Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Hail,
I conquered a province that has these structures in it. When I click on them it says I can recruit various units at them but I canno figure out how to actually recuit those units. They don't show up in the regular recruit units screen of that province.
I'd appreciate your help

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

you captured an enemy capitol. You don't get the C'Tis only national troops like they would, but you do get the gems!

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Thanks. Could you explain this a bit more.
What are C'Tis?

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Those are the people you conquered. Note the name of the province containing the Empoisoner's Guild - should be C'tis.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Every nation has certain units it can only recruit in its capital city(the one you start with and on most maps named after your nation). Only that nation can recruit those units out of that province.

The up side to conquering these(other than eliminating your enemy) is that the population is usually very high(all but Ermor death themes start with 29k+ population) and the province will have a high gem income already in place. You should note that Capitals never have hidden gem sites, so there is no point in site searching them.

Hope this helps.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

When you start the game, you have one province, in which you have a lab, a temple, a fortress, and some nation-spesific sites. This is your capital.

All nations have a capital. Most often the name of the capital is the same as the name of the nation, so e.g. C'tis (the nation of lizardmen) started from a province named C'tis, which has C'tis national sites (Temple Marsh, Empoisoner's Guild), a fortress and a lab. The C'tissian temple was destroyed when you conquered the province, and in theory, a random event might have destroyed the lab. You still get lots of gold from there, get a "free" castle, and quite often decent income of gems you wouldn't have otherwise.

The AI defends its capital very heavy-handedly, and conquering and holding enemy capital often means that you're winning the war. Even in multiplayer games, there are only few exceptions, which usually include ridiculous strategies that are fun to play but won't (usually) win the game. Gandalf Parker, as an example, has played Pangaea by conquering few "dots" here and there (stealthy forces), then building a fort, a lab and a temple with a stealthy Dryad, and advancing to conquer many small "nations" which his enemies eventually would conquer - only to be very surprised to not have found his capital, or a route to his other provinces.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Lots of help in these answers PK and Endo. Thank you.
BTW, could you recommend a good newbie map for me to play? I'm a first-timer and using the CB mod. The map I'm on is a bit hard. Just as I though I was 'set' and winning, I got blindsided by Atlantis coming in on me from the ocean and conquering several of my provinces. I hadn't even noticed him out in the water.........
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Choosing enemies and setting up the game can also help.

Choose the number of enemy nations according to the numbers of provinces on the map you choose. If you want to have lots of time (and provinces) before you meet an enemy, have one nation per every 25-30 provinces of the map. So for a 100-province map, you would play against 2 or 3 enemy players, with yourself as the third or the fourth.

Higher independent settings slow down everyone, but usually they slow the AIs down more than you. Set independent strength up to 6 when you are setting the game up. In the same screen, choose the Rich world, and up the amount of magic sites. This way you can experience with more things at once. Normal research is fine; magic is so powerful that in MP, research is often set to Hard or even Very Hard. If you want to try Luck, set Random events to Common (still the same screen).

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Thanks guys for the prompt and useful help.
Amap mentioned in the thread I was pointed to is Cradle of Dominion. Hmmmm....I don't see it in my choice of maps. Is it a map I am supposed to download from somewhere?
I appreciate all the suggestions.
Thank you

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

For a first game, you should't select Atlantis, R'lyeh or Ermor as enemies. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Hehe the thread I pointed you to was your thread =)

Here is the maps section on the Illwinter site. http://www.illwinter.com/dom2/maps.html. Download the maps and extract them to you dominions/map directory.

As Endo said, map setting can make a huge impact on the game. Once you are comfortable, I would play at normal richness, and hard (or higher) research. These settings can make an impact on how you design your pretender.

Once you are comfortable with the basic mechanics, I would go into the MP/AAR section, and duplicate some of the settings from those MP games. Anyone but The Winnowing (Thread title is The Winnowing) and Manifesty Destiny (Thread title New Noob Game). Reason being they were intended for MP noobs, and thus had more relaxed setttings.

