Dominions 3 Q&A

[undercovergeek]

Yeah, it would be for my sacred Avalon knights. Thanks

yup - i use fraps, dead easy and then imageshack to host the pics - also dead easy

Martok - as long as your knights are commanders or special troops youre good - run of the mill fodder - no matter how sexy the name or how much they cost wont be able to be buffed up

All spells have awesome power, but also a counter to it - a sure fire(!) way to beat the AI is to go for flaming arrows, in MP - youd get away with it a few times til someone cast rain, or storm. Super dooper armoured troops are great until you run into sooper dooper troops with armour ignoring weapons, or a mage casting spells that smash your armour to bits - dont wear armour? cast protection, or wooden warriors, or marble warriors, or barkskin - until some one comes and sets you on fire for been made out of wood - and were back to fire again - the AI probably wont respond to your awesome things - a human will

[undercovergeek]

Next stupid question:

Does terrain factor into combat? For example, if I am defending in a mountain province with soldiers who are "mountain survivors", do I get a bonus? What about river crossings? I ask because on one of the "lets play" videos, Das referenced a river and said "that's a tough barrier... No one is crossing that without a big fight".

to the best of my knowledge - no. it effects the income of the province, it determines the kind of fort and therefore its cost and defensive value that can be built there, and it effects magic site probability and movement - but in general fighting in mountains will not incur a bonus or a penalty on the attacker/defender

the barrier the river may have caused is the fact its uncrossable - and you have to go round the river and fight your way to your intended target

[JasonPratt]

Some rivers on maps are uncrossable (except by flying units and/or magic) by the expedient of the provinces across from each other simply not being linked. No way to tell until you're in the game and right click on a river province to see if arrows reach across it (assuming the "neighbors" map filter is on). Same is true for mountain art and a few other things.

Portals (and mundane ports for that matter, and tunnels) link distant provinces to one another as "neighbors". A good map designer will show hints about this on his map. The random map in-game generator will do this, too, I think.


Anyway, the terrain doesn't affect troop combat, unless the terrain is underwater. I have however seen a minor effect based on tactical battle maps linked to hilly terrain types when the attackers start downhill -- although I can't tell yet if that effect is only imaginary on my part. (Were the troops really having trouble shooting up hill and the other guys had better range thereby? Or was that due to other factors?)

[JasonPratt]

Well, you should know that you can't craft stuff for your basic troops.  Only those units that have inventory slots on their info pages can equip items.  As for whether it's worth it, I'll leave that to the experts, but the couple of AARs I've read featured crafted items prominently.

Some items act like permanently active spells affecting non-commmander/non-hero troops, however. So in that sense you can craft items for basic troops.

Item crafting can be wildly exploited but it takes quite a bit of experience (or reading around the internet for experiences of others) and/or genius to figure out how to best combine items and inherent properties/weaknesses.

[W8taminute]

Figure 1: Main world screen display


1. Nation summary (Your faction leader name, total treasury, total national income, total unit upkeep, magic stone inventory)
2. Province summary (further details to be furnished upon completion of guide)
3. List of leaders present in currently selected province
4. List of buildings present in currently selected province



I will be working on assembling more screenshots with detailed explanations.  These images will contain basic information.  The target audience is total newcomers to the game.  Detailed theories and strategy suggestions are not my intention.  The manual lacks a basic breakdown in simple language of what the meaning of the individual components are for each screen.

[W8taminute]

Figure 2: Nation Overview textbox (item 1 of Figure 1)


1.  Your leaders name.  Click on name to center map on his current location
2.  Total gold in national treasury and total national income per turn in gold
3.  Total cost in gold for unit upkeep per turn
4.  List of magic stone items your nation posses.  Hover mouse over any stone for details on how many you gain per turn. 
5.  Hover mouse over this icon to list the season and year of the current game turn.


Note that a popup textbox appears at the bottom of the main screen (see Figure 1) with the details of the item currently being hovered over.  Some magic stone items will not show a quantity gained per turn.  This means you are not collecting this stone type in any of your provinces. 

[mikeck]

What is the upkeep? Is that number the gold per turn or supply or what?

Also, if I have a commander that can sneak, can all the troops he command automatically do so as well or do I need to recruit troops with a sneak ability if I want to sneak a small raiding force behind the lines?

