Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Hello everyone, and thank you for helping me out so far! This is a very nice game and what seems to be a very nice community too!

Here is where I will put my final question, which is a bit longish. And because I actually have one new one, I will try not to post new threads, but keep everything here (which will make it harder for other people to find stuff they want using "search",w hich I have found very helpful in my lurking so far!).

- AI: I am strange, but I like SP games where I dont have to worry about the clock, where I dont have to worry about disappointing fellow players by being sub-optimal, etc. So of course I would like to have a challenging AI. Obviously, the AI here can never be good, and I do not expect it to be so, because there are simply too many things to do, no AI can evaluate all that. But I think it could be better at at least some things, and I was wondering if you had any ideas if these things could be done perhaps in a mod or a patch?
The AI prefers to buy and summon lots of really weak stuff instead of fewer more powerful units. Why? Can't it buy or summon something nice?
The AI does sometimes spend money on temples, but it often leaves these unprotected and goes off to odd provinces in its nation's interior (for no reason, it seems -- I scout!!) -- it seems to have no priorities on where to attack or defend.
The AI either builds no forts or spams them, sometimes in every province it has -- but then it misses out on its administration bonuses, right? Doesnt it make sense to have at least some distance between forts?
The AI often has huge armies, but still sends out very small ones led by its prophet, which then gets killed easily. Can "protect the prophet" somehow be scripted?

- Rout: Do I understand rout correctly that it makes sense to have bigger squads instead of lots of smaller squads?

- Finding Stuff: Even after only a couple of dozen turns, I have huge armies going. Sometimes, I will have two-dozen commanders in one provience, going different places too. Many of these commanders look alike. Sometimes, I often want to make sure Commander 1 is protected, and Commander 2 casts certain spells (because he has certain stuff), and one commander is leading the funky troops, but another only has bodyguards, etc. -- but when I hit "t", I have to scroll down so long to find the commander, that I often forget who is which. I have not been able to find a way to access a commanders battle orders from the "Examine Commander" (right clicking on him in a provence) screen -- is there a way? Could that be added into a patch? In that screen, the one where you get the details on a commander, the one where you can hit "r" to rename (good idea! Even if sadly all my commanders have boring names now, like "Astral 3" and "Fire Gem Bob"), if you could hit "t" there and access his battle orders and see if that was the guy who was leading what kind of troops again? That would be SO HELPFUL!!!!

Well thank you very much and best to everyone

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Well, when the AI spams forts it increases its income, so it's positive. And it always spam forts, apart when it's dead broke poor.(usually due to death 3 scales)

The bigger a squad, the better, but even AI's do attack rear sometimes, so guard your flanks !

It doesn't really matter were a temple is, temple checks are 'transfered' when a region is fully converted.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

AI are good enough with huge conventional armies not requiring finesse. Think LA Ermor (though I don't like LA). Setting such nations as opponents coud be more challenging... Also, fewer AI players per map seem more dangerous as they gain momentum before you meet them, not grind each other to impotency. I prefer Impossible/Random setting, but Agressive AIs may be more dangerous. There is also a possibility to edit maps so that opponents get, say, particular Pretenders.
Rout: Yes.
Finding: I don't know a way. Renaming is helpful, and joining commanders into groups also, but... Another thing useful in this regard is to save mages' scripts - also not a panacea, of course. :(

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

I've wondered about this, but never actually looked into it: Is the AI and its decision-making modable at all? (aside from the hacks that prevent it from buying hundreds of militia by making them cost 800 gold each). Would it be possible to build an AI that "understood" gearing, thugs, scale selection, and so on, given a dedicated enough modder, or is the AI logic not available for us to change?

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Check out the Better Independents mod.

There are a couple of versions, but the intent is to keep the AI from building the worst troops, by making them cost-prohibitive.

It does seem to work.

There is no real modding access to the AI decision making. It's been suggested before, but would probably involve a fairly serious rewrite so it's not likely.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

There are no AI rewriting tools available.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

I would say contrary to what many people will tell you, the AI can't manage large armies of ordinary troops either. I've had 1v1 games with the AI where it's had tens of thousands of troops, with no shortage of leaders, all milling around in massive armies deep in its territory, yet it still only attacks with drips and drabs of maybe 10% of its total force. When you attack you'll run into these troops eventually, but it can't really use them to mount offense.

That said, the AI is functional given that dom3 is a MP game primarily.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Thank you!
One more question, and some follow-up questions, thanks in advance.

