Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

I have got most of the mechanics of the game down (I didn't say I had them aced, just understood!!)

However, there is one aspect that I just am not getting,

Either I am too dense, have a mental block, or am reading things wrong.

Its magic and things like Summoning...

I know what summoning is in the usual sense but I get the feeling that it is SO much more in this game.

I have read Baalz's Excellent Guide to Summoning but it seems it is directed to those that have a basic knowledge of the subject.

It talks about Masters and 4 slaves ect and the combinations that you need ect. I am sure that to someone that understands the terminology that it rocks....

But its Greek to me.

I have played nations with magic of all kinds to try and force myself to learn but I just keep getting more frustrated and playing MP seems a LONG way off if I am the only one trying to fight a ground war.

Is there ANY WHERE that explains the nuances of the magic game in all aspects that a dummy can understand?

Thanks as always...you guys are great when it comes to supporting new people!!

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

I think you are referring to Baalz excellent guide to communions. If so I recommend setting up a hot seat SP game where you control both players. Choose a nation with astral mages and the other with blood mages. Experiment. Sometimes it is useful to save the savedgames directory pre-battle, play the battle, check results, copy savedgames backup over the current savedgames, try new spells, formations, replay battle, rinse, repeat. Try those nine astral mages casting solo and then with an 8:1 communion (leveraging those more powerfuls spells they would not normally be able to cast because of fatigue and/or level.

-SSJ

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

I think you mean Communions, not summoning.

Communions are a way to boost a mage's power during a battle to cast more powerful spells and to spread out and reduce the fatigue.
Play around with it. Take a bunch of Astral mages, have one cast Communion Master and the rest Communion Slave, then have the Master cast big nasty spells.
With 2 slaves, the Master gets +1 to every path he has.
With 4, +2
with 8, +3, etc.

Fatigue for the Master's spells is divided up among the slaves and the master doesn't stop casting when they go unconscious, so he can quite easily kill them in a long battle, especially if there is more than one master. The more slaves you have the less likely they are to die, both because the fatigue is split more ways and because their paths are boosted as well, but only for the purpose of reducing fatigue from the master's spells.

There are all sorts of nuances, exploits and variations, but that's the basics.

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

Grudgebringer,

It might help if you could give an example of how summoning confuses you. Do you understand ritual magic? (Have you read the manual's sections on magic and ritual vs. battlefield magic?) Summoning spells are just ritual magic spells that create troops as opposed to e.g. raining fire on enemy armies. Like all ritual magic spells, they cost gems instead of gold.

Communions (masters/slaves/etc.) are a totally different story, and I presume that's what you mean by Baalz's Guide To Summoning. They have nothing to do with summons, but apply to the Thaumaturgy (Astral) spells Communion Master and Communion Slave. Since the manual is pretty sketchy on what they do, Baalz's Guide To Communions tries to flesh that out, but it assumes you've already read the manual descriptions of those spells. That could be why it's so confusing--or it could be the fact that communions are a fairly confusing subject anyway.

-Max

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

If I have 21 PD and 15 archers in a province is there any way to set up the archers so that they are behind the PD forces?

i looked at battle orders but didn't see how this was possible. Thanks

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

The PD will always appear in the default, center position. Set your archers to be toward the back, and the PD will appear in front of them.

-Max

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

You'd need a commander for them. An actual one, not the PD commander.

Then you can just position the squad in the back half of the field.

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

I was reading the Magic Path Booster Guide and actually am starting to understand it.

One thing it keeps mentioning that I don't understand is it keeps mentioning you will have to 'Empower' something.

Is empower the same as Summon?

It seems like it is saying "in order to get another level in this Magic Path you have to Empower this ot that"

Now to me as a NOOB that makes no sense as Empower suggests I cast a spell on my own 'Mage' to make him a level higher.

It makes much more sense to 'Summon' a beast that has say E3 and then give him an article to make him E4.

Can someone clear this up for me please...

Thanks

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

A mage commander has a list of possible commands. He can Move, or (if he's a priest) Preach, or Construct (Lab), or Pillage, etc. If he's at a lab he has extra commands including Alchemy, Cast Ritual Spell, and Empower. Empower permanently boosts his magic path but costs three or four times as much as building a path-boosting item.

