers.  These guys, in my opinion, are the best mercenaries in the entire game.  They're a small force of shamblers, which are basically well-armed amphibious giants.  They can easily tear through independents both on land and underwater.  From that picture we can also see that Ermor won the last set of mercenaries



The Greater Wild, to the north of my capital, has the weakest independent soldiers, so I'll be sending what troops I've amassed along with my scout prophet to provide priest support.  Other than that, all I can do is send my other scout out exploring for more territory.  My short term goal is to take that farmland to my northwest, which should get me enough income to make up for this turn's hurricane.

Join me next session for an introduction to combat!

[The Generic Name]

So are these how some LPs are done on sites like SA?  or is there normally a video?

[Eschatos]

So are these how some LPs are done on sites like SA?  or is there normally a video?

It can go either way. Most on SA are text, but then there's also a shitton of video LPs on youtube.

[The Generic Name]

[quote author=The Generic Name link=topic=7078.msg271780#msg271780 date=1380133960]
So are these how some LPs are done on sites like SA?  or is there normally a video?

It can go either way. Most on SA are text, but then there's also a shitton of video LPs on youtube.
[/quote]

Most of which are either shit face-cam yelling attention whores, and others are just over looked because of those popular youtubers, correct?

[Sogo]

[quote author=Eschatos link=topic=7078.msg271823#msg271823 date=1380214147]
[quote author=The Generic Name link=topic=7078.msg271780#msg271780 date=1380133960]
So are these how some LPs are done on sites like SA?  or is there normally a video?

It can go either way. Most on SA are text, but then there's also a shitton of video LPs on youtube.
[/quote]

Most of which are either shit face-cam yelling attention whores, and others are just over looked because of those popular youtubers, correct?
[/quote]

Correct.