More questions IV

[Corporal Kindel]

More Dom 3 Q&A:

1) Had a leader who ran off of an island, there was a valid 8 (show connected provinces) connection (that’s how I got there to begin with), and he was not wounded. I don’t understand why did he die in the after battle report?

2) Related to the above question, I had a boar leader (sacred) who somehow died in the battle report. Watched the battle movie, I completely destroyed the AI side, the leader was not wounded and he had the moon blade, red dragon scale mail, and the horn of valor. Halfway through the battle he charged the enemy, though the enemy routed before this. He attacked, never got wounded, even up to the last instant before the movie ended. Yeah, I watched up to that point trying to figure why he died, I have no idea?

3) Apparently, the magic item construction queue is limited in size. If you build more items than the queue holds, what happens to the excess items. Are the gems used in construction just lost or what?

4) There was a fortress buried in a mountain only accessible from one adjacent province in which I conquered & had an army. I had a scout in the buried province. For three turns I ordered my troops to move to that province and they never did move there. On the fourth turn, my scout was found & killed, and suddenly my troops were able to move to the province. Is this a bug, or is there something I’m missing here?

5) Have this problem with elephants retreating & killing my leaders, I specifically set my elephants to the south side of the set up area and put all my other troops (especially leaders) way up to the north in the army setup display, but it always seems like when the elephants retreat they go way out of their way to stomp my leaders, what’s the best way to guarantee your leaders safety short of not buying elephants?

6) I had about 100 units get attacked by a single dragon (one of the pretenders). My druid cast stone fall. Why on earth would he cast this in this situation? The spell cast and killed about 20% of my own units and 3 or 4 of my extra leaders.

7) Had a leader that survived a battle, although my side lost, that somehow lost all of his items. Had a unique item & every other spot was filled, but somehow all the items just disappeared. I have no idea why?

8) I had this battle report that says an arrow falls from the sky and pierces heart of leader x, but sometimes x is dead, wounded, or not wounded at all. What’s the cause of this result and how defend against it? (just about every single turn I get this report, I lose three times as many leader to this & stomping elephants than I actually do in battle).

9) Is there a limit to research, I noticed it flatlines at 750, if I have more than this, say 800, what happens to the extra 50rp?

10) I’m wondering why sometimes guys get wounded out of nowhere for no reason. I understand the old age thing, but I had a good leader (the old man in the woods) who suddenly got wounded even though his age was 302(605) thus less than old age. Is this just a completely random thing, or is there some defense against it?

11) Had a leader with the twin spear (casts lesser horror in battle) but it just seemed to cast the lesser horror anywhere regardless, and the horror attacked my own men who were forced to attack it. I don’t understand the point of having this weapon, what good is it if it attacks your own troops? Or, how do you prevent this from happening?

12) Had a leader who got attacked by a lesser horror, he retreated off the map but survived the battle. The next turn I could not find him, think the report said he died, don’t understand why he died when he successfully retreated? The province was not cut off or anything like that.

13) Gave the woundflame sword to one of my guys, he got diseased, and a turn later half my leaders in that province were diseased. What’s the point of using/forging this weapon if it destroys your own guys?

14) Some water moving guys have a movement of 2, like shark riders. I tried to match them with a 2 movement leader but they only go one spot no matter what. Is this a bug or what?

15) Question about encumbrance: I had rainbow armor and boots of youth on a druid: basic encumbrance +3, old age +1, armor +1. This makes melee encumbrance 5 and spell casting encumbrance 6. Under fatigue I had extra reinvigoration 5, why do I have the extra reinvigoration symbol when 6 (spell cast en.) – 5 (extra reinv.) = +1 .. thus still gaining fatigue?

16) All of a sudden some of my guys became soulless, after looking at the army setup screen. I even had a soulless magic leader that I knew was not soulless. I don’t know how/why my guys were converted this way, is it possible that starvation somehow caused this? If not, why?

