Magic Spells and Ritual

[VALENT]

some questions: 1)is there some basic spells for all the nations i have to research in every class of magic?some spells important to research?
2) for the ritual is there some ritual important to research?does the ritual aplly all the time of the game? is ritual important to use?
3)for items and objects which give some strengh to my pretender or mages:is it importantto develop?does it will be important to use?
4)i am Ermor+Ashen: to take some ennemy fortress ihave to use ritual and magic?
5)for the use of directives to my pretender in "recruit army", ihave see many orders. what the difference between them? and which is the most important of orders to use?
please help me for a beginner.i am a littlre lost between all theses orders.
thinks to answer me
phil

[Jondifool]

uh.. I think this is a case of too general questions there in such a complex game simple have no meaningsfull answer except "it depends."

I have to remind you that most things in this game does have a counter. So unless very specific, answer to whats best is simply not given

This game has a very steep learning curve. So try something out and learn, try and try again. If then have questions , tell what you have done, why and ask for advice in how to improve.
But first use the search option alot and read all the answers , if you still got a question then it properly should be raised in on of the most recent topics about the topic.

I am a newbie my self. And this forum is really helpful, so when your question doesn't get an answer it could be because of wrong question

Good luck

[Vynd]

1) In general, the way to decide what to research is to find a spell that you would like to be able to cast, and research until you can do so. There are spells in every magical school that will be useful, it is up to you to decide which you want. With that said, if you are playing Ashen Ermor, I suggest you concentrate your research mostly on Conjuration.

2) A ritual is any spell that is cast outside of combat. The only rituals that are going to apply all the time are global and local enchantments. It should be clear from the description which rituals are of these types. There's no one ritual that is important for everyone to research. But for Ermor, try looking at spells that require powerful death magic like Utterdark or Well of Misery.

3) This one is really entirely up to you. Magic items can help you a lot, but to get good ones you need to research Construction and spend lots of gems. It might be that there are better things for you to research and spend your gems on. Ashen Ermor needs to use lots of gems to cast ritual summoning spells, so if I were you I would not worry much about magic items.

4) You can take an enemy Fortress the same ways anyone can. The simplest is to beseige it. You can do this by moving an army into the space and then giving the commanders the siege order. Eventually, you will get a message saying you have broken the walls and have the option to storm the castle. Then you give your commanders the order to do thsi and you will fight a battle. It might take many turns for the siege to work, if it is taking too long send more men to help.

5) Ashen Ermor is not like regular nations, because Ashen Ermor gets free undead troops every turn. Because of this, you should probably use "Recruit Army" mostly to get powerful commander units.

[ April 24, 2004, 13:46: Message edited by: Vynd ]

[Pocus]

you see Philippe, different forum, same answers, be more specific! Its like you were asking us : "I want to win, how should I do?"

[Tuna-Fish]

First, a disclaimer: i am not arguing that this advice always goes for everything, and some of it can actually be rather counterproductive in an advanced player's game. But I think that it is very good advise for a newbie ermor player.

Originally posted by VALENT:
some questions:

1)is there some basic spells for all the nations i have to research in every class of magic?some spells important to research?

2) for the ritual is there some ritual important to research?does the ritual aplly all the time of the game? is ritual important to use?

Well, casting rituals is very importnant in the game. They include spells for practically everything. I strongly recommend you to familiarize yourself with at least all the Last spells of the schoold (I mean the ones you get at research level 9 and 8), just to know what you got coming from there...

Sitesearching spells, including:
Dark Knowledge (conjuration 2, death 1, 3 death gems, finds death sites)
Voice of Apsu (conjuration 3, water 2, 2 water gems, finds water sites)
Voice of Tiamat (conjuration 4, water 2, uses 8 water gems, finds all elemental "water, fire, earth, air" that are underwater)
Augury (thaumaturgy 2, fire 2, 2 fire gems, finds all fire sites)
Auspex (thaumaturgy 2, air 2, 2 air gems, finds all air sites)
Haruspex (thaum 2, nature 2, 2 nature gems finds all nature sites

And the king of them all, Acashic Record (conjuration 5, astral-3, 25 gems, finds ALL sites)

Generally sitesearching with spells is more effective than directly by mages, because it's faster (a mage can search one site in 2 turns, with spell it's 2 sites/2 turns), and it also finds the rarer very hard to find sites that you really dont want to miss. Some magic sites at levels 3 or 4 are very good. Of cource, if you find a site that gives conjuration/thaumaturgy bonus, move your searchers there asap.

