Nominate your "Tiny Tim" spell here!

[Dedas]

I would like to experiment more with the touch spells. Maybe one could use them effectively when expanding early?
It is risky though but with the right intelligence, in form of spies, and the right scripting, maybe this risk could be reduced? What do you think? Any ideas?

[Gandalf Parker]

Endoperez said:
Most spells mentioned here are useful in the right situations. However, these cases often are are very rare and, more importantly, not something you could plan to use. Stream of Life is risky, but if it's the best you can do... Similarly, in the optimal case you never use the touch spells, but occassionally they can save the life of your caster.

Or with certain SC's or certain pretenders or some are just for fun or role playing.

Of course there are still some that could stand to be made more useful so maybe its just the idea of generating an apparently long list of "useless" spells that bugs me. With so many dud units and dud nations and useless spells its a wonder that anyone visiting the forum bothers to try this game at all.

[Dedas]

Hey Gandalf, don't mind them help me instead with these touch spells. I'm sure there are some very good uses for them just waiting for me find, I just need a push to get in the right direction.
Do you use them? If you do, how?

Some questions:
*Is there some special mages that are better with touch spells than others? T'ien Ch'i LA come to mind.

*Items that help with surviving in close combat but don't add fatigue so you can cast spells.

*Bodyguards that don't get into the way.

[Endoperez]

I wouldn't plan to use the touch spells. In some cases, I might want to use Fire/Cold Blast, Shadow Bolt/Blast, Flame Eruption or some other improved versions of the touch spells, but not the touch spells themselves. However, I've seen Death mages annihilate a pair of thugs that managed to Attack Rear... You shouldn't plan on using them, but they could save your mage.

[Dedas]

I tried to use Eagle king and shockwave and it worked very well in early expansion.

Script: airshield/attack one turn/shockwave/attack one turn/shockwave/cast spells.

The Eagle King is actually a very good combat mage as he got armor, awe and high defense. If you use him in a standard bombardment fashion he will quickly build up fatigue due to his armor and with ranged spells costing more fatigue. So to use him most effectively as such you have to exchange his armor for something else. Pretty costly.

To ensure his safety I built 5-10 Tempest Warriors (75% shock resistance) set on guard commander.

After a couple of turns I had 5 Eagle Kings just charging in and obliterating everything.

After more experimenting I found out that they of course could forge themselves an amulet of missile protection (const2) each, eliminating the use for air shield spell. So I rapidly exchanged it for charge body; that worked exceptionally well. If I wanted I could also let them forge weightless tower shields getting their defense up to 22, and with all the experience they gathered from all the kills, they now had a cool 24 defense.
The forging is not needed of course, but it helps as after a while you want to go after bigger armies without backup. And air gems is not a problem for Caelum.

Note the minimal research and that I had no losses. The stakes are high of course as each mage cost 400 gold. But if you do it right and choose your targets carefully it will work. Try it yourself, there are plenty of more to learn from this winged dude.


Next up, another combat mage.

[Shovah32]

3 E9N4 eagle kings set to bless, mistform, mirror image, attack one turn, shockwave, cast spells work well in taking out most pd/lvl 9 indies since even if they take damage(rarely) they heal it and they also tire slowly.

[Dedas]

Oreaid:

Or astral 9 or 10 for twist fate.

Some research required (const2, evocation2, alteration2). So use philosophers and sloth. You don't need more than one resource for building Oreaid anyway.
Build order:
Turn 1: Oreaid
Turn 2: Philosopher + build troops
Turn 3: Oreaid + build troops
Turn 4: Philosopher + build troops
Turn 5:.... and so on.

Research
Alteration 2
Evocation 2
Construction 2


Equipment:
Shield of Valor

They can forge it themselves. You will have the gems needed after you've researched the above. It won't take many turns, expand with your main army in the meantime.

Total cost: 400 gold, 5 earth, 5 air

When you are ready you will have about 4 Oreaids and 4 Philosophers. Use your scout as prophet and put on the shields on the Oreaids. With your scrying and stealth scout prophet and Oreaids you can choose freely which provinces to attack. Why not backstab another player in his rear territory?