[JasonPratt]

Upkeep is strictly gold per turn for all units owned. (I don't recall if that counts mercs; you may pay for their supply up front.)

Some troops use supply, some don't, and some give supply back; that's tracked on a province by province basis, and is listed in the summary window for each province as "supply usage". In the screenshot above, troops in the province are currently using 20 supplies per turn, out of a stock of currently around 232. Supply is re-supplied (so to speak) at a variable rate (based on a bunch of factors) every turn, but can be eventually used up or otherwise eliminated. After that, troops in the province will start suffering afflictions, hits to morale (I think), maybe desertion. They may also start battles with fatigue, or with higher encumbrance rates (not sure but seems likely).

One class of troop that doesn't use supply is the garrison. Every level of garrison requires gold equal to the level of garrison being arrived at, so 1 gold to bring it to level 1, then 2 gold, then 3, and so on additively. (Sometimes local governors or mayors will increase garrison by 10 randomly, too.) Garrison never goes away and will always be reset next turn assuming the province doesn't fall to the enemy: once they're paid for, they are a permanent fixture like a fortification.


As for sneaking, all units under command must be stealthy as well, or the commander moves normally and will attack rather than hiding. Making the units invisible might help with sneaking, or may only affect combat--my guess would be the former but I don't know for sure. (That a commander doesn't automatically confer sneak however is guidebook info.)

[Nefaro]

Is construction magic worth it? My god has 4 in earth magic so he can craft some good stuff but how well does that work. IDE hate to send in my infantry wearing magical plate armor just so some Mage can turn them into sausage

Construction magic is definitely worth it.  I'm pretty sure most people learn it in order to create nice magic items to trick out some of their leader units into tailor-made killing machines that can murderize lots of stuff once fully equipped.  It also helps with creating Research Point bonus items for your researchers and there's at least one item/enchantment that produces extra (green?) gems, which are all quite helpful. 

[JasonPratt]

More about upkeep: pretenders and prophets require no upkeep, nor do some other regular units, nor do most summoned units. They do however require supply (usually, unless they provide supply instead or have special abilities related to supply perhaps). Even many summoned units require supply.

Normal upkeep = purchase cost / 15. Sacred units are ascetic or more willing to work for your pretender and so cost purchase / 30 per turn. (But they also tend to cost a lot on the front end!)

[mikeck]

Well I just got my ass kicked on easy level. While I was busy running around in all directions with small armies (didn't realize they were small), my enemy to the south built one huge army of giants and steamrolled me. Once I thought I stopped him, I was attacked from the other direction. By a smaller army of giants which ripped through my outposts.

I spent too much magic research on cool destruction spells that don't do much. I need to look more at buffing type spells

[JasonPratt]

Giants, hah! -- what are they good for? Absolutely anything, huh, say it again!

Giants have some big weaknesses which can be offset with planning. I don't want to say much more than that because I'm having to deal with some giants in multiplayer and I'm hoping my opponent hasn't realized how he's crippled his giant faction, or that he hasn't adjusted for it sufficiently somehow. ;)

Still, losing to giants isn't a dishonorable way to go.

[mikeck]

Jason my friend, it wouldn't have mattered what type of soldiers they were. I had 4 armies of about 55 guys spread out monkey-stomping the independents. His army (jutenheim...or something) numbered over 200. I thought my armies were "big"

[JasonPratt]

200 giants is going to beat anything except (maybe) 400 archers early in the game: big, scary (which is important because an army only has to be annoyed out of fighting), soak damage, dish damage, move surprisingly fast on the field. A seriously systematic plan of tactical magic can overcome that, but most giant factions are no slouches in the magic department themselves.

But yeah, keeping a large army on reserve along your threat axis while you expand elsewhere is important. Once a killer stack (of any kind not only giants) is on the move, it takes too long to consolidate and they defeat you piecemeal.

(Also important: getting rid of giant factions before they become steamrollers early in the game. Or attacking giant factions when other factions have bloodied them down a bit, grabbing farmland, keeping their gold income down.)

[Huw the Poo]

(Also important: getting rid of giant factions before they become steamrollers early in the game. Or attacking giant factions when other factions have bloodied them down a bit, grabbing farmland, keeping their gold income down.)

Well, pick on the giants in our LA game instead of me then!  I've spectacularly gimped myself in that game anyway!