Whoah theres a lot of micro management in this game

[Question]

Just started playing this game and theres surprisingly a lot of micro management. There are no hotkeys for some actions like transferring gems...so you have to spam mouse clicks. You can't set rally points, and worse you can't even give commanders orders to move to more than 1 turn's worth of provinces per turn...a feature that was present in strategy games released 20 years ago(Master of magic IIRC).

I get the impression people dont like using capital only troops for this reason. Its too slow and too much of a micromanagement hell to constantly move troops from the capital to the front lines.

AI in combat seems...extremely primitive. Set mages on "cast spells" and they will spam random level 0 spells...when they could be casting lightning bolts or more. And you can nnly queue like 5 spells, so after 5 spells your mages start casting really random stuff. And i cant find a way to move them up to support the melee guys either (i put them in the back, but when my melee guys charge, they just...stay there...and do nothing useful),

Also tried using iron dragons set to "attack rear most unit" to take out commanders and archers. Instead they would attack the closest unit (usually some charging cavalry) and get tied up there. Uh? That's completely the opposite of what i wanted you to do...

How exactly do you make decent armies? So far ive been mostly using melee guys in 3 large blocks, buffed by spells, because ive noticed that 50+ composite bows cant seem to kill much, and things like javelins and slings are horrible.

Side note : Site searching is god awful. Lets say i want to search 4 different sites in one province. I have to cast 4 different spells to do it, and theres no way to automate it...theres no way to even see which provinces have been searched while casting the spell (province select screen doesnt show any indicators it seems). Also some minor points like how the game doesnt automatically put researchers back on research after casting/forging.

And theres plenty of help text that doesnt tell you anything useful. Can't see the stats of a creature before you summon it for example (and you cant set mages to auto summon turn after turn, its a LOT of work if you want a summoned army).

Problems :

-Low level mages have no way to cast higher level spells? Do i just have to empower them(really expensive)?

-How do you invade under water provinces without natural water breathing? I saw a Rl'yeh city with 1500+ troops once...how the hell?

-How do you make commanders effective in melee combat? If i put them in the middle of a large block, they get stuck behind the mass of trops when it comes time to charge. And they never seem to kill much. Are there any AOE weapons other than the frost/fire brands?

-How do i make an effective god? I tried using a water 9, father of frost god, gave him a frost brand, black steel armor, some buffs...somewhat effective in combat, BUT died easily to the first real AI army encountered. Also i noticed that if i set him to cast quicken self, he would spam cold bolt instead...and if i set him to cast falling frost, he would cast quicken self instead...

-If you spam forts everywhere, do they reduce the resources in your capital or something?

-How do you heal afflictions? Or dismiss troops?

-For research, should i just spam researchers turn after turn?

[brxbrx]

To automate site searching, click on a commander casting the spell, press shift+m, choose a site searching spell, pick a site, and the next month the commander will choose a new site to search.

R'lyeh is an underwater nation, so it's normal that it has a lot of troops underwater (especially in the Early Age and Late Age: Early Age R'lyeh AI keeps building water only units [because that's all EA R'lyeh has]; Late age automatically generates troops in its dominion).
Invading water provinces without water units will require you to either have a unit capable of taking units underwater (like the Sea Troll King) or a magic item that lets you do so (Breathing Pills).

There are spells that empower mages during combat. Mostly conjuration. Phoenix Power, Summon Storm Power, and Summon Earth Power come to mind. Also, the crystal shield boosts magic paths in combat.

You cannot dismiss troops (though there is a mod that lets you do that, I think), and afflictions are usually permanent unless you have a healer unit (Arcoscephale, Gath, Hinnom, and Late Age Pythium have recruitable healers), the Gift of Health enchantment cast, the Chalice, or a unit with Immortality and recuperation.

[Colonial]

While most of what you say is pretty true, you also clearly are not aware of one extremely handy shortcut.

When you hover over a commander and press Ctrl+M it takes you to the casting menue, but you are there to choose a 'Monthly ritual'. this is a ritual your guy casts every month, so long as you have enough gems for him to begin casting the next ritual as soon as you finish this one. so a 1 cost ritual you need 2 gems one to cast this turn's and one to begin casting next turns.

