Best - worse magic paths

[Endoperez]

HoneyBadger said:
Earth has built-in usefulness because it's got lots of nice early game forged items that you can make en-masse, and earth drakes.

It's nice that you can sell the gems for 15 gold a pop, but earth gems are much more valuable, and they're only worth 10.

I'd like if you could use mastery in fire to combine more with other paths: more magma, steam, some kind of eldritch death-fire Anthrax spells, maybe something with Astral to make Aether magic? Aether (along with fire, earth, water, air) being one of the Platonic elements. Water, overall, seems to be a little bit more useful, especially considering the ability to freeze your enemies solid. You can set your enemies on fire, but so far I haven't seen this have too much of an effect..

Sea Serpents and Cave Drakes can be good in the early game... but they are also expensive. 8 gems is often way too much, even in the early game, because you could save those gems and use them for something better AND more cost-effective later. Cave Drakes are good... but are they worth 8 gems? That's much harder question.

The gems aren't sold. It's called alchemy for a reason. Lead to gold etc. In MP games, all gems have the same price AFAIK.

There are already quite a few combination Fire spells. Fire-Air has one - Sulphur Haze. Fire-Earth has the Magma spells, very useful. Fire-Water has the Acid line of spells, and Boil high in Alteration. Fire-Astral has Astral Fires, nice AoE spell that ignores armor but is gneated by magic resistance. Fire-Nature has some low-level spells, Seven Year Fever and such, not very useful, but there's also the new global for the Kindly Ones... Fire-Death has Banefire, Lord of Banefires, Reanimate Archers which summons undead archers armed with magical Banefire bows, etc nasty stuff. Fire-Blood has Devils, Archdevils and Hellfire.

Manual page 78 explains the effects of being aflame and frozen. Basically, it's some damage for fire, some fatigue for frost.

[Corwin]

NTJedi said:
Yes nature works more in combination with other paths to be effective. A few examples would be gift of reason on the tartarians, swarm spell with undead archers, and gandalfs tornado with charm.

What do you mean by "swarm spell with undead archers"?

[Shovah32]

casting the spell swarm, a level 1 nature spell requiring 1 gem that, iirc produces 20 weak dragonflys or something like that. Using it with undead archers you can get some (practically free) chaff that it dosnt matter if your archers hit or not (since they die after battle)

[Corwin]

Shovah32 said:
casting the spell swarm, a level 1 nature spell requiring 1 gem that, iirc produces 20 weak dragonflys or something like that. Using it with undead archers you can get some (practically free) chaff that it dosnt matter if your archers hit or not (since they die after battle)

Yes, I know what these both seplls are. I was curious about the synergy between them.

I understand your point, and I agree that swarm is a nice delaying spell. But how is this combo (with undead archers) different from using swarm with any other deadly missile attack? Like for example "normal archers with fire arrows"/"swarm" combo?

[Meglobob]

I think blood is very powerful. Early - mid game u will get more blood slaves than u will gems of any 1 other path, a blood 3 mage can get 5 - 14 with a blood hunt in pop. 5000+. U just need to figure out a effective way of getting the unrest it creates down.

U can cast cross breeding for fun which is a very cost effective spell with some very nice effects. Frost fiends r nice when playing Niefelheim, demon knights r pure evil, if u have earth paths as well. From then on it gets better and better. U can easily crush other pretenders/nations just by using blood magic alone.

Nature on the other hand lacks killing power but is good for creating large horde armies. Its weakened alot because yr troops no longer starve so items like enormous cauldron of broth r no longer very important.

[Shovah32]

I agree blood is very powerful but the micro (especially for mictlan with all your sacrifices) in mid-late game gets annoying. You forgot to mention that blood has some of the best summonable commanders in the game aswell as some nice battle magic.

[FrankTrollman]

Ritual Magic holds a different place in Dominions 3 than it did in Dominions 2. No longer are you racing to replace your national troops with conjured alternatives. Now you are attempting to supplement your armies of national troops with summonings. This means that summonings like Vine Ogres are no longer the holy grail that makes you automatically win - instead you're looking for units that cover holes in your national army.

