Newbish question

[dirtywick]

GrudgeBringer said:

I don't think I really understand why Dom 10 is such a major factor if it is only an aura that surrounds HIM (pretender) and his ability to raise Dom where he goes as he can only be in one place at a time.

Your dominion does more than that. It can also be spread through having a priest unit preach, and through building temples. Dominion 10 is good because a high dominion is hard to remove through preaching or by building temples; you can actually spread your dominion into enemy lands. It's hardly necessary to start with it that high unless you're using a dominion reliant strategy, as building temples increases your max dominion. If you build enough temples you can get 10 dominion later.

Your continued survival in the game requires you to have some dominion somewhere. It doesn't matter how many provinces you control or how big your armies are, if your dominion is eroded through temples and preaching then you lose the game.

Of course, that's extremely difficult to do. Usually it happens if you have a strong dominion and you've conquored a lot of the enemy and their pretender and prophet are dead, then you can push your dominion over theirs and conquor the rest at your leisure. But there are some nations that excel at stealth preaching and lowering dominion and raising their own quickly.

When you look at the map, you'll see either white candles, black candles, or no candles. The white candles represent your dominion, the black an enemies, and no candles is no dominion. You can count the candles to figure out how much of your dominion is in a particular province, or how much of the enemies. Having your dominion in an enemy's lands also gives you a little information about the province, like what troops are there. Your dominion represents your scales. At full dominion you get full scales, at partial dominion you get partial scales.

The other effect dominion has is directly on your troops. I think fighting in friendly dominion gives a morale boost, and in enemy dominion a penalty. It also severely effects your pretender's and prophet's stats.

So a 10 dominion start isn't important unless you're trying to push your dominion onto your enemies. A moderate dominion is more reasonable.

I just can't seem to understand WHY that just isn't the way to do it...Best scales, good blesses, money/production/luck and a strong magic on my pretender when he awakens (on like turn 35 or something).

Could someone PLEASE take the time to explain why I am reading about an awake pretender when there are just NOT enough points to make a strong nation (in MY flawed estimation.

Well, the first thing to say here is your pretender is often your best unit period. Maybe if you took a wyrm with no magic or something that wouldn't be the case, but even then late game summons are all that will come close, if at all.

I play TW games too, so it's like having a 10 star general, except the power difference is even more vast. Like a queen in chess, except it can shoot fire and spit acid at the pawns.

Your pretender can do a lot of things; conquer provinces on it's own, cast the most powerful spells, forge the best equipment, it depends on what form you choose and what magic you give it.

So if you've got it imprisoned, you're going a pretty long time without your best unit. Giving it all that high magic isn't much use until it's in play.

The other thing is the best scales and high magic in certain paths are dependant on what you're researching and what nation you're playing. So you really need to evaluate that when designing your pretender, because it is your best unit and you want to play to it's strengths, and also play your scales to your nations strengths, and then find a middle ground.

For instance, Kailasa doesn't have many high resource troops, so taking production 3 just because it's a "good" scale is a waste of a lot of points, you simply won't use the resources, so take sloth instead. But the mages are expensive gold wise, so you want some order for gold. Order reduces the chances of random events, so you could tip your scale towards misfortune. That's one good scale and two bad scales, see what I'm saying?

Then you have a lot of points to both keep the pretender awake and get some magic on it, because Kailasa could really use a good bless and early expansion help.

Once you get to mid-game and see what worked and what didn't, what you need immediately, and refine your strategy and plan for mid-game and late game in pretender design once you've got a handle on how things work.

[thejeff]

Just a note about dominion 9-10 Awe on the pretender: It doesn't work best with a pretender who already has awe, though the stacking helps. It works best with a pretender who has Fear, since Fear reduces the morale of everyone around him. It really can be impressive.

But don't take our word for it. Try it out. It's hard to get the effectiveness of SCs until you've played with them. Take an awake Dom10 Wyrm with no magic, put him in the back of the field scripted "hold,hold,hold,attack" and send him out solo on the first turn. You can still have good scales, but now you'll be expanding faster the gold comes pouring in faster, you'll have full resources in your capital sooner, etc, etc.

[Loren]

thejeff said:
Just a note about dominion 9-10 Awe on the pretender: It doesn't work best with a pretender who already has awe, though the stacking helps. It works best with a pretender who has Fear, since Fear reduces the morale of everyone around him. It really can be impressive.