This is useful for monthly summoning troops and for monthly casting site searchers. for the latter the AI chooses a new site every month, and is pretty good at it. it searches them in numerical order but skips capitals and skips partially searched sites until it is out of unsearched sites.

to know what a summoned unit is going to be or what a mercenary looks like you need the wiki: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Main_Page

basically press the windows button, look it up on line, then change back to domIII. a bit annoying but better than summoning in the dark,


since I already have a long schpeal, I may as well answer your questions:

1. some magical items boost your skills in a magic path. http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/User:..._booster_guide

2. Its an absolute nightmare. Nature, Water and Air magic all have magic items that you can forge that allow you take different numbers of troops into the drink. you can also recruit water breathing indies. a lot of late game summons are amphibious. or dominion kill the under water guy.

3. Most commanders aren't effective in malee, and theres nothing you can do about it. the only way to make them useful at all is give them a magic item that gives them something to do, like a bow.

for those who are actually good fighters, you have a number of options: have them attack alone, put them in the front line, put them on a flank where no one will get in their way, or give them flying. I'm sure there are other strategies I'm not thinking of

4. This is a huge issue, that I'm not going to cover. loads of stuff on the wiki, on the forums and in the manual.

5. Every fort exerts a tax of resources from neighboring provinces, a percentage of their overall resources. It can't do this to another fort, though. so if you put a fort next to your capital, that one less provence that the capital is taxing the resources of. If you surround your capital with forts, it will only have the resources it can get from its own square, which is a small fraction of the resources it would have otherwise.

6. Healing is really hard but doable, you need to find a commander with the healing ability, of whom the easiest to get is her: http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Faerie_Court . Its impossible to dismiss troops.

7. Yes (with a few exceptions)

should have expected to get ninja'd, i took so long writing that

[Question]

To automate site searching, click on a commander casting the spell, press shift+m, choose a site searching spell, pick a site, and the next month the commander will choose a new site to search.

Thanks, that helps a lot. Will shift+m automate things like forging items or ritual spells too?

I had manuals of water breathing, but theres no way 25 units per commander could invade a 1500 troop city o.O.

[Gandalf Parker]

For automating items, and other things the game has no hotkey for, you need to use a 3rd party macro program. I like AutoHotKeys

An almost complete hotkey list is here.
http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Hotkey

[Squirrelloid]

Attacking Underwater nations:
The UW-Land conversion is really really poor in the base game. Try Burnsaber's UWGIM (UnderWater Gameplay Improvement Mod) or CBM 1.9x (think 1.92 is the latest, almost entirely incorporates UWGIM) for a better cross-sea level experience. FWIW, the experience is at least as bad, if not worse, in the other direction. UW powers tend to have a really hard time invading land and staying there.

That said, the following is how you should go about doing it:
(1) 1500 troops is mostly chaffe. Thugs and SCs can more than pull their weight, especially against chaff armies, and especially ones who naturally are amphibious.
(2) Some troop types are naturally amphibious. For most nations this is mostly summons. In addition to specifically amphibious troops, all undead are poor amphibians, and since you're not fielding them for their stellar stats, the stat hit isn't all that relevant.
(3) Astral magic is probably the best offensive school for underwater combat, followed by air (most lightning spells work) and water (for School of Sharks/Shark Attack). Most evocations simply don't work underwater.

How do i make an effective Super Combatant (SC)?
(1) Encumbrance is key. Thugs or SCs which build up fatigue are going to die in protracted battles. You absolutely must be fatigue-neutral (reinvigoration >= encumbrance). Remember buffing can cause a lot of fatigue. Remember if you Quicken Self you'll attack twice per turn *and* accumulate 2x the fatigue.
(2) Defenses: You absolutely must have pretty good MR (22 is a minimum for SCs, thugs can get by with less, but <18 is asking for it). You're also going to want to stack a high-parry shield, high protection, and some other defensive measures (like luck, elemental immunities, awe, etc...).
(3) Fear is amazing vs. chaff and pretty decent against anything that isn't immune. THE MANUAL IS WRONG ABOUT HOW FEAR WORKS. Fear *decreases* morale of enemies in an AoE around the fearful unit, so when you attack and deal damage to units, and thus provoke morale checks, the enemy is more likely to break. Since it does this *without limit*, a fearful opponent who doesn't die *will* rout any enemy not immune to fear. (Morale 30, 50, 99 are special numbers and immune to fear).