AI: This better AI mod, where can I find it? I would be happy to install it if people think it is koscher.

Have the developers / producers indicated any updates to AI in (future) patches, e.g. protect the prophet, etc.?

Another thing I noticed is that the AI often has really odd pretender designs (bad synergy, weird bless choices, counterproductive scales, odd semi-rainbow imprisoned immobiles, etc...) -- Wrana said you can "edit the map" to get the AI to use good pretenders; I don't understand that. Can anyone help me, or is that for advanced people only?

Stuff: Could a button which lets you see/edit a commander's battle orders (the "t" screen for a commander) when you have that commander "open" be added into a patch?

New Question!:

- Area of Effect (Range): The manual states in a number of places the area of effect that certain things like Fear etc. have as a range in squares. Example: P. 57, "The base area of effect (Fear +0) is 6 squares.", or "so a Standard +8 raises the morale of units by 1 withing an 8-square area of effect". I'm confused. Intuitively, I would have thought that an "area of effect of X squares" means just that: that whatever effect lands in X squares, 6 or 8 or whatever as the case may be. Let's call this Interpretation 1. But another interpretation, let's call it Interpretation 2, which would actually make much more sense to me but I am unsure of the English, would be to treat the "X squares" as a radius, e.g. if you have Fear +0 your fear effect radiates out 6 squares in each direction. Because if it wouldnt be Interpretation 2, how do you count the squares? I mean: All adjacent squares to any unit would be 9, so which 6 would Fear +0 affect if Interpretation 1 is correct?
So in short: Interpretation 1, 2, or something else?

THank you so much.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Well, as I understand it the AI creates its gods randomly.
One simple solution without mapmaking is to start the game with all players human and design the gods yourself. Then set all nations that you want to be controlled by AI to AI.
There's also a "semirandom" program by ballbarian which helps, can't say for sure what it does though, never used it myself.

About the area: I'm quite sure it's not the radius, but indeed 6 squares means six squares. Where these are exactly is random except for the one square that was targeted (and the fact that the squares have to be next to each other) - hence bless for example often misses larger groups of sacreds despite 100 precision.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

There's range, and area of effect.

Range is how far something can happen - 25 squares is 25 squares from the source.

Area of Effect is slightly different, I think it means that it affects a certain number of squares within a certain area of the centre of effect. So for instance a spell or effect with AoE 6 will hit 6 squares, but precisely what squares are hit may vary - it could be six of a block of nine (the central square and randomly 5 of the 8 surrounding the central one). But someone else might be able to explain better.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Thank you. Here are some more, including followups:

AoE: Ohboy, thank you, that is weaker than I thought. So how do you get Banners, for example from commanders with items or innate abilities, to actually help? Even a +10 banner will have to be adjacent to troops to help then, he must literally be mixed in with the troops to give the morale bonus, how do you get him to stick around, the "stay behind troops" command seems to have him in the rear...?

Prophets: According to the manual, assigning a prophet increases holy power by 1 or gives it 3, whichever is highter. So it almost seems like a "waste" to assign a H1 or H2 priest to be prophet, unless there is some good reason for it -- so it makes sense to make some tough guy or sneaky guy or mage a prophet too -- right?
I havent yet played a nation with H3 priests, which could then become H4 if prophets -- but I don't really see the point. It could cast that battlefield-wide version of Sermon of Courage (forget name) and the weaker version of Smite -- but is that worth it? I often see my current H3 prophets casting Sermon of Courage over and over again, often on what looks like to be the same troops, despite the fact that the manual says it can only work one time -- because the prophet doesnt have much else to do, after blessing, besides casting Smite. Is there anything inherently good about H4 that I do not understand?

Thank you all!

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

H4 is not a lot to write home about, unless you are fighting undead, blood sacrificing etc.

Tough guys will often benefit from a bless: Additional strength, mr, hits etc. Be aware it *also* means your tough guy will take penalties fighting in enemy dominion.

And, the occassional anti-sacred spell will now work against you- like ermor's heresy, or ulm's halt sacred.

If you search the threads, you will find templates for the for spell effects.

As for standards, yeah it helps to have them stuck in the middleish - and standards are slightly better than fear in that standards raise the morale +1 without a save required.

Of course.. fail the save and your whole army could run away with fear...

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Thank you!
How do you keep your standards in the middle of things? My commanders either have to hold and attack or stay behind everyone, how do you keep yours in the middle of the frightened troops?

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Put them behind a block of troops and set them to hold one turn longer than the troops, then attack (the same target as the troops).

