Blessings balance?

[Endoperez]

Meglobob said:
Newbie question related to blessings.

I have a rainbow pretender, lvl 4 archmage, in all forms of magic. The strategy being he goes from province to province searching for magic sites, lv4 gives 100% chance of success I believe. Is this a good strategy?

When my priests bless my sacred troops, it looks like I am just getting air shield, 20% missle defense. Why am I not getting the other lvl 4 blesses? Or am I and I am not noticing? If I am getting just air shield, why?

This is currently in the Dominions 2 demo, other than changes in bless powers, is the bless system still basically the same in Dominions 3?

Thanks in advance to anyone who shares there wisdom.

Most of the level 4 blesses are worth it. Fire, Water and Blood increase Attack, Defense and Strength, Earth gives reinvigoration which also helps sacred mages, etc. However, they aren't all worth as much for all the nations. The lightly armoured recruitable units of Kailasa (EA monkeys) don't need reinvigoration, and one of their two good mages is already able to cast Earth Power for reinvigoration, but Defense helps their survivability, Att and Str help with all their multiple attacks, Regeneration isn't that good because they still die quickly when someone manages to hit them, etc.

If you don't have a reason, it's usually not worth it to take everything up to level 4. I think level 2 already discovers most sites, and 3 gets you virtually all sites. The few rare ones aren't worth the points for site-search alone.

Also, as in Dom2, only the starting paths are considered for blessings. Fire 4 pretender with lots of fire boosters will only give +2 Att, and the blessing won't change if he dies or becomes mute either.

One, maybe two level 4 blessings, and other paths at levels one to three, should be enough. The paths your national mages can supply can be left out altogether if you don't have spesific plans in mind. Paths only your pretender could use, but you don't plan on using, can also be left out.

In Dom3, a rainbow pretender available from the very beginning can be very effective in giving your research a nice boost, and searching for sites before there are many spells that could target him. Dormant rainbow could work, but imprisoned would be too risky - unless you only wanted spesific path combinations for items, e.g. Astral/Earth or Fire/Death for spesific boosters.

[Meglobob]

Based on what everyone said above (thanks), just checked out my Serpent Dancers a bit more closely. It looks like they r getting all the bonuses they should get. My pretender only had 4F, 4Air, 4W, 4E and 4B, had already changed to avoid getting the magic my national mages already had. So that explains why no berserk/lesser fear.

Still a bit confused by reinvigoration +2. The only plus unaccounted for on the serpent dancers is +1 encumberance. Is this cased by +2 reinvigoration or is fatigue staying at 0 because of the +2 reinvigoration?

Endoperez says:-
The few rare ones aren't worth the points for site-search alone.

R the citadel of Pyriphelegeton (pyromancer,adepts), the glowing hill (Daoine Sidhe), moonvine circle (enchanters) and horses vale (horse brother) all examples of rare lvl 4 sites? Got all those before turn 20 in my current game.

[Nerfix]

What pretender you used and what your scales were?

[Meglobob]

Nerfix said:
What pretender you used and what your scales were?

The serpent king (playing C'tis), turmoil 1, sloth 1, heat 1, luck 1.

Province where I observed my serpent dancers in battle is under another pretenders influence/dominion, -1 dominion, turmoil 1, drain 1 and growth 1.

[Nerfix]

Interesting, I ough to try something like that out.

[PDF]

Meglobob said:

Still a bit confused by reinvigoration +2. The only plus unaccounted for on the serpent dancers is +1 encumberance. Is this cased by +2 reinvigoration or is fatigue staying at 0 because of the +2 reinvigoration?

Enc and reinvigoratiobn are different things, so second case is right : you get 1 fatigue due to enc1 then cures it by reinvig2, so it stays at 0.
Special reinvig bonuses are shown in the "fatigue" tooltip/window, not the enc one.

[Endoperez]

Meglobob said:R the citadel of Pyriphelegeton (pyromancer,adepts), the glowing hill (Daoine Sidhe), moonvine circle (enchanters) and horses vale (horse brother) all examples of rare lvl 4 sites? Got all those before turn 20 in my current game.

Crown of Darkness (3 death gems, Thaumaturgy bonus 40, disease), Library of Time (4 Astral gems, allows recruitment of Shadow Seers), Prison of the Desert Sun (5 fire gems, increases Heat a lot) and The Factory (3 earth gems, an entering Earth mage will get one free Mechanical Man/turn) are some examples of level 4 sites.

Moonvine Circle is Nature 1. Horses Vale is Nature 0, so it's already visible when you conquer the province. The Citadel of Pyriphlegaton and The Glowing Hill are both Fire 2. These four are all Uncommon and Unique according to a list of all Dominions magic sites.


Rareness doesn't always mean the more rare site is better, either. Level 4 sites are all pretty good, but there are some level 3 sites that only give you one gem, and as you found out, there are lots of very good level 2 sites. As an example, Well of Pestilence is a common Death 3 site. It increases Death scale, which makes provinces with abnormal Death scale usually a good investment for a Dark Knowledge (which finds all Death sites) even if you only have Death through random picks, but a common Death 2 mage can't find it with normal searching even if you knew that something strange was going on. However, there are other sites, even non-Death ones, that could also cause Death scale.

