Magic Items and Equiping ?

[Chazar]

I feel much the same like spirokeat: I'm pretty afraid to send my commanders into the fray, but I have to:

Sending a leader and his guards gives you much more control over the units (like hold, hold, hold, hold, attack xyz) and therefore some strong leader must always go to meele...

[Boron]

at which point do you start forging items for your leaders ? and what nations are generally good for forging ? i think because on the one hand if you forge many items it is quite time intensive since only 1 item / mage can be forged per turn . and for the more powerful items you have to research quite a bit in construction .
i mostly forged items so far only to increase my casting skills in some magics . so in early / perhaps midgame ( with highest research costs option ) if you go the forging path and encounter an enemy which instead concentrated e.g. on summon spells and used his gems instead for this purpose will your empowered leaders than win against with equal gem costs summons + leaders without magic items ?
and another problem is that in most cases your 1-3 possible maingemtypes which your races mages have as magics have to be used both for forging + summoning / battle magic / rituals and so on .
so if you mainly forge items and your oppenent instead mainly uses his gems the other ways do your well equipped but few leaders than win against your lower quality but more quantity enemies ?

[Gandalf Parker]

I tend to forge in spurts. One round I will have everyone make something. Usually it will be when I am about to send out a hero or an assassin. Or maybe a major army of elite units. As to when in the game... Most often as soon as I hit constructions 2,4,6. Although for most of my races construction is nearly the Last magic I put attention on.

Some items I just like to have available in the lab. Flying boots in case I want to move a commander quickly. Often straight to another lab where they remove the boots for the next guy to use. Or items goor for an Arena. Or items that make good gifts for AI's such as Herald Lance, or Poison Bladder or Hunters Knife.

[ June 17, 2004, 13:41: Message edited by: Gandalf Parker ]

[Boron]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:

Or items that make good gifts for AI's such as Herald Lance, or Poison Bladder or Hunters Knife.

what is the use of a gift to the ai ? since there is no diplomacy ?

what do you consider a hero ? the 2-3 special national heroes you get randomly ? or powerful summons like a arch devil ... ?

i know you are a expert gandalf
you play lots of mp games too or ?
so do you remember one where either you or your opponent used lots of magic items and you or he won because of them ? if you had summoned just some more units instead of having forged the items and fought the battle with them instead would you most likely have been better or made the items the win ?
or is in mpgames battlefield space a true limit ?

[Taqwus]

I can see at least two major reasons for giving gifts to an AI.

The first is to help the recipient against a third enemy which you're not immediately willing or able to confront directly. Perhaps the third AI is significantly more powerful than your recipient and is on the other side so your armies can't reach yet. Perhaps you're playing with an impossible Ermor and don't want to see it gobble up AIs that are otherwise not terribly good at combating Ermor. That sort of thing. These gifts can sometimes be chosen so as to minimize the potential impact when you eventually get around to backstabbing; e.g. if you're largely poison-immune, or simply going to avoid melee combat, then the snake bladder stick won't hurt you; likewise, if you've got no undead, it isn't a huge problem to hand out herald lances unless you were really counting on routing the enemy through Terror and such.

The second reason is far more exploitative and cheesy, and that's to send double-edged gifts which can seriously hurt the recipient if used unwisely. Examples would include Lycantropos amulets (cursed, berserk, eventually turns recipient into werewolf), extra eyes of aiming (one's fine, two's a problem), bane venom charms (disease spreader), rime hauberk (if he's not cold immune, probably will kill those standing next to him), bone armor (same bit, with life draining) etc. It's cheesy in that this is taking advantage of the AI's relatively careless use of items and that only the most careless or inexperienced human player would be likely to fall for it.

[Gandalf Parker]

You have them pinned well Taqwus. Just as examples.....

sending the hunters knife to Ulm helps if part of your tactics involves attack-ear or the use of assassins

sending that bladder on a stick Jotunheim so that if their commander is attacked he poisons himself and all other commanders near him. You dont even have to be the ones attacking Jotun for that to work

sending Heralds Lance to Marignon to help them take out Ermor. There can be many reasons.. Because Ermor is a problem for me to take, because Marignon is closer and can maybe stop Ermor before it ruins too many provinces, because Marignons Paladins with a heralds lance is deadly against undead but actually weakened when they fight me (less damage then the natural lance)

[spirokeat]

That gives me a helluva lot more food for thought not just on equiping my commanders but excerting more control over bodies of troops.

I lamented the lack of battfield control when I first got DOM2, but I understand that as a MP game its impractical to implement it. But as I play primarily in SP I'm always thirsting for control of the combats especially as the game has such fantastic combat based spells that I feel I never quite get control of. Perhaps a larger pool of scripted commands would be good, rather than just 5.

However I had not thought of using my commanders in combative rolls with troops on guard to extend the ammount of combat control I had. The ole hold and attack never quite seems satisfying when you have a massed rank of 50 archers raking your foes, you almost hate seeing your tropps start moving forward on turn 3.

All great stuff though, I think I will restart my current game and play with all this in mind.

How do people feel about the items that have a negative side, I kinda want to forge them but am never quite sure how hard the resultant combats might be when the guards of the underworld, Chalice Knights or horrors come calling on your guys to collect ? plus does that count as an assassination attempt and allow bodyguards to be present ? That might be a more comfortable safety net.

Spiro.