17) Had a battle report that said armies of kailisia (one of the enemy AI) was routed, some of mine routed too in the course of the battle but not all. I watched the battle movie, and the AI definitely got routed, although strangely, the last two rounds or so, none of my troops successfully hit any of the retreating troops. After clicking “go to province” it was still owned by the kailasia side, I have no idea what happened, is this a bug or something else I'm missing?

[Frozen Lama]

That's quite a list. I'll start i guess. Some of the questions i'll leave for more knowledgable people to answer.

1 2 and 17 all sound like battle replay bugs to me. which sucks a lot. this happens every once in a while, and the reasons are still being worked out. hopefully someone else can help you there.

3) your lab only holds 50 items. rest get wasted I think.

6) the AI isn't the smartest. when you give them gems, they get a little too excited. either script him, and only give him enough gems for his script, or just don't give him gems.

7)I don't suppose he was immortal and died then came back at your cap? or maybe he has a second form without full slots and he died and went into the next one?

8)Air magic spell seeking arrow. its easy to cast (A3) and the computer will sometimes spam it. best answer- put cheap armor on your mages.

11) horrors are neutral, and will attack randomly. the spell horror mark puts a mark on an enemy, and then the horror will attack the guy with the most horror marks. to use that spell pretty much requires a mage casting horror mark. (S1)

12) if you retreat from an assasination battle (includes horrors or seduction) you die.

13) give it to an undead sneaky guy (black servant is great) and put him in the enemys cap.

14) you cannot move more than 1 province underwater no matter what.

15) the reinvig tag will still be there, you just have to do the math.

16) were they in a battle where you had the ankh or cast life after death? starvation wouldn't cause this.

[Gandalf Parker]

1) Keep in mind that rout is not the same as retreat. Having a safe retreat wont always help. In a rout the unit chooses a random direction to run.

4) were they attacked? That can kill a move action

8) Hitting is one thing, the result is random IF it hits. concentrate on nations with air magic. research and cast province shield spells. fill important mage provinces with cheap commanders and scouts.

12) again, unless you had him scripted with something like action, action, action, retreat then he did not retreat. He fled. There is an advantage to retreating. And even rouits die when fleeing an assassination style attack

[Frozen Lama]

Gandalf- if there is only 1 retreat province and your army routs they all go the same direction- to the province that is yours. elsewise whenever you routed unless you owned all the provs around the battle, you'd have a few guys die.

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

1) Keep in mind that rout is not the same as retreat. Having a safe retreat wont always help. In a rout the unit chooses a random direction to run.

I've never noticed a difference between retreat and rout. Either way they flee to random friendly neighboring provinces. You never get to choose and they don't seem to stick together better in retreats.

[vfb]

1) I've never heard of units running off in random directions. If you rout, you rout to a neighboring friendly province if one is available. The only rout mechanism that is vaguely broken about this is that commanders who cannot breathe water, but are wielding water-breathing items, cannot rout into a friendly water privince.

4) OMG have you solved the movement bug? I can't remember if I had a friendly scout in the destination provinces when this bug has hit me. Anyway, there is a movement bug, which may have something to do with sneaking or hidden armies, where your army ignores your command to move. I'll be sure to move any scouts out of the destination province if I get hit with the bug in the future, and see if that fixes it.

5) Don't tell your leaders to "Stay behind troops" unless you've got something like archers (who don't move) to stay behind. Sounds like they are chasing up behind your elephants. Spellcasters/archer commanders should be fine ... are they?

7) Did he get an affliction or get injured and shape-change?

8) DON'T put cheap armor on your mages, Seeking Arrow is magic and AN. You need Shield of Valour/Antimissile Ammy/Antimissile Armor, which will give you 80% protection, or a luck pendant, which will give you 50% protection. Or Gift of Health, which will give your mages enough HP to survive.

9) Once you have resaerched everything in a particular path, there is nothing gained by researching further in that path. Hit F5.

10) There are rare random hidden disease-causing magic sites in some provinces. There is also Inkpot End, which is not hidden, and causes disease.

11) You can also give the spear to a scout, who can cast the spell once, then retreat. The Lesser Horror will probably go attack the enemy.

