T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

Just wondering what some of the better players would be doing in my shoes at this point. Note the freakish amounts of mages sitting around doing nothing.

Also any tips or notes about my progress at this point would help. I'm playing with 8 or 9 other nations on norm AI.

Thanks in advance. =)

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

warning: must have cradle of dominion map downloaded =)

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

I summoned like 15 Demons of Heavenly River and they got slaughtered by tritons. =( Also, by "correcting" my mages to try to get guys with extra magic skills, should I just empower them? Also, with site searching, would it reveal all the sites or only sites up to my spell level? For example, master of dead casts the death search, would he come up empty on a 4 gem death?

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

Casting the site spell searches the province, totally - at level 9 search ability, albeit there's no sites above 4th.

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

Also, on the topic of spending points, how would you advise my point spread look? Mind you, this is already for a game where the settings are rich province, difficult research, indie str: 7 and magic sites: 55

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

Huh?? With only a few exceptions, that is what expensive mages are designed to do. This is like playing Man and not sending your crones off to war. Sure you keep a couple back if they have the right paths to forge or summon something special. But otherwise they need to be out there on the front lines, earning thier keep.

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

I think the idea was to recruit Mo5E for combat and have a few CM for research/forging.

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

yes, because the CM can also summon those lovely demons (and with flying can quickly reach the front lines if needed)

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

Why do you recruit so many mo5e? a mo5e gets you 6 paths for 190 gp. A CM gets you 8 paths, one higher holy level and flying for only 60 gp more. And they are far more effective as combat mages. The only reason where I´d consider recruiting mo5e is when you are desperate for a 2e or 2n mage.

Then why don´t you use the CMs for sitesearching? any province should be immediately searched by a CM, if that doesn´t turn up anything use sitesearching spells for the paths that the cm doesn´t have.

Then build a second fort with lab and temple to recruit masters of the way, those will be your primary type of mages with a fire/air/nature/water random they make good combat mages, with a blood ranfom they make EXCELLENT bloodhunters, with an astral random they will summon demons of heavenly rivers, with earth or death you can use them as researchers.

Then learn to use demons of heavenly rivers. The trick is to group them with your cms, so that they get bodyetherealed/lucked and take a good bless( I´m particularly fond of w9 since it is very powerful, helps all your mages and you get it quite cheap on a dragon.)

Oh and put some PD in your provinces, helps against losing them to sneaky scouts.

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

I was looking for a 2e to forge hammer of the dwarf lord -.-. Plus I heard people say Mo5E's are better than CM's.

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

M5E vs CM in battle
As I said - if you need a special CM in battle because his random magic allows him to cast a spell you want - go and use him. But better deck him out and maybe even empower him in Astral: It's not only that cheap S-1 mages could duel him to death easily (AI won't do that, though), in my experience there are few arrow magnets like 250gold mages. And CMs aren't really as durable as Jotuns ... . When I played S&A, the mean time of survival of my CMs was 3,5 battles unless I gave them shield, armor or items.
And more magic pathes isn't necessarily what you need in battle. Only gives the spell AI more chances to screw up. And both will be able to get Fire, Air, Earth - 2. You may get lucky with a Water-3 CM - I would suggest using that commander to go underwater, casting Geyser.

Masters of the Way
Are lousy combat mages. Yeah, sure they can cast quickeness. But the Fire/Air/Nature-1 from a random will only let them cast low-level spells with high fatigue cost. Most of the time they will be sitting around buffing themselves... . Better forge some Sceptres of Authority and let some indie commanders or Black Servant use those: Casting spells from an item is only 5 fat/spell.

bless
With all mages and the national summons blessable, I would at least go for an earth-4 bless to give everyone 2 reinvigoration. Means the mages might get off one more spell, and the Demons never tire from combat as they only have enc-1 - they might even recover from fatigue-inducing spells. Air shield from low-level Air blessing isn't worth it, but the shock resistance from Air-9 might something to be considered (if it where 100%, even more so http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif )
Nature-9 might be tempting, but stay away from it: berserking mages aren't really a good thing http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif
Death-4 isn't really worth it: most times you'll have too few Demons in the front line for it to have any effect.


.. will add more later, have to leave now ...

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

People say Mo5Es are better than CMs because of the magic duel issue - something that occurs far less often than it gets talked about. And if you're going to use neither the flying, nice paths +*2* random CMs, nor the Demons, there isn't any reason at all to play S&A...

Re: T\'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise
 

That's actually the way I see it as well. SA's MAIN advantage just seems to be it's CM's and you're foregoing the ability to take Order if you take that. Is it really worth the trade off? If so, what's the best way to max out the use for CM's?