How to avoid getting domkilled?

[pkk]

In a game as MA Pythium, I only have 4 provinces under my dominion left. Vanheim (impossible AI) holds about two thirds of the map. Another impossible AI and me share the rest.
What can I do to survive? I already have a temple and preaching priest in each of my provinces. For the forts, I also have a few Theurgs and Telestic Aninates preaching. I am recruiting more Theurgs and c4reating more telestic animates, but it doesn't seem to be enough. I have the ark, my prophet is H6 and preaching, too.

I guess I could try to summon a few Arch Angels as additional preachers. Is have Alt 9 researched halfway; how good is wishing for dominion?

Philipp

[terve886]

Originally posted by pkk:

I have 2 fortified cities, 4 castles, 5 citadels. I hold about 30 provinces (all with temples), including the thrones of Knowledge, Stars, Sun, Bones and the Golden Throne. Vanheim has 11 thrones. T'ien Ch'i is still in the game (I wonder why they haven't been domkilled yet) and has 1 throne.

My global enchantments are Forge of the Ancients and Arcane Nexus. Vanheim's 3 vary; currently they have Gift of Health, Stellar Focus and Strands of Arcane Power.

I have researched Construction 8, but not Construction 9, and all my good priests and researches are astral mages, and thus gone soon. So construction Juggernauts doesn't seem feasible for me (but Vanheim has some).

My first two golem thugs are on the way to the frontline (I don't have much experience with using thugs - I had already thugged the first golem to help in an army attack on T'ien Ch'i, but now decided to cancel the attack and redirect the golem at Vanheim). They carry swords of swiftness, armors of knights, amulets of missile protection and spirit helmets. One has winges shoes, a lantern shield, a bottle of living water and two angel bodyguards, the other has a weightless tower shield, chi schoes, a flying carpet and an abomination bodyguard. I intend to fly them behing Vanheim's lines, and hope to find a few unfortified provinces to destroy temples.

P.S.: The golem thugs are scripted to cast body ethereal, then attack rear. Is that reasonable?

A good golem thug has vine shield and a brand (or snake bladder if friendly fire is not a problem and your opponent is not immune against poison), most preferably armor of knights to make it even more durable than then shock or frost resistance misc items if your opponent has access to frozen heart or air evocations.

I would suggest casting astral shield for extra protection against melee attacks and resist magic for extra defence against astral magic in case your opponent can cast opposition astral spell. Body etherreal, like you guessed, is also good to cast.

If you want to turn your golem into light Super Combatant, you give it astral skull cap in addition as head gear and astral coin on the misc slot. If you have access to Evocation 8, you can cast astral tempest using 4 astral pearls.

[pkk]

So I brought up Enchanted Forests, it even replaced Arcane Strands (apparently they used less gems this time). One golem destroyed a temple a province, then the next round ran into an army. The other golem has destroyed two temples by now.

On the other hand, armies are attacking in a different place. I already lost a castle. And another castle has two enemy armies next to it - one of 700 units, half sea trolls, half dispossesed spirits, the other 1200 units, mostly disposessed spirits.

[pkk]

In case I want to try the golem thugs again: How do I get a good golem-maker. Currently only my pretender (which is mostly busy otherwise) and one adept of the golden order can make them. I am recruiting more adepts, but they only have a 25% change of earth. Any S+E mages that I could summon?

Philipp

[terve886]

Originally posted by pkk:

In case I want to try the golem thugs again: How do I get a good golem-maker. Currently only my pretender (which is mostly busy otherwise) and one adept of the golden order can make them. I am recruiting more adepts, but they only have a 25% change of earth. Any S+E mages that I could summon?

Philipp

Usually you need to have S and E access from national unit or from magic site (mostly throne sites) and then increase the paths with booster items such as astral skullcap, earth boots and astral coin. MA pythium has bad access to these due to lack of earth magic. Summoning spectral mage has chance to give access to both those paths, althought with extremely small chance as you would need a E2 spectral mage to get the earth boost and one E1 S1 spectral mage to equip all the booster items mentioned above, but Pythium also lacks death access.

[Nrak555]

Specters have have a chance at ES cross path (not likly 6.25%) but the rest could make okay thugs. You would also need the boosters to get them high enough. Conj 6 D3 22D gems

[pkk]

The golems seem to be inefficient; after destroying 1 or 2 temples each they are gone; the enemy has just too many mage-supported armies wandering around.
I didn't notice much effect from enchanted forests; I kept loosing dominion. I guess hte main advantage is that it replaced enemy strands of arcane power, before I had a net loss of about 10 mages (mostly theurgs) per month, now I am recovering via the chalice.
But wishing for dominion really makes a difference - if I wish for dominion every second months it should easily keep me alive until I have researched construction 9 and can start building juggernauts.

[jojeck]

I wish you luck but frankly in this game you let one AI get to a situation that is too dominant with respect to generating dominion. Once it has twice as many sources of temple checks as you do, there is not much you can do. Any of your temples sitting under 10 black candles only have a 50% chance of removing one candle each turn and he only needs one temple somewhere deep in his territory to replace the candle so effectively your temple is only worth half what his temples are. All his spare temples (and thrones and juggernauts and whatever else he has generating temple checks) are slowly reducing your white candles. The dominion push will overwhelm you.

Priests and heretics can only do so much against the increasing tide of dominion, they basically just buy time. As he builds more temples you will get swallowed. You needed juggernauts a lot earlier or have a way of militarilly defeating the insane AI armies so you can take territory from him, destroy his temples and build your own (and protect them) so your dominion keeps expanding. Letting him have Gift of Health is also a major problem as it is potentailly the most powerful global in the game particulary when combined with extremely strong dominion.

As you said in the other thread the impossible AI seems to be much better in Dom 5 than it ever was in Dom 4. I don't play against impossible AI so this is not something I've experienced first hand. The AI casting multiple globals and dispelling player globals is not something I ever encountered in Dom 4. You need a miracle :) At least you're learning a lot about the core principle called dominion and how important it is in a game called Dominions whereas nearly all the MP players simply ignore dominion since it is usually too slow a mechanism to bother with in MP games as the other players simply stale and quit due to boredom once the game reaches the stage where dominion becomes decisive.