NvV3: Pre-game Discussion

Are we going to open up our forum for other people to read, or can we start discussing notes on this game and ideas for next?

In the next game, I suggest figuring out beforehand what attack rituals each player was going for, so that we could more easily call in 'artillery strikes' on vet raiding parties and large armies. Last game I had seeking arrows and Illuminated had horrors, which worked out pretty well on a few occasions. With the race I have in mind for the MA game (Jotunheim) I'd probably get things like vengeance of the dead and perhaps baleful star (and definitely all the nasty blood rituals, considering Jotunheim's strong blood paths). I would need earthen hammers as I wouldn't really have a way to get them. Stuff like that would be great to plan out ahead of time so we could get a nice strong start.

It would also be good to check out where our start positions were to make sure that we had nations strong vs. early thug rushes ready to pounce if the thugs tried to attack slower starting nations (letting them live until they came into their own in the midgame).

Once this game finishes I will do what I did for the last one and archive all the discussion in an open forum with all topics locked except for one new one where people can discuss the game if they like. This thread I'll leave where it is though.

Good ideas Van. Certainly coordinating our remote (artillery) strikes is important. Whatever I have, be it fires from afar, VOD, or anything I will direct towards the enemy as long as we have spotters. But then I usually don't restrict my research to a single magic school but research all with my rainbow pretender. However, I should probably change this as it doesn't allow us to effectively pool/maximize our research. Perhaos we could designate a forge whore who would concentrate in construction. Any extra gems could be given to that player for production purposes.

I agree with Stretch, there should be some general plan after nations are selected and before the game is started for everyone.

For me the seeking arrows were only an annoyance, they killed a mage and my prophet and messed up my orders once but I had lost that battle anyway.
The horrors were nice against the eagle kings, but a complete fail against Niefel and Hinnom except for raiding.
Also don't be afraid to hit capitals with spells, I never lost a mage to a dome.
The remote rituals are nice, still I think mobility and flexibility are more important, but I can't remember a MA nation that has both.

If someone takes blood next game - it takes a while to get it going, so focus on something else first before trying to use it large scale. 4 bloodhunting provinces with 2 mages each = about 70 slaves.

I hear that a lot of games ban Ashdod from MA games because it's so damn strong that it's very difficult for even other superpower nations to beat. Should we try to get it removed from NvV3, or just have someone race to lock down the capital?

Stretch wrote:I hear that a lot of games ban Ashdod from MA games because it's so damn strong that it's very difficult for even other superpower nations to beat. Should we try to get it removed from NvV3, or just have someone race to lock down the capital?

I am in principle against banning any nations (of course I want maximum players, hehe), if the vets get it, yes we could lock it down, our best move is to get it for ourselves I would think. Lingchih is actually killing me in Faltering Steps right now and I'm Ashdod. It depends who is playing. If we retain alternate first choice benefits like we did in previous games, Grudgebringer or one of the other noobs could grab it. Lobby for retaining that privelege.

I've been working on a build for Marignon, if it's available. I'm not sure where I'm going with it after initial expansion, but I've got an awesome bless for the angels going. I know I'll have very strong fire, some good astral, and a pretender with tons of water. My research hurts initially, but I can get a bunch of castles to be fed by pretty stunning expansion (paladin + 2 or 3 knights of the chalice to beat almost anything at indie level 5). A ton of flagellants with a passable bless for them can help to support me into the mid-game and angels are of course the troops of choice for later on. My big problem is that while I end up with lots of gems and powerful magic, I can never think of things to actually DO with it.

I was thinking about taking the stealthy priests of marignon, having them self-bless and giving them a wand of fireballs each, so they can toss ridiculous amounts of flame around. I could give them all slave matrices and have them led by a master who casts big spells to take advantage of the fact that there'd be so many of them not accruing much in the way of fatigue. Of course, it's really just one tool for the box.

I'd love to know peoples' thoughts on possible team uses for Marignon if we get the nation and I get to play it.

