Best - worse magic paths
 

This is a topic that came up already several times on these forums, during Dom2, and very probably in Dom3 too but I might have missed it. But here i go again...

Just curious to know which magic paths people like to play better/less now in Dom3. Me, I like Astral and Death (even separately, not necessarily the combination of the two). I think they perform really well, but I also like them thematically (which for me is also an important part). Air follows close behind.

At the bottom? I dont like playing Water too much, although it's useful to invade uw provinces. Fire's not too strong, but I like the way Dom catches the spirit of fire magic ( = destruction), so I dont mind playing it.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Best - death and earth, living statues, large area buffes and bladewind ftw ; astral, nature after (especially for the charm powers)
Worse - water... I dislike this mix of underwater and cold with too few original spells. I would like to see frost magic being an independant path and the real water magic having more spells related to... water but usable out of the seas (as well as the old effect for water mages)
I also dislike blood... but mostly because of too much MM, it's a great and very thematic path/school anyway.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Earth is probably my favorite. It's got a big variety of spell effects and useful spells in all schools.

All the paths have their uses though.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Air, Astral, Death and Nature come to mind instantly.

Blood can be great, but it's kind of a special case.

Earth, Fire and Water are perhaps less good than the others, but that doesn't mean they are bad.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

My favorite are now Air and Astral. With research more difficult, I'm really focused on early magic, and early magic is about supporting your non-magic stuff. Air and Astral both have good artillery spells (lightning bolt and mind burn) and great back rank commander survival-enhancers (antimissle and luck items).

Fire seems to have gotten it worst from the shifts in Dom3. Before the excellent early-game artillery made up for the inferior late summons. Now though, between aging, slowed research, and more expensive labs, my artillery banks just don't seem worth it.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

I love how blood magic captures the feel of "black magic" without being specifically about death. But I use it probably the least except for summoning a couple big dudes later in the game. Death magic is probably the most useful (research skull, skellies, Ghost Riders) and easiest to get rolling (Dark Knowledge, Skull Staff, Revenants).

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

I do like Blood a lot too. Battle magic is a pain, as your slaves can get killed easily by archers and make your mages targets too (although they can help in assassination attempts as fodder) and the spells are almost all massive in fatigue. But the summons (Demon Knights at level 4? Yes, please) and items are great, and it's pretty easy to mass slaves quickly and early compared to gems.

But, most nations without blood pick nationals are going to have a really tough time getting blood going, if they can at all without Wish, compared to other schools.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

blood, death, nature, and abit of fire. I like the summons they give

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Blood, Death, Astral, Nature. Sorcery rules the world.

Weakest ones...Fire and Water.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

But instead here you get the best bless effects and combat stats (+AT/DEF)

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

What schools you prefer will depend largely upon what age you're playing in and who you are up against.

Most early age troops are lucky to get pants at all, and a protection of 13 is something you're supposed to be happy about. That makes things like Bladewind a battlefield clearing spell. On the other hand, in the later periods, entire armies can be thrown down where a protectionof 17 is low - and Bladewind might not kill anyone when cast.

The dynamics of battle magic are very different in Dominions 3 than they were in Dominions 2. In the previous game, spells like Flame Bolt were essentially worthless as they never hit anyone; yet spells like Frozen Heart were battle-winners because you only needed to kill a few targets to route the other side. With larger armies, Bolts of Cold and Flame almost always hit something, making their effects much more similar to the auto-hit spells at higher research levels.

The role of the battle mage is very different from what it used to be. Spells which enhance armies are much nicer, and enemy squads are usually large enough that they'll manage to get to close combat no matter what magical assault they are under. Combats are not won by Fire Darts alone. But perversely, Fire Darts does kill more enemies than it ever did in Dominions 2.

War Mages with Water and Fire are essential, but not sufficient. They easily pay their cost and more in even early battles, but they are no longer able to win battles without help from troops. Dominions is no longer a magic game with troops, it is a game of troops that has magic. But if you have the magic and they don't, you'll win.

If you have the troops that is.