Other than sitesearching but very importnant rituals include:

Enchantment-5, dispel. If you play ermor and your enemy casts purgatory you really want it to disappear as fast as possible.

Cannot figure out something really importnant for everyone, but just for ermor:

Enchantment-4, Behemoth. Summons a dead elephant that tramples smaller enemy troops. In my experience, the main problem of AE ermor troops is that they dont really dish out all that much damage. Against ulm the ulmish troops usually have to pass out of fatigue before the ermor hordes deal any damage to them. Behemoth fixes this flaw well.

Enchantment-6, reanimate archers. This fixes the same decifit as the behemoth: undead archers with their banefire bows can dish out very much damage to a living foe.

Conjuration-7, call wraith lord. Wraith lord is a very good supercombatant with very few flaws: Give him a wraith sword and decent items and armor and he carves straight trough normal troops.
Conjuration-8 Well of misery. Gives you high death income. Also increases the income of all living nations, but I dont think that effect is as useful to them as the death gem income to you.

Conjuration-9, Tartarian gate. Gives you undead gods for a very small price. Might not be as useful after those gods were made unable to heal in the Last patch, but they are still decent combatants.

Conjuration-9, Ghost riders. Cheap spell that makes undead riders lead by a wraith lord attack any province of your choosing. You cannot contorl the riders and they disappear after combat, but if you see an enemy army marching your way dropping a few of these on it can be deastating.

And of cource, Alteration-9, Utterdark. This spell pretty much kills all the living nations IF IT STAYS UP. For ermor, it's a win button if he can make sure nobody can dispel it. Against humans you can expect all other players to team up against you and combine their gems and dispel it together.

3)for items and objects which give some strengh to my pretender or mages:is it importantto develop?does it will be important to use?

Those items are important because they can give you access to spells that are useful to you but you cannot usually cast. As ermor, your best mage is dusk elder with 3 death and 1 random. this means that if you dont use your pretender, who should have enough stuff to do already, the only sitesearching spell you can cast is Dark knowledge. But, if you use a dusk elder with 1 fire forge a fire skull and give it to him, he can now cast the fire sitesearching spell. Same goes for almost every other path. There is a very handy document called magiboost.xls in http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/ that list all the available mage boosters.

Also it's a good idea to boost your battle mages to death 4 for drain life, a very good spell you get at alteration-5, it kills one critter every combat turn, and doesn't fatique the caster at all. Combine with quickness for maximum fun.

Also, keeping up with costruction research is importnat because in the late game the most effective "armies" compose usually of only a few commanders and the soldiers only work as chaff to protect mages and such. Good example of this is a wraith lord with good items: there really isn't a normal army that can beat it. Thus getting construction research high is a priority.

Also, ashen empire tends to be bad at spell research. This can be helped by forging "skull mentor"s that help your research quite a bit. Give one to all your researchers

4)i am Ermor+Ashen: to take some ennemy fortress ihave to use ritual and magic?

Well, your units can tear down the walls all fine, but the undead fodder usually get screwed when it tries to storm a castle. Try putting a few behemoths up the front and backing them with undead archers and/or mages casting shadow bold, drain life and such so you can cause damage to the enemy before you have broken trought the bottleneck of the fort. Also, some sort of fliers can be VERY useful. Having your pretender or someone cast "mass flight" when you are using a really huge undead army can be devastating.

5)for the use of directives to my pretender in "recruit army", ihave see many orders. what the difference between them? and which is the most important of orders to use?
please help me for a beginner.i am a littlre lost between all theses orders.
thinks to answer me
phil

I think you are meaning what ritual to cast: At start you get 5 spells that give you mages and priests.

The most imporntant are the mages "Dusk Elder" and "Spectator" Dusk elder is "3D 1?" and spectator is 2D. You need them for pretty much everything you do, and you should have as many of them as humanly possible. Also, since dusk elder is better but more expenive, dont use them for tasks that the spectators can do as well: If you are putting one mage to, for example, cast dark ritual or forge skull mentors, use spectators, and have dusk elders research.

The three priests, Acolyte (2 unholy) Bishop (3 unholy) and arch bishop (4 unholy) are a lot less useful tham mages but having a few is still good. they can reanimate dead (by giving them an order to "reanimate") and more importantly they can boost undead by casting some special spells they get at start. If you expand with one main army, make one arch bishop your prophet and have him cast "Power of the sepulchre" and 4 times "protection of the sepulchre"

[ April 24, 2004, 13:56: Message edited by: Tuna-Fish ]

[VALENT]

Thinks for all your response vynd et tuna-fisch . marvellous i have to work all this spells and ritual!
thinks
. phil