So if your troops are hold then attack closest, you'd set the commander behind them to hold,hold,hold,attack closest

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

About the repeated Sermon of Courage castings. The spell hits random squares (well, the first square is 100 precision and will always hit the target, but all subsequent sqares are randomly placed around it). So there is most likely 1 or more squares of troops missed. You can veryify this by looking through your troops and seeing that while many (maybe most) have the better morale, not all do.

This applies to all AoE spells with an AoE > 1 (the Mass xxxx spells), so don't expect them to hit all of whatever your force is in one casting, even though it should be large enough to cover them.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Thats not exactly true. At least its not my understanding of true.

They don't hit random squares. They hit a predetermined pattern.

Additionally, it is my belief that the the AI casts to maximize results. It may miss, but it still attempts.


So what I am saying is suppose you were casting Mass X.


The template is


7 1
6 02 4
3
5 9

Edit: Ruined by ascii graphics, but I was making it up anyway).
(I'm making that up). If you were to position single individual troops in that exact pattern you would get a hit every time precision wasn't missed.

Seems like way too much work tho

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

When taking over independents, what is the best method?

Last night I attempted to play a game, with Nief (Sorry not sure about their full names yet). Sent my scout running outwards just to get a feel for what was around me.

Then I sent 3 armies out and about knocking off independents.

Normally with 6 (guys that turn into big werewolfs?)
Just an aside, how do I make them into werewolfs from the start? It normally requires them to get pissed off before they change.

So I am expanding lovely, then C'tis and some Caelum (sp?) are coming at me from both the top and bottom. I send my troops into the C'tis fortress and seige the thing, my god that takes forever, even longer when you don't know how to enter the gates.

My main problem is, I keep losing my other provinces, I will take one and lose one. My troops keep having problems with starvation as well, how can I fix that? Is there a trick to taking over independents?

Is it best to take the ones closest to your home first, then slowly work your way out?

Normally playing games very aggressively, I just rushed out and started attacking. I killed the C'tis god and they said they would do everything to stop me, does this mean I killed his pretender? How can I completely destroy the C'tis?

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Better Independents v2.1 thread

Read the thread to get an idea of what the mod does. If you read the mod files in a text editor, they are extensively commented and the logic is laid out. I guarantee you the AI armies will be tougher when you use that mod. It was born out of my own frustration with generic AI hordes and does force them to use more national units.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

There is no one best method that works for taking out independents for all nations, each nation has its own methods that work best for it. Niefelheim, using your example, is a classic bless nation and is usually played using blessed units to expand. That doesn't mean they can't be played effectively in other ways however.

Commanders that turn into werewolves have an ability to shape change in their action menu on the strategic screen (the same menu you tell commanders to do research from). I hope you understand what I mean by that because it might be hard for me to explain. Anyway, if you tell them to shape change there they will be in werewolf form before the battle. HOWEVER if you were talking about the skinshifters rather than skratti, then you can't start them in werewolf form - they must be "killed" first.

When you're sieging castles, you must first break down the walls. You'll get a message to that effect at the start of the turn. Then you open the action window thing for the commanders sieging the fort and change their orders to "storm castle".

I have found that when playing against the ai, it is really in your best interests to try to hold the smallest line of provinces bordering them possible and slowly grind their armies down through attrition while you build up enough armies to strike out at them while maintaining a solid defensive line. Unfortunately, since armies can pass through each other without fighting, in order to ensure that the AI does not get an army through you it's necessary to have another army behind your front line armies following them up. That said, what qualifies as an army can vary significantly. It may be that you can kill an AI army with one man, which makes the whole process much simpler. Also if you have more mobile armies it is less necessary to hold such a rigid line as you can quickly backpedal or move up fresh units to surround and destroy the ai army. There are also some tricks you can use to make yourself a less attractive target for the ai to attack, such as having decent pd on your borders with them, and having a high army count. However for general purposes both of those things are somewhat counterproductive.

There are a few ways to deal with starvation. First, make smaller armies :P You could also take growth scales, and your temperature scales affect provincial supply levels as well. You could build magic items that increase supplies in the province (all nature items, the sword requires earth too though). After that, your only options are units that don't need to eat or increasing the game's supply levels on game creation. It's usually a good idea to do this anyway when playing sp since the computer is highly skilled at causing its armies to starve under normal settings.

The way that usually gets the most provinces is to expand into the weakest indies first while taking provinces adjacent to your capitol when possible. Taking the ones adjacent to your capitol is helpful because it gives you extra resources to recruit troops with.