One or two in most paths, 4 in one or two, works. In Dom3, you can't have that pretender in the early game. C'tis with Sauromancers is Early Age in Dom3, and has Heat Preference 2, so you'll have few more points to play with. Frost Father has Water 1 and Air 1. Because even one pick in a path makes a difference when you go to higher levels, he is probably the cheapest option for Water 4, and I didn't find any competitors who had 10-point paths and either Fire or Blood.
With only Heat 1 and otherwise same scales, and only Dominion 5, you could have four paths at 4, and one at 2. With 40 points from Heat 2, which you'd have, you could get F4A4E4W4B4. However, you don't necessarily need Earth blessing, and Air is quite weak. You could get F4W4B4, and spend the other points on A3E2S3N2. Now you have access to much higher Astral and Nature that you normally would (well, Nature isn't particularly high, but Nature/Astral has one more path booster, Moonvine Bracelet). E2 is enough for a booster, S2 and S2E2 get you two Astral boosters, etc. Nature 2 is also what is needed for the first Nature booster, and with a Thistle Mace, your Shamans can cast Haruspex, the site-searching spell for Nature sites. It finds every nature site in the chosen province.

This still isn't optimal, but it's pretty good. It's more cost-effective than your build. Of course, there are other builds which could use paths similar to those you used. Fountain of Blood, as an example, could be used for B4 or maybe even 6, and summon some demons with those varied paths. Demon Knights, Storm Demons, plain old Devils, Blood items... Fire, Water and Blood would help you a bit in the beginning, giving you more powerful sacreds. Earth also has its uses, if you use Shamans in communion, or as battle casters with path boosters.

[Folket]

where is the list of all sites?

found it

[Endoperez]

Folket said:
where is the list of all sites?

www.freewebs.com/dominions2 has one. Fourth link/file in the Game Info section. It's based on Dom2 info.

[Meglobob]

Endoperez said:

Crown of Darkness (3 death gems, Thaumaturgy bonus 40, disease), Library of Time (4 Astral gems, allows recruitment of Shadow Seers), Prison of the Desert Sun (5 fire gems, increases Heat a lot) and The Factory (3 earth gems, an entering Earth mage will get one free Mechanical Man/turn) are some examples of level 4 sites.

Moonvine Circle is Nature 1. Horses Vale is Nature 0, so it's already visible when you conquer the province. The Citadel of Pyriphlegaton and The Glowing Hill are both Fire 2. These four are all Uncommon and Unique according to a list of all Dominions magic sites.


Rareness doesn't always mean the more rare site is better, either. Level 4 sites are all pretty good, but there are some level 3 sites that only give you one gem, and as you found out, there are lots of very good level 2 sites. As an example, Well of Pestilence is a common Death 3 site. It increases Death scale, which makes provinces with abnormal Death scale usually a good investment for a Dark Knowledge (which finds all Death sites) even if you only have Death through random picks, but a common Death 2 mage can't find it with normal searching even if you knew that something strange was going on. However, there are other sites, even non-Death ones, that could also cause Death scale.

One or two in most paths, 4 in one or two, works. In Dom3, you can't have that pretender in the early game. C'tis with Sauromancers is Early Age in Dom3, and has Heat Preference 2, so you'll have few more points to play with. Frost Father has Water 1 and Air 1. Because even one pick in a path makes a difference when you go to higher levels, he is probably the cheapest option for Water 4, and I didn't find any competitors who had 10-point paths and either Fire or Blood.
With only Heat 1 and otherwise same scales, and only Dominion 5, you could have four paths at 4, and one at 2. With 40 points from Heat 2, which you'd have, you could get F4A4E4W4B4. However, you don't necessarily need Earth blessing, and Air is quite weak. You could get F4W4B4, and spend the other points on A3E2S3N2. Now you have access to much higher Astral and Nature that you normally would (well, Nature isn't particularly high, but Nature/Astral has one more path booster, Moonvine Bracelet). E2 is enough for a booster, S2 and S2E2 get you two Astral boosters, etc. Nature 2 is also what is needed for the first Nature booster, and with a Thistle Mace, your Shamans can cast Haruspex, the site-searching spell for Nature sites. It finds every nature site in the chosen province.

This still isn't optimal, but it's pretty good. It's more cost-effective than your build. Of course, there are other builds which could use paths similar to those you used. Fountain of Blood, as an example, could be used for B4 or maybe even 6, and summon some demons with those varied paths. Demon Knights, Storm Demons, plain old Devils, Blood items... Fire, Water and Blood would help you a bit in the beginning, giving you more powerful sacreds. Earth also has its uses, if you use Shamans in communion, or as battle casters with path boosters.

Cheers Endoperez. Lots of great info here. Will after study pretender selection some more I see. Hurry up Dom 3 then I can explore the high level stuff.