Dominions 4: Pretender Design and Analysis Step 3

Step 3: Analyzing your opponents

You have chosen or been given your nation.  You've clearly looked over your options and have a pretender concept in mind and some tactics for the different activities.  What about those wankers who are ALSO in the game?  What a pain in the ass.  If single player was at least a competent challenge I could avoid the agony of getting beat by other players.  And let's face, even the best player loses about 5/6 games or 9/10 depending on their preferred game size.

What are we looking for?  Let's go over some obvious major issues.

• Nasty dominions.
• Dangerous sacreds.
• Powerhouse blood.
• Blood sacrifice.
• Stealthy thugs.
• Recruitable SC's

You can't predict all the things that your opponents will do.  You can make general predictions.  Is EA Niefelhiem in the game?  They will probably base their strategy on Jarls and a monster bless.  What do you do?  I don't have all the answers and it's a tough thing to measure.  But you will have a rough time if you do not consider your opponents fundamental goals.

Let's break it down.  You have say 9 opponents.  Look at their nations.  What will they likely do?  Try to have a plan for the most obvious actions.  Sure it's hopeless to plan for everything but the key is to keep in mind the obvious actions.  This section of my guide is in some ways the weakest but in others the most critical.  I can't hold your hand through every situation you might encounter but the point is to keep things in your plan.  Look over who you have to face.  What might they do and most importantly what things they might do that are most dangerous to you.

Bandar Log Example:

My opponents and their most likely strategies are:

• Vanheim - Vanheim is very likely to use stealthy thugs with a bless.  Air drop by cloud trapeze and sudden raiding is the biggest expected threat.  The best counter is to be strong enough to be too threatening to attack.  And small squads of sacreds with a mage or two can be placed in the path of potential attacks to stop thugs
• Abysia - Hard hitting fire immune troops backed by fire evocations is the most likely.  Minor blood hunting with summons like devils is also a serious potential.  Water magic can be used to get fire resistance which supports summoning a few Yakshini.  The spell Rain is a powerful counter.
• Mictlan - Major bless with eagle warriors is the most likely plan.  Early game my plan is to have bigger and tougher sacreds.  For mid game, hopefully I can put up storms to stop the eagles from flying in to my melee troops or back line.
• Man - Man has great potential for a scales diversity design backed by solid magi and hordes of dangerous archers.  A plan to keep sacreds alive against archers is important.
• Ulm - MA Ulm is quite a different nation in Dominions 4.  I would expect a focus on quality troops, the very dangerous evocations Iron Darts and Iron Blizzard and lots of forging.
• T'ien Ch'i - Another case of major archer armies and tough troops.  I would be out shot if I tried to go archer versus archer.
• Ashdod - Big nasty sacreds with a big bless.  This is an opponent unlikely to be a concern.  Attacking an astral nation with giant sacreds can be extremely painful.

I believe all of these can be handled with the right major bless and tigers with white ones.  I don't anticipate problems with very dangerous things like dying dominion or early globals like Burden of Time.  Therefore, my core plan of elite squads with great bless is solid.