Magic Scale
 

I wonder whether it is possible to have the magic scale influence summoned creatures.

High magic scales could make those creatures stronger, while drain scales would, as the name sais, drain their power and lower their abilities.

This would allow new strategies, e.g. a nations that you need to conquer with normal troops because of their drain scale.

What do you think about this?

Re: Magic Scale
 

Sooo... anyone here take drain with any nation other than Ulm?

Re: Magic Scale
 

Theorically, a nation with easy access to Death and/or Fire (especially Death since its research boosting artefact comes earlier) might get away with some Drain. A Rainbow Mage would help as well, since Drain would be almost irrelevant for her.

In actual practice, I would be hard put to find a situation where 40 points (or even 80) would be good enough to justify the trouble of taking Drain. Perhaps with a special game where you have fewer than 500 points, but that would be an experimental situation, so.

Re: Magic Scale
 

I like the idea of the drain scale affecting summoned creatures. Say, something like loss of 25% HP, and maybe 2 attack and 2 defense and 2 strength per drain level It might actually make a drain scale worth getting!

Probably not, though, since it would affect the owning nation too.

Re: Magic Scale
 

Ulm would be the one to benefit most from the rule.
However, making the drain scale would actually allow for new strategies.
You could try to play a nation relying on normal troops that woild be competitive even later in the game, because they would still have a chance against enemy creatures (at least in their own territory)

Re: Magic Scale
 

Except that, as proposed, the other players would all have even more of a reason to take Magic-3, and would use the 'feature' that would let the critter keep its extra HPs when coming straight from a magic province into a drain one. (Just like pretenders and prophets going from high dominion to negative, where the HPs stay around a while.)

So, Ulm's troops would actually tend to be fighting summoned creatures that were even nastier than usual, wouldn't you think?

Re: Magic Scale
 

The best candidate for a drain scale other than Ulm is in my opinion Jotumheim - and I have used such a strategy with them, but not in quite some time. My reasoning is this: Jotun has, well, giants... and this means a couple things. First, they don't need to rely on battlefield magic for early expansion. Second, giants are hard to deal with without a lot of magical aid, so hurting an enemies' ability to use magic makes some sense. Jotun also has easy access to skull mentors to overcome the research penalty. The reason I stopped using the strat is that I'd much prefer my death gems be going into Wraith Swords...

Re: Magic Scale
 

yah, i tried that in SP as well. But the loss of death summons/forging is just too dear. As well default Jot at least is one of the nations which most benefits from some positive magic scale (since 55gp for 3 research becomes the luscious 55gp for 5 research under magic 2).

I have no idea what zen might be trying out in his scales mod in order to make drain a plausible choice for nations other than ulm.

Re: Magic Scale
 

But that has nothing to do with the generell idea. Besides, there would be certain ways to counter it: Building castles at the border, and Attacking the enemy forces after they entered your dominion.

Another proposal: Drain works like diseased. As long as the summon stays inside the drain territory, it will loose HP and might get afflictions (because its dissolving).

Re: Magic Scale
 

The drain scale is supposed to be bad, that's why it gives you points. I don't think we need to come up with ways to change it so that it is actualy an advantage to choose it. Now maybe Drain is less attractive than the other negative scales. But I think that has more to do with Misfortune, Heat/Cold, and Death being relatively mild than with Drain being relatively harsh.

Re: Magic Scale
 

I can remember discussions about Dom I where some considered it to be standard practice to take drain 3, as it had very little effect when you could boost you research just by spending more gold.

Re: Magic Scale
 

Speaking for myself, I consider magic 3 a no-brainer. Dominions II is won through magic, and research is vital to the war effort. While it is true that you can buy more research with more gold, it is hard to do so in the beginning, and your maintainance cost shoots through the roof. Maybe it could work for some nations. For my favorite nation, Vanheim, it would be insanity.

Vanheim has four mages that can be used for research. In Magic 3 the research per maintainance cost is 1.2, .8, .83, .75. Note that I start by buying the worst researchers (dwarves), at least until I get enough random picks for my casting and forging needs.

Now, lets consider Drain 3. The points/gold become .2, .2, .33, .16, We are talking an average of six TIMES less research per mage. Even the best researcher is a full four TIMES worse. Yes, if you have four times as much gold, this may make sense, but you will not.

The mathematics may be different for independants and other nations, but I doubt they are that much different. Drain for anyone but base Ulm is suicide, unless you intend to somehow win the game without magic.