I usually take a dormant rainbow great sage with 6 or 7 level 4 blesses. Of course I'm a noob and not a hard core Dom3 player, but how bout some commentary on what is wrong with this idea for the next game.

Death 4 bless I believe gives an increased chance of inflicting afflictions, Blood 4 bless, I believe increases strength. How does it compare to say an Astral 9 or Nature 9, etc. Obviously if I don't have a blood nation, I'd have to rely on my pretender for hunting and most spells until I can empower other mages. And if I get a nation with weak sacreds then my bless will be less effective. Any suggestions on which MA nations would work best for me with this rainbow bless strategy?

My revolution is getting watered down, as I suspected. My dreams of 3:1 and massive noob cap population fitting with my storyline are being debased. I think I'm too lenient. Oh well, I will try to do what I can to preserve some semblence of my admitedly shallow plotline. I guess the thirst for vet blood gets the best of me sometimes and I forget you guys are actually supposed to be getting an education here.

Generally speaking, it's better to have one or two larger blesses because they increase a certain stat exponentially, and the level 9 blesses add additional benefits. For example take ermorian shadow vestals. They're undead sacreds, so since banish is an obvious undead counter it's best to have a very high magic resistance on them to lessen the effectiveness of banish. I don't recall their MR at the moment, it's probably something like 14. If you take a level 4 astral bless, they'll go up to 15. If you take a level 9 astral bless, they'll go up to 18 and gain twist fate, negating the first hit done to them in the battle. This is much more resilient than it would be with the level 4 bless. The death bless infliction rate increase triples or so at level 9, and you get a small amount of an damage added on, which isn't really that useful but can help clearing chaff I guess. So the reason bigger blesses are better, is they take a unit to an extreme. You can't hit it, you can't avoid being hit by it, you can't out-fatigue it... etc. The style of god you like to take would work better as a site-searching god to open up magic paths and forge some of the items with hard to come by magic paths. According to vet thinking this would probably be a nation that you can expand quickly without an awake SC and is not ashdod Having lots of smaller blesses could help, but it won't tend to make a sacred as powerful as it would be with a higher bless. So you can't rely on your sacreds as heavily with that sort of bless.

rdonj wrote:Generally speaking, it's better to have one or two larger blesses because they increase a certain stat exponentially, and the level 9 blesses add additional benefits. For example take ermorian shadow vestals. They're undead sacreds, so since banish is an obvious undead counter it's best to have a very high magic resistance on them to lessen the effectiveness of banish. I don't recall their MR at the moment, it's probably something like 14. If you take a level 4 astral bless, they'll go up to 15. If you take a level 9 astral bless, they'll go up to 18 and gain twist fate, negating the first hit done to them in the battle. This is much more resilient than it would be with the level 4 bless. The death bless infliction rate increase triples or so at level 9, and you get a small amount of an damage added on, which isn't really that useful but can help clearing chaff I guess. So the reason bigger blesses are better, is they take a unit to an extreme. You can't hit it, you can't avoid being hit by it, you can't out-fatigue it... etc. The style of god you like to take would work better as a site-searching god to open up magic paths and forge some of the items with hard to come by magic paths. According to vet thinking this would probably be a nation that you can expand quickly without an awake SC and is not ashdod Having lots of smaller blesses could help, but it won't tend to make a sacred as powerful as it would be with a higher bless. So you can't rely on your sacreds as heavily with that sort of bless.

You know I read the manual over a while back (I generally tend to like large manuals) but found some portions of it a difficult read. Damage and attack formulas and such don't appeal to me. Looking at the bless effects section it appears your right on target though (as usual). Wish I retained stuff like I used to but I suppose I'm getting old. At lvl 9 extra stuff pops up? What are these death weapons and death curse?

Wouldn't affliction infliction be good to have when coming up against SC or large enemy units since it would tend to act like a curse and pretty much screw up and weaken them for the rest of their lives (unless they get healed).

