Dominions 3 Q&A

[undercovergeek]

Good post jp

If you give me an hour bison I can give you some links for pretender creation tactics, and battlefield placement tactics that I found very useful

[Bison]

Thanks guys.  I've started the tutorial and learned some of the management stuff.  I'm stopped at the big army build up part, so between that and J's answer I've scratched around the answer a bit. 

Yes UCG I welcome all help.

[undercovergeek]

Thanks guys.  I've started the tutorial and learned some of the management stuff.  I'm stopped at the big army build up part, so between that and J's answer I've scratched around the answer a bit. 

Yes UCG I welcome all help.

http://z7.invisionfree.com/Dom3mods/index.php?showtopic=1114 - this is the pretender set up guide

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3454638&userid=173236&perpage=40&pagenumber=3#post400702956 - this is unit placement - strategy gold

[Nefaro]

I am playing through the tutorial now so I suspect my questions will be answered there as well.

I was just gonna recommend that after seeing your question regarding separate squads under the same leader.  ;D

[Bison]

I struggle with concept of reading a manual for instructions.  :D

[mikeck]

I have not read the manual and I'm doing fine. Play the turorial then jump in. I refer to the manual if I have a specific question. The first "game ending" mistake I made was not realizing how big armies needed to be. I was beating on independents with my 60 man army... Until I ran into another pretenders army of 160. There will be more for sure.

[Bison]

Pretender setup.  Looking at the schools of magic and the starting level what's the general rule of thumb here?  Is there a viable method of increasing a magic level in game through research/spell/item that off sets potentially low initial allocations?  i.e.  if I give my pretender 1 nature level, but what I am looking at down the spell chart is a spell that uses 3 nature how likely is it to increase the 2 levels in game?

[Bison]

Also in the tutorial I moved all my units to do an attack together.  Now they are all linked and I cannot unlink them.  So I go to move one army and the entire list highlight and wants to move.  I don't even know how I linked them in the first place to be honest.

[Phobos]

If it is your commanders on the map screen, then you can use shift-click to select/deselect commanders you want to move in a group.

[Huw the Poo]

Actually it's ctrl-click; shift-click will select/deselect multiple units in a line.

As for increasing magical prowess, yes there are ways of doing this.  To begin with there's empowerment, which is expensive in gems but permanent.  For example you might use 50 fire gems to go from level 2 to level 3 fire.

You can temporarily buff magic levels during combat via the use of certain spells.  And you can forge magical items that also have the same effect.

[undercovergeek]

For example you can forge a thistle mace to increase your nature by 1 but you need to be N2 first - in mp a very good ally might forge you one and gift it to you

Right at the back of the grimoire is a list of all the booster items

[Bison]

OK.  I have a region, it happens to be my capital one, with a defense of 30 and several standing armies on "defend".  However I'm being continuously attacked by both the evil AI opponent armies, which isn't the issue.  I'd attack my pathetic pretender too.  The issue is that every turn it says Caleum is attacked but that it was undefended and now my castle is being sieged.  Why is my providence considered undefended?  I thought that both defense # and armies set to defend would solve that issue.

[undercovergeek]

OK.  I have a region, it happens to be my capital one, with a defense of 30 and several standing armies on "defend".  However I'm being continuously attacked by both the evil AI opponent armies, which isn't the issue.  I'd attack my pathetic pretender too.  The issue is that every turn it says Caleum is attacked but that it was undefended and now my castle is being sieged.  Why is my providence considered undefended?  I thought that both defense # and armies set to defend would solve that issue.

im thinking aloud here because im not completely sure - are your armies properly formed or are they sat at the top of the screen in 'garrison'

[Bison]

Well they have units assigned to them and I've scripted battle plans for each of the generals.  I figured that was all I need to do to setup a defensive army.

[JasonPratt]

Odd, I would have thought the 30-garrison at least would fight.

When a commander is in a province with a fort, he can defend the region or defend the fort. I thought I recalled province defense being the default, though... (i.e. he had to be manually assigned to defend the fort instead.)