Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

Yeah, what is up with that spell?

I cast it three times and got:

2 mages, 5 improved unfrozen, 20 normal unfrozen
2 mages, 7 improved unfrozen, 18 normal unfrozen
0 mages, 3 improved unfrozen, 6 normal unfrozen.

The last casting was during Winter, and boy did that suck.

Anyways, the Mages are random, the worst one was 2 Earth and 1 Death, but the other 3 had 6 or 7 picks each, distributed between Earth, Water, and Death (looks like up to 3 in each path, I got a 3 Earth guy, a 3 Water guy and a 3 Death guy with 1 or 2 picks in the others).

Individually, Unfrozen have better stats than Wights, but they tend to fight with stone spears and leather armor, which makes them somewhat inferior. The Unfrozen Leader however, is pretty exciting. Marginally better stats than a Bane and his disadvantage of coming with worse armor is just 5 Earth gems away from being solved.

-Frank

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

Ive only cast it once and I got 1 unfrozen leader, 2 very nice mages, 1 poor mage, 2 improved unfrozen and a bunch of regulars.

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

In general "turtle and research" is a tactic which would work best on
A) large maps
B) few players
C) high setting on independents

Any of those can work, or all of them. Any opposite settings (small maps, many players, default or lower indepts) would create a rush game which would be hard for you to survive. Dont despair though. If you are good at turtle and research then you could be a welcome surprise in the large games.

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

Perhaps the spell has worse results during the winter and best results during the summer... it might also be complete random results. If I wasn't at work I'd do some quick tests.

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

Ah, that reminds me of something else. If you forge a Dwarven Hammer (E3), anyone having it while forging will have a forge bonus 25, the same as your Master Smiths, and it stacks with your Smiths' ability. Can you say no to 50% off of all items?


Black Servants aren't mages. They are ethereal, however, and as most undead they have encumberance 0. That means that they are hard to kill, and won't suffer from high-encumberance armors (their encumberance will STAY at 0, no matter what armor they wear). Black Servants equipped with Black Steel Full Plates and Black Steel Helmets are VERY hard to kill. Another very useful item is Pendant of Luck (S1), having 50% chance of negating anything that might further damage them, and of course Amulet of Antimagic (S1) to protect them against enemy priests. They could also benefit greatly from Lead Shield (E1 or E2), which also increases magic resistance, especially as they can ignore its encumberance.

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

Who said they were?

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

Ok, my game is going well for the moment, even though I guess it is going to be harder now that I am at war with Tien Chi, Caelum and Agartha at the same time.

I had forgotten how much micromanagement was involved in the middle to late game: it is a pity mages can't autoforge the same item every turn...And assigning the ten lightless lanterns you forge each turn to 10 mages is not funny either. But I guess that's the downside of having so many possibilities.

one thing however: I was casting something like 2 Haruspex, 3 augury, 3 gnome Lore, 3 arcane Probing and 2 Dark knowledge a turn, and I found that my success rate was low. Then I took a closer look, and it turned out that the mages were all searching the same province on a given turn, even those that were casting the same ritual! I guess this is a bug, or I am just unlucky. Hence, I have stopped casting each spell more than once per turn. But it's a pity.

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

It's a bug. It seems none of us remembered to mention the bug... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

ok. So, basically, it's pointless to autocast the same spell multiple times.
It is kind of annoying...

Re: Questions about a game in progress
 

Yeah, it is. I mean, it might be bad strategy to autosearch as much as you can, but I'd like to be able to decide on my own bad strategy (esp. in SP) without the game making the micromanagement help only available if I limit my searching...
(and as a result, I end up only casting each spell once per month, because the monthly casting is so much more convenient)