Note: unlike a path-booster, you can Empower to give a mage access to a completely new path. This costs 50 gems. If you have lots of pearls (for example) but no Astral mages you may burn some of those pearls to Empower somebody to S1 or even S2, but after that point it's usually cheaper to have him forge himself booster items than Empower himself further.

-Max

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

Yeah. If you need to break into a path you don't have there are only two routes: indies and empowerment. I'm in a MP game now as a water nation. I've found indies once--water mages! To get into a path I have no access to the only route is empowerment.

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

Or summons. There are a number of summons that open up other paths.

Spectres are probably the best. Lamia Queens also have randoms. Faerie Court opens Air, etc.

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

That makes sense, I understand that now,,Guess I was on the right track just didn't get the whole gist of it.

NEXT QUESTION (lol as usual),

In an army you can have (for lack of a better word) 5 divisions (at least thats all I have been able to make in any army).

Now say I want 5 mages to fo with my army...

I have 1 large Infantry Division

1 cavalry Division

2 Archer Divisions

I mage division (5 Mages)

Now my question is this:

I see no way of spreading out my Mages if they are all in the same division. They are all lumped together as the Archers and infantry are (1 block)

There is also no way to put small skirmisher Units in front of the main army to draw fire if I have 5 full divisions.

(you can tell I play mostly ground warfare strategy games)

Am I correct in this assumption or am I missing something?

Thamks Guys, You really go out of your way to help!!

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

I'm not sure what you mean. You can only have five squads assigned to a single commander, but you can send multiple commanders to the same fight and thus break your army into as many squads as you want. Each squad can be positioned separately.

And Mages are commanders, thus not part of any squad. All commanders can be positioned and given orders as needed.
Are you overlooking the positioning boxes for commanders?

Re: Newbish question regarding Summoning ect
 

DUH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

No wonder I am getting my Butt kicked by the AI.

Even stuff I know ...I don't use or remember


Thanks, maybe I will start thinking things thru a little more now!!

Re: Newbish question
 

I am getting closer and closer to MP...

I have a silly question and have tried to find an answer but I think I am just mind blocked and not seeing whats in front of me.

I thinks I know what a 'Bless' is.

What I need to know is HOW do troops get blessed.

I know my pretender has 2 Blesses but he is asleep.

Is it a spell, does the creation of my pretender give it to everyone?

Sorry for all the dumb questions but sometimes I feel I have one thing down and the linguage just escapes me.

Thanks

Re: Newbish question
 

It is a Holy spell, so your priests can cast it. If you haven't appointed a prophet yet, you can make one and he will become a priest. If your prophet has died, you have to wait six months before you can appoint another.

You can also recruit priests from provinces where they are available and which have a temple. Any province you have forts in, including your capital, has priests among the commanders, and priests are common among independents as well.

Re: Newbish question
 

Your priests (Anyone with Holy magic) can cast divine spells which include Bless at H1, and Divine Blessing at H3.

Cast one of those on sacred troops and they will be blessed. Any priest can cast bless, the effect is based on the pretender's magic.

Re: Newbish question
 

You can tell if a troop has been blessed because in his unit stat screen there's a candles icon for sacred troops. If he's blessed it will light up and you can click on it to see what the blessing is. "+300% afflictions, reinvigoration +3" or whatever.

-Max

Re: Newbish question
 

This is very newbie question but I didnt find a clear answer in the manual. If I hit enemy army with a spell like murdering winter/flames from the sky and it damages units but doesnt kill them and the I attack that army in the same turn. Do they have reduced hitpoints in the fight on that turn or have they healed after the spell?

Re: Newbish question
 

Yes, they still have reduced hitpoints. The manual has a turn sequence (~17 steps) somewhere in the middle. Unit healing takes place almost at the very end, after all battles have been resolved.

(Note that PD will still have full hitpoints because PD units don't exist until the battle happens.)

-Max

Re: Newbish question
 

Ok a couple of more questions (I am starting to understand like maybe 1/10th of everything...really)

Looking thru my posts I seem to have a theme that keeps rearing its ugly head.

I am not understanding the Pretender and what it can do, and because of that I am not understanding the more subtle magic because I am trying to play this game like Rome TW and win by a ground game.

So....

After much thought of how can a dummy (like me) ask the question that I needed answered the most in a way that others could understand and actually help me.....I broke down and asked my Girlfriend to compose the question (YES, part of the deal was that SHE get the credit...sigh).

