Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Howdy!

I was thinking of starting up a game with an earth based pretender and play with all the magic items. My thought was that if I am going to research to the top of the construction tree, I may as well get to use the big ritual spells along the way.

Now, I am going to need lots of gems to make the pretty toys and I want a race with fairly beefy commanders, as they will be using many of the items in combat.

Ulm looks interesting with the forging bonus and Johnteim with the high hit point leaders.

I am very open to suggestions and strategies, so please let me know whatever you think. And yes, I know I could search, but a fresh conversation with all the people who are lurking here is much more interesting!

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Earth items are pretty weak. For forging, there is the Dwarven Hammer, and... most good Earth things have another path, like Charcoal Shield, Blood Stone, Summer Sword, Firebrand or Crystal Shield. I suggest you play a rainbow mage if you like forging.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Or just cast Forge of Ancients with powerfull Earth pretender.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Iron Faith Ulm with a rainbow mage to forge boosters so your Balck Priests can actually use their forge bonus to make the good items?

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

I understood he aims for good items and construction 8, and is going to choose a high-Earth pretender to be able to cast the summons and rituals Construction makes available.

Arcoscephale's Mystics can come close to a rainbow pretender, especially once you hit Constr. 8 and have had time to find all kinds of gems and make some boosters. With Arco, you would already have Earth/Astral access, so Shedu wouldn't be that good. You don't have much Nature, Death or Blood, so any of those might do it... You need powerful beings to wield the weapons; death has some low-level things and better summons, from Black Servants to Bane Lords. I think Nature only has Firbolgs. Blood has many uniques, but you'd also need other paths to get access to them, and you would probably lose the race against human players.

Maybe Earth/Death pretender for Arcoscephale? You might want some Thaumaturgy for early-ish combat support. Even Mind Burn helps a lot. Sailors' Death would is a nice Thaum spell, so Earth/Water could also be interesting. Earth/Air would give you easy access to the Staves of Elemental Mastery. Earth/Fire would be very offensive combination.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Arco earth death it is! Thanks for your input all, Endoperez has understood what I am thinking best, so I shall give it a whirl. In addition, Forge of the Ancients is good advice and the pointer on needing more paths than just earth is well taken. I am playing single player. We just had a baby and the turn based, slow action of Dominions is just what I need. Baby cries, I leave the room and don’t worry about getting eaten by something in a realtime game.

The construction summons can be pretty decent and it will be fun to try out many of the magic items that I have never used before. With baby in the other room, this will not be too serious of a game, so I aim to have as much fun as I can. I will turn up the special site frequency and play!

Also, it is great to see some of the old timers still here after so long!

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

The trinket level Earth weapons are actually pretty good.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

I just got a national hero who is a rainbow, all level one. It is right up the alley I want to go, so I will have some fun with him.

Reserach was off to a slow start, but found a library in a strategic location, so lab, temple and fort were all dropped in place. Decent position in the rankings and on the map, so all is shaping up well. I took a Cyclops with earth five and death four. The Lesser fear for the sacred troops is a nice touch, as heavy infantry has to get up close and personal for some time with most enemies. Having the enemy rout a turn earlier is always nice!

I also took order and some magic, as I always find a use for money and research is needed to get the fun toys.

Finally, the Arco leaders tend to have heavy armour, so they are fairly durable to start. If I can boost them up with magic items, I think they are going to do well with this strategy. I have tended to find the gap between SC god and thug commander hard to bridge, perhaps I will learn some tricks.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Not always. Often I just want to inflict as many casualties as possible (or kill off everyone), so runnin away can be really annoying. (This is especially true for long-range-summoning-spells, because you don't really care for the summoned units anyway)

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

True enough, often I prefer killing them all off, particularly strong spell casting commanders. At this stage in my current game, I am dealing only with independents and militias, so I am very happy to run them off. However, I now need to start worrying about Mitlan and Pyrithum.

Caelum is particularly good at killing off everyone. When they fly in front of the retreating units, the fleeing troops have to run around or fight. Either way, they get hammered. Cavalry are also good at running the enemy down after a rout.

Still, the scattering of the enemy after a rout tends to disperse their forces well. You can then do a piecemeal clean up. Late game, some seeking arrows to hit the scattered commanders can really disrupt their reorganization. While it does take a couple of turns, cleaning up the broken pieces can turn the won battle into a won war. After a close battle where my troops have been badly reduced, I want to be sure I capitalize on the victory.

Needless to say, a rout when the enemy can not retreat and is eliminated is even more satisfying!

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

take out mictlan asap, the are tough late game.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Arco leaders arent traditionally thought of as "durable". Basically all human commanders, no matter how good they are, are vulnerable to a one-hit-kill. If you want tough commanders that can actually survive a fight, you have to go with Jotunheim giants or Pangea centaurs. Man-Last Of Tuatha and Vanhiem also have glamoured commanders which can work (and buff themselves too). If not those, then perhaps Man (lord warden), Abysia (warlord) or Ulm (black knights).

