Indy commanders with magic items
 

Just bought the game a few days ago, one of the best game purchases I've ever made I'd say... Anyway I'm a noob so bear with me:)

Am I just being unlucky, or is looting items from indy commanders not happening. And if it's not happening, is it a bug?

Annoys me to lose my pretender + two other commanders + countless of troops to a 2x cyclops indy province. And one of them was wielding a +50 forge bonus 2h hammer - which I didn't get after the fight:/

So is it a bug, intentional, or bad luck?

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

It is essentialy very bad luck. There is a proportionnal chance to get magic items, it is related to the power of the magic item. Only the cursed items are always found.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

The chances of looting an item are based on its rarity and I think the same no matter who carried the item. The item you mentioned is an artifact so you should had a big chance of looting it (I think 80%), and probably very bad luck. Note that looting an item if all your present commanders can't equip it is also impossible (so a 2 hander can't be looted if all the remaining commanders have a 1 or 2 hand weapon).

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Aye, I was considering the possibility of being full slots-wise. But I checked and I had at least two commanders left that could have wielded it.

So the indies DO drop their magic items, and I've just had bad luck is all? Okies...

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Oh, and by the way.

Are there many kinds of indie provinces with extreme defenses like that? I've seen that particular province in two different games, but I don't recall seeing anything coming even close to the destructive power of those two cyclopses...

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

No that sort of defence is very rare on the standard map.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Some indies are pretty tough, but it is usually in relation to your nation. If I am playing SP without Ermor and then get a Indy 9 of undead, I may not have the right armies to take them. I have noticed the Indies have more variety and decent mages than in Dom II, which is a nice touch.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

There are few special provinces with special defenders. Usually it's just an Adept of Pyriphlegaton (Fire mage), few Abysian Infantriess and perhaps a Salamander or two, but few that guard unique items are usually tougher. The report will be pretty clear in those cases.

Here's a short list of some more common province types that are tougher to take, or have worse enemies:
Knights and Longbowmen, Elephants (with militia and slingers), Dark Vines (with some Bloodhenge Druids), Shark Knights, Amber Clan Tritons... and Devils. If you see Devils in an independent province, be afraid! Soul Contract the item gives one devil per turn. If an independent commander starts with it, the province will be FULL of Devils. Flying, trident-wielding, nasty Devils.
Because events can now afffect independent provinces, it's theoretically possibly for them to be affected by events. Independent attackers that would take control of your province join its original defenders. If Knights and/or Barbarians have joined forces with units that don't fit the theme, the provinces can be very hard to take. Also, beware Bogus the Troll. He attacks randomly, and he and his merry men have devastated many armies indeed.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

When commanders rout into a dead end (die after routing), are their items gone for good?

And isn't that the case every time an independent commander routs?

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Yeah, they have to actually be killed on the field.

If they get away, you don't get their stuff.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Hardest one I have run into so far was a lich, wearing a crown I've never seen before that let him create mummies.

I wasted so many troops on him just to try and get that crown for myself ><

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

For some reason I always thought that it made a difference that you had commanders near them when they died. I havent tested it, it just seemed that combat commanders that charged in had better results than the ones that stayed behind. Or maybe I just wanted it to work that way.

Anyway, I often had mounted commanders or flying commanders set to attack rear when I knew there was a magic item I wanted.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

I dont think being near them helps but flying/mounted units have a better chance of catching and killing them before they flee the battle. As endo said if you see a province with devils it probably has a soul contract so, if you plan on evert taking it do it asap (on bigger maps ive had to fight indys with 100+ devils)

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

That is probably Amon Hotep, an artifact crown.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Nah. It's Katafagus the Lich, and his crown is named after him. Amon Hotep is nicer, at least for a mage (MR -and- Invulnerability in a head slot -- saves body slot for rainbow armor, robe of shadows, Calius, souls, what have you, robe of the archmage if you're feeling lucky http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif).

Those Cyclops... that hammer was the Hammer of the Cyclops, and it's unique -- but there IS a unique forgeable 2-hd hammer with the same forge bonus. No, you don't get free forging if you give both hammers to a Nataraja mage.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Alternate path: use Charm. Preserves their commander status, and therefore their inventory... so long as they survive the battle. Not the longest range and you need to beat the MR check, of course.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

and you need to kill any pesky troops in the way without them routing...

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

You should. The chance of that happening is so rare and epic, indeed, it would make sense. I think someone who manages to get a Nataraja, and Hammer of the Cyclops and a
Hammer of the Forge Lords altogether deserves a unit that can create free items every turn. It's not like it would guarantee a win; it's just the same as a supplemental gem income. In fact, it's not economically different than having both items and giving them to two separate commanders except that it would allow you to craft things when you have no gems.

=$=

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

No it wouldnt because no matter what forge bonus you have, you must pay atleast 1 gem per magic level required to forge the item iirc. And since you can wish for the hammer of the cyclops it isnt impossible to get both without indies so if it did allow you to forge items freely it would be imba and widely complained about.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

IIRC, in Dom2 a nataraja with the hammer of the cyclops and the hammer of the forge lord you forge any item for which your nataraja meets the requirements for 1 gem in each path the item needs. The only problem is that unless you have a nataraja pretender, you have to empower your nataraja an awful lot to be able to forge anything where the savings are truely meaningfull. I fail to see how it really all that imbalanced. A master smith with the hammer of the forge lord, earth boots, fire helmet, skull of flame and maybe another path booster or two, even without the forge of the ancients, still isn't that great. The only REALLY expensive items that can be forge again and agian are rings of wizardry (getting a fourty gem item for 10 gems isn't THAT much worse than getting it for 1 gem). Ok, maybe it would be nice to take an astral 9, four armed pretender, wish for BOTH of the hammers, and give all of your mages a ring of wizardry, but for thae many gems you wish for power, and cast arcane nexus, then go on a rampage accross the world. OK, you'd probably get petrified, but I don't really see how getting nearly free items is all that imbalanced.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Take a look at how cheaply you could make soul contracts.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

