A newbie asks...

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by JonBrave

[*]In battles, I'm a little confused about casting distance. Do I have to move my casters to the enemy and/or with my troops so as to get them close to enemy/keep up with my guys for effectiveness? If so with what order ?

If I'm not mistaken, the starting "no man's land" between two armies is 20 squares, give or take 5 (although it might be a bit more with larger armies). At least, that's what I base my calculations when futzing around the planning to determine where to set up my clumps of soldiers to get the first strike in.

I also believe one square on the battle planner = 1 square on the battlemap, so moving your mage all the way to the back adds a lot of range to cover. It's all right if your army is set to hold and attack and the enemy isn't, since they'll be coming in range by themselves, but against a human you probably can't count on it since they'll be buffing their army too... bottomline is : check the range of the attack spells you've got and that mage can use. Some (like mind burn) have 100 range and will essentially hit no matter what, some (like fireball) have a range listed as "35+" which means the range is 35 for a mage that has just the requisite paths to cast it, but more skill in the primary magic path equals more range, and finally some like Iron Darts have a fixed range that you have to plan for. If there are no enemies in that range, then the caster will go off script, with sometimes hilarious or frustrating consequences. Especially if the mage has the paths to cast Touch of Madness, which the AI seems to love to cast on other mages for some reason.

Same thing about buffs, by the by. If you absolutely need that mage to land that buff on these guys rather than those, it's best to place the mage so that it's in range of the former and no one else, otherwise they will throw the buff on the bigger group of soldiers, even if it makes less sense. Magic seems to do something to addle their brains, 'till they figure buffing a clump of shortbowmen with Strength of Giants is clearly more useful than my Steel Warriors going giant huntin' .

Yes, it's a bit of a pain in the nethers, but Dominions lives and dies by micromanagement

If a spell has too short a range and you need the mage to come closer to the fray to cast it, you can script him to "Attack one turn", then cast it - but be careful there. You don't want him to move further than his infantry screen, so do check whether or not he's faster than your frontline, or how many squares the frontline will have moved forward by the time he gets to that order. And definitely don't do that if the mage is a flyer, cause he'll go straight to melee.