Magic Items and Equiping ?

[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.

[Gandalf Parker]

Definetly. One thing I like to do alot is assign knights to a mounted leader. Put them on a flank just slightly back from my front-line infantry. Have the knights "guard commander" and have the commander hold/hold/hold/attack-rearmost. That allows time for the enemys rush to reach my frontline troops, and makes it more sure for my flankers to get around past them.

Doing the same with flyers can also help make sure that the enemy commanders are standing alone before the flyers attack them.

[Taqwus]

I have used the Chalice (admittedly while abusing Tartarian Gate), can't remember ever seeing an attack from that. Horror attacks, however, are a different matter. I suspect that some items not only horror mark you (making it more likely that a horror or Ashen Angel will preferentially attack you) but also increase the chance of a horror arriving at all. The Gift of Kurgi might be one of these, and the Forbidden Light almost certainly is. OTOH, Mage Bane, which does horror mark you, doesn't seem to attract 'em in droves by itself.

[PvK]

From a practical cost-effectiveness standpoint, I think adding combat equipment to warrior commanders is a speculative investment. It has a big effect on their personal effectiveness and survival, but not as big an effect as summons or other gem uses on battle victory... up to a point. However, once abilities become great enough, from items and experience and heroic abilities and buffs, they can become more and more powerful, able to either take out large numbers of enemies, or able to take out opponents which the regular troops can't handle.

There are also considerations such as a large group of summons requiring a bunch of supplies and leadership to add to an army, while magic gear doesn't require either. It can sometimes Last a lot longer, too.

PvK

[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 ?