Basic Questions
 

Hey. Been playing the Dom2 demo. It's frighteningly good. Goodbye productivity ;(

If you make spells/items add/moddable this game could be perfect. The new MoM!!!


Several things I don't understand:

1. How do I end/speedup the replay of a battle?

I'm running a new amd2500+ with 1gig and 256mb 9600 pro card and it's still very slow. (fps is 60+, battles still take several minutes to resolve)

2. How do I get spells to hit targets? My megaearth Cyclopian pretender can't hit squat....do where the sprites land not matter?

2.5 Do mages/pretenders naturally gain magic levels, or is empowerment the only way to improve?

3. how high a magic proficiency do I need for a comprehensive site search? Is 5 enough, or does it go all the way to 9+?

4. Is there a random map generator? The 2 demo maps are haunting my dreams as is...

5. Is there anywhere to buy the full game retail, or is mail-order likely to be faster?

6. Is there any way to lock move orders so that I don't accidently change them while province scanning. I guess just become f1 obsessive, eh?

7. are domain effects detailed anywhere?


Thanks,

Rabe

Re: Basic Questions
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">and in one year, you wont have recovered from the game.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">you cant. My main problem with the game as of now.
<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">compared to dom1, accuracy has either not changed, or is lower. Thats why you will need to be closer to your enemy to hit them reliably, lest you will only cast nice fireworks in the sky.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">they wont gain anything with experience. You either need to empower (very rare, perhaps done 0 to 2 time in a game, if you can do this more often, then it means you are already rolling over the opposition). More frequent, is to give them items giving a bonus in a path.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">3 is sufficient to get 90+% of the sites.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">the full games will have more maps, and a fan made RMG is planed I think.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">the game is sold exclusively Online.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">you cant lock orders.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">dunno, but I dont think. Perhaps Sunray will have this one day.

hope it helps.

Re: Basic Questions
 

1. How do I end/speedup the replay of a battle?

Other than changing the graphic quality there is no way to change the speed of the battles. Its on the players wish list

2. How do I get spells to hit targets? My megaearth Cyclopian pretender can't hit squat....do where the sprites land not matter?

Some spells have splash effects. But the battle is already all figured out so its not so much what you are seeing as it is how the numbers change. Right clicking a unit will being up its information so you can check what really happened after that spell hit.

2.5 Do mages/pretenders naturally gain magic levels, or is empowerment the only way to improve?

Yeah thats its, or with magic items that boost magic. But many different types of mages can be made in other provinces. Sometimes they are obvious right away such as the amazons and druid provinces. Others can be discovered by finding magic sites.

Generally I do it like this. When I build a pretender I seriously consider giving it 2 or 3 in any magic that my nations mages dont already have. Thats enough to make many of the items that will boost it up another step. It also gives me search ability in magics my mages wont have. Later in the game I might notice that I have alot of gems of a certain type so to make better use of that gem income I will use some of those to boost that type of magic. That makes the final direction of my game kindof random but thats the way I like to play http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

3. how high a magic proficiency do I need for a comprehensive site search? Is 5 enough, or does it go all the way to 9+?

With Dom2 we dont know yet but I think it was 4 in Dom1. Generally thats considered a waste though. Taking alot of a type of magic is only for trying to rush toward a particular spell. Its a tactical strategy. 2 or 3 is considered better for searching. It finds most stuff. Use the searching spells instead of using a high level mage.

4. Is there a random map generator? The 2 demo maps are haunting my dreams as is...

There was a player made one for dom1. And alot of manually created maps done by players. So we had the best of both. We will probably get there with Dom2 also.

5. Is there anywhere to buy the full game retail, or is mail-order likely to be faster?

I think mail order is your best bet

6. Is there any way to lock move orders so that I don't accidently change them while province scanning. I guess just become f1 obsessive, eh?

Not lock. But there is a way to record them. Pressing Ctrl and a number will remember that set of orders. hitting the number will give them to a commander. (I think I remember that right, havnt used it yet). This was mostly to make it easy to assign commands to new commanders but it should help you also.

7. are domain effects detailed anywhere?

Did you read the thread near the top of the page for newbies?

Re: Basic Questions
 

There's also ways to boost your spell power during battle. Spending gems, for instance, can boost your mage's effective level by one for that casting. Certain paths have spells which boost either a single path (e.g. "Summon Earth Power", IIRC, boosts Earth by 1 for that battle only, plus gives reinvigoration) and there's at least two spells which boost /all/ paths you have by one (Astral's "Power of the Spheres") or two (Blood's "Hell Power"). You can also use Communion/Sabbath; the communion master will effectively gain levels for that battle based on how many communion slaves there are. The slaves will also divide up fatigue.
None of those ways will help with out-of-battle rituals, forging or site searching however.

Re: Basic Questions
 

You can quit the replay by hitting Q. You can also pause it with the space-bar. At the moment, alas, there is no way to go into fast-forward.

The sites still cap out at 4 in terms of what level of magical power is needed to find the rarest of them.