Script for Oreaids:
Barkskin/Stoneskin/Resist lightning/Shock wave/Shock wave/Spells or attack.*

*Use only if you later equip them with some nice weapons. Don't worry, there will only be archers left on the battlefield anyway. No you shouldn't attack a whole army with these gals alone. If want to, use backup.

Script for Prophet
Divine blessing/Smite/Smite/Smite/Smite/Cast spells

Placement:
Oreaids on top of each other middle extreme forward. This is important because you want that lightning to really devastate the enemy in one round making the few survivors rout. No, it isn't likely they will get hit by arrows (they have parry 8*2 + air shield 80%). If you are really worried about this, use mist (evocation 3). The turn later they will also get twist fate and barkskin. The turn after that stoneskin, giving your Oreaids protection 15 on the whole body (later you want to combine this with light weight scale mail and black steel helmet giving you 23 prot).
Turn 3 the Oreaids will cast resist lightning and the enemy will be upon you maybe trying to strike you. With 17 defense, protection 15, awe 5, and twist fate they will not harm you - promise. But don't attack anything with very high morale until you get more equipment. Remember, this is early in the game and you got a very potent elite strike force with stealth, seduction and electricity. There are plenty of juicy targets. The joy.

The prophet should of course be placed very far back to avoid anything stupid.

Try it. These gals have loads of potential in close combat. There are also lots of nice spells and weapons later in the research tree. And if you want to attack evil mind burn mages, the Oreaids MR is nothing to sneeze at and doesn't get worse with the astral bless.


Shockwave is a nice spell. But now something completely different...

[Sombre]

Gandalf Parker said:
Of course there are still some that could stand to be made more useful so maybe its just the idea of generating an apparently long list of "useless" spells that bugs me. With so many dud units and dud nations and useless spells its a wonder that anyone visiting the forum bothers to try this game at all.

I'm really sorry to go breaking the flow of this thread, but I'm getting tired of this kind of attitude. Why are people who are discussing problems with the game often accused of 'hating' the game? If people didn't like dominions3 they wouldn't be pointing out which spells are overcosted or underpowered and trying to fix them in mods, would they? Same deal for pointing out problems with the AI, higlighting units that they'd never build, trying to restore some balance to the Vans etc etc.

Some spells and units and so on in Vanilla just aren't balanced. No-one is claiming the game is bad, no-one is badmouthing the devs, no-one is being overly negative. It's just that there's no point in making lists of units/spells/nations that don't have balance problems is there? Acting like everything is perfect and labelling everyone who disagrees as 'haters', 'whiners' and people with no interest in RP, singleplayer etc is just silly.

As for people not trying the game, if they're daft enough to come to the conclusion that the game is bad by reading a couple of threads pointing out issues to be fixed (this game has active modders and fairly regular patches as a major reason to buy it in my opinion) then that's their problem. And if they measure up the good and bad of dom3 (and yes, there /is/ a list of bad points) and decide they don't want to buy the game,... how is that a bad thing? They're just making an informed decision. I personally get a lot of enjoyment from Dom3, but there are plenty of people who wouldn't and I'd never want to give them the wrong impression of the game, resulting in them buying it an being unhappy.

[Gandalf Parker]

Maybe its the choice of the wording which gives the appearance of trashing the game. I never said that was the intent, just the impression. Intent doesnt mean much if the entire forum seems to paint the game as crap. Try to even it out abit.

how about instead of saying "Some spells and units and so on in Vanilla just aren't balanced. No-one is claiming the game is bad, no-one is badmouthing the devs, no-one is being overly negative"
you might say "Some spells and units and so on in Vanilla just aren't balanced in my opinion" or even "in the opinion of some". That way it doesnt give the impression of bad-mouthing the devs.

[jutetrea]

Game is so far away from crap it isn't even funny... but that doesn't mean specific spells or units aren't "crap". IMO making a good thing even better is a worthwhile goal.

IMO touch spells aren't that useful, but the short range (1-5) with a big AOE are great - powerful yet risky.