Q: Effective use of magic resources

[ExitJudas]

Finally my dominions 3 arrived by mail. ive played the demo a littel and dom 2 quite a bit. However I am still only an intermediate player. Right now, I'm trying to figure out the following, and could use some advice:

I usually try to maximise magic resources every turn from the beginning of the game. I do cost/benefit analysis on research points/per gold and buy one of these every turn, after i have my prophet and primary commanders running.

I then start researching whatever magic school i find fits best to my nation and pretender.

My question is this:

1. when and how to invest magic resources (i.e. turns of action by magic users) in what?

It seems a waste of time to deck out a normal commander in magic items, since (at least this was the case in dom 2). commanders in melee tend to die, routing your army, so you need to keep them out of the action anyway. When should you spent resources on creating magic items? who should get them and how can they use them? are the trinkets worth anything at all?

i can see that giving your commander a ranged weapon is smart, since he can then do damage from safety, but it just seems to me that armor and melee weapons are not really usefull for anything but pretenders or the rare supernatural commander with tons of hp.

is it worth it buying multiple commanders, and decking them out in magic items, and having them fight together alongside normal troops?

thanks!

[Endoperez]

Equipping commanders as killing machines can be done, but usually not with recruitables. Human commanders are just human, and they die. Jotun and other giant races can do it better. And everyone can summon powerful commanders and deck them out. There are many threads about thugs (that's what you described), and about super-combatants or SCs (which are much, much worse and can kill entire armies alone).

If you want to try this strategy out, I'd suggest LA Jotunheim. They can recruit sacred giant commanders in all their forts, and they have easier access to Astral than other ages of Jotunheim. Choose a pretender with a supportive bless that helps your Jotun Jarls (Earth for reinvigoration, Nature for regeneration, perhaps Water for increased defence or Water 9 for quickness...), research Construction and make items that give them protective abilities.

Pendants of Luck, Amulets of Antimagic, Rings of Regeneration, Boots of Quickness, weapons with high defence rating (ice sword, sword of quickness) or which affect several enemies at once (sword of quickness, Frost Brand, Shadow Brand)...

You need to ensure that the Herses and Jarls can avoid most hits (defence, luck), withstand a few (good hp, decent protection, regeneration), survive enemy mages (elemental resistances, magic resistance (13 is a good start, but not enough)), kill or rout enemies you're fighting against (boots of behemoth + horror helmet works against low-morale troops, but is suicide against undead) and finally, not die from fatigue. High encumberance is a killer. Don't let encumberance climb too high, and make sure your Jarls are never completely surrounded. Give them some bodyguards, and remember than while two giants won't fit in the same square, a giant and a human can share the same space.


EDIT:
You can use the human commanders with other items: bows, Sceptres of Authority and other spell-casting items, Herald Lances to destroy undead from afar...

[ExitJudas]

great advice. so if you deck out these sacred commanders, you wouldn't have them control too many units in case they die, right? have them fight with a few bodyguards alongside another the army, commanded by another commander from the back of the field?

[Endoperez]

That's usually the easiest way. If they happen to die, you don't have the trouble of re-scripting all their old troops again. Giving the bodyguards to someone else isn't nearly as tedious.

[ExitJudas]

cheers.

[Autochthon]

Another thing about using humans as thugs is the fact that they have too few HPs.

That means that even when geared out, they tend to wear out due to the higher rate of Affliction gain. Even if you play Arco, you'll still have to sideline your human thug quite often.

Also, given their Size of 2, they tend to get Trampled by large units and swarmed by small units

[Cor2]

Another fun thing to do with normal human commanders is

1: give them a bow of war and boots of quickness. 26 arrow a turn!

2: give them a rod of the pheonix or any spell casting device like skull talismen and give them boots of the messenger, gridle of might or anything that reduces fatigue.

3: If you have a death bless or earth bless or any bless go ahead and give non sacred mages shrouds of the battle saint. It gives them armour with no encumberance, plus extra killing power (for death) or extra reinvig (for earth) or extra Magic resist (astral bless). The death bless makes spells be much more likely to cause afflictions. So if you casting Earthquake (8? ap damage to the whole battle feild) and you want to cripple alot of people this is the way to go

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Sword of Ice, Cat Charm, Raw Hide Shield.

If you want to 80% guarantee a well supported human thug's survival, get defense at twenty or higher, and choose your targets carefully.

While I don't find humanoid thugs a reliable strategy, there is room for lightly equipping a few. They can turn the tide of an equal battle. Simply having some cheap, spare commanders and giving them basic fire swords can be handy (early on). If you've got two equally matched national armies, but side A has three units that will hit all of the time, instead of half the time... And yes, you will get casualties. It's not a great strategy, but if you're playing say, LA Atlantis, you can't always afford to build a temple, laboratory, AND fortress. I sometimes skip on the first two to focus on churning out always scarce infantry.

[Shovah32]

Cor2 said:
Another fun thing to do with normal human commanders is

2: give them a rod of the pheonix or any spell casting device like skull talismen and give them boots of the messenger, gridle of might or anything that reduces fatigue.

When giving commanders spell casting items I would stick with boots of quicknes and, although quickness no longer works for spell casting, it still works for item casting IIRC(so banner of the damned/skullface/rod of the phoenix can do some fun things)

[ExitJudas]

great advice everyone. thanx a lot. i guess decking out low hp melee commanders is not something to prioritize compared to other things your magic users can spend time on. i thing ill do it once in a while though. there is something cool about a mounted commander in full battle gear with a huge mace charging into ranks of undead!