Questions from a new Dom 3 player

[Quitch]

Bought the game a year or two ago after having a blast with the demo, but I've only just conquered my fear of the manual and managed a game. Great fun!

I chose to play with cumulative victory points and the info in the manual is beyond skimpy when it comes to these, I was on the map Aran and the crowns were often on terrain borders so how to tell which territory they belong to??

Also, does the AI understand the different victory conditions? Sometimes a VP would look like an easy grab but I didn't see them moving on them with great purpose.

Finally, I started a new game on Aran after finishing my old one using the same nation and pretender, but a new game name, and on turn 1 before anyone had done anything some territories already had crossed swords on them. A bug?

[Illuminated One]

If you start a game on the same map and there where some fights in the previous game you will see the swords. It's merely a graphical glitch and doesn't affect the game afaik.

[JimMorrison]

Nono, it's if you use the same game name. It will happen regardless of map, it will just be the same province #'s that had combats in the last turn of the previous game. Nothing to worry about.

My favorite SP victory condition is Dominion, though the way the score is calculated is a bit wonky. But if you divide total provinces by 2, and then multiply by 10, you end up having to be pretty dominant in the game to reach that point - but it ends before growing too overly tedious. Of course, that can be tweaked up and down to suit your own threshold.

[Edi]

There is more info about the victory points in the mapmaking manual (mapedit.pdf) in the Dom3/docs folder.

[Quitch]

Can you advise where? I had a look but the only reference was on page 5 and it didn't clarify how (outside the map editor) you could determine which territory had a victory point.

[Edi]

You can't. Unless it's in the map file, they're randomly placed. But the mechanics explanations are there.

Best way to use VPs outside of a map file where they are set is to select 1 per capital and put the required number to something like half the number of players if you don't want an extra long game.

[Quitch]

I'll probably do something like that, but has anyone experience in telling where those crowns are supposed to be? They always overlap a province name, so I'm guessing they belong to that province?

[Edi]

They are above and to the left of the provimce. Download the Faerun 466 map and start a game on the adventure version. It has lots of VPs defined in the map file, so you can see how it works. The link is in my sig.

[Endoperez]

Yeah, that is VERY annoying. If you have capitals as victory points, you can check where the crown is in relation to the name in your capital.