Here goes..

1. I understand that in pretender creation the blesses he receives at that time are in effect immediately for sacred Units.

I don't think I really understand why Dom 10 is such a major factor if it is only an aura that surrounds HIM (pretender) and his ability to raise Dom where he goes as he can only be in one place at a time.

I have never actually seen the AWE effect and other than it being like a Super FEAR spell, or IF it is in effect for ALL its Commanders/Mages ect that are blessed from the start of the game and all the time in the game.

I guess I just don't understand all the hoopla...

It would seem to me that you could design a Pretender Killer type stack if only HE has those abilities.

When I am designing a pretender I ALWAYS seem to get hungup on the fact that MORE is better than QUICKER.

in other words, what has worked for me very well in other games is that I take and develop a STRONG central base and then conquer slowly and build a strong nation as I go.

You can't get 'behind' my lines because there are no lines....everything is very strong.

If I can make it to mid game then I can be a force (if I use the right diplomacy) because while I can be defeated I can wreck another nation while he is doing it to the point that HE is now a sitting duck.

That doesn't seem to be the case in this game from what i've read.

So, my pretenders have all been imprisoned so that I can get the BEST starting scales and most magic ect on my pretender.

I just can't seem to understand WHY that just isn't the way to do it...Best scales, good blesses, money/production/luck and a strong magic on my pretender when he awakens (on like turn 35 or something).

Could someone PLEASE take the time to explain why I am reading about an awake pretender when there are just NOT enough points to make a strong nation (in MY flawed estimation.

Maybe I am just not getting what this game is about so ANY suggestions on theory of the game is helpful as I REALLY enjoy this game I am just getting frustrated....

Thanks to ALL that have been so helpful!!

Re: Newbish question
 

It depends on the game setup, including your neighbors.

If you're on a crowded, tiny map and your Niefelheim neighbors are sending N9E4-blessed Niefel giants in your direction immediately, you need something to kill them -- fast.

If you're on a tiny map where other sides are sacrificing scales for a rampaging pretender that will rapidly out-expand you, he'll have many more resources to crush you before your scales are likely to matter much.

If you're on a massive map with relatively few nations, and very strong independents, and it's late era (so fewer easily accessible monster sacred units running around), scales will matter more than in the earlier case.

Re: Newbish question
 

Well first, this game is all about different options, different strategies/tactics, and different abilities. So it's not "wrong" to have an imprisoned pretender, it just severely limits your own flexibility, and your understanding of the game, if you only play in the one fashion.

Now that we have that out of the way, just a note, blesses are not "automatic", there are sacred units, but only your prophet is constantly blessed, all other sacred units must be blessed during combat, and then it only lasts for the duration of that combat.

Dominion 10 isn't an end all be all trick. It works especially well for a pretender who already has Awe, as they stack, making it incredibly powerful in mitigating damage from most troops other than mindless units that have 30-50 morale. It does not work like fear, other than that the roll is taken against Morale. However, every unit MUST make an opposed roll of their Morale, vs your (Awe + 10) when they try to attack you. If they fail their roll, they fail to make an attack in that round. This is so valuable mostly in the early game, where a properly selected pretender can take 1 province every turn from the very start of the game, drastically increasing your expansion rate, giving you the economic base to crush people in the mid game and beyond.

This is a trade off, awake pretenders cost a LOT of design points (as points not gained by choosing dormant of imprisoned). But placing those points into scales, is for many nations much more of a mid game benefit, so if you don't have a strong early game growth plan, the player who has poor scales and an awake pretender will probably be so much larger than you, that they win the war 9/10 of the time against you, and probably with acceptable losses.

Then the third option, is to go for a bless strategy. Some nations make powerful use of blesses, some do not benefit from them much at all. You can sometimes do a single greater bless with a dormant pretender (and in a few cases it's possible with awake, but your scales will be AWFUL), but you will generally have to go imprisoned to do a dual bless. Often it works well to do a greater bless with a minor bless (usually the minor is nature for small regen, but not always), and in those cases you can typically just be dormant and still have -mediocre- scales.

In Dominions, if you try to fortify and shore up your position on a constant basis, your economy will bleed out, and you will grow far too slowly to be a threat to anyone later in the game. Perhaps they will avoid you because the reward for the effort is small, but you will never win that way, because someone far more aggressive than you will win much more quickly.


