Guide: a difficult Pangaean strategy

[Morkilus]

Just as the game, Dominions is way deeper than M:TG. However, in the context of metagaming and winning tournaments, Magic is more complex because there are more people playing it. On the highest levels, Magic isn't only a game about resource control and making the right tactical decisions, but also an information war before you even begin. With better balancing (counters for diverse strategies) and more players, Dominions could reach that level of complexity as well.

[Boron]

Gandalf Parker said:

I agree with KissBlade. Boron you surprise me. I thought you were one of the "mp blitz is the whole game" people. I apologize for that.

I really like i think almost any way to play Dom3.
In SP i usually play huge maps and with mods. Currently i love Amos mods.
In MP i like both blitzes and longterm games.

But when discussing about balance i usually focused on blitzes, because imho there potential balance issues are most problematic.
In a longterm MP game there is always diplomacy, and there is research.

In SP imbalances are imho even beneficial, because they imho enchance it by adding more variety and they can help the AI .

But in blitzes if there are early game imbalances you eventually discover them. And if you do not have research and diplomacy as potential weapons against them they are annoying then.

Now modding seems versatile enough though to "rebalance" those problems especially for blitzes .


I like usually to be very straightforward though. I can understand now that this can lead to misunderstandings.
It might be somewhat related to national mentality.
Generalizing is always bad, but it is indeed somewhat true that germans like to criticise.
And they are usually more straigthforward, political correctness is not very popular here neither.
Most important though is that if we criticise something it has to be interpreted also as indirect praise.
Because we usually only criticise stuff that we care about.

So thank you for your apology Gandalf and i also want to apologize if i often sound either too harsh or too "whining". To some degree it is really a cultural issue probably.

If someone would do a survey about the various posts so far in this forum which "criticised" dom3 i think the majority of these posts would be from european users.

And sorry for the OT post.

[Cainehill]

Arameyan said:
2 - Death woods: take a Carrion dragon, reasearch enchantment, spwan carrions, cast Haunted forest and/or carrion woods...

Only to see someone dispel your Carrion Woods, or simply accidentally overwrite it because all global spots were full. As someone who _loved_ playing CW Pangaea, I'll be very curious to see if anyone, ever, uses it in MP. And if it's successful, or simply gets wiped out rapidly.

[Gandalf Parker]

*bump*
But for a reason. In light of a mega-scenario concept I have in mind Im curious if anyone has any other hints about Pangaea

[Lingchih]

Gandalf Parker said:
*bump*
But for a reason. In light of a mega-scenario concept I have in mind Im curious if anyone has any other hints about Pangaea

I claim the 5th, because of the current mega-game that I am in.

I can comment later on this, but it will concern LA Pangaea, whose strategy is a bit different.

[Gandalf Parker]

That is true. I rarely play Late Age Pangaea because it steps out of the usual Pangaea mold. If any Pangaea was made to be played in an Ulmish head-to-head manner it would be LA Pangaea. The logic of it for late era does make sense but its not the Pangaea that Ive grown to love.

I have a mega-scenario in mind which will ally all 3 Pangaeans and both Oceanians as AI's. I will need to build effective god/scale builds for each.

[Beorne]

Gandalf Parker said:I rarely play Late Age Pangaea because it steps out of the usual Pangaea mold.

But unfortunately LA pangea is the only that can easily approach Carrion woods spell, that, imho, is very unthematic in la and is very thematic for ea Pangea.

[FaceLess]

Gandanlf, I know you like to play large maps but how many nations do you put up in thoses games? Basically what is frequency of nations/provinces. If I try your tactics, I always overrun by many nations because you appear weak with having relative few provinces and low troop counts with all the stealthy high end units. I guess I put to many nations in my games (existing maps with max nations) to wreck havoc on them all to keep them in control. Is the patchwork enough to keep nations away?

[Gandalf Parker]

FaceLess said:
Gandanlf, I know you like to play large maps but how many nations do you put up in thoses games? Basically what is frequency of nations/provinces. If I try your tactics, I always overrun by many nations because you appear weak with having relative few provinces and low troop counts with all the stealthy high end units. I guess I put to many nations in my games (existing maps with max nations) to wreck havoc on them all to keep them in control. Is the patchwork enough to keep nations away?

Good question. I often tell people that discussing map size is not has helpful as they think. Its the province to player ratio which affects how the game will be played.

I started defining things that way on my Dom2 site. Dom2 maps


TINY less than 5 each, or less than 85 total provinces. Best done as 45 land and 8 water.

SMALL 5 each, or 85 total provinces. Best done as 75 land and 10 water.

MEDIUM 10 each, or 170 total provinces. Best done as 150 land and 20 water.

LARGE 15 each, or 255 total provinces. Best done as 225 land and 30 water.

HUGE 20 each, or 340 total provinces. Best done as 300 land and 40 water.

EPIC 25 or more each, maybe to the maximum 500 total provinces. Something like 450 land and 50 water.

But that needs redone for Dom3. In the game the devs has defined Small, Medium, Large; as 10, 15, and 20 per player. Even with all players of an age on a large map, that doesnt reach even 500 provinces.

I guess I will have to have Epic 50/player (1000 province map) and Xtreme 65/player (1500 province map)

Im sorry, I wander. To answer your question I often play up around the 50 province per player setting. Or with all the nations it would be a 1000-province map. It gives a real "wilderness" between the nations. It makes the path you travel to get there important. I also like to turn up the border mountain setting to give lots of chokepoints. Such as Tri-Mega Map
which can be downloaded here... download TriMega

Gandalf Parker

[thejeff]

Province/player is important, but so is map size (or given a set # of provinces/player, number of players)

Small map, few players, even with 20+ provinces each games will be short, ending well before the most powerful late game magic. Blitz rush strategies might not dominate, but midgame will.

Few provinces per player, but lots of players, you'll need to worry about rushes, but you'll also need a good late game strategy.