Death: The death weapon bless is an extra attack that happens when the sacred attacks. It does 2 armor negating damage, but is negated by magic resistance. So it doesn't always work, and is less effective the better your enemies units are. Afflicting afflictions is useful, how useful depends on the target and how geared out it is. It's really hard to say exactly how useful it is to have a massive affliction chance. It's going to be generally more useful on things that don't rely on aoe weapons or trampling, or a passive way of killing people.

Blood: The death curse, I think, is a mr negates horror marking. It's not really a big deal. The strength bonus from blood is much more interesting, so usually getting the blood 9 bless is sub-optimal.

So what are the nations we are wanting in the next game.

Still hoping I'll be allowed Skaven. But if not I'm up for any really. And will probably just concentrate on construction. So a Earth/Death nation best I think.

Lavaere wrote:So what are the nations we are wanting in the next game.

Still hoping I'll be allowed Skaven. But if not I'm up for any really. And will probably just concentrate on construction. So a Earth/Death nation best I think.

Looks like Lumen would like Marginon. Ashdod would probably be good. Ermor might be nice. Hmm, got to do a bit of reading.

We will need to produce a ranked list for the team depending upon recruitment totals but for now perhaps we should each begin deciding upon our say top 3 choices, we can then build the ranked team nation list from that.

Well all I know is...

If your Man you need a SC pretender with atleast F4. That way you can do Flaming Arrows, though it takes time to research. And the cheap Temples are a bonus.
Shinuyama you can get alot of research done quickly. So they make a good Construction nation.
Skaven, make some really good poison inflecting armies. Or armies that shoot alot of lightning at the enemy. Also makes a good Construction nation. As most are either Construction or Blood spell summons.

Not sure about any of the other nations. As these are the only MA nations I know.

Just to receive feedback, the tests I've had with Marignon show that this design for a pretender expands very, very well:

Dormant Lady of Love, 9 water, 4 earth, 4 nature.
Dominion 6, Turmoil 2, Production 3, Heat 2, Luck 2, Drain 2

I'd really love to be able to not have Drain 2, but it's just not feasible for the magical paths that I want, and high production is necessary for my units.

The initial expansion forces are 1 paladin scripted to bless once, cast or hold (i.e. blesses again if he misses one square with the first one), then attack closest, and 2 or 3 knights of the chalice scripted to hold and attack closest. One of these forces can beat Ashdod's 25 PD at its capital, although sometimes (rarely) I'm unlucky and lose even against pretty weak indies. These units don't do particularly well in extended battles (moderate encumbrance and quickness), which is why these forces will need to be combined later on after the initial expansion, but they continue to be effective raiding forces that can be broken off of main armies very easily.

I have a major goal in finding as many water sites and water gem production as possible. My pretender god likes to search for water sites and then make a dwarven hammer followed by clams of pearls. Once conjuration is there, I can summon Naiads to continue with the clam production. I need tons of astral pearls to leverage my angels later.

My initial research hurts a lot because of the drain and the fact that for a while I'm just producing paladins in my capital. Since I start with a friar (stealth priest), I can build a temple where there's an indie priest available, and shift my expansion forces over to 1 priest and 4 knights of the chalice, starting to make my grand masters in the capital. These guys research for 7 and are sacred, so I can just pile them up. Hopefully, I can scrounge up enough cash to build another fortress where I build one of those temples, so that I can once again go back to paladins there, and continue with the mages in the capital.

Admittedly, I'm not sure where this will go in mid-game, because games against the computer don't really get to mid-game where magic starts being really important. However, I will be making conjuration and evocation priority researches after I get my site-searching ones. I suppose I could go straight for lanterns in order to make my research better. Where you go in mid-game seems to be determined by your main enemy neighbors anyway.

I do know that loosely, later on I'll be dependent on angels for armies, and my bless is *awesome* with angels.

Melnorjr is talking about taking C'tis.