Yes you killd C'tis' pretender, but he can come back and probably will sooner than you'd think. You can kill C'tis by taking all his provinces and forts or by preaching away all of his dominion. Being super-aggressive can be hard to pull off against the ai because it's so good at swarming you with units and will cause issues in your backfield. Against players it's more possible, but risky.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Cheers for your help, I find that when I go all out against the AI, then I get two or three of them coming to attack me from all fronts. I may have to rethink my SP rushing.

I think the main things I need to learn at the moment is a proper scripting for my armies. Then how to equip my units with magical items and how to properly search for magic.

There is just so much information to know.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Not sure why this happens, but when I minimise Dom and leave it for an extended length of time it stops responding.

It is rather annoying as I constantly multi task and I come back to the game and lose all my previous turns.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

I've not had any problem running it in windowed mode, so you could try that.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

I will give that a shot when I get home, that should work.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

I always play in windowed mode, it helps switching.
One thing I cannot get to work is the page up and page down buttons during battle replays. I only have a laptop and only have p-u´p and p-down buttons on the "numpad" section. Is there a trick for laptop users?

Thank you, Edi!
I will check that out as soon as I start a new game.
Do many people use this for MP too?
I was tinking of installing CBM too since many people seem to have that installed default for MP games ... or am I being too rash?
THank you very much!

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

CBM is very popular in mp these days. Only a few games start without it. So yeah, it would probably be a good idea to get cbm if you intend to play much mp.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

THank you! OK I'm trying it now.

One more question: Isn't being a water mage supposed to allow you to be able to breathe underwater? I cant seem to get my pythium archtheurg underwater!

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

No. It was in Dom2, but not since then.
Water mages can forge items that let them (or others) go underwater and some of them are amphibious, but just having water magic is not sufficient.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Thank you! I must have read the wrong stuff then.

Well I started a new game with CBM and Better Independents, and am liking it. Fun! Some new questions however:

- Luck: The very first province I conquered had that site I found with my ArchTheurg whose name I forget but it lets you recruit sages and lore masters. Wow! I seem to have a huge advantage! Luck seems to play a really prominent role in this game, more so than in others I know. Is there any consensus on this as to how to deal with that?

- Blood and Magic: I'm not really sure I know what to do with Pangea MA, they have some great stealthy troops, but only two real mages, both really expensive, and one has B3. I suppose I miss the magic point, I am overwhelmed by the number of spells and what they do, so I simply build troops (I understand that!) and let the mages pretty much decide on their own. But what's that black Pan guy supposed to do? He costs a fortune, and I have to use him for blood hunting to even get anything to do with his magic powers. And I get some ok summons for that, eventually, but until then, I seem to waste a lot on getting slaves, and I cant really use him in battle. What am I getting wrong?
Here's another thing I dont understand about magic. I scripted my ArchTheurgs to cast some things like air shield and personal luck etc., and then they usually cast smite and things like that, very nice -- until I saw a few of them disappeaering suddenly -- and dying at the end of the battle. I watched the replays closely, and oddly enough, my little old men seem to be doing just fine -- until the enemy routs! Then they cast "blink", teleport themselves into the middle of the routing enemy, and get bashed to bits. NO NO NO! WHY!?!? They could have cast anything else, even the low-level-spell "Bruise My Own Shins", they can smoke cigarettes or have a nap for all I care, but why must they do that? What can I do about it, it happens frequently now?

- Communion: I researched Thaum1 to get C-Master and C-Slave, sounds nice for Pythium. Seems to work as expected, except that I do not see the power of my mages increase. When I click on their avatar in the middle of battle, their paths are still the same as at the beginning. Is there a trick?

Thank you in advance again!

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Oh sorry one last one:
- disease: I made an assassin my prophet (he has the most stealth in Pythium) and sent him off to indy lands to preach. But around turn 12 or 15 or so, he got a disease, and soon died! I know there was no C'tis in that game, and he was never in battle -- how can that happen?!?

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

There are magic sites that will disease units in the same province. You may have fallen foul of one of them.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Hi all,

A quick question on assasination : if I set an assassin on 'assasinate' on a province where lies a stealthy ennemy commander (a scout for instance), will the assasination occur ?

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

You can't use an assassin to assassinate an enemy unit that is hiding or sneaking.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

this is sad :(

so the only ways to kill a stealthy commander are :
- patrolling the province (must own the province though) and hope I will find him.
- kill him if he is imprudent enough to reveal himself to fight.