Re: Magic Scale
 

I don't, since it has severely diminishing returns over magic 2.

I'm also referring to Dominions I, where there was more than twice as much gold in the economy.

You can always use owl quills on dwarves.

A better comparison would be to look at magic 2 vs. magic 3, and to include the purchase price where you'll notice that the difference is very small.

Ermor can get away with a drain scale quite nicely.

Re: Magic Scale
 

In Dom1 you could also convert Astral to RP.

Re: Magic Scale
 

I was talking about drain being suicide... now, if you are saying that Magic 3 is not worth the 40 design points over Magic 2, that may be perfectly reasonable. When I decided on magic 3, I mostly did it by comparing the loss of research to the loss of gold from death/sloth, and decided that magic 3 made sense. It is also the difference between getting to Alt2 in two turns, and having to take one more turn before sending my pretender on a rampage.

I can believe that for even slightly different pretender designs, magic 2 may be better than magic 3. But I have trouble imagining how drain can be a good idea. Do you mind explaining why you would take drain with Ermor? Even without drain, you can easily afford a monster pretender. Investing 6x40 more points in it will not allow you to do two things per turn, while it would deny you 6 more research points per mage.

As for the suggestion tha I use quilts of dwarves, I will just assume that you were joking. There are better uses for air gems in the early game, especially for Vanheim.

Re: Magic Scale
 

If Graeme is joking, then count me in the jokers bandwagon as well.

Re: Magic Scale
 

well, construction 2 vanheim gets a hammer; 3 air gems for +3 research, pretty darn early, if you wanted to go that route. Perhaps you haven't found a library...

as to early uses, air is pretty weak (though wyverns have been improved in zen's mod) until the rush to queens.

Re: Magic Scale
 

I always have my first air queen before turn 20. I hardly use air gems for anything else while there are air queens left, and I would go as far as trading hammers for air gems. I am frankly surprised that any air nation would use air gems before this... but that may explain why I have always ended with at least two air queens in every one of my Vanheim games, even when Man, Caelum and Pythium are in.

Re: Magic Scale
 

you might be under very difficult research; in which case investing in air gems might actually speed up your acquisition of the queens.

or there might be no other air nations; in which case you can be a bit lax in the rush.

Re: Magic Scale
 

drain 1 for ermor seems to be pretty resaonable.
your units get +1 mr, you will be behind in research anyway with ermor, but you mostly need only conjuration and construction anyway.

In one ermor game I´m in, I chose magic 3 and so far it has only hurt me. My undead are far easier to banish(-1MR compared to +1MR), my pretender could have 1 more 4point magic paths , I can´t research anyway, because it´s with very hard research settings and I must pump every death gem into wraith centurions just to stay in the game.

Taking drain2-3 though doesn´t make sense

Re: Magic Scale
 

I've taken Drain 1 with Vanheim and done very VERY well, when the game ended from lack of interest (4 AIs, including the Caelum Norfleet had started) I think I may have been the only one holding my own or advancing against the AI'd nations.

I went with the assumption that Helheim can afford ... Skull Mentors, is it? Good death income, earth income, and dwarven hammer capable mages.

No doubt it wasn't optimal (nor was having Astral 3 or 4 on my Ghost King pretender), but as an experimental whimsy, it worked quite well. First through the use of skull mentors (yes, there are much better usages of death gems, especially at conjuration/summoning 6 and 9), and also by conquering past my dominion and setting researchers outside the area of drain - easy enough for any Vanheim theme to manage.

Re: Magic Scale
 

Unless you are playing a single-player game, and I must mention this as a single-player man.
There are plenty of great spells for Ermor all around the research table.
Utterdark, Well of Misery, Burden of Time are great globals for Ermor, also, Nether darts is pretty damn good for default Ermor.
Also, I've found its a nice idea to have some Earth magic on your Ermor (none default) pretender, it can give you good forging, a steady supply of earth gems (to convert into money, if you have to), a spell that creates a tower in one of your provinces (fortifications are hard to build as pennyless Ermor), Inulenrability for your pretender and nice globals like the mechanical militia.

Re: Magic Scale
 

Well,
well of misery is conjuration. The other two globals won´t work that well in multiplayer as you mentioned.
You don´t really need a lot of strategy to win vs the ai nations with ermor http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif.

wizards tower is a waste of gems in most circumstances. you could just alchemize 45 of the 50 earth gems required and build your ermorion castle.