In the last game, the vets used IRC meetings to discuss how they should proceed every week or so, in addition to their forum. I'm wondering if people think such discussions are a good idea for this team this time around.

Very much so, problem is I can't get IRC working on this comp. so I wouldn't be able to join in.
I could probable install Trillian to see if AIM or MSN will work though

LumenPlacidum wrote:In the last game, the vets used IRC meetings to discuss how they should proceed every week or so, in addition to their forum. I'm wondering if people think such discussions are a good idea for this team this time around.

I've never really gotten into that whole IRC world in Dom3 or anywhere else, but if we can arrange a convienent time for everyone to get on that could be a possibility. Wouldn't hurt.

Our first priority it would seem to me is making sure everyone uses this forum regularly this time around. E-mail and in-game messaging can play a role as well but nothing can replace this forum as a powerful communications means. As you know the admins will be strictly enforcing this.

Another first priority for all of us is getting more players into the game. Lets get those invites out. With it being summer and people having a tendancy to overcommit as it is, we must do what we can do. No shame in that.

Communicating our specific early expansion goals will be important, so there are no crossed wires on that front. In the case of a full crew of 16 noobs, 4 expansion threads based upon geographic placement could be used for specific early expansion outlines, and perhaps a map, in addition to the turn threads, but that may or may not be necessary and would only be used for those purposes. Creating seperate turn threads for different groups might get a bit confusing, which is why I'm not suggesting it. Unless there is a way to do it in a way that won't clutter the forum.

This thread can be used to organize our nation selection picks and put together our ranked team list. For now, start by thinking about the 3-5 nations you'd most want to play (stick with land nations unless we get above 18 players).

Pangaea would be a neat choice. They're quite capable of doing the Carrion Woods thing in the middle age. Besides, you control the starting positions, and can put yourself next to a big forest for best use of the domspawning.

I propose that each person on Team Noob creates a ranked list of nations. Then, we can use some voting theory to create the master list for the team. I think we could use Preferential block voting to determine our list. Essentially, we "eliminate" (i.e. place at the bottom of the list) any nations with the fewest first-place votes, then remove them from the ballots and remove the nation with fewest first-place votes again, moving to second, third, etc. place votes as necessary.

My ranked list of nations is as follows:

1. Marignon
2. Pangaea
3. Shinuyama
4. T'ien Chi
5. Machaka
6. Pythium
7. C'tis
8. Man
9. Ulm
10. R'lyeh
11. Ermor
12. Bandar Log
13. Eriu
14. Jotunheim
15. Arcoscephale
16. Atlantis
17. Ashdod
18. Abysia
19. Oceania
20. Caelum
21. Vanheim
22. Mictlan
23. Agartha

Wow, that seems a bit much for each team member to have to do, but it is quite scientific. I am just asking (you'll see my post on the forum) that at the very least each of us come up with their top 3,4, maybe 5 candidates. I'm not sure I know enough about each nation to intelligently rank every single nation and also we don't know whether or not we will need water nations until we get a final idea of how many people will actually be in the game. I'm not going to put in water nations unless we have more than 18 players. I was just going to throw our picks at the top of our list (in order of votes) and throw whatever we haven't picked at the bottom, swaps within the team and from any left over nations (as namad suggested) can then be done. But whatever you guys want I will go with. Just tryin to simplify it a bit.

rdonj, are you going to start accepting members into the forum now or will you wait till we officially begin nation selection?

I'm going to go ahead and rename this thread, we can use it for pre-game discussion and create a seperate one for the actual nation selection process.
For now it is enough I think to have everyone at least thinking about their top choices for at least land nations.

Hmm, without water nations (18 start), right now I'd say my top 4 choices would be in order of preference:

1- Pythium
2- Pangaea
3- Ashdod
4- Caelum

I'll accept anyone that you have listed in the game thread on the other forum whenever they sign up. I think it would be better to have everyone here as soon as possible so the nation picks can get well ironed out before the game gets underway.