Some newbie questions (no nation specific)

[Aracon]

Hello everybody!

I'm a newbie player of dominions. Well in fact i bought the game some years ago, but personal reasons made me leave games to focus on university (when i'd played just a month in SP of dominions) and i've forgot everything i could learn. So i'm a newbie

I've been looking for info about some questions through boards and so, but i've found it hard to extract the specific information i could need (too much info available, it's overwhelming). So I have some questions that if somebody can give me links to the answers' page or answer them directly, it will be very appreciated

Let's go!

- There's a place when you can find all the "slang" terms? Like SC, and so. Some are "easy" i think (i figured SC = super-combatant) but others...

- I've seen there're lots of mods (or you name them at posts). Which one's are the most usually used in MP games? Where can i download them?

- Which are the most popular maps? Where can i find them if they're not on the original game (latest patch applied)

- What's the main goal of each magic school? I mean, construction allows you to build items, but some differences between other schools seem less clear to me, and i've read posts which seem to point there're some focused on damage, and so... I haven't find any doc with spell data (i have one with enchanted items and one with summons, one with magic sites and one with unit stats, but no spells), there's any?

- Which are the most popular items? I know it must depend on race choice as requirements will change, but i've read things like "clams item (forgot name)" which generates astral pearls like being used a lot. There're some "common" items everybody uses if they can, and some specific ones worth knowing about?

- About blessing: if i've understood well, having a pretender with a certain amount on a magic path allows sacred troops to earn a blessing. That's automatic (in combat they have the skill from blessing right at start) or you must cast any holy/unholy spell (kind of bless) in battle?

- I'm confused about PD (I assume its province defense from what i've read), sometimes people has claimed you need to invest 20 pd to have a commander, but manual says that 1 PD summons a commander (weaker that the 20 pd version) for your troops. Which one is right?

- Where can i find MP games for a newbie player? Not right now, but in a few weeks (when i finish adjusting my skills vs AI) i would like to be beaten in MP so i learn

- In MP people usually uses strong-expensive troops, isn't it? They focus on research (for summoning) and hard troops right from the beginning (with adaptation to circumstance, as neighbors and so) or they make an initial army full of expendable troops to begin and evolve? Because some AAR seems like they do the first choice, but i don't see how to expand fast this way.

- Last question (by now ). I know it's specific (or should be) to each nation, but i've read people usually use rainbow pretenders (lots of path of magic to find sites), or SC ones. The games i've done (SP all of them) i usually max (or near to max) 1 magic path on my pretender so i can cast most powerful spells. Is that wrong? It's better to have 2-3 paths at 4-5-6 level?


oh, I forgot: Dominions 3 forum, is just for beta testers? When it's supposed to be released?

Thanks for reading through this and answering if you can