-Frank

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Death is excellent largely because it's has so much variety. It has virtually no buffs, but it does have good summons starting at the bottom end and going right through to the top as well as good blasts, battlefield spam, and items. It's also easy to power up with items, and the kicker is that it's "self booting" in that you can use items to increase your level to summon higher level death mages who can then take the items and summon more of the same.

I would say that nature is more useful than powerful. I really hate playing without it, but it's hard to crush the world with nature magic alone, primarily because it lacks killing power.

I think astral is overrated. It's a great secondary suit, but it has jack for summons and it's excellent BF spells are almost all single target. If i want to kill things one at a time i'll hire a crossbowman.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Yes nature works more in combination with other paths to be effective. A few examples would be gift of reason on the tartarians, swarm spell with undead archers, and gandalfs tornado with charm.

I always want some units with astral, but not my pretender unless he's a astral_7 or better. Astral works great for giving a large enemy of units the curse mark or providing increased magic resistance for your units. And the buff spells like body ethereal and luck are for already powerful units such as demon knights.




Much depends on what nation is being played and which are your current enemies.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Yup, sorcery rules. Astral is still the king in my book with death coming close second. Nature got its key spells nerfed and isn't really essential now, imo (also, it's easy to recruit an indep 1N mage and forge a wineskin or two).

I'd rank earth the 3rd strongest path overall and by far the best elemental path - no weak areas, really. Air is also good but Fire/Water I can easily live without.

These things are nation and player dependant, but generally I'd say:

1. Astral
2. Death
3. Earth
4. Air
5. Nature
6. Blood (I don't use it much, but it can be a game winner)
7. Fire
8. Water

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Why does water have virtually no spells underwater (Not counting summons) Anyways? I can only find one or two battlemagics underwater,and the closest one for research is Level 4!

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Fire has that nice arrow thing.

Water has that nice quicken thing. Double strike sword and double strike boots are kinda nice.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Yeah, nice for collapsing from fatigue after two rounds of fighting. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

The number of attacks a unit makes in one attack action has no effect on fatigue. You only accrue fatigue for each complete set of attacks you make. If a unit's melee encumbrance is 5, then they gain 5 fatigue each time they attack. It doesn't matter if that unit with a melee encumbrance of 5 is a a pikeneer with one attack, or a nataraja with four swords of swiftness. Both units would gain no more than five fatigue per turn. If either unit is given quickness, then they could gain a maximum of 10 fatigue per turn from melee attacks.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Frank Trollman's post in this thread is excellent.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Water has great underwater summons, including the sea serpents, which are lovely monsters who eat independents for dinner and don't cost much, in levels or gems. Summon up a dozen in the early stages of the game and you won't be sorry. Earth has built-in usefulness because it's got lots of nice early game forged items that you can make en-masse, and earth drakes, which are really tough for low level summons, esp in early era where armor is at a premium. I'm not too impressed by fire magic. It could use some later game boosts, and more variety. It's nice that you can sell the gems for 15 gold a pop, but earth gems are much more valuable, and they're only worth 10. Is there any good reason why the other gems can't be converted to gold? I know it's probably for balance, but pearls, sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, they're all really valuable, especially the pearls and amethysts in ancient times. Still, gold in the game isn't so valuable a resource that the other gems shouldn't be unconvertable.
But I digress, (I do that a lot)
I'd like if you could use mastery in fire to combine more with other paths: more magma, steam, some kind of eldritch death-fire Anthrax spells, maybe something with Astral to make Aether magic? Aether (along with fire, earth, water, air) being one of the Platonic elements. Water, overall, seems to be a little bit more useful, especially considering the ability to freeze your enemies solid. You can set your enemies on fire, but so far I haven't seen this have too much of an effect. Can one troop on fire set nearby troops ablaze? probably, but I haven't seen it yet.
Death to me is the most useful, throughout the game, regardless of nation, with astral and earth tied for second.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Sea Serpents and Cave Drakes can be good in the early game... but they are also expensive. 8 gems is often way too much, even in the early game, because you could save those gems and use them for something better AND more cost-effective later. Cave Drakes are good... but are they worth 8 gems? That's much harder question.

The gems aren't sold. It's called alchemy for a reason. Lead to gold etc. In MP games, all gems have the same price AFAIK.

