The pain of slavery

[Saxon]

You know the old saying “Love hurts”? Well, I love DOM II, but sometimes it hurts!

I was playing single player Arco, with victory point locations. It was mid/late game and I was getting beat up, but figured I could pull it off. Then I realized there was an easy way out. I had my “firing squad” of 16 astral mages, mostly Astrologers, but including my rainbow pretender, all set up with good items. The map was too big and they could not stop all the attacks, particularly the giants. So, I figured I would just teleport into the remaining victory point provinces, take them and win.

I teleport into the first and smash the defenders. One mage casts “enslave mind” and captures a tiny little wolf rider.

In the same turn, C’tis invades the same province with a big army. I replay the battle and am a bit concerned, the numbers are huge. Still, I figure I can take them. The spells start and the soul slays are eating up the troops, they have no magic resistance. My lone wolf rider charges out to fight. He meets the enemy and is killed. I shrug, no big deal, he was a bonus anyway.

Then my mages retreat. And die. The heart of my army, my major investment, my pretender, my only hope. Dead.

Since I had teleported in, the surrounding provinces were held by the enemy, nowhere to retreat. Since all of my troops were killed, my commanders retreated. Enslave mind is a cool spell, but do not script it when using a commanders only army, you can find yourself retreating sooner than you like…

[Boron]

but you have no impact what your mages cast after 5 turns so if the battle Lasts longer than 5 turns one of them almost 100% sure casts it anyway
that's my biggest wish for a new patch / dominions 3
that you can script only your mages which spells to cast either until end of battle or at least for 15 turns.
it would be nice if you could make a spellpool :
for the first 5 turns it works like always you can give direct orders. then you draw the spells you wish your mages use in the spellpool and the spells are randomly choosen out of the spellpool from combatturn 6-end of battle .

cause as norfleet stated in another thread some mages have enourmous advantages since they have not so many quite useless spells.
if your mage has a naturepick e.g. he casts perhaps vine arrow while he could cast other much more useful spells instead .

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Saxon:
Then my mages retreat. And die. The heart of my army, my major investment, my pretender, my only hope. Dead.

This would have happened had a single one of your commanders been killed, so it wasn't that unlikely anyways.

[Saxon]

Really, a killed commander will prompt the rout of the others? I am sure that I have lost “Firing Squad” members before and they kept going. Perhaps I had cast enslave mind and gotten some troops by then.

Ok, I am still not convinced (no offense intended) but, assuming that they do retreat at the first loss, does anyone have any bright ideas on how to get around this? And Norfleet, I will beat you to the “don’t get anyone killed “ comment! Or is it just inherently risky.

[Boron]

it stands in the manual. if your army consists only of commanders when the first casuality happens your other commanders will rout.
page 18 point 6.6.

this is unfortunately really true
only exeption : immortals in friendly dominion / gone beserk commanders .

[Norfleet]

What you need is also a constant spam of summonable crap, like False Horrors, Skeletons, etc.

The constant flood of summonable crap serves to both swamp the enemy as he attempts to kill your mages, and ensure that you also always have crap on the battlefield at all times, preventing an auto-rout.

[Saxon]

Fair enough, if it is in the manual, it must be true. Teach me for surfing the net while at work. That is right, I have been taught, now I will have to bring the manual to work with me.

Cheap summons, hmm, that is a good idea. Slow the charge at the mages, prevent the auto rout, make the enslave spell useful again and, occasionally, kill an enemy or two. I could have done that easily in the battle in question…