Dominions 3: Unofficial All-Purpose Megathread

[Greatatlantic]

I’m finding it really hard to get motivated to prepare turns on the current “maybe wahoo will pop in an play a turn this weekend” schedule.

Is there any chance we could just put the game on hold until he is able to commit to a 72-hour timer? (and I would prefer 72 hours over 48 at this point)

We could. Wahoo was before his computer trouble a pretty reliable turn taker, so I’m hoping he’s still trying to get his hardware worked out and then will return for regularly scheduled turns. We certainly could do a 72 hour timer, but I want to make sure everyone can commit to it. I’m not sure whats going on with Wahoo that he’d be able to make that limit or not.

[Hetzer]

We could. Wahoo was before his computer trouble a pretty reliable turn taker, so I’m hoping he’s still trying to get his hardware worked out and then will return for regularly scheduled turns. We certainly could do a 72 hour timer, but I want to make sure everyone can commit to it. I’m not sure whats going on with Wahoo that he’d be able to make that limit or not.

OK Wahoo has been away for 3 Weeks, so he is either coming back or he is not. We should proceed with the game as otherwise it would die a wasting death.

[Lazy_Shiftless_Basta]

Oh how the mighty threads have fallen!

Struggling against strangely mighty independents, I’ve found borders with both Utgard and Midgard. I must say, holy crap! How do you guys have such giant armies? Aren’t we still on like turn 10?

[baruk]

I’m finding it really hard to get motivated to prepare turns on the current “maybe wahoo will pop in an play a turn this weekend” schedule.

Is there any chance we could just put the game on hold until he is able to commit to a 72-hour timer? (and I would prefer 72 hours over 48 at this point)

I’ve been neglecting the Pax Ermor game a bit. Its hard getting back into after a break of a few days. I will try my darnedest to get a turn in this weekend, just myself and Ermor left to move.

[GuildBoss]

Oh how the mighty threads have fallen!

Struggling against strangely mighty independents, I’ve found borders with both Utgard and Midgard. I must say, holy crap! How do you guys have such giant armies? Aren’t we still on like turn 10?

Ooh, indie Devils! That sucks.

And I have giant armies because we are GIANTS, silly!

[gruntled]

I’ve been neglecting the Pax Ermor game a bit. Its hard getting back into after a break of a few days. I will try my darnedest to get a turn in this weekend, just myself and Ermor left to move.

My point was that I really don’t like playing 1 turn a week in the middle of a complicated war. It is too hard to have a coherent strategy - I keep reinventing the wheel, and sometimes it ends up square.

The problem is that wahoo hasn’t told anyone what his situation is. If he thinks 1/week is all he’ll be able to do for the long term, then I’ll make do. But if he thinks he can be back on a 72-hour schedule someday, I’d rather have the game completely on hold until then, then start back up when he’s ready.

But I’m only 1 vote. Everyone else might be fine with a turn/week. Others might prefer he look for a sub - the game will surely take a very long time to move at just one turn a week. So far, not many of you have chimed in on what you prefer.

[Dave_Perkins]

I’ll write to wahoo and ask him what’s up. I’d say that if he doesn’t respond, we should consider setting him to AI. But I bet he’ll respond; he’s playing his turns in Nov 5th.

[Greatatlantic]

I just got a PM from Wahoo saying he’s back and is OK with a timer being put back on. I’m a bit leary of doing so as Christmas is coming up and everyone’s schedule is hectice. Furthermore, my computer has been suffering from periodic slowness and I may have to get it repaired. On a similar note, we only need ron_derby to play his turn to host.

[baruk]

But I’m only 1 vote. Everyone else might be fine with a turn/week. Others might prefer he look for a sub - the game will surely take a very long time to move at just one turn a week. So far, not many of you have chimed in on what you prefer.

For the record, I’m in favour of 72 hour turns (perhaps starting after the holidays).

[gruntled]

New turn is up.

I guess we’ll see how it goes without a timer through the holidays.

[baruk]

So, Ermor has Master Enslave. His god is an astral 9 oracle - throw on a couple of boosters and spell penetration items and it turns out you have a pretty effective army blaster - returning was cast on turn 3 so you have to get in pretty quick to have a chance of knocking it out (it has 30 HP, 25 prot). I even cast antimagic, but it made little or no difference.

[gruntled]

Blabbermouth

Then again, Bandar Log is already plenty familiar with Deus Ermor’s persuasive abilities on the battlefield.