13) Woundflame causes battle Plague, it does not disease provinces. Give it to an undead or lifeless or demon commander and send him into battle. If he hits an enemy without killing him instantly, then the whole enemy army should eventually get the plague and die. If you bring living troops along with your commander, they will also get the plague and die. So send him solo, or with undead troops.

[MaxWilson]

14.) You can only ever move one province per turn under water. Mapmove 2 on shark riders (or any underwater unit) is completely pointless--the only situation I can think of where it would matter is if you cast Gift of Reason on one and then give him an Amulet of the Fish so he can go on land, in which case you can move 2 spaces per turn on land. Yippee! :-P

15.) The exhaustion/reinvigoration symbol does not include fatigue from spellcasting/combat, for the very good reason that on some turns you will not be engaged in either. (E.g. you're already unconscious from >100 fatigue.) It lists only fatigue you accumulate EVERY turn, no matter what. See the fatigue guide thread for details on what else causes/cures fatigue.

-Max

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

8).... fill important mage provinces with cheap commanders and scouts.

This is a useful defence against most of the commander targetting ritual/global spells. Although if you are using Scouts (the cheapest to buy) then make sure they have 'DEFEND' orders, and not their default 'HIDE' ones. And if you are moving them with your army for protection, then again make sure that they 'MOVE' and not 'SNEAK', which is their default type of move option. (hold the 'Ctrl' key down as you move them to stop them sneaking).

This is because spells like 'Seeking Arrow' can not be targetted against hidden units, so hidden units can not act as decoys against them. Hidden units are only useful as decoys against the Mind Hunt spell, as that can target hidden units.


And vfb is correct about defending against 'Seeking Arrow'. Luck and Missle Avoidance items are the only regular items that help. And then special case things like a Shroud of the Battle Saint if you have a S9/10 bless (for the Twist Fate effect) and Gift of Health for increased Mage HP. But the latter only helps if the targetted mage(s) is in your dominion (or has recently moved from your dominion), as the HP bonus from Gift of Health is related to your dominion strength.


For info, Seeking Arrow does 8 + DRN - DRN points of Armour Negating damage. So it is usually only cast against human type mages that generally have around 10HP (although of course the AI will cast it against anything)

[Corporal Kindel]

Thanks for all the great replies guys. A lot of good info for things I was unaware of. I'm slowly but surly learning more details about spells & items one spell/item at a time.

Originally Posted by Frozen Lama

7)I don't suppose he was immortal and died then came back at your cap? or maybe he has a second form without full slots and he died and went into the next one?

16) were they in a battle where you had the ankh or cast life after death? starvation wouldn't cause this.

He might've been changed, trying to remmeber now, I had two leaders that changed, one with twiceborn & ritual of returning. Turns the leader into a wight when he dies & returns to capital if taking damage. I had another magic leader that had some magic item and got changed into a troll. So I guess if a leader dies but gets converted into another form he still loses all his magic items?

It might've been the case, I usually don't watch every single battle movie, since there's so many (I'm in the endgame on a large map). I usually just look at the battle report and watch those that that I've lost, in order to figure out why I lost. I just noticed (later) when setting up my armies in the army setup mode, that a bunch of guys were soulless.

So, I guess what happpened was one of my powerful mages cast a spell that kept the guys alive after death, but they technically died? (so I lost any equipment a soulless leader might have had?). One of my soulless was a fairly strong druid, but I have no way to tell if he lost/reduced any of his magic path values or if other stats were affected (wish there was some way to have a before & after snapshot to see how he was effected). Does anyone know how magic paths & other stats are affected, and if they lost all their items? There's not enough description in the life after death spell on page 242.

Originally Posted by Gandalf Parker

4) were they attacked? That can kill a move action

I know they were attacked the first time I moved there, that's why I figured my first movement was nullified, but definitely not the second and third moves. I'm thinking this is some kind of movement bug based upon another forumite's reply.

Originally Posted by vfb

4) OMG have you solved the movement bug? I can't remember if I had a friendly scout in the destination provinces when this bug has hit me. Anyway, there is a movement bug, which may have something to do with sneaking or hidden armies, where your army ignores your command to move. I'll be sure to move any scouts out of the destination province if I get hit with the bug in the future, and see if that fixes it.