But don't take our word for it. Try it out. It's hard to get the effectiveness of SCs until you've played with them. Take an awake Dom10 Wyrm with no magic, put him in the back of the field scripted "hold,hold,hold,attack" and send him out solo on the first turn. You can still have good scales, but now you'll be expanding faster the gold comes pouring in faster, you'll have full resources in your capital sooner, etc, etc.

Why hold, hold, hold? What does that accomplish?

[Amhazair]

Loren said:

Why hold, hold, hold? What does that accomplish?

Often it's not really crucial, but it means that if your (indy) opponent has troops of two different speeds (like knights and infantry) they will become strung out and fail to attack you at the same time. It might also mean that enemy archers are farther away from you when you get into melle, and thus have less chance to damage you.

Of course, this applies against independents (and PD). Human players tend to try and coördinate their armies.

[JimMorrison]

thejeff said:
Just a note about dominion 9-10 Awe on the pretender: It doesn't work best with a pretender who already has awe, though the stacking helps. It works best with a pretender who has Fear, since Fear reduces the morale of everyone around him. It really can be impressive.

According to the manual, your results are not due to the mechanics working as you state.

A Fear effect does not reduce the morale of nearby enemies. It forces a morale check each round, with a penalty equal to the Fear bonus, causing a rout if the check is failed.

Ergo it has no directly synergistic effect with Awe, it just happens that if you have a high enough fear effect to easily rout PD within the first few combat rounds, any awe at all will give you a good shot at surviving with minimal damage.


If the manual is totally full of it, then I will consent, but the description seems to very much differentiate it from other morale checks.

And anyway, in my experience, the potential of Awe+7 with Virtue, is an incredibly powerful tool. It gives you a strong effect even up to elite infantry with 15 morale. This essentially makes her nearly invincible against all normal troops, which is an advantage that continues to be leveragable through the entire game (though she's a poor raider against say R'lyeh, with their lobo guard PD).

[thejeff]

Haven't dug into that part of the manual in awhile, but check the morale displayed on units in the Fear area of effect. It definitely drops.

[Endoperez]

Morale definitely lowers defence. It is pretty powerful even without Awe, so it could well force morale checks in addition to that.

[Agrajag]

Endoperez said:
Morale definitely lowers defence.

Huh?

Anyway, the synergy between awe and fear is indeed because it routs PD, not because of morale issues. Even if we assume each 1 fear decreases morale of everyone around by 1 (which it definitely does not), then it's effect on awe is identical to 1 awe, since lowering enemy morale by 1 is equivalent to raising awe by 1.

[JimMorrison]

Okay, I just did some testing. Fear auras have absolutely -ZERO- effect on a unit's morale. Enemy morale gradually went down over the course of the fight, due to losses etc, however there was no direct correlation to the Fear effect whatsoever.

In fact, providence allowed me to take 40 militia against an Onyx Amazon + Nightmares province, and the militia actually held for 3 full rounds against the Nightmares, even with like 20 overlapping Fear effects against them, their morale only dropped from getting cut down like wheat.

Bear in mind, it's possible to gear Fear over 20+ with a D9/10 pretender and items, if they start with Fear. That would basically mean that anything not divine or mindless would pretty much auto route if it got within sight of you, and even 30 morale troops would have trouble attacking through your Awe.

[MaxWilson]

Endoperez just misspoke/mistyped. "Fear definitely lowers morale" is what he meant.

Horror Helmet/Shield of Gleaming Gold is effective against normal troops for basically the same reason. Awe +0 and Fear+0 is easier to get than Awe +4, and to a first approximation they do the same thing.

-Max

P.S. Hmmm, how much fear could you get? I think the PoD is Fear +5 or something normally, before counting Death magic. Give him D10 and he'll be Fear +15. With Horror Helmet, Aegis, and Stymphalian Wings he'll be somewhere north of Fear +30. Am I forgetting anything? Other than the obvious Horror Harmonica, but that's a Fear attack on everyone on the battlefield, which is totally separate and different.

If you're going to rout the enemy army make sure you cast Wind of Death first so they actually DIE too.

P.P.S. Oh yes, you could give him a Lantern Shield in his other hand. Fear +35 at least, unless some of those items are more powerful than I remember. I guess you could give him a Ring of Sorcery and a Ring of Wizardry to boost him to D12, so that's Fear +37. Can't think of anything else.