[dfs]

Nov 5th

I will be out of commission next week. If the game could be taken off timer after this turn, I would be grateful.

An auto-notification would still be nice…

[wahoo]

So, Ermor has Master Enslave. His god is an astral 9 oracle - throw on a couple of boosters and spell penetration items and it turns out you have a pretty effective army blaster - returning was cast on turn 3 so you have to get in pretty quick to have a chance of knocking it out (it has 30 HP, 25 prot). I even cast antimagic, but it made little or no difference.

It presents quite the conundrum. How do you attack Ermor who has the largest army with about 4000 troops on my border when his pretender enslaves any army of reasonable size you put together to fight him?

I’ve got about 15 mages scripted to cast soul slay b/c 1 should do the trick but that only works when I’m on defense and not against his big army when the mages need to cast better spells. So there’s an interesting no-man’s land between Ermor/bandar log where we’re scared of risking our big armies to oblivion.

[Tortilla]

It presents quite the conundrum. How do you attack Ermor who has the largest army with about 4000 troops on my border when his pretender enslaves any army of reasonable size you put together to fight him?

I’ve got about 15 mages scripted to cast soul slay b/c 1 should do the trick but that only works when I’m on defense and not against his big army when the mages need to cast better spells. So there’s an interesting no-man’s land between Ermor/bandar log where we’re scared of risking our big armies to oblivion.

Uber scary mage commanders like that need constant overland mage harassment and assassin harassment if possible.

[gruntled]

Uber scary mage commanders like that need constant overland mage harassment and assassin harassment if possible.

Which is why uber scary mage commanders like that spend most of their time hanging out with dozens of other commanders in a fort, and only venture forth by magical transportation for quick surgical strikes.

This is a rather odd war. You have taken more territory, but I have taken a greater toll on your capabilities. Pretty much a stalemate for now.

The slow pace of the game has also produced a real nightmare scenario for me. My other game has caught up to this one. So at the same time as I’m fighting a hugely complex late-game war over here, I am also fighting a hugely complicated late-game war over on the OO forums (against DireAussie). Except over there I’m Shinuyama (I was so impressed by Shin’s capabilities in this game that I wanted to try them out for myself). The bummer is that DA is now a late-game Ashdod <shudder>.

[wahoo]

Which is why uber scary mage commanders like that spend most of their time hanging out with dozens of other commanders in a fort, and only venture forth by magical transportation for quick surgical strikes.

This is a rather odd war. You have taken more territory, but I have taken a greater toll on your capabilities. Pretty much a stalemate for now…

Yeah, no way to get at the monolith. OTOH, his inability to move means he’s subject to being stranded one turn in a province w/o a lab. At that pt, it’s open season on him…

Stalemate favors you b/c you have a better endgame than me having both access to death/astral. I need to do better than a stalemate to take pressure off Shin. Was hoping Shin could hit you with some strikes.

[gruntled]

Stalemate favors Pythium

I fixed your little typo there.

Any day now Pythium will start fielding Seraphs. Kind of like a big red “I win” button.

[Tortilla]

Which is why uber scary mage commanders like that spend most of their time hanging out with dozens of other commanders in a fort, and only venture forth by magical transportation for quick surgical strikes.

That’s a fairly easy tactic to disrupt. They might venture out via teleport but there’s no guarantee of finding a lab in the province they moved to. So that’s one turn where they are a huge glaring target.

I typically deals with commanders like that via mass mind hunts (if I have disposable mages capable of casting it), teleporting thugs equipped specifically to deal with the scary commander, assassins if I can bait the scary commander into being somewhere I have an ambush ready, etc.

[wahoo]

That’s a fairly easy tactic to disrupt. They might venture out via teleport but there’s no guarantee of finding a lab in the province they moved to. So that’s one turn where they are a huge glaring target.

I typically deals with commanders like that via mass mind hunts (if I have disposable mages capable of casting it), teleporting thugs equipped specifically to deal with the scary commander, assassins if I can bait the scary commander into being somewhere I have an ambush ready, etc.

You’re missing what Ermor is doing…His pretender teleports in. Casts master enslave. Then casts returning. So he doesn’t need a lab b/c he’s gone. He only gets stranded if the battle ends the same turn he casts master enslave. Chances are that the enemy isn’t complete enslaved or destroyed so his commander escapes. Hence no target. So the thugs, assassins don’t matter.

Mind hunt doesn’t work since they monolith is very high astral. Thugs don’t count b/c the monolith sits in a castle.