Just purchased Dominions 3...

[przy]

....OK, I took the plunge, now do any of you have any suggestions/tips/hints on what I should do to get started once I receive the game? Any replies would be greatly appreciated.

[Evilhomer]

Well if you are unfamilir with dominions a good start is probably the tutorial (info in the manual). If you played dominions 2, a good start is probably to check out the new ages/nations in sp and later on sign up for a few mp games.

[Eressil3]

Welcome !
Usually I jump in games without opening the manual. But for this one this was the first thing I did : to read.

After few SP games I jumped into MP. This may not be a thing to do, but I couldn't wait any longer. I don't regret it. I feel I learn faster seeing others tricks.

[Edi]

Well, the order of things to do is install, patch, read manual, play.

If you're familiar with Dom2, you can skim the manual instead of reading it in full.

[Gandalf Parker]

a couple of small hints.
Late Era is probably easiest for totally new players to understand.
Something like Arcos, Man, or Ulm might make good first nations
Late Era Ermor needs to be fought by priests.
Turning the indepts HIGHER will slow down the AI's.
There is a reason that the game is called "dominion" so dont ignore it.

[Sombre]

I played without reading the manual and found people had been making far too much of Dom3's complexity. It has hidden depth, but it's not /that/ hard to get into. You sure as hell don't need to have read the whole manual first.

[llamabeast]

I agree with everyone else!

When choosing a first nation, I reckon Arcoscephale is a very good choice, particularly if you are playing Late Age. They are interesting but fairly easy to get a grasp of. If you choose Middle Age I'd go with Marignon (exciting fire mages), Man, Ulm or Arco, and if you choose Early Age I think Sauromatia is great - or Arco again. But all the nations are very interesting and cool, you can't go wrong really.

Oh, these names will of course seem very weird, so here's translations for the ones I've mentioned:

Arcoscephale - Like the Greeks, with hoplites and also elephants
Man - A bit like Arthurian England, I think
Ulm - Germanic, lots of heavy armour
Marignon - Feels Spanish to me, apparently French in fact - anyway, it's all Inquisition and "burn the heretics!"
Sauromatia - Based on the Amazons (not the South American kind) - great cavalry, great archers and great mages so lots of fun

[Morkilus]

Ulm's my favorite newbie nation since their low magic diversity (at least in the first two eras) focuses you on what to research, and a critical mass of heavy armor units is effective enough against indies. Their diversity of unit weaponry lets you learn the combat system and proper tactical placement (cavalry for flanking mages, high-prot + shields against arrows, flails vs chaff infantry). I'd say Niefelheim is a good step after that to learn how to use sacred units and build thugs, which are commanders that can take poorly defended provinces on their own.

[Gandalf Parker]

Yeah I like to recommend Ulm and nations like it for beginners. Most people coming into the game tend to understand what to do with mounted knights, guys with shields and swords, archers. It lets them get used to the game mechanics before getting into the new-concept stuff.

[MaxWilson]

Similarly to playing around with Ulm, you might try playing around with the easy spell mod (Save this to c:\Program Files\Dominions3\mods directory or equivalent, and go to Preferences/Mods to turn on "All spells pre-researched"). Then you can select a nation like, say, EA C'tis and see how much you like their spellcasters. Realizing of course that in a real game you won't have access to all those spells from the start of the game, it might still be fun to see what magic schools you want most.

-Max