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Best trinket weapon: "Stinger"
Ulms Black Knights can make good use of "Girdle of Might".
Shambler Chiefs are nice, too, with Black Steel Tower Shield. But do not add BS Full Plate, it's too heavy.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Ironhawk,

That is a good way of looking at it. Pangaea could end up with some rather powerful centaurs now that you mention it. Throw in Gift of Health for a few extra hp, their good starting stats and some decent magic items …

For Arco, I am going to try the gift of health, if I can get a decent nature mage. As I am trying to get lots of gems, a Thistle Mace and an empowerment should not be too hard. I will beef up commanders, but use them as part of larger units of heavy infantry. I don’t expect them to win battles by themselves, but to stiffen the units they will fight with. It is a big investment, so I don’t know if it would work in a highly competitive game where every gem counts, but in SP, I am hopeful. Some should get into the hall of fame, which provides some random boosts as well.

I am also thinking some Horror Helms with the leaders in my Blood Companions unit, as they already have lesser fear. Boost that with the Horror Helms and I should be able to rout enemy units quickly.

Shovah, thanks for the idea of taking out Mictalan early. Combined with the map placement, focusing on them will save me problems later. I hate the casualties usually associated with a siege relatively early in a game, but taking the player out of the picture early usually pays good rewards later. Hopefully I can get some mercenary cavalry to race through the gate: that has shortened many castle battles for me.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

I think that early Mictlan, especially if played by a computer, is a paper jaguar. Their troops are weak (let's not talk about dualbless Jag Warriors, the chance of seeing those W9F9 monstrosities from comp is a small one) and you might even be able to out-dominion them.

And their castle towers use slings. IIRC.

Using cavalry sound good, and I *think* tramplers could be useful. But getting them is hard.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Paper Jaguar, I like that. They were rather weak at first, but have toughened up recently. It is too late, as I am now seiging the capital and took out their nasty national hero prophet with a lucky arrow that sent him berserk. I am glad I did not wait any longer! Your comment on out dominioning them is also on target. I am going for a fairly strong dominion push, as Arco gets good scouting reports in areas with dominion. I have been able to generally roll them back. I assume that if they spend lots of slaves on dominion, they are not spending it on summoning.

On the magic item front, all my talk of boosting commanders to go into the front line has gone nowhere. I have instead been handing out a lot of missile weapons, be they fire bolts or bows. Getting your god killed in the death match leads to you recruiting priests instead of front line commanders… At least both of the gods died in the battle, I got some benefit from it.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Forge of the Ancients! Oh my, I had forgotten about it. Any mage can forge any item you have researched at a reduced price. I am using summoned 1 Death Revenants to forge anything I fancy! This was the spell I wanted for this game, I can try out any and every magic item I want! Throw in that forging bonus weapon and things are dirty cheap as well. Gems will eventually be a problem, but right now I don’t have enough mages to forge everything I want. Ok, I could, but I don’t want to reduce research, as Mechanical Militia is really going to help me. I have too long of a front with three angry neighbors…

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

It doesn't allow you to forge every item, but the effect is pretty close to it. All your mages get +1 to every path when forging requirements are considered.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Ah, that is good to know. With Arco, I have so many mages with different paths that it really feels like I can do everything. And with the ability to get the path boosting items (Thistle mace, ect) I am sure I could pretty quickly get the needed levels in any path I wanted.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

It allows for all the low-level items, especially when your mages have randoms in all paths. Nornas of Jotunheim only have sorcery randoms, though, and can't e.g. forge Earth Boots. Your Mystics can't forge the Thistle Mace, either. And to forge Ring of Sorcery, even with Forge of the Ancients up, you need either S2 mage or S1E1. S1 allows Starshine Skullcap, but you'd need S1E1 mage to forge Crystal Coin... So S2, 3 with Skullcap, which becomes 4 with the Forge.

It is still frighteningly powerful spell.

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Ring of Sorcery, thank you for reminding me! I have been finding that with the large number of Mystics I have recruited, the pool of paths is pretty wide, so pretty much anything is going to be possible with some thought. I am at work and your ideas mean I should have a good weekend!

I have also been chasing Gift of Health, so I recruited an Animist and empowered them, so the Thistle Mace was part of that plan. While GOH is not as immediately impressive as some of the other big spells, I have found it very helpful on defense. Right now, I am focusing a lot of my energy on one corner of the map and must be very defensive elsewhere. A few more turns and Mechanical Militia will join the Global list. My defense will look a lot better then.

I will look at powering up more mages and see if there are any other good globals I can set up.

Enjoy your 24 hour sun!

Re: Earth and Magic Item strategy?
 

Mystics have elemental randoms, so Ring of Sorcery won't help. You need Ring of Wizardry, S5 and 80 pearls before forge bonus.

For Nature, make a Moonvine Bracelet. Nature and Astral, I'm not sure about the levels, but I think it's N3 S1 - Astrologer with his random in Nature and Thistle Mace can do that.