The game's a bit infamous for never being on sale but I got lucky and recently purchased it for about 5 quid. After getting my ass handed to me a few times by the AI and clawing my way up the 90° angle learning curve I'm confident enough to join a Multiplayer game. The game I'm joining is intended for noobs and I'm not expecting any devious tricks or power gaming strategies. Still, all gloves are off in the diplomatic field and there's potential for some wonderful backstabbing.Dominions 3 is a ridiculously detailed turn-based multiplayer strategy game. It chronicles the struggle of a large number of Pretender Gods contesting for the throne of complete godhood. The last survivor wins domination over the planet, and the rest are chained in Tartarus forever, left to reconsider their failings. Battle is waged via armies, spells, powerful elemental enchantments, arcane horrors torn from beyond death itself, and so forth. The game includes literally dozens of available nations, hundreds of spells, and over a thousand unique units.
Pre-Game
My nation is Late Age Man. The game is divided into three eras, namely early, middle and late. The eras vary greatly in available nations but as a role of thumb you can say that early era involves a lot of powerful mages and lightly armored units while the reverse is true for the later age. Some nations exist throughout all ages while others have perished. Those that prevailed will have seen big changes, for example the roman-like human empire of Ermor from the early ages is a nation of undead legions and wraith emperors. My nation, Man, is heavily inspired by gaelic mythology and medieval Britain. It s an offspring from similar nations in the early ages but as you can tell by the flavour text I don't have access to their Sidhe, Fae and similar mythical stuff. I'll have to rely on Longbowmen, Crossbows and the few mages that are left to me.
The god (or 'pretender') of my nation is a sorceress, but for the time being she's imprisoned and we won't see her for roughly the next three years. I'll explain her characteristics when we get to it.
The overall strategy of my nation is all about money and castles. I've got two units in my rooster that are vital for this strategy, one that'll allow my to extort the living hell out of my subjects without risking exploding and another one that counts for 20 units both when besieging a castle or repairing a besieged castle. With enough of these any potential invader will just grind against the walls or commit an absurdly sized army to the siege while I can sent my forces to his homelands.
This is the world contested by the pretenders. I'm the castle in the northeast, surrounded by mountains and rivers.
A closer look. The yellow lines indicate the neighbouring provinces, i.e. provinces land troops can enter from this province. As you can see, I'm only bordered by 4 provinces which makes my capitol quite inaccessible, especially considering that those 4 provinces will probably have some forts in them within the first few years. 2 of the nearby areas are mountainous which means a high income in resources but low gold. Both are needed to recruit troops but while the latter just accumulates in a global fond from turn to turn the latter is different from province to province and un-spent resources are lost. As you can see my capitol is currently producing 92 resources, which isn't much. But as castles "leech" resources from bordering provinces (as soon as I've conquered them) this means that my capitol will easily be able to produce many high quality units.
This position isn't ideal for Man but some high income provinces are nearby and hopefully I'll be able to grab them before others.