Typically, most games seem to be won through one or the other strong early game strategies - either they have an awake pretender who can make their empire grow twice as fast as you grow, or they imprison with a strong dual bless, and have incredibly powerful (and somewhat replenishable) sacred troops produce the same effect. This is why you hear so much about these things, because in MP, a "slow and steady" economic win through good scales and (nonstrategic) magic diversity, is not very common at all.


Hope that helps somewhat.

And remember, if you don't like that, there is no shame in just sticking with SP for the more laid back fun of the game, it's the route my roommate is taking, in fact.

Re: Newbish question
 

Pretender design points can be spent for several purposes:
1) They can buy high dominion to recruit more sacred troops, spread dominion from temple checks faster, and with 9 or 10 have awe +0 or +2 on the pretender.
2) They can buy a SC in the early game that can grab independents and deter early rushes.
3) They can buy a mid/late SC which uses full equipment and spell buffs to destroy destroy armies. Sure, most SCs get killed eventually and each time you Call God his magic weakens but think of the destruction you can wreak first!
4) They can buy high magic to define a useful bless effect that priests can buff sacred units with.
5) They can buy high magic to cast powerful spells.
6) They can buy many paths of magic to add diversity to the national mages, research, and site search.
7) They can buy scales to produce more gold to buy mages, castles to recruit mages, troops, and temples.
8) They can buy scales that increase production to recruit more or better troops in the early game.
9) They can buy scales that improve random events.
10) They can buy scales that increase the research productivity of your mages.

These thing vary in importance with different nations and starting conditions so you are trying to find a balance that works for the game you are about to play. Try LA Ermor -- an awake pretender with at least D3 is a no-brainer and scales are mostly worthless.

Re: Newbish question
 

Your dominion does more than that. It can also be spread through having a priest unit preach, and through building temples. Dominion 10 is good because a high dominion is hard to remove through preaching or by building temples; you can actually spread your dominion into enemy lands. It's hardly necessary to start with it that high unless you're using a dominion reliant strategy, as building temples increases your max dominion. If you build enough temples you can get 10 dominion later.

Your continued survival in the game requires you to have some dominion somewhere. It doesn't matter how many provinces you control or how big your armies are, if your dominion is eroded through temples and preaching then you lose the game.

Of course, that's extremely difficult to do. Usually it happens if you have a strong dominion and you've conquored a lot of the enemy and their pretender and prophet are dead, then you can push your dominion over theirs and conquor the rest at your leisure. But there are some nations that excel at stealth preaching and lowering dominion and raising their own quickly.

When you look at the map, you'll see either white candles, black candles, or no candles. The white candles represent your dominion, the black an enemies, and no candles is no dominion. You can count the candles to figure out how much of your dominion is in a particular province, or how much of the enemies. Having your dominion in an enemy's lands also gives you a little information about the province, like what troops are there. Your dominion represents your scales. At full dominion you get full scales, at partial dominion you get partial scales.

The other effect dominion has is directly on your troops. I think fighting in friendly dominion gives a morale boost, and in enemy dominion a penalty. It also severely effects your pretender's and prophet's stats.

So a 10 dominion start isn't important unless you're trying to push your dominion onto your enemies. A moderate dominion is more reasonable.


Well, the first thing to say here is your pretender is often your best unit period. Maybe if you took a wyrm with no magic or something that wouldn't be the case, but even then late game summons are all that will come close, if at all.

I play TW games too, so it's like having a 10 star general, except the power difference is even more vast. Like a queen in chess, except it can shoot fire and spit acid at the pawns.

Your pretender can do a lot of things; conquer provinces on it's own, cast the most powerful spells, forge the best equipment, it depends on what form you choose and what magic you give it.

So if you've got it imprisoned, you're going a pretty long time without your best unit. Giving it all that high magic isn't much use until it's in play.

The other thing is the best scales and high magic in certain paths are dependant on what you're researching and what nation you're playing. So you really need to evaluate that when designing your pretender, because it is your best unit and you want to play to it's strengths, and also play your scales to your nations strengths, and then find a middle ground.

For instance, Kailasa doesn't have many high resource troops, so taking production 3 just because it's a "good" scale is a waste of a lot of points, you simply won't use the resources, so take sloth instead. But the mages are expensive gold wise, so you want some order for gold. Order reduces the chances of random events, so you could tip your scale towards misfortune. That's one good scale and two bad scales, see what I'm saying?