And then with that nexus up you could easily wish for both hammers and for magic power, forgeing practically any magic item in the game for free (soul contracts, rings of wizardry, artifacts ect). Alot of effort to put in (in a mid+ sized game youd only need the nexus up a few turns to do this) but getting practically free items is worth it (1 free soul contract per turn adds up)

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Forge Bonuses round in your favor. So having one guy with the Hammer of the Cyclops making a 25 gem item saves 13 gems. Having another character with the Hammer of the Forge Lord making another 25 gem item saves... 13 gems. So if you have one guy with both hammers make an item for free, that saves you 25 gems - 1 less gem than you would save if two forging mages were making items with a hammer each that turn.

So really, what's the deal?

Sure, you can make free Rings of Wizardry or something crazy, but so what? You're already using the Hammer of the Forge Lord and a Dwarven Hammer together - you're making those rings for 16 gems a piece (8 if you have the Forge of the Ancients, 6 if you have the Steel Ovens). Is it really that big a deal?

You're saving 16 gems, but you're tying up the Hammer of the Cyclops on your main guy, which means some other forger is going to have to settle for a Dwarven Hammer this turn. Your production of Skull Faces (or the like) is going to cost 18 gems instead of 12. Your production of Rings of Sorcery is going to cost 20 instead of 30. In short, while you are saving 16 gems a turn by making free Rings of Wizardry, you are also costing yourself 6-10 gems each turn.

So your grand master plan, which generally requires Construction 8, Alteration 9, and a heavily Astral four armed pretender (no four armed pretenders start with any Astral magic) is generating a total of 6 to 10 Astral Pearls a turn. And it cost over a 100 to set up. Is the fact that it can't be dispelled (only Wish stolen) enough to make it that much worse than Stellar Brilliance in terms of gem output?

---

Seriously, the only thing that justifies this is the "surprise" factor of being able to mass produce magic items that correspond to no magic type that you do. But honestly, by the time you have Contruction 8 and Alteration 9, I refuse to be surprised by anything an Astral character can bring to the field.

-Frank

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

But that one guy making items for free, if forging the same amount of items would save you 50 gems rather than 26.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Who gives a crap? You don't have unlimited time. In the same time that you could save 50 gems by having the Destroyer of Worlds make all your stuff you could have two ordinary recruitable mages use the same equipment and save you 52 gems - and put twice as much equipment in your lab.

In forging, as in everything else in this game, time is the limitting factor. In the long run, everyone will research through to level 9 in every path. Everyone will find magical gems sufficient to empower themselves up to level 9 in every path and even battle vestals wil die of old age. But that doesn't matter, because the game is over before it hits turn 200 even in the longest of games. 1 item a turn is nice, but in the big scheme of things it doesn't matter.

-Frank

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

You should probably use 40 gem items, since that's what you'll want to be forging.

You'll never reallyneed more than one ring of wizardry, so that's not a big deal. The thing that is a big deal is the ability to permanently boost your blood slave income by 7 per turn for every turn that you are forging items.

No, it's generating 7*n blood slaves per turn, where n is the number of turns that you've spent forging soul contracts. And since astral pearls are still evailable by the hundreds to the water nations, the cost in pearls becomes much less of an issue.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

By the time you can be doing this, Soul Contracts aren't worth 7 blood slaves per turn per turn.

You have level 9 spells, if you really cared about making Devils with blood magic, you'd make them with Infernal Forces, which comes with an army of imps and may very well be cast through Mount Chaining or even the Summoning Circle for a tremendous cost savings and the Devils come now instead of 7 turns from now which is a huge help.

No, if you want to make blood slaves with Forging, I suggest you make Dousing Rods. Each one increases the chance of your blood hunters successfully coming back with blood slaves, and it adds 1 to the number of blood slaves each comes back with. Those things are actually worth 2-3 slaves per turn.

Soul Contracts are great, but if you have the ability to Wish for unique magic items they aren't worth 7 slaves a turn - not even close.

-Frank

Re: Indy commanders with magic items
 

Soul contracts are _always_ worth 7 blood slaves per turn, because that's the cost of the devils. You can't build a strategy around a site that you'll probably never find such as mount chaining. On the other hand, you can build a strategy around dwarven hammers, because you can guarantee access to them.

The infernal forces spell only produces 7 devils per turn per B5F2 mage, so once you have seven soul contracts it becomes more mage time efficient to build another one instead of casting infernal forces. The mass summoning spells are for when you need the forces right now, soul contracts are an investment in the future growth of your nation.

Why on earth would you make a B1 item, an item that all of your blood hunters have had since the turn after you researched construction 4, with a mage that could be making a B5 item for 5 slaves? What kind of strategic advantage are you hoping to gain by forging dousing rods one at a time with your wished for, astral empowered, then magic power wish boosted Nataraja? Further, why do you really care that an item that would normally cost 40 gems now costs five gems instead of zero?

Soul contracts are always worth seven slaves per turn, because that's how much the devil they produce costs. They are the most cost efficient way to create devils, and they, along with the other gem producing items, are the (almost only) reason that forge of the ancients is a worthwhile spell. There's a reason that a wish for blood slaves is one of the best wishes you can make, and that's because it's much easier to turn that wish into an effective gem income than it is for many other wishes.

Re: Indy commanders with magic items