(4) Thugs are meant to be budget province takers, not army killers like SCs (although they can supplement armies well). Throw a good weapon and shield on some chasses and you can pretty reliably do this. Some chasses may require slightly more gem investment. Encumbrance can be less important (because the scope of engagements is more limited), although many thug chasses are undead and thus Enc 0. Moreso than SCs, a lot of thugs rely on being sacred and blessable to perform well as a thug because it reduces gear needs. (Which isn't to say there are no sacred SCs, but rather that SCs are a more gem-intensive investment and thus you aren't demanding the same sort of gem-efficiency out of them, so needing a bless to perform isn't as much of an issue).

That should help get you started with Thug and SC construction.

(SC pretenders come in two flavors: Early game and Mid game. An Early game SC pretender needs very little or (preferably) no gear to clear provinces, and can expand from turn 1. It will become less useful as time goes on because these chasses tend to not have full slots, and thus not be fully gearable. A mid-game SC pretender is typically also a bless chassis, and taken asleep or imprisoned. Its meant to run with full gear and kill enemy armies. This can last into endgame against the AI or bad players, but even midgame use against good players is risky and endgame use is suicide in MP - not something you'd want to risk your god on).

[Deathblob]

-How do you make commanders effective in melee combat? If i put them in the middle of a large block, they get stuck behind the mass of trops when it comes time to charge. And they never seem to kill much.

Try putting them in front of your block then.


I think a PD-oriented strategy might suit your playing personality better. If you reply on your PD more, you don't have to worry about ferrying commanders and troops so much.

Just make one big enormous army, and every time you take a province, buy 125PD. The AI can never take it back! (Warning: don't try this with monkey nations).

[DeadlyShoe]

Also tried using iron dragons set to "attack rear most unit" to take out commanders and archers. Instead they would attack the closest unit (usually some charging cavalry) and get tied up there. Uh? That's completely the opposite of what i wanted you to do...

How exactly do you make decent armies? So far ive been mostly using melee guys in 3 large blocks, buffed by spells, because ive noticed that 50+ composite bows cant seem to kill much, and things like javelins and slings are horrible.

there's alot of subtlety in it, it depends on your nation and magic research settings. And what you are fighting. 50+ composite bows wont do jack to Pythium legion troops, but they'll massacre swarm troops like Flagellants.

there can also be a lot of subtlety in what melee troops are best too, there are a lot of tradeoffs in terms of defence mechanisms and offensive power. Hastatus, for example, have good armor and a shield and their short swords do decent damage. But they have poor reach so they can get Repel'd by most other weapons, and the weight of their tower shield means they will rapidly fatigue in an extended battle.

You also have to weight in the use of magic - Javelins & bows are fantastic if you have destroyed enemy armor using spells... there are many possibilities.

[Doo]

Flaming Arrows if you can cast it helps bow (and other ranged units) units. Doesn't increase the chance to hit but causes more damage when hits occur.

The Well Behaved Wizard mod might help turn those Hogwarts flunkies into mages Gandalf the Grey would be proud of. No more spamming Phantasmal Wolves equals "I'm not a conjurer of cheap tricks!"

Vs the AI research is not so much a race but a gentle drive though the forest on Sunday with Grandma. Perhaps thats an exaggeration but still its generally easy to pull ahead in research and get the good unique forged items or global spells. Vs humans I suspect its more cut-throat. In this case don't spam researchers at the cost of early expansion vs indies or getting the second fort up but then go for it.

[Question]

Can anyone explain why my iron dragons were attacking the closest enemy troops when they were set to "Attack rearmost units" then?

For pretenders, how should i pick magic? I gather that i should be choosing magic that complements the nation i picked, but how do you decide how many points you put into a path?

Are there any other mods you guys could recommend?