Then you have a lot of points to both keep the pretender awake and get some magic on it, because Kailasa could really use a good bless and early expansion help.

Once you get to mid-game and see what worked and what didn't, what you need immediately, and refine your strategy and plan for mid-game and late game in pretender design once you've got a handle on how things work.

Re: Newbish question
 

Actually, there's a tradeoff between strength and speed of spread. Higher dominion spreads slower because it takes longer to "fill" a province before it "spills over" to an adjacent province.

Re: Newbish question
 

Just a note about dominion 9-10 Awe on the pretender: It doesn't work best with a pretender who already has awe, though the stacking helps. It works best with a pretender who has Fear, since Fear reduces the morale of everyone around him. It really can be impressive.

But don't take our word for it. Try it out. It's hard to get the effectiveness of SCs until you've played with them. Take an awake Dom10 Wyrm with no magic, put him in the back of the field scripted "hold,hold,hold,attack" and send him out solo on the first turn. You can still have good scales, but now you'll be expanding faster the gold comes pouring in faster, you'll have full resources in your capital sooner, etc, etc.

Re: Newbish question
 

Why hold, hold, hold? What does that accomplish?

Re: Newbish question
 

Often it's not really crucial, but it means that if your (indy) opponent has troops of two different speeds (like knights and infantry) they will become strung out and fail to attack you at the same time. It might also mean that enemy archers are farther away from you when you get into melle, and thus have less chance to damage you.

Of course, this applies against independents (and PD). Human players tend to try and coördinate their armies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Newbish question
 

According to the manual, your results are not due to the mechanics working as you state.

A Fear effect does not reduce the morale of nearby enemies. It forces a morale check each round, with a penalty equal to the Fear bonus, causing a rout if the check is failed.

Ergo it has no directly synergistic effect with Awe, it just happens that if you have a high enough fear effect to easily rout PD within the first few combat rounds, any awe at all will give you a good shot at surviving with minimal damage.


If the manual is totally full of it, then I will consent, but the description seems to very much differentiate it from other morale checks.

And anyway, in my experience, the potential of Awe+7 with Virtue, is an incredibly powerful tool. It gives you a strong effect even up to elite infantry with 15 morale. This essentially makes her nearly invincible against all normal troops, which is an advantage that continues to be leveragable through the entire game (though she's a poor raider against say R'lyeh, with their lobo guard PD).

Re: Newbish question
 

Haven't dug into that part of the manual in awhile, but check the morale displayed on units in the Fear area of effect. It definitely drops.

Re: Newbish question
 

Morale definitely lowers defence. It is pretty powerful even without Awe, so it could well force morale checks in addition to that.

Re: Newbish question
 

Huh?

Anyway, the synergy between awe and fear is indeed because it routs PD, not because of morale issues. Even if we assume each 1 fear decreases morale of everyone around by 1 (which it definitely does not), then it's effect on awe is identical to 1 awe, since lowering enemy morale by 1 is equivalent to raising awe by 1.

Re: Newbish question
 

Okay, I just did some testing. Fear auras have absolutely -ZERO- effect on a unit's morale. Enemy morale gradually went down over the course of the fight, due to losses etc, however there was no direct correlation to the Fear effect whatsoever.

In fact, providence allowed me to take 40 militia against an Onyx Amazon + Nightmares province, and the militia actually held for 3 full rounds against the Nightmares, even with like 20 overlapping Fear effects against them, their morale only dropped from getting cut down like wheat.

Bear in mind, it's possible to gear Fear over 20+ with a D9/10 pretender and items, if they start with Fear. That would basically mean that anything not divine or mindless would pretty much auto route if it got within sight of you, and even 30 morale troops would have trouble attacking through your Awe. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Newbish question
 

Endoperez just misspoke/mistyped. "Fear definitely lowers morale" is what he meant.

Horror Helmet/Shield of Gleaming Gold is effective against normal troops for basically the same reason. Awe +0 and Fear+0 is easier to get than Awe +4, and to a first approximation they do the same thing.