There are already quite a few combination Fire spells. Fire-Air has one - Sulphur Haze. Fire-Earth has the Magma spells, very useful. Fire-Water has the Acid line of spells, and Boil high in Alteration. Fire-Astral has Astral Fires, nice AoE spell that ignores armor but is gneated by magic resistance. Fire-Nature has some low-level spells, Seven Year Fever and such, not very useful, but there's also the new global for the Kindly Ones... Fire-Death has Banefire, Lord of Banefires, Reanimate Archers which summons undead archers armed with magical Banefire bows, etc nasty stuff. Fire-Blood has Devils, Archdevils and Hellfire.

Manual page 78 explains the effects of being aflame and frozen. Basically, it's some damage for fire, some fatigue for frost.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

What do you mean by "swarm spell with undead archers"?

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

casting the spell swarm, a level 1 nature spell requiring 1 gem that, iirc produces 20 weak dragonflys or something like that. Using it with undead archers you can get some (practically free) chaff that it dosnt matter if your archers hit or not (since they die after battle)

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Yes, I know what these both seplls are. I was curious about the synergy between them.

I understand your point, and I agree that swarm is a nice delaying spell. But how is this combo (with undead archers) different from using swarm with any other deadly missile attack? Like for example "normal archers with fire arrows"/"swarm" combo?

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

I think blood is very powerful. Early - mid game u will get more blood slaves than u will gems of any 1 other path, a blood 3 mage can get 5 - 14 with a blood hunt in pop. 5000+. U just need to figure out a effective way of getting the unrest it creates down.

U can cast cross breeding for fun which is a very cost effective spell with some very nice effects. Frost fiends r nice when playing Niefelheim, demon knights r pure evil, if u have earth paths as well. From then on it gets better and better. U can easily crush other pretenders/nations just by using blood magic alone.

Nature on the other hand lacks killing power but is good for creating large horde armies. Its weakened alot because yr troops no longer starve so items like enormous cauldron of broth r no longer very important.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

I agree blood is very powerful but the micro (especially for mictlan with all your sacrifices) in mid-late game gets annoying. You forgot to mention that blood has some of the best summonable commanders in the game aswell as some nice battle magic.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Ritual Magic holds a different place in Dominions 3 than it did in Dominions 2. No longer are you racing to replace your national troops with conjured alternatives. Now you are attempting to supplement your armies of national troops with summonings. This means that summonings like Vine Ogres are no longer the holy grail that makes you automatically win - instead you're looking for units that cover holes in your national army.

Because of that, the ideal summonings vary somewhat between nations. Atlantis, for example, is light on ranged attacks and is looking for something that can cover that weakness. Good alterntives include:
[*} Fast Troops. If you can summon something that flies, you can close with the enemy archers before they cut you to ribbons. In the long run, that might as well be Iron Dragons (Earth), but for the majority of your life, the best flyers available are going to come out of Air.
[*] Tough Troops. If the guys in front are tough enough, you don't really care what kind of archery you're shrugging off. Late game that can be Tarrasques (Nature) or Juggernauts (Astral), but most of your time you're going to be doing it with Statues (Earth) or Wights (Death, or Water if you can make Unfrozen).
[*] Archers. Summonables with archery are fw and far between. But it can be done, and is often devastating if done correctly. Most ranged summonables come out of Blood, but Reanimated Archers (Death) are very impressive as well.

--

Which brings us to the rules of gem conservation. Unlike Gold, the amount of gems you get each turn is pretty small compared to the cost of anything you want to make with it. That means that in order to cast the big fun stuff you must save your gems from turn o turn. This also means that anything you cast now essentially cuts into the strength and number of high end spells you will ever be able to cast.

Casting a ritual early in the game is an investment in having whupass on the table now, which will hopefully pay itself off by allowing yu to take more provinces, search for more sites, and eventually have more gems to cast more awesome magics when your research catches up. But not casting a ritual is also an investment - an investment in having more gems in a pile when you can cast better spells with them.

Vine Ogres are better than Vine Men. Not just "per unit of hero time", but per gem and just overall. If you can manage to stay alive and expanding without squandering any gems on Vine Men, you'll have more gems to make Vine Ogres. And the same can be said of Crushers and Iron Dragons, just on a larger scale.

