Q: Effective use of magic resources

[ExitJudas]

Finally my dominions 3 arrived by mail. ive played the demo a littel and dom 2 quite a bit. However I am still only an intermediate player. Right now, I'm trying to figure out the following, and could use some advice:

I usually try to maximise magic resources every turn from the beginning of the game. I do cost/benefit analysis on research points/per gold and buy one of these every turn, after i have my prophet and primary commanders running.

I then start researching whatever magic school i find fits best to my nation and pretender.

My question is this:

1. when and how to invest magic resources (i.e. turns of action by magic users) in what?

It seems a waste of time to deck out a normal commander in magic items, since (at least this was the case in dom 2). commanders in melee tend to die, routing your army, so you need to keep them out of the action anyway. When should you spent resources on creating magic items? who should get them and how can they use them? are the trinkets worth anything at all?

i can see that giving your commander a ranged weapon is smart, since he can then do damage from safety, but it just seems to me that armor and melee weapons are not really usefull for anything but pretenders or the rare supernatural commander with tons of hp.

is it worth it buying multiple commanders, and decking them out in magic items, and having them fight together alongside normal troops?

thanks!

[Endoperez]

Equipping commanders as killing machines can be done, but usually not with recruitables. Human commanders are just human, and they die. Jotun and other giant races can do it better. And everyone can summon powerful commanders and deck them out. There are many threads about thugs (that's what you described), and about super-combatants or SCs (which are much, much worse and can kill entire armies alone).

If you want to try this strategy out, I'd suggest LA Jotunheim. They can recruit sacred giant commanders in all their forts, and they have easier access to Astral than other ages of Jotunheim. Choose a pretender with a supportive bless that helps your Jotun Jarls (Earth for reinvigoration, Nature for regeneration, perhaps Water for increased defence or Water 9 for quickness...), research Construction and make items that give them protective abilities.

Pendants of Luck, Amulets of Antimagic, Rings of Regeneration, Boots of Quickness, weapons with high defence rating (ice sword, sword of quickness) or which affect several enemies at once (sword of quickness, Frost Brand, Shadow Brand)...

You need to ensure that the Herses and Jarls can avoid most hits (defence, luck), withstand a few (good hp, decent protection, regeneration), survive enemy mages (elemental resistances, magic resistance (13 is a good start, but not enough)), kill or rout enemies you're fighting against (boots of behemoth + horror helmet works against low-morale troops, but is suicide against undead) and finally, not die from fatigue. High encumberance is a killer. Don't let encumberance climb too high, and make sure your Jarls are never completely surrounded. Give them some bodyguards, and remember than while two giants won't fit in the same square, a giant and a human can share the same space.


EDIT:
You can use the human commanders with other items: bows, Sceptres of Authority and other spell-casting items, Herald Lances to destroy undead from afar...

[ExitJudas]

great advice. so if you deck out these sacred commanders, you wouldn't have them control too many units in case they die, right? have them fight with a few bodyguards alongside another the army, commanded by another commander from the back of the field?

[Endoperez]

That's usually the easiest way. If they happen to die, you don't have the trouble of re-scripting all their old troops again. Giving the bodyguards to someone else isn't nearly as tedious.

[ExitJudas]

cheers.

[Autochthon]

Another thing about using humans as thugs is the fact that they have too few HPs.

That means that even when geared out, they tend to wear out due to the higher rate of Affliction gain. Even if you play Arco, you'll still have to sideline your human thug quite often.

Also, given their Size of 2, they tend to get Trampled by large units and swarmed by small units