-Max

P.S. Hmmm, how much fear could you get? I think the PoD is Fear +5 or something normally, before counting Death magic. Give him D10 and he'll be Fear +15. With Horror Helmet, Aegis, and Stymphalian Wings he'll be somewhere north of Fear +30. Am I forgetting anything? Other than the obvious Horror Harmonica, but that's a Fear attack on everyone on the battlefield, which is totally separate and different.

If you're going to rout the enemy army make sure you cast Wind of Death first so they actually DIE too.

P.P.S. Oh yes, you could give him a Lantern Shield in his other hand. Fear +35 at least, unless some of those items are more powerful than I remember. I guess you could give him a Ring of Sorcery and a Ring of Wizardry to boost him to D12, so that's Fear +37. Can't think of anything else.

Re: Newbish question
 

Jim,

I'm not sure what was going on with your tests. Battle losses don't drop Morale, they affect the bonus that units get for being mostly intact (which doesn't show up on the screen). I don't know why you didn't see a correlation between Fear strength and the morale drop, but it's possible that you don't realize that Fear +X refers to the AREA of fear. The strength of the Fear effect is 1/5 of that, according to KO. Try testing Fear+50 vs. Fear+0 and you'll see it drop quickly, but if you tried Fear+0 vs. Fear+4 you wouldn't see any difference except that 9 squares would be affected instead of 5 (which you probably wouldn't notice).

Multiple overlapping fear effects are indeed fearsome. Frequently troops will rout even against enemies they could easily beat, if the enemies didn't have Fear. That's precisely why Onyx Amazons are so annoying, but it didn't show up in your test because the militia were ALSO getting cut down like wheat (and probably the ones who were within the Fear aura were mostly dead as well as Fear'ed, and thus irrelevant--although you said you did some a morale drop on some of them, and that was from Fear).

-Max

Re: Newbish question
 

This post was just silly, the next one is much better. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

Re: Newbish question
 

Well with a D10 PoD, the turn after he attacks the enemy, they are still at full morale. The turn after that, some are 4 down, some are 6 down, some are 8 down, and some units were alread at -2 or -3 morale.

I can definately assure you that morale erodes over the course of a battle. Every round, more and more units are showing lower scores, which I must attribute to their losses/damage, and the routing of nearby squads.

Though you are entirely correct, I didn't read the entire description of fear (my bad), I put the manual back down after I had confirmed that it states that its purpose is to force a morale check. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Newbish question
 

In my humble opinion, it would not dominate the game. The enemy commanders wouldn't route because they wouldn't be within your fear aura (AoE 37 is only a 3-4 square radius), so you'd have trouble with undead armies as well as other thugs[1] and mages. I actually think it would be only moderately effective as SCs go, but counting the number of Fear items was an interesting exercise.

-Max

[1] A flying + Gate Cleaver + Boots of Quickness anti-SC thug, for instance, would hit you with 60 HP of damage before you could blink or your Fear aura could take effect. If he had good morale (18-20) he could probably do it a couple more times before routing, too.

Re: Newbish question
 

You should check a normal battle. IME, unless a unit with Fear is involved, the shattered remnants of the army that finally flee have the same Morale that they had at the beginning. When you smash a barbarian horde or a bunch of indies, they still say "Morale: 8" or "Morale: 10". I think a Fear aura is like Soul Vortex or a Chill aura, it kicks in at the beginning of your turn. Only, Fear auras aren't visible.

Turn 1a: Enemies do their thing.
Turn 1b: <Fear>, PoD flies to attack. The Fear doesn't affect the enemies because it comes before they're in range.
Turn 2a: Enemies do their thing.
Turn 2b: <Fear>, PoD attacks. Enemies are down lots of Morale because this time the Fear aura covers them.
Turn 3a: Enemies do their thing or rout.
Turn 3b: <Fear>, PoD attacks.

Etc.

-Max

P.S. If Fear really is like Soul Vortex, you should also note that Quickness makes Soul Vortex happen twice per combat round too.

Re: Newbish question
 

Standards seem to counter the cumulative Fear effect very well. They don't seem to have much effect normally, a slight morale boost (probably capped?), but against Fear that boost seems to be added every turn, bringing morale back up toward normal.

Re: Newbish question
 

Standards add one point of morale to every unit in an X square area every turn. If that would result in the unit reaching morale more than 5 points higher than they started with, the standard doesn't work.

So yes, in a combat with a fear-causing creature, the standard would probably continue to give a morale point a round for the whole battle.