Death has an advantage that it is relatively easy to use Death Gems to advance in Death if you have enough Research. A mage with 2 Death can make a Skull Staff, using which he can make a Mound Fiend. The Mound Fiend with the Skull Staff can make a Skullface, and while wearing those items the Fiend can make a Lich... and that should cover virtually anything you need to do. With enough Research under your belt only the scarcest of side suits won't be enough to make a powerful army of the dead with Death magic. Even the gems generate themselves once you have a Revenant you can spare to cast Dark Knowledge on all your provinces.

On the flip side, you have things like Blood. To get the little girls you need to use it at all you need to turn provinces over to having several blood mages spend their time hunting them down. Then to actually cast the spells or make the bonus items requires more blood than most nations ever get on anyone. To get it going properly requires not only taking a nation which has blood hunters already, but generally requires a pretender with at least 4 blood as well.

For ease of development, I'd rank them:

1. Death
2. Water
3. Earth
4. Nature
5. Fire
6. Air
7. Astral
8. Blood

Oddly enough though, that may put higher priorities for placement on the God for the more difficult developing paths.

For "early game", which for this purpose I am arbitrarily defining as "how well can you supplement your army with Level 3 Research and worse", I would have to rate it:

1. Blood *
2. Nature
3. Death
4. Water
5. Air
6. Fire
7. Earth
8. Astral

*: Although, that can be misleading. While certainly the Blood Summons at Levels 1-3 are amazing, they are also almost unreachable for many nations and require a kick to your economy you may not be able to support if you actually use them in the early game. Still, Fiends of Darkness are so much better than Cave Drakes that it isn't funny.

Note also that national summons can throw that WAY off. And that things develope at different speeds. If you intend to jump to an Enchantment of 5 or 6 quickly an Earth/Air setup or a Water/Death setup is a very strong army supplementation. Seriously, what army wouldn't be made stronger with the inclusion of Gargoyles?

-Frank

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Vine ogres never made anybody automatically win. They were cost-effective meat shields and nothing else. Anybody who lost to an army of vine ogres would have lost to any competent player, using any powerful strategy. A single bane lord with a blood thorn, charcoal shield, lucky pendant and jade armour would have been enough to kill 50+ vine ogres in a single battle, and a failure to field such a unit to deal with an army of vine ogres is the fault of the losing player, not game balance. Now, thanks to a doubling of their gem cost, they are barely cost-effective. Bizarrely, lamias, which were already the best nature summon, have been made cheaper.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Lamia Queens are much harder to get, though, and they summon more Lamias, so that makes Lamias somewhat less cost-effective than they would have been in DomII.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

What do you mean - "no longer starve"? I thought I saw the starvation message in Dom3. Do you mean - they no longet get desease from starvation in dom3?

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

I think he means that his armies haven't starved (severely) yet.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

I can testify that armies still starve, and get diseased, and other afflictions as well. What seems to have changed is the effectiveness of the Enormous Cauldron and Endless Bag - or is it just me?

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Its just that troops are much more common and supplies more plentiful than dom2, so in comparison to dom2 the +supply items aren't that good. That's how I see it anyway http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Yeah, seems like they should've been boosted so they'd still seem worthwhile, given the increased supplies available, since one of them might have doubled how many troops you could have in a province in Dom2, and only allows 20% more troops now.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

No, starvation is alot more rare in Dom3, well in Dom2 it was fairly common. In Dom2 when embarking on a war u had to plan yr logistics correctly, equip supply items so yr army avoided starvation and disease. In Dom 3 u can just wing it, I have fought lots of wars across lots of maps now and lack of supply/disease no longer stops yr army in its tracks even when a enemy raises unrest or adopts scorched earth policy.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

They were. The Bag of Wine produces 50 supply instead of 25. All the supply items are worth double to go with the new larger expected army size.

That means a good marching army no longer needs 8+ Bags of wine, but can instead do it on more like 4 or 5.

-Frank

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

It sure seems as though supplies are so plentiful that a good marching army can do with zero bags of wine. Maybe my games just haven't yet hit a point where folks can muster up 500+ strong armies.

