One or three questions I have...

[Ubik]

I am enjoying the game immensely. The manual is a very good read, but with a game of this depth, as I play, some questions arise here and there. Here they are, for anyone who is willing to help me learning this game:

- What are the changes for the difficulty levels of each Pretender? Is it just a matter of having more gold/resources or they in fact play better as the difficulty goes up?

- I play Man and follow a strategy of maxing income and resources at the expense of magicka. Besides hindering research are there any other consequences for having drain magicka at -3?

- It buggers me my generals always getting afflictions that most of the time lead to their untimely demise. How can I heal these guys? I seem to recall from the manual some races - not Man, for sure - have a unit specific ability that heals afflictions, but I am going for a more general way of mitigating the problem.

- Is there any way of recruiting a number of other factions troops?

- What are these Horrors I keep hearing about that from time to time appear listed while the turn is being processed?


Thank you for your help.

[Agrajag]

1) Just extra gold/resources/pretender points etc. Easy gets a handicap.
2) You get extra mr in drain dominion, and IIRC spells cost more fatigue.
Also, certain random events only happen in certain scales, I'm not sure if/which are drain specific though.
3) Arco priestesses can cure afflictions, as well as some other units (the only one which comes to mind is the Faerie Court leading faerie
4) Recruiting enemy national units is impossible, except through bugs :X
Though I think there are some mercenaries and indies that you can recruit that are similar to some national units.
Not sure if I'm not confusing something here :X
5) Its probably the part of the turn processing that has to do with horrors, which are horrible creatures that are attracted to units which are horror marked, also randomly attacking them.
Especially strong commanders get to be attacked by especially strong horrors.

[TomD]

3) The global enchantment Gift of Health cures afflications. If you want to reduce the afflications you get in the first place then regenerating commanders are far less likely to become afflicted. There are various items and spells which cause regeneration.

[Endoperez]

3) If the afflictions appear on old mages outside of battles, they might be due to old age, and taking Growth scale will help.

[UninspiredName]

3) Certain units also have a chance of healing any afflictions in the province they dwell. Arcoscephale's Priestess recruitable and the Mother of Serpents pretender (I think) can do it.

[Ubik]

Thank you all for the usefull answers.