Here's a question for you fluff-players... Ever tried doing 'Adventurer mode' in Dominions?
Basically, just create a few interesting commanders you want to have around. Make sure your pretender (or somebody) can cast Gift of Reason if you find a standard troop you'd like to have in your party.
Then spend several turns just researching various useful battle spells, and also working on kitting out your little party of oddballs.
Independent strength needs to be around 1-2 points for this to work... I'd recommend just 1, so you'll have plenty of easy provinces to romp around in.
Take Misfortune (for the occasional attack/rebellion, thus giving your adventurers more to do) and magic (to make researching faster, and to let your mage(s) cast spells more easily), the other scales are pretty much up to you. Although productivity is kinda pointless, since you'll only be dealing with a very small number of commanders.
I'm sure you can see what I'm getting at here. Have your very own little party of adventurers romping around the various indy provinces, and putting down the occasional vineman assault or troll upheaval. Spend extravagant amounts of resources on getting your little chaps kitted out and/or empowered, but don't take anything that's normally used as a supercombatant (I mean, that's just too easy...).
See how far your party can go! Get attached to each of the buggers as they gain vast amounts of experience and develop personal skills (hall of fame boosts)!
It should be pretty darn obvious that this is in no way a competitive tactic. However, it
is surprisingly fun, and you might very well be able to slap something together where you get multiple players together to see who can get the most heroic party of adventurers together.
In Dominions 1, I found Man capable of churning out some very aesthetically pleasing parties. Pangaea is also interesting, and they'll give you the benefit of being able to skip a province that's a little too tricky.
Damn, I've talked myself into it... Now I have to go and whip up one of these matches...
Also:
For the heck of it, I did a Vanheim vs. Jotunheim grudge match. I've never really been all that impressed with Vanheim, but I thought of another approach I might take to them, and I've been having lots of fun with it so far. I was really worried the giants would just steamroll me, but I've actually gotten to the point where I hold a distinct advantage.
What was funny is that at one point, Jotunheim attacked the castle I had slapped on the only land bridge connecting our two territories. At the time, the total provincial defense was one human herse and two of his drinking buddies. Surprisingly, they actually managed to take down a couple goons before getting smeared.
The castle wasn't held by much more. Five druids and around ten woodsmen with blowpipes were the total force guarding the keep. So, in full emergency response mode, I got a couple druids to slap on vine crowns and had one grab a thistle mace he had made earlier.
I then had each of the five druids cast awaken vine man/ogre each turn. By the time the giants had breach through, I had a mix of around 35 troopers to take them on. Then, in anticipation of the attack, I gave each druid a nature gem to cast 'Swarm' with.
In come the giants. It was a rough fight, and I lost one of the druids, but I held out. The giants, a force of 30+ Jotun led by around seven jarls, with some auxiliary archers and such, was turned back by my paltry vine army. I think this was mostly due to the fact that the giants had been sitting out there for quite some time, and this tiny island we were fighting over barely had 600 people living on it. So while my nature-endowed druids were whipping up food for everyone inside the castle, all of the hungry hungry herses outside the walls were getting unhappy.
They tried another futile attack, and were once again turned back by the reinforced vine army and enlarged dragonflies. After this attack, however, I snuck a large army of Vanir back around behind him thanks to their sailing ability.
They lumped on the castle again, spent a turn or two starving before they made it in through the gates again, were once again confronted by the starving+panic spam double whammy, and fled.
Right into the province I had just captured. Forty-some giants - prophet included - down the hole. Yeehaw. And now they've got an army with over fifty Vanir riding around in it, plus my prophet with divine blessing. Also, he has the Heroic precision hall o' fame ability, which adds up with the prophet, experience and air magic bonuses to wind up with 24 base precision. I handed him a bow of lightning and told him to shred some magic bastards with righteous fury.
I predict good things.
Poll
