Newbie Questions: Leaders & Terrain &&&

[MaxWilson]

1.) Click (or is it right-click?) on a unit's leadership stat to view the breakdown. By default, only the regular leadership is displayed, but it may turn out that a "Leadership: 10" guy also has 100 undead leadership and 50 magical being leadership (for leading elementals, statues, etc.).

2.) It doesn't quite cancel out--resisting a trample uses defense but not the attacker's attack. Same thing for spells like Earthquake, they'll be slightly more effective in swampy terrain because there's a defense check.

3.) Me, personally? Not until I get some SCs or booster items, unless I get into an early war. The only thing I tend to use gems for early on is site-searching for more gems. Edit: oh, yeah. And making skull mentors/lightless lanterns/owl quills.

4.) Usually I designate my starting commander. If I'm playing a nation with H3 priests I may wait and prophetize one to get an H4, or if my nation has good thuggable commanders I may prophetize one of those instead, or one with more mobility than the starting commander (e.g. flying) to lead sacred troops. If he dies, you can prophetize a new one five months later or so so it's not a big deal unless you're in a war or don't have any other priests.

5.) Occasionally I will build fortresses right next to each other. That's only if I'm using them as real fortresses and not as factories. The advantage there is that you can build one turn at one fortress and directly attack a sieging force the next turn at the other. It reduces your resources but gives a stronger defensive situation.

8.) Cavalry do have better defense and lower encumbrance than other units. That makes them potentially useful in castle battles even though they can't really flank.

-Max

[jfp3]

Just great info gents.

I wonder if I'm too bold in asking if there is a mod that does things like provide for defense bonuses for defenders in forest/mountains or opposite side of rivers -- movement cuts when moving through mountains/swamps or over rivers etc. Not that I'm quite ready for that before I play a lot of "Vanilla" myself, but just wondering if a mod like that has/can be done?

[Ironhawk]

Huh. I never noticed that battles in swamps imposed penalties. Guess I dont fight in swamps much. Does it effect units that have swamp survival?

[Sombre]

Swamp survival means you don't suffer from fighting in a swamp. Same with the spell quagmire I believe.

[Edi]

K, in addition to encumbrance penalty, swamp also reduces defense by 2 unless the unit has swamp survival.

[MaxWilson]

By 1 actually.

-Max

[Edi]

1, 2, pfft, who cares?

[MaxWilson]

No, that's not possible with the modding commands provided. You'd have to hack the .exe in a serious way (to a degree that's impossible without the source code).