Endo made a great suggestion. If you pack a ton of AI on a small map, you will be in a world of trouble. But once I had a handle on the game, try enabling one less or equal to the recommended AI's. I find this to be a relaxing setting, while still having a good variety to play with.

GL
OG

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Actually go a step further, don't pick any nations that have access to death mages. Death mages tend to summon load and loads of undead/eth troops. If your only dealing with a pool of 6-7 nations, why include them?

Also I'm sure this has been mentioned, but don't pick races that have "Death" themes to fight against.

Ulm (Black forest)
Pangea (Carrion Woods)
Ermor (Cuz they are Ermor)

I think I am forgetting one.

As Olive said, including the Water races can be frustrating because its very hard to defend entire coastlines, and even harder to hit them back as certian nations.

GL
OG

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Also, you probably want to leave Caelum out, since they can attack provinces you think are safe.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Thanks guys for all this excellent help!

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

personally i dont find ulm black forest that hard to fight, id suggest fighting vrs ulm at start

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Black Forest requires a different pattern of thoughts in order to be effective. Standard Ulm is very good for newbies, but in the hands of an experienced analyzed gamer it can be very difficult to handle.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Thanks for the continued input. It's all very useful for a new player like myself.
The game is so complex. A few more questiosn come to mind:
When is it good to do things like Pillage, Preach, Blood Hunt, Blood Sacrifice and Monthly Ritual Spell.
The challenge of when/where to use these spells is daunting for the newbie.
Best
How786

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

pillage should only be used imo if you took an enemy province and you know it will be taken back soon. preach is good for raising your own dominion if its low and for reducing nemy dominion. blood hunt gets blood slaves but increases unrest (reduce taxes+patrol to counter unrest) blood sacrifice is a bit like preaching but you need blood slaves and monthly ritual cost gems and cast a spell (huge variety there)

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Monthly Ritual is of most use when you want to cast a cheap spell for many turns. Awaken Vine Men and Awaken Vine Ogre are two very good examples.
Note that if the spell defines a target province, it won't change, so monthly ritual order is useless for site-searching spells.

Blood Hunt is only useful if you want to use Blood magic. Generally, there are no sites from which you get blood slaves, the blood equivalent of gems. You have to hunt for them. In common circustances only blood mages can hunt effectively, although if your only blood mages are very expensive (e.g. Skrattis of Jotunheim) it might be worth it to have dozens of Scouts hunting slaves.
The most common method of blood hunting is to have a province with big population but not too high income (i.e. not capital, big Farmlands province, but with population of maybe 7000-10000), lower the taxes, build a lab, and leave few commanders hunting. If you don't want to lower taxes, you can Patrol the raising unrest away, but that will lower the population even faster, and you might run out of good hunting provinces if the game continued really, really long.
If you have blood mages earching, forge them Blood Dousing Rods ASAP. They help as much as another level of Blood magic. They don't work on non-blood hunters.
Remember that you can press Pool from F7 menu. This takes most of the micromanagement out of blood.

I'm not sure which Blood nation is best to try it out. Iron Woods Jotunheim might work - they have Vaetti Hags to use as hunters, Skratti to summon some Fiends of Darkness and Frost Fiends, and later Ice Devils. And if you get Angerboda, Jotunheim hero, you can do lots more. Like cast Reascendance, and get B3F3 Fallen Angel, or send Horrors to attack your enemies.
Cross Breeding is also fun, although not very useful.

Preaching and Blood Sacrifice (improved Preaching which uses Blood Slaves) are useful to negate enemy dominion, and to strengthen your own. You lose if your dominions dies, and you can avoid storming a heavily-defended enemy capital if you preach him to death.
Dominion also affects your pretender's and prophet's toughness, morale of your own and enemy units, and changes the world to work under the scales you chose.

Choosing high dominion is often all you have to do, except in special cases and against enemy border.
If you chose Production and Order, you'll want positive dominion of 4-5 in your forts so that the scales stay at maximum. Strong dominion also lessens the seasonal temperature changes, which lower your income a little.
Also, against Ermor themes or Pangaean Carrion Woods you'll want to keep their dominion as far from you as possible. Those special dominions kill population VERY, very quickly.
If you play as either, you'll want as high dominion as possible. It weakens your enemies, and gives you more free units.