:doh:

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

You can also use Mind Hunt to kill commanders that are sneaking or hiding.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Blood: Blood magic is not usually battle magic. It's more useful to forge items and summon creatures. The blood Pans are expensive to use for blood hunting, but even a few of them hunting can bring in far more slaves than you will have gems of other types. Forge and give them Sanguine Dowsing Rods to bring in more. Then start summoning. For troops, Demon Knights work well with Pangaea. Forging Blood Stones brings in more Earth gems and boosts your Pans earth magic. Experiment. Many of the high end blood summons can be turned into SCs.

Magic: There's not much you can do to control what your mages cast after the script runs out. It sounds like what's happening is that when the enemy retreats, they get out of range of any attack spells your Theurgs have and they've already cast the available buff spells. Since their orders are to cast, they cast blink. If you research longer range spells for them, they'll probably stop. Or battlefield summons. My air mages love to cast phantasmal warrior after their scripts run out.


Communion: Path increases due to communions aren't shown. If the slaves are getting fatigue when the masters cast, it should be working fine.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

OK thank you! Not doing well with Blood yet, will leave that for a bit right now. ANd you were right -- my mages stopped casting Blink once I researched some better stuff. THanks!

I can't seem to find a document I stumbled on last week -- I am pretty sure it is not that Dom3DB xl spreadsheet I find easily, but it was a spreadsheet that "merely" listed all of the nations and their national units. I think it may have had pretenders there too. It was grouped according to nations. I cannot seem to find it, and my searches are sadly turning up that DomDB. Does anyone know what I mean and where I can find it? Thank you!!

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

It's entirely possible that there is another document with this info, but you can find it in the "Army List" tab of Edi's Dom3 DB spreadsheet (the search result that is turning up for you). See the "Units" and "Commanders" columns.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

No, sorry, that is not what I meant. I saw those sections, and it is not what I mean -- those list the unit numbers for the nations, not an overview of those units' stats. What I had seen was also color-coded, a slightly different color for each nation, and I think the whole spreadsheet only had 3 tabs or so. I hope I am not mistaken and what I had seen was for Dominions 2.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Sunray's site has a version like you describe for Dom3, but it's several patches out of date.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

I think I found that now, thank you Edi.
I have this CBM installed now, so everything is different anyway. I am not sure I like the CBM, even though I am certain it is great for everyone -- seems to make summoning much more powerful, so that national troops are less important. But maybe I need to play more!

I made three games, one with each Era, each with all nations, so that I can go in and hit "r" and see what everyone has. What confuses me is that R'lyeh has exactly the same setup for MA and LA -- or is my game screwed up?

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Play with LA R'lyeh for a while. It is different.

I think the recruitables are the same. (Or at least very close.)

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

CBM is awesome, promise. I would say that rather than making summons dominate, it makes the earlier summons worth considering summoning. In base game it's very disappointing to save up and spend 8 gems on a single drake. Even with CBM summons should only be a small part of your armies though (until very late in the game when national troops and cheap summons both go out of the window and are replaced by big beasties).

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

ok thank you!
What does "insanity" actually do?

Another question: I am playing a first time with MA Abysia - fun! But what's the deal with the national summons? If I see right, they get some interesting ghost men thingies at conjuration 2, I think -- cost 5 death gems. But I can't cast that. I don't think I can even get a random death pick on warlocks (at least ive never gotten one). I suppose I *could* design a pretender around being able to cast that spell (I chose an air and earth titan), and make him search for death gems, but that just seems weird -- or is that what everyone does, what you are supposed to do with MA Abysia?

One last one: A lot of those mages are Old. Just like those Pythium guys. It doesn't say that explicitly in the manual -- only that the older you get, the weaker -- but the old ones seem to collect these aweful diseases and other handicaps (like mute!). Is that from old age? Is there a way to figure out who has a chance of getting what when, and something to do about it?
Thank you!

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Insanity is a chance that the commander will do one of a bunch of random acts on a given turn, and you won't be able to give it orders. They can do things like preach, become prophets, pillage or some random off the wall thing that has no real effect.

If you want to cast spells like that you may have to have the paths on your pretender, or you may be able to empower find enough death gems over the course of a game to empower someone to be able to cast the spell.

It is due to old age. You can reduce the chance for them to acquire afflictions by having a growth scale, or by casting certain spells that lower the caster's age. There are also items that prevent commanders from aging so they don't become old. You can't specifically tell who is likely to be afflicted, it will happen randomly to old people.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Insanity is a percentage chance that the unit will ignore any orders you give it for a turn and do something random. When they do their picture will turn red and their random order will be already selected for them. Insane units will not randomly decide to move.

