[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by LintMan:
[QB]
2)Is Nifelheim (is that the giants race's name?) a bad one to play for any underwater capability, or do I have the wrong set of magic skills? (Or am I just missing the possibilities?)

Take a look at the stats on a Niefel Jarl. They have water magic, so they can lead troops into the water along with themselves. They can bring themselves with one water skill, plus one other troop for each additional point in water magic. Niefel Jarls are very tough, and Niefel giants are also. They should be able to take water provinces in sufficient numbers.

3) At about 30 turns in, if I dedicate all my mages to research, I get about 32 res/turn. Is that good or bad? I'd like more, so use for summons and searching as well, but the mages, costing 250 each, will have a very large upkeep, won't they?

That's quite low. I would probably try to have over 150 research points by that point. One of Niefelheim's major weaknesses is that they have expensive non-sacred mages. The way around this is to use mages recruited in other provinces for your research. Sages, which can be recruited at a library are extremely effective for this, but most otther independent mages will be more cost effective than Gyga and Skratti.

Site searching seems to be a painfully slow process, particularly like in my case, where I'm using my Pretender to lead a fighting force.

There are several low-level spells that can be used to search for magic sites. Thaumaturgy 2 contains the spells for every magic path other than astral, death, and water. These spells all require two magic in a particular path to cast, but will find everuy magic site of a particular type in a given province. Conjuration contains dark knowledge for death magic, which requires a death 1 mage. Conjuration also contains voice of aspu for water, and voice of tiamat for searching for all elemental sites in a water province. Conjuration 5 (not available in the demo) has Acashic record, which is quite expensive at 25 astral pearls, and requires 3 astral skill, but finds every magic site in a given province. Evocatin magic contains arcane probing, which is an astral 1 spell for searching for all astral sites in a given province. Evocation level 9 also contains strands of arcane power, which searches for magic sites as part of its abilities.

4) What controls the number of provinces a unit can move in a turn?

You can only move one province into enemy territory, unless the commander and all his troops are flying. Other than that, mountains, forests, and other difficult terrain reduces troop movement to 1, unless all units in the group have the "survival" trait for that type of terrain.