What use is death magic?

[Olive]

Peter Ebbesen said:
If your nation lacks magical lowlevel diversity, summon spectres [they had D?2].

Have they still true random paths in dom3 or are they restricted to a few paths like other mages with random magic ?

[Forrest]

Peter, I stopped asking about Death gem use because I got my questions answered.

Your answers hint of great things but are a little to general to be of use. Lets narrow things a bit.

Race: Arcoscephale
Gems: Water 171, astral 61, Air 35 (I had plans for the air)
Mages: Water 2, Astral 6, Air 3, The water and astral combined. Can go a level or two higher on the water. I can throw in Fire 5 and death 2+ and 20 to 40 gems each in a few turns. All that combined if I throw in my Pretender.

Near term figure 6 or under research.

So what would you do?

[Forrest]

Would a antimagic amulet help a Bane Lord resist banishment?

Does a sword of swiftness and boots of quickness mean 4 attacks?

[Teraswaerto]

Yes to both, unless things have changed since Dom2.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Forrest said:
Peter, I stopped asking about Death gem use because I got my questions answered.

Your answers hint of great things but are a little to general to be of use. Lets narrow things a bit.

That's because it is nearly impossible to give specific advice without a save game on hand. To give good strategic advice (which is what we are talking about when it regards forging/summoning/army construction over multiple turns to meet a threat that does not spell imminent doom), you need to know more about the world than is expressed by "my nations is this, I can do this stuff". One can attempt to give general advice, of course, but the more specific it gets, the more likely it is that there's some snag to the actual situation that makes a good counterargument.

Race: Arcoscephale
Gems: Water 171, astral 61, Air 35 (I had plans for the air)
Mages: Water 2, Astral 6, Air 3, The water and astral combined. Can go a level or two higher on the water. I can throw in Fire 5 and death 2+ and 20 to 40 gems each in a few turns. All that combined if I throw in my Pretender.

Near term figure 6 or under research.

So what would you do?

I'm a cautious player most of the time, so unless I urgently needed to improve my armies' fighting abilities to be able to survive, I'd not use them on the spot. (It is not clear from your description whether this is the case)

If not the case...

I'd probably beeline for conjuration 8 saving air gems [though that'll take considerably more research than you are outputting now] to summon one or more queens of elemental air (you have the construction to make path boosters to get an A5 mage to perform the summoning) equip them well [as many of regeneration, quickness, reinvigoration, luck, anti-magic, scripted with air shield, mirror image, mistform, attack rear - possibly given a wraith sword, possible a good 1H+charcoal shield combination if you have a mage for that at the time, or perhaps go the Staff of Storms route and make it an summon storm power, wrathful skies, air shield, mirror image, mistform, attack rear queen - depends on what you face, really] and have 2-3 super-combatants that the AI is practically defenseless against.

Then again, if I had any sort of nature gem income at all (and if I didn't, that means I made an error in pretender design or had monstrous bad luck sitesearching ), then, given the large number of water gems you have available, I'd want to forge/empower my way to a single W3N mage to contact a Naiad (W3N3) for 35 water gems. The Naiad could then contact other Naids (same price), and they could start hammering out clams - a worthy use of water and nature gems - or sitesearch further for nature gems. It is always good in long games to be sure to cover all paths of magic.

I'd definitely put up Wrath of God if not done already with a few extra gems since the AI is crap at dispelling - say a total cost of 90-100 astral gems. It not only easily pays off in the long run, it is also damn satisfying.

If I needed help in the short run, I'd probably consider burning some gems on Sea King's Court and Draconians (this does feel like a bit of a waste, though) as army boosters.

You talked about giants in one place and summoned bears another. In case of magical creatures, you have the mages to destroy them with opposition. In case of a few big and dangerous creatures in general, you have the mages to cast soul slay, enslave mind (or just spam them with paralyzation). And, though a bit expensive, you do have mages you can use as communicants allowing you to cast these with really high penetration and low fatigue. Might be worth it, might not, just like those independent fire mages you talked about could, if you have just a single guy able to reach E2S2 get a crystal matrix and thus become able to cast the big fire spells as part of a communion.

If the opposing nation doesn't have astral mages, I'd use my astral gems on extensive mind hunts whereever his forces gathered. You've got the mages to pull it off. If, however, the opposing nation does have astral mages, and if they are low-astral they use in combat, I'd probably want to build a mind duel master to pick them off one by one.

Sorry, I really cannot suggest anything but generalities like these based on what I know of your situation. I must say that with so much astral/water/air lying around, it would be terribly tempting to start churning out well equipped Bane Lord thugs.

[PhilD]

Olive said:

Have they still true random paths in dom3 or are they restricted to a few paths like other mages with random magic ?

I summoned tons of Spectres in a recent SP game, and I can pretty much answer that - they have D1, plus two 100% randoms, which can each be any of WESD (Water, Earth, Astral, Death).

[Olive]

Thanks.

[Forrest]

Thanks to you all.

Peter you have given me much to chew on. I will be changing my plans.