Because of that, the ideal summonings vary somewhat between nations. Atlantis, for example, is light on ranged attacks and is looking for something that can cover that weakness. Good alterntives include:
[*} Fast Troops. If you can summon something that flies, you can close with the enemy archers before they cut you to ribbons. In the long run, that might as well be Iron Dragons (Earth), but for the majority of your life, the best flyers available are going to come out of Air.
[*] Tough Troops. If the guys in front are tough enough, you don't really care what kind of archery you're shrugging off. Late game that can be Tarrasques (Nature) or Juggernauts (Astral), but most of your time you're going to be doing it with Statues (Earth) or Wights (Death, or Water if you can make Unfrozen).
[*] Archers. Summonables with archery are fw and far between. But it can be done, and is often devastating if done correctly. Most ranged summonables come out of Blood, but Reanimated Archers (Death) are very impressive as well.

--

Which brings us to the rules of gem conservation. Unlike Gold, the amount of gems you get each turn is pretty small compared to the cost of anything you want to make with it. That means that in order to cast the big fun stuff you must save your gems from turn o turn. This also means that anything you cast now essentially cuts into the strength and number of high end spells you will ever be able to cast.

Casting a ritual early in the game is an investment in having whupass on the table now, which will hopefully pay itself off by allowing yu to take more provinces, search for more sites, and eventually have more gems to cast more awesome magics when your research catches up. But not casting a ritual is also an investment - an investment in having more gems in a pile when you can cast better spells with them.

Vine Ogres are better than Vine Men. Not just "per unit of hero time", but per gem and just overall. If you can manage to stay alive and expanding without squandering any gems on Vine Men, you'll have more gems to make Vine Ogres. And the same can be said of Crushers and Iron Dragons, just on a larger scale.

Death has an advantage that it is relatively easy to use Death Gems to advance in Death if you have enough Research. A mage with 2 Death can make a Skull Staff, using which he can make a Mound Fiend. The Mound Fiend with the Skull Staff can make a Skullface, and while wearing those items the Fiend can make a Lich... and that should cover virtually anything you need to do. With enough Research under your belt only the scarcest of side suits won't be enough to make a powerful army of the dead with Death magic. Even the gems generate themselves once you have a Revenant you can spare to cast Dark Knowledge on all your provinces.

On the flip side, you have things like Blood. To get the little girls you need to use it at all you need to turn provinces over to having several blood mages spend their time hunting them down. Then to actually cast the spells or make the bonus items requires more blood than most nations ever get on anyone. To get it going properly requires not only taking a nation which has blood hunters already, but generally requires a pretender with at least 4 blood as well.

For ease of development, I'd rank them:

1. Death
2. Water
3. Earth
4. Nature
5. Fire
6. Air
7. Astral
8. Blood

Oddly enough though, that may put higher priorities for placement on the God for the more difficult developing paths.

For "early game", which for this purpose I am arbitrarily defining as "how well can you supplement your army with Level 3 Research and worse", I would have to rate it:

1. Blood *
2. Nature
3. Death
4. Water
5. Air
6. Fire
7. Earth
8. Astral

*: Although, that can be misleading. While certainly the Blood Summons at Levels 1-3 are amazing, they are also almost unreachable for many nations and require a kick to your economy you may not be able to support if you actually use them in the early game. Still, Fiends of Darkness are so much better than Cave Drakes that it isn't funny.

Note also that national summons can throw that WAY off. And that things develope at different speeds. If you intend to jump to an Enchantment of 5 or 6 quickly an Earth/Air setup or a Water/Death setup is a very strong army supplementation. Seriously, what army wouldn't be made stronger with the inclusion of Gargoyles?

-Frank

[Graeme Dice]

FrankTrollman said:
This means that summonings like Vine Ogres are no longer the holy grail that makes you automatically win - instead you're looking for units that cover holes in your national army.

Vine ogres never made anybody automatically win. They were cost-effective meat shields and nothing else. Anybody who lost to an army of vine ogres would have lost to any competent player, using any powerful strategy. A single bane lord with a blood thorn, charcoal shield, lucky pendant and jade armour would have been enough to kill 50+ vine ogres in a single battle, and a failure to field such a unit to deal with an army of vine ogres is the fault of the losing player, not game balance. Now, thanks to a doubling of their gem cost, they are barely cost-effective. Bizarrely, lamias, which were already the best nature summon, have been made cheaper.

[Endoperez]

Lamia Queens are much harder to get, though, and they summon more Lamias, so that makes Lamias somewhat less cost-effective than they would have been in DomII.

[Corwin]

Meglobob said:
Its weakened alot because yr troops no longer starve so items like enormous cauldron of broth r no longer very important.

What do you mean - "no longer starve"? I thought I saw the starvation message in Dom3. Do you mean - they no longet get desease from starvation in dom3?