New empowerment strategy?
 

Ok...I'm a dominions newb. A total newb. So please bear with me.

Does anyone consider it to be a viable strategy to start a pretender off with a lot or "3" ranks as a rainbow mage and then empower to 4 for purposes of getting all or almost all of the bless effects for sacred troops?

Also, has anyone ever found a blood magic site? I never did despite generally having blood 2 on my rainbow mage searcher. At least not in the sense that I would have a steady income of blood slaves or a blood summoning site that required fewer slaves to do something neat.

Final question...Castles only draw resources from provinces you control, right? Not adjacent enemy provinces?

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The bless effects are determined on pretender creation, not their current statistics.

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

I just got my manual yesterday. Can you tell me how you know that? In the manual? Experience?

This would be a good thing if you got killed and lost some skills, though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Graeme Dice said.

Yes. They are very rare though...

Only your provinces.

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

There are not alot of blood sites but the ones that are out there can be VERY important to find.

Castles only draw from neighboring dominions you own. I rarely play in a circle-growth mode spreading equally from a home province (lots of pros and cons there) but I always try to remember to take every neighbor attached to a castle.

I often took gods with 2 or 3 in as many magics as possible as searchers. I figured that if I found a ton of air sites, then I would have a ton of air gems, I would want to be very capable of using those gems effectively, it wouldnt hurt me any to empower him another level in air, etc etc etc. If I found lots of earth gem sites, etc etc etc.

In other words I let my random luck decide where my pretender was headed. Having him 2 or 3 levels toward that goal was good for searching and for empowering (not too expensive). At 3 or 4 in a magic you can usually make 1 or 2 items that can give you the next few levels in that magic bringing you up to 5 or 6 or even 7 in a magic that you just happened to find a ton of sites giving you gems for. Ahhh the POWER!!!

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

Looks like forts no longer pull resources from other forts. Glad to see that gone. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

Thanks for the responses. I am having an interesting time against Ry'leh (?sp). And I'm thinking about building a fortress along my coastline directly adjacent to his home province. Does anyone else do that? It's good to know that it won't pull resources from his adjacent territories. I would love to be able to go down there and seige him, but I haven't even found troops that can go underwater yet as it is early in the game.

I'm adopting that same strategy with my pretender...took a sage and ulm. Really makes the research flow well. I'm actually ahead of all the ai nations in research atm if you can believe that.

Thanks for telling me that there *are* some blood sites out there. I was beginning to wonder. I usually only take 2 in blood because of how easy it is to raise if you can get some hunters.

By the way, do those items you get change your skill levels on the overland map or just in combat?

I guess the general concensus is that bless effects do not change with subsequent empowerment of the pretender or with the pretender's disempowerment by death and being called back?

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The items that say something like "1 level nature" or whatever increase the magic path on both the strategic and tactical maps.

The devs have said elsewhere that your blessings are fixed at god creation, so no amount of empowerment or death will effect them.

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

licker,

Thank you for clarifying that. I guess now that is a reason not to be a pure rainbow as I have started to be.... 3 in everything but blood, 2 in blood. Which is nice...the feeling that I have "given up" something makes me feel less guilty about all those magic sites I find. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Has anyone ever found a holy or unholy site? I've had priests search but always come back having found nothing.

Re: New empowerment strategy?
 

Holy/Unholy sites do exist, just a bit rare.
A few sites do give blood income (Damned Merchant, for instance; there's also some non-blood magical academy site that does, too) or blood summoning bonuses, but they're far rarer than brigand lairs et al. But blood slaves are mostly captured, not received from sites. There's also a Demon Lord which gets free slaves, but not at a terribly quick rate.