Micromanagement

[Makinus]

Hello everyone!

First, let me tell that i love Dominions! I have both Dom2 and Dom3, and i play Dom3 in my main machine and Dom2 in my notebook (it�s not robust enough to handle Dom3 well)...

Now, while i love the game, i rarely finish a game (i play only against the AI, no multiplayer for schedule reasons), mainly beause of the huge amount of micromanagement needed on later turns...

So, i would like to know what strategies you use to reduce micromanagement in later turns... i get tired of every turn to check every province to recruit new troops, it get tiresome when you have 50+ provinces to check...

[mathusalem]

for SP only :

* only on smalls maps
* no scout or spy after the third one
* big army or tough SC : I don't adjust my force with the enemy one, I crush them methodically and raise the PD.
* only battlespell without a gem cost + clams, blood stones

[thejeff]

Victory Conditions.

Don't try playing a 600 province game with all nations in it. You'll be massively dominant long before actually taking all the provinces.

I usually play with 5-6 nations, 10-15 provinces each. 10%+1 capitals as a victory condition. You don't really get into endgame magic, but the AI can't handle that anyway.
Early/midgame is where the AI works best.

And don't recruit troops in every province anyway. Recruit troops in the castles near the front and maybe capital only troops. (And your occasional good indy province) Recruit mages everywhere you can. You should be spending most of your money on mages by the time you've got 50 provinces.

[Zeldor]

Do not cast Gift of Nature's Bounty And do not play nations like MA TC.

[BesucherXia]

I always play SP huge maps (glory of the gods) with all nations in it. When I am getting tired of the micromanagement, I just start another game and pick another nation.
After all, if human players can manage to reach a certain phase in a SP game, killing AI will be just a matter of time.

[Makinus]

One feature that would ease the micromanagement would be a setting where the province would always produce a selected unit up to the resource amount available in the province... would be possible to add this in a patch?

[thejeff]

Possible, but unlikely. It's been suggested before and little interest was shown, by users or the devs.
Troops have a gold cost as well as a resource one, so such a setting would also have to prioritize spending gold as well.

If you have the gold, you can always queue up units well past the resource limit.

Your questions suggest to me you're focusing too heavily on troops and particularly indy troops, which are usually not as effective as national troops. I rarely recruit troops in more the 4-5 provinces a turn. Usually in forts. Sometimes indy archers or elite (sacred?) indy troops. Occasionally in late game I'll recruit low resource indies in mass to provide chaff to buff with Army of Lead/Fog Warriors etc.

[LDiCesare]

Only produce units at forts. You'll be unlikely to have 50 forts on any decent sized map for SP until you've won the game.
And put some victory condition like VPs, you can teleport/cloud trapeze and take them all from the ai when you reached the point you should have won but can't continue due to the hassle.

[chrispedersen]

I would like priest to automatically go to defend if they cannot raise the domininon level via preach.

[MaxWilson]

Sometimes I take a cue from the original Master of Orion 3 plans (which were later scrapped) and say that I, my pretender, only have so many "attention points" for giving orders. My mages will forge only five items per turn (all the others will do research by default). I can order only five attacks per turn (although it's okay for an army to sit there and defend, or to maneuver prior to an attack). When I'm in a dominant but not yet superdominant position, it doesn't hurt much to delay some attacks until a later turn, and I don't have to deal with trying to juggle five parallel military campaigns in my head. Basically, some armies have to get ignored temporarily even though they're militarily capable of making progress because I don't have the cognitive resources to manage them--and it's thematic!

I also agree with victory points. At a certain point you just want to cast "Master of Magic" and be done with chasing down tiny provinces, so I give a roleplaying reason for the victory points to matter (shards of the Pantokrator's power) so I can feel like it's really OVER when I get them and the game ends. "Having conquered the worlds of Arcanus and Myrror, you are now the one true Master of Magic!!! <fireworks>".

Oops, I mean "Having retrieved all 13 shards of the Pantokrator's power, you are now the one true God!!! <fireworks>".

-Max