The supply boost really hurts Agartha. At first glance, one Agarthan advantage is that they do not need supply. So it seems like it should be a good plan to take a bunch of heat and death scales, to hinder any invading army that does need to eat. But those Agarthan provinces *still* have 300+ supply points.

Supply trouble depends on who you are...
 

...ex. if you're playing the Dreamlands with high dominion, you'll acquire hordes of really, really lousy freespawn that still eat as much as far more useful troops.

Of course, since they're freespawn, you might not actually care that they starve -- but if you have real troops backing them up, you may want enough supply because you can't guarantee that it'll be the freespawn who starve twice in a row and get diseased.

And also where you are, of course. Wandering through the former territory of the Ashen Empire, you'll still want supply items.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

I've found it's only a problem in wastelands and swamps, and even then only if you don't have swamp or wasteland survival. Most other provinces have plenty of supplies. It's not as much of an issue at all, but it hurts if you're not prepared.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

This "analysis" ignores the fact that vine ogres can be buffed, and do not operate in a magic-support-free vacuum. In Dom2, Vine Ogres were absurdly underpriced. Calculate the number of gems spent on that Bane Lord, and then calculate the number of hitpoints possesed by an army of Vine Ogres on which an equal number of gems was spent.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

If the person lost a battle because of mage support, then they lost it because of mages, not because of vine ogres. It's also not like there's a useful battlefield wide buff spell other than mist warriors and arrow fend for vine ogres.

Easy. 10 death gems for the bane lord, 20 slaves for the blood thorn (The equivalent of about 5-10 normal gems), 5 pearls for the luck pendant, 5 water and 5 earth for the jade armour, 5 earth and 5 fire for the charcoal shield. That's a grand total of 40-45 gems for the bane lord, or 80-90 vine ogres and 40 mage turns to summon them.

Those vine ogres have two fist attacks and a protection of 5, so they cause themselves 11 damage each turn they attack, and the bane lord causes 34 damage per turn. Over the course of the battle, the bane lord will kill 25 vine ogres by himself. The charcoal shield takes five turns to kill one, but since up to 16 will surround the bane lord, you can expect him to kill up to a maximum of about 160 vine ogres given optimum placing.

I've seen what fireshield does to vine ogres. On a dragon that's currently at F7 the shield killed 50 vine ogres well before the 50 turn limit. I also know from first hand experience that sea trolls, which are better meat shields than vine ogres will die to a similarly equipped ice devil.

Vine ogres were one of the few early research summons that had actual use, despite their expense, throughout the game, which is hardly a bad thing.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Mass protection and/or regen make vine ogres alot more survivable and weapons of sharpness (would it work even though they only have fists?) could make them deadly if they hit.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Mass protection only raises their protection to 10 as vine ogres don't wear armour, and makes them 25% susceptible to fire, so that's only a small boost. Mass regeneration is enchantment 8, so you pretty much deserve to have such a powerful spell by the time you research it. Weapons of sharpness is E5 which limits its access to only a few nations. Although to be fair, there are a couple of nations that have access to both N3 and E3 mages. However, I'd rather not spend 23 gold a turn to summon two vine ogres with a Pan.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

You could always play an earth heavy nation and take nature on your pretender (he could then summon vine kings to summon vine ogres and lead them)

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Because it's not always possible to use normal archers when advancing into enemy lines... disease, gold, morale, food supplies. Also not every nation has access to fire mages which can provide their archers with fire arrows.
On the same note not every nation can acquire the undead archers easily.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Units still starve in DOM_3 yet not as often because supplies are in greater number.

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

Talking of lamia queens...

What is their bonus to cast lamias? +1? +2? more?

Some EA pans may have N5...

Re: Best - worse magic paths
 

They used to get +2 and it still says so in the desc. Pan has no problems summoning the queens (you need to empower a Pan in death in EA, though), but you might as well use the Panii to summon the Lamias, since in Dom3 the queens cost a bunch and don't even start with the required nature levels (you need some luck with randoms or pathboosters --> easier and more effective to use a Pan). Maybe if the queens could call Lamias without using the ritual...At current gem costs they're just so not worth it, imo.