Game Over!!

[Sandman]

This thread should definitely be stickied, because of Saber Cherry's post. With spoiler warnings.

Don't buy water mages.

Isn't that a bit drastic?

Do:
Hire mercenary mages.
Hire independent mages and especially sages.
Give gems to your mages for important battles.
Script your mages.
Get a level-4 priest to cast fanaticism constantly.
Use fast, flying and cheap units to patrol.
Build lots and lots of scouts and spies.
Protect your mages with a screening force.

Don't:
Engage in a guerilla war against the AI.
Take Golem cult.
Use top-tier mages for research and nothing else.
Use sages in combat.
Try to assassinate a death mage with a bog-standard assassin.
Enter the arena with anything valuable.
Give your mages heavy armour.

[Saber Cherry]

Sandman said:

Isn't that a bit drastic?

Oh, right I was thinking of battle-mages, but water mages are useful for forging a few things, casting Murdering Winter, summoning ice devils and Water Queens, and making clams in an unmodded game. But other mages tend to be more flexible. Overall, I find water mages to be the least useful.

[shovah]

quickness+falling frost can be useful when massed (quite easy with atlantis)

[Endoperez]

Of course it is. It's useful even without massing it. However, Water 3 isn't that common. Quickness + Frozen Heart is much easier to get. The point that there are seldom Water mages on the field stays, and of course there are all those Undead that are almost always immune to cold.

[Cainehill]

Heh. I thought the reason SC said not to buy water mages is because they kill off the other mages by casting Breath of Winter - never leave a water bracelet on a water sage for long.

[shovah]

yea, breath of winter is evil

[Saber Cherry]

That too. In fact, I've recently encounted a rash of Rime Hauberks forged by water mages and placed on normal commanders... so that they can kill even when they're not around I have to admit that I picked one up after a battle and put it on the Ulm Black Forest vampire-hero, who killed his troops with it too, despite my scripting to have him fly to the rear and attack away from my other units.

But it's true, Breath of Winter is almost universally bad except for Jotunheim/Neifelheim, Ermor, or solo supercombattants. And it's cast unscripted

Falling Frost is a nice spell but it requires more water magic than 90% of water mages will ever have. It cannot be cast underwater. However, water mages cannot buff with "Summon Water Power" on land! A Robe of the Sea is expensive, while a Water Bracelet is Construction-6. Considering that normal water mages (Hydromancers, Initiate of the Deeps [Atlantis' cheap non-capitol mage], Jade Amazons, Master of the Way, Celestial Master, Master of the Five Elements, Pythium, Wizards, Sages, Skratti, Caelum, Marshmaster, Starspawn, Astrologer, Mystic, Rain Priest, anything else with randoms, especially summons) are all W1 or W2, water on a recruitable mage almost never lets you cast Falling Frost.

Of everything I listed, I think Jade Amazons have a 1/16 chance of W3, Skratti have a 1/4 or 1/8, and S&A Celestial Masters have a 1/4 (these numbers may be off due to forgetting which randoms are #, $, or ?).

Then there are the recruitable W3 mages: Atlantis King of the Deep (290g), Deep Seer (180g, capitol-only), Neifel Jarl (500g, capitol-only). There are no cheap W3 summons of which I'm aware.

So, what do you do with this water?

W1 mage: Cast Quickness, then Slime. At Alt-6, Frozen Heart... but not really, since it has a range of 20 on a W1 mage. Underwater, cast Water Power then Water Strike (1 enemy per cast).

W2 mage: Cast Quickness, 4x Cold Bolt, then Breath of Winter and kill your own troops. At Evoc-7, Ice Strike is OK, but only range 25, and only really good on high-level mages.

W3 mage: Almost doesn't exist except for 2 nations, Ice Devils, Sea Troll Kings, Elemental Queens, and W9 Gods... or massive communions, after which you have better spells than Falling Frost.

So - for the first half of the game, W1 mages research, W2 mages forge clams (if you play that way), and all the cool mages get into the hall of fame. W2 mages can't get into the hall of fame except by friendly kills (not sure if those count). It's hard to find a good use for low-level water magic for much of the game.

edit: Before you go summoning Sea King Courts willy-nilly, consider this:

Kristoffer O said
Trolls are incredibly greedy. What they do with their stipends is unknown. Tax collectors worldwide dream of solving this mystery. The trolls dream of juicy tax collectors.

Sea troll cost - 50
Troll cost - 60

[DominionsFan]

Doms 2 AI got many major flaws, like it wont build castles, or enough castles, it builds loads of useless troops etc. etc.
I never had problems beating the hardest AI at all....
I hope that these errors will be fixed in Doms 3, if there will be a Doms 3 at all

[Endoperez]

I always thought AI builds too much militia etc. because it doesn't build castles.

Besides that, you can't be serious about NEVER having problems with the hardest AI! The user interface alone will take a few games to master!

[DominionsFan]

Endoperez said:
I always thought AI builds too much militia etc. because it doesn't build castles.

Besides that, you can't be serious about NEVER having problems with the hardest AI! The user interface alone will take a few games to master!

.. of course I had in the beggining. :-) .. actually imo if you play on big map against multiple AIs, its harder to win in Doms 2., then in Galciv 2 for example. The Galciv2 AI got major flaws also, but its easier to win there against multiple AIs, in Doms 2. it is much harder.