For most nations the insane orders are stuff that doesn't do anything (stuff like "F'taghn!" and "Stargazing"). For R'lyeh (whose dominion spreads insanity) they will execute real orders, but rarely to any effect (a non-magic path commander attempting to site-search). Occassionally R'lyeh will get multiple prophets this way (you can search the forums for more information on this).

Finally, I have read that tartarians are insane and do some interesting things, but I have never really experimented with them so I am not at all sure.


Question 2: Most nations have national spells. Some of these can be cast be the national mages, some can be cast with a little help, and some require luck/empowerment/pretender paths as you mentioned. You can try a test game and summon these to see if they are worth it, but I doubt it unless you can figure out other ways of leveraging those paths on your pretender (maybe summoning more death mages to really start your foray into death magic, though you would have to balance it against your blood and fire and astral magic as well).


Question 3:
You can search the forums for information about old age. Some short points:

Age advances at the end of every late winter by one year.

Old age causes new afflictions every late winter along with other stat modifications.

Afflictions from old age can only be cured by the Chalice (N4? Construction 8 unique item) and the Gift of Health global (N4, Ench 6?).

The spell Rejuvanation (Blood school 6? , B3?, ritual requires 10 slaves) reduces age by 10 (enough rituals will remove old age). The boots of youth (Constr 6? B? item) stops aging and new afflictions from old age.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Thank you! Perfect. Do you know what the % chance is? Does it depend on something else?

That seems odd to have to have a pretender to cast national summons, I will have to try later on that then. Thank you!

Are you saying Growth scales help protect against old age symptoms? I didnt know that! Do you know the %chance to help? Nothing like that in the manual!

The manual also says that when fatigue goes over 100, you fall unconscious. I have been watching battles quite a bit and I do not see any effect of this. I have some mages with 140 fatigue, and some non-mages too (like normal human priests caught up in Abysian heat), and they don't seem bothered by it -- still unchanged defense and attack stats etc. Wouldnt you expect defense to be lowered if unconscious? Or did I misread something?

THank you!

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

Are you asking about the percent chance to get an affliction from old age? No I do not, though it would appear the chance for contracting disease is calculated seperately from other afflictions (uner growth I tend to get a variety of afflictions, but under death they all seem to be disease, unless that is just silly pattern-seeing). From my experience (I normally play at least growth 1 for old age nations) about 1 in 10 old mages get wound each winter. I think under death 3 that number rises to more like 1 in 4.

As for getting spells, it is *possible* to get another mage to do that (at the very least alchemy/empowerment can get you into anything), the opportunity cost is normally too high (the exceptiong is lucking into independant mages with the paths you want).

Effects of fatigue are not shown on the unit's stat page. They are:

-1 attack for every x fatigue lost (I think it is 20?)

-1 defense for every x fatigue lost (I think it is 10?)

+x% chance to receive a "critical hit" (a hit that is considered AP even when the weapon isn't - melee only?)
I am not sure what the percentage, but tests have shown it to grow very quickly. That is why fatigue is a large concern for any thug/SC that has any reliance on protection.

After 100 fatigue the unit falls unconscious, meaning they don't move or attack or cast spells. Units lose 5 fatigue per turn while unconscious (in addition to any other reinvig they might have) and so will normally wake up eventually, unless the enemy continues to hit them with fatigue-inducing spells.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

The percentage chance for an insane commander acting up on any given turn is shown if you hover the mouse over the insanity icon. You'll see insane(x), where x is the % chance.

Some national summons are arguably there more for flavour than utility, btw.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

A small note on the Smoulder Ghosts - they are useful, but don't waste empowering or a pretender on them. Abysia gets a few national heroes which have both fire and death, so if you want them Luck is your best bet to help your chances. They are also important as Fire + Death gives you Skulls of Fire, a great fire booster at construction 6. If you get no national heroes that is potentially worth empowering for at some stage, though of course you want to find a death caster of some sort and empower with fire, rather than the other way around

Old age is a major hassle for abysia. If you plan to get a lot of warlocks I recommend growth 3, and potentially a nature 4 bless so you can shroud them if diseases. If you don't wish to invest in growth minimise the number of warlocks you recruit and rely on demonbreds.

Re: Final Newbie Question (or compilation of questions!)
 

In the long run the cure for old age with Abysia is Boots of Youth, not growth or nature bless.