Nerf

[Quitti]

Originally Posted by krpeters

And what happens when a 300-strong AI army shows up and eats it?

That's the reason you don't use machakan/ape PD. Actually niefel/jotun PD might not be able to survive that either, probably. Either way, I've never seen AI take a province with 125pd. Never. Ever.

If you are concerned, throw in a few mages throwing random evo's and you're 99.9% quaranteed to win. The dom3 AI is stupid.

Say, play a game with MA Pyth - and if you ever manage the AI to beat your 125pd, please send me the turn file. I'd be really interested to see what the composition for AI was for that.

[thejeff]

I'll never get the AI to beat my 125 PD, because I'll never be able to afford that much PD, even just along the borders. If you wait to expand until you've got ~8000 gold per province, you'll never get anywhere. If you expand first, you'll have a big border and you still won't be able to afford 125 PD in every province.

Or even 70 (~2500). 30 would be doable, at least on the borders. But even the AI can blow through 30 PD if it has put together a big enough horde.

Maybe you people are playing a different game than I am.

[NTJedi]

125PD ?? That's not just turtling that's snailing or even cocooning. I can't think of any experienced SP gamer using 125 PD for AI opponents. I even recall reading a problem where an event could raise the province defence again which causes it to loop back to zero.

[TheConway]

I hate to break it to you guys, but something tells me that quitti is actually:

[Juffos]

[Bananadine]

I've played as Quitti says. It works fine, until you get tired of your slow, predictable progress and give up.

It's still possible to lose this way, though. I had a little C'tis in a corner of a huge map once--I was going for some ultimate spell, or something, while an enemy R'lyeh was beating on me and on some other nation I never met. I did fine until the unknown nation fell and R'lyeh began to really thrive. Then the crappy, unready enemy armies that had always been falling into my grinders became so big that they actually won once in a while. But it was the enemy dominion that finally beat me.

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by Bananadine

But it was the enemy dominion that finally beat me.

I was going to point this out as another possible risk -- if you're growing that slowly, domkill is a real danger. I guess you would need a fair number of temples and priests to protect against this?

I think I'm going to have to try a game this way and see what happens!

[krpeters]

Hmmm, well, that actually helped considerably.

One of the big problems I have against the AI is attrition -- when he flings 100 troop armies of crud against me, and I defend with 100 competent troops, I'll lose 10-20 troops. Then he hits me with another 100 cruddites. And then 150. And then 200. And then...

Cranking up the D to 50-60 is expensive, but the AI can't dent it. Interesting.

So why doesn't this work against human opponents?

(BTW, I was playing Abysia; the humanbred PD is reasonably good. I wouldn't try this with Bandar Log or Shinyuma)

[thejeff]

It doesn't work against humans because it's not hard to make a teleporting or flying thug that can take out any amount of PD without any real chance of dying. Or mages to do the same. So your huge investment goes poof and your enemy, who hasn't been spending 1000s on PD and thus has more forts/mages/research, just rolls over you.

The somewhat odd result of this is that no one spends more than the bare minimum on PD, sometimes just 1, sometimes 5-10, which means you can pull of the same raids with much cheaper thugs.

[Executor]

I'm sorry, but I find playing SP Dominions like this completely idiotic, the PD way I mean.
There are infinite ways to kill the AI, and if you can't beat the AI than it's still not time to try MP.
You can play the same way the AI plays and still beat him easily, just field your nations best troops, no mages no spells, no nothing. Take a nation like Midgard for example and only make skinshifters. Or Agartha and just make Troglodites.
AI tends to use crap troops like militia and other crap which break and rout easily.

Second way to play is just research battle spells. I think that's self explanatory, as the AI has hard time dealing even with the most pathetic mages.

You can just summons a few medicare thugs like Bane Lords and semi-thug them out. Than there's the choosing of any bless nation with a decent bless.
AI can't deal with Kailasa due to awe, can't deal with Micltan, any bless nation really.
You can also take a Giants nation, Hinnom for example, Niefelheim and *just recruit commanders. Take crappy scales and some OP bless and make just a thug Giant commander (Jarl, Melqart...) and send them out one by one. Equipment or buffs are optional.
Than there's death magic, AI can't kill any death nation with raise dead/skeletons.
There's always the take SC awake pretender (Dragon works best) and kill the AI on turn 5, than move one to the next one and so on.
Doing some minor site searching than spamming a ton of summons (note than the AI doesn't site search and therefor rarely uses summons)

Now, you can't do that with human opponents cause nobody really uses PD, unless you expect a fight in your province at which point you probably up the PD to 25 at best so the PD fights along side your troops.
The reason nobody buys PD, or buys very little until much later in the game, or not at all more commonly is that PD is useless.
The money spent on PD is better spent on troops/mages/forts which will be used to take more provinces faster, which will bring you more gold, which will bring you more troops/mages/fors and so on.
PD gets taken out quite easily with minimal or very often no loses due to lack of battlefield orders. PD Archers for example can get screwed by only a hand full of troops placed correctly, and all the other gets screwed by battlefield magic since they're all grouped together or enemy archers.
Or you can just send a thug with say luck and body ethereal and rape any amount of PD.