5) Don't tell your leaders to "Stay behind troops" unless you've got something like archers (who don't move) to stay behind. Sounds like they are chasing up behind your elephants. Spellcasters/archer commanders should be fine ... are they?

7) Did he get an affliction or get injured and shape-change?

9) Once you have resaerched everything in a particular path, there is nothing gained by researching further in that path. Hit F5.

11) You can also give the spear to a scout, who can cast the spell once, then retreat. The Lesser Horror will probably go attack the enemy.

13) Woundflame causes battle Plague, it does not disease provinces. Give it to an undead or lifeless or demon commander and send him into battle. If he hits an enemy without killing him instantly, then the whole enemy army should eventually get the plague and die. If you bring living troops along with your commander, they will also get the plague and die. So send him solo, or with undead troops.

4) I don't know if I solved anything, I was unaware that this was a bug, but based on replies it seems to be some kind of bug. It only happened in this on province that was in the center of a mountain and was accessible by one province only, and there were forts, built by the AI, on both of the connected provinces. My moves seem to work mysteriously once my hiding scout was killed.


5) That might be it, I've learned the hard way to keep my leaders well away from elephants, but the elephants are so kool & strong I luv using 'em . But yeah, some of my leaders were running up behind them, so I need to keep one leader in command of all the elephants, and make sure he does not have the 'stay behind troops' command? Maybe give him a good long range (35 square) bow like ethereal/banefire crossbow, bow of war, plus the eye of aiming and script him to fire closest?

7) I'm not sure if he was afflicted or injured, he might've been. I should've jotted more details down at the time when it happened.

So I take it though, that this is something that is not normally supposed to happen unless the leader dies or "changes" somehow? such as happens when/with twiceborn, ritual of returning, becoming a troll (some magic item does this)? Rout by itself doesn't seem to cause a leader to lose items (if working correctly), but in some situations they die (and lose items) depending on where they rout to. Would wounding in and of itself cause a leader to lose items (assuming he didn't die, change, or rout)? How about getting wounded & retreating (does he lose items)?

9) Well my paths weren't all researched out. Clicking on the the research overview, F4 or F5 can't remember right off-hand, shows a flatline at the 750 rp mark (it's a helluva lot of research). So, I'm guessing if one has more than 750 research points, say 800, the extra 50 just get wasted?

11 & 13) Great ideas, it never occured to me to do that with the woundflame, undead sneaking troops, awseome . It did occur to me to give the twin spear to a leader with the wing boots or crane sandals & have the leader move behind the enemy lines and use the spear to create a horror. The problem with this theory is that there's absolutely no control over what the leader does. I had a sc golem with crane sandals and watched the battle movie (gave him orders to attack rear), and he just popped back & forth willy-nilly all over the 4 corners of the battlefield. In fact, he rarely even got near an enemy mage/leader (which was my intent), so this strategy is pretty useless in application because there's not enough control on what your battlefield leaders do, where they go, or who they attack.

[Illuminated One]

There's four ways to die in a battle and get a second chance I know of.

The Life after Death battle spell.
Everyone that dies rises again as zombie in the same battle. Commanders keep all their item (*). If he survives with his shiny new rotting body, he is there the next turn. Stats change but magic does not. Some players use this to let their researchers research for free.

A global (Haunted Forrest I think)
Everyone that dies rises as a Carrion beast or Manikin. However if he survives the battle he's still lost, dissolving or following the order of a mysterious ancient power, I don't know.

The Ritual of Rebirth ritual.
The mage with that cast on himself returns to the cap, when he dies as wight mage. Only if the battle is under friendly dominion, though. All items are lost, I'm quite sure.

Shapechanging
Some units have a second shape, that mysteriously appears after they've been killed (well, it doesn't matter wether they are only stabbed or a 5 ton meteor drops on their head ). Werewolves for example.
All items are kept. (*)

(*) Except for those that the new shape can't carry. For example if a wyrm with 2 heads ends up as zombie with 1 head 1 helmet is lost.