Mictlan is a special case. Their dominion DOES NOT spread in normal ways. Temples won't help, although they still slow the spread of your enemies' dominion. For you to stay alive, The Blood Must Flow. That is, your priests have to use Blood Sacrifice. Jade Knives help, and stronger priests can be very powerful once you have enough slaves to burn. In the early game you'll be in trouble, though. And Mictlan needs rather high base dominion, because it affects the power of Blood Sacrifice.


Pillage is useful for taking money away from the enemy. It is often easier to just raise taxes to 200, but if you e.g. have a weak army in his capital, with no way out, you could pillage it and do the most harm you can. I don't think I have ever actually used pillage for strategical reason.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

i thought this was true until i got one in the winnowing. the searcher only had 1 blood, and the site produced 1 slave/turn, but i was still really surprised. i guess that's why we use the word "Generally".

i have also never pillaged except as an experiment to see what happens

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

is that site the damned merchant?

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

ask damilano. last time i checked, he was in charge of that province. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

lol, not for long

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Yep, it's the damned merchant, +1 blood slave/turn. So I'm only 76 turns away from getting myself an Ice devil. Whoopee http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

There are a few Blood sites, even though the Damned Merchant might be the only one that produces Blood Slaves. Demon Gate, Blood mage may enter to summon Devils (the Fire type), and another that allows summoning of Fiends of Darkness... and of course Brigands' Lair or whatever the 0-level site is. Any mage, or even a priest, searching for sites finds it, because it's 0-level site, though.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Mictlan gets a site that produces blood slaves http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Thanks for all the replies. Endo, thanks for this essay! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif
OK...with Awaken Vine Men/Ogre, how does that work as a monthly ritual spell? I looked in the manual and the manual mentions it as a battlefield spell. I'm not sure how one would cast this monthly if the summoned creatures go back to their 'slumbered state'.
Also, there was mention of Empowerment. I must be missing it but I don't readily find it in my manual.
Thanks

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

vinemen/orgres is a ritual spell and empowerment is a (rather expensive) way to increase a mages skill

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

"vinemen/orgres is a ritual spell"

Right. But what is its use? My manual says that it is a spell used in battle. Of what use is it to have a Commander cast it monthly unless in battle?

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

casting it monthly means you do not need to keep ordering it. its effect is to summon a few vinemen or a single orgre (multiple ogres if cast by master druids, vine kings or models wearing an ivy crown) and ogres (being the more popular of the 2) are often used as meatshields (especially for mans longbows ect)

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

The spell itself is a ritual, which creates vinemen. Vinemen are mindless units. Mindless units die, instead of retreating, if all commanders are dead or routing. Normal commanders who don't know magic can command Vine men, while mindless undead need a Death or Blood mage or an undead commander. They would die if living commanders are left, but all commanders that could command undead are dead or routing.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

summon vinemen and summon vine ogres are ritual spells, not battlefield spells. they summon permanent troops of the relevant variety. Currently, summon vineogres is probably the cheapest way to accumulate a bunch of reasonably tough frontline troops. If you press "shift + M" on the relevant summoning mage it will give you the option to set that mage to auto-cast the spell each month.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

To clarify, vinemen and vine ogres are summoned outside of battle, and they do NOT go back to their "slumber state" after you summon them.

They stick around unless you are in a battle and your commanders all die or retreat.

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Thanks for all the clarification. I misread the manual. I did not realize that they remain as permanent troops.
BTW, are they still summoned even if the ritual mage enters battle on that turn?

Re: Temple Marsh/Empoisoners question
 

Yes, rituals happen before troop movement. Be sure to consult the stickied FAQ at the top, it has a lot of good info. Turns are executed in phases (ritual spells, assassinations, preaching, and so forth) and knowing the phase order is useful when planning coordinated actions.