Finally got it!..now a question on manual use?

[Caduceus]

The spell lists make good bed-time reading.

[Morkilus]

I've pondered the magic booster chart for hours.

[Jazzepi]

I really find the summons list extremely important. When you diversify in magic you do it one of two ways.

1. You discover an indy province, or special magic site that lets you recruit a new unit that offers a new magic path.

2. You summon a creature with paths in a given type of magic.

Jazzepi

[Taqwus]

From the lab's research screen, you can view the descriptions of the various spells and rituals, including those you haven't yet researched.

Icons and statistics also tend to have their own descriptions, as does every monster.

Three hints to reduce frustration:

- If an independent force seems to be wasting away over
time, for no apparent reason... there IS a reason.
- Many an inexperienced player has hurled vehement curses
at Lizard Shamen.
- If you don't start with an awake pretender, with magic...
hire a mage the first turn.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

If you're interested in an oddball race like atlantis or agartha:

I suggest a small map with one easy ai opponent that never changes. That way you limit your learning curve to just two nations and the spells. You won't have to hit the books often.

Once you start winning, you can introduce random nations. You really don't need to understand most of the mechanics until you get into MP. Then, you'll want to brush up on the specifics of things such as gem use and movement priorities.

You may occasionally want to go into your saved game folder and make a backup, so you can do whatifs for learning.

[Lyzra]

Mhhh, my approach in games usually is to play them at start without touching any manuals.

Bear with me, being older gamer and testign allmost every game I bother to try over time you become familiar with UI's and various ways things are allmost ALLWAYS set in games, thus manuals often aint all that important.

Yet, dominions does require some need for manual. For instance its bit hard to decipher how the actual sense for building forts/cities work. Its explained in the manual well but without it your kinda blind to that aspect. Another one is perhaps the little bonuses from various magic paths to an individual knowing them, aswell how the pretender bless works from paths.

Basics are pretty much just that, you create armies of varying forces and position them so you dont screw yourself up.

I do recall one of my 'ace' associates playing dominions and creating a pretender for abyssia, one that used blood magic. He went into battle with plenty of bloodslaves and all abyssian troops in a cluster around himself. Needless to say the heat aura of his troops killed all of the slaves.
Did I mention to raise the issue of him being 'ace' with games in general.

Manual is also very useful in determining WHICH paths of magic you need to have for certain intem construction, otherwise you never know until you have the appropriate paths.

[Zeldor]

Some basic tips that can make first games much more enjoyable:

- take good scales [especially stay away from misfortune]
- take a nice nation that has a lot of possibilities [MA T'ien Ch'i would be a great idea]
- take more gold [about 200] and resources + supplies [around 150], you will have more castles and temples that way
- you can refrain from playing against water nations as it is hard to attack them and frustrating to defend
- if you want to defend a province with a castle you need to order your troops to patrol, not defend; also when you move reinforcements to the castle move them and change their orders to 'move and patrol' [it was very painful lesson]
- use '8' to get connections between provinces, that makes conquering much easier
- you may increase independents strength, it makes initial start slower, but AI has bigger problems with it

[Sombre]

I started playing without looking at the manual or playing the tutorial. I honestly didn't get very confused. I later looked a couple of things up in the manual, but I got a lot of info simply by lurking on here and trying things out for myself. I have never used someone else's strategy and I never will, though I do take their tips. I almost never use the manual now and I don't trust it, because it is often wrong in my experience. Not just about subjective things like strategies, but about mechanics, stats and facts.

I do pretty much know the entire modding manual without having to look anything up any more though. I have read through the entire thing many times. It's located in the docs subfolder of the dom3 install.

[ttomm46]

thank you all..i'm playing the tutorial and it's even fun.

[DigitalSin]

I never read the manual, it's probably still collecting dust on a shelf. I jumped right in and started firing blind, and picked up a few things like that. Then I started paying attention to what things did