T'ien Chi S&A play my next turn exercise

[KissBlade]

Just wondering what some of the better players would be doing in my shoes at this point. Note the freakish amounts of mages sitting around doing nothing.

Also any tips or notes about my progress at this point would help. I'm playing with 8 or 9 other nations on norm AI.

Thanks in advance. =)

[Peacekeeper]

warning: must have cradle of dominion map downloaded =)

[Arralen]

• Do not send the expensive Celestial Masters (CM) into combat, unless you really need one there because of his magic pathes. Better use Masters of the 5 Elements (Mo5E), maybe with a path booster.
• Get yourself a dwarven hammer or two. You are going to forge some 10- or 20-gem items, so they should pay off soon.
• At least, give them some Lucky Coins
• Sitesearching with LvL1 only isn't sufficient. Try to get a CM with 2 in all pathes for searching. Apart from water and death, that is: you have enough income to use the sitesearching spells with these. Cheap Master of the Dead and a Master of 5 Elements with random water can cast these spells. Keep in mind, though: a province can only have 4 sites.
  Here are all the siteseeing spells Code:

  ---

  
  
  TYPE     SPEll     NAME (SKILL/COST/EFFECT)
  
  death  - Conj -2 : Dark Knowledge (1/3death)
  
  water  - Conj -3 : Voice of Apsu (2/2water)
  
  water  - Conj -4 : Voice of Tiamat (2/8water - all elemental sites underwater province)
  
  astral - Conj -5 : Acashic Record (3/25astral - reveals ALL sites)
  
  astral - Evoc -2 : Arcane Probing (1/2astral)
  
  special- Evoc -9 : Strands of Arcane Power (7/90 - special, ritual)
  
  fire   - Thaum-2 : Augury (2/2fire)
  
  air    - Thaum-2 : Auspex (2/2air)
  
  earth  - Thaum-2 : GnomeLore (2/2earth)
  
  nature - Thaum-2 : Haruspex (2/2nature)
  
  blood  - Blood-2 : Bowl of Blood (2/2blood)

  ---

• Your troops are poor. You have 178 water gems, but you haven't summoned 1 single "Demon of Heavenly Rivers", which are upkeep-free, btw..
• Did I mention those DoHR are auqatic, as are all your mages which have water skill? The mages can even bring along non-aquatic troops in small numbers...
• You don't have scouts. Use Black Servants.
• Oh, you don't have a mage with death-2. Correct that.
• Oh, you don't have any conjuration researched. Better correct that, too. Summons are generally upkeep-free and stronger than standard units. (Trolls are 1gold/turn, though)
• Think about either a)giving your prophet better protection or b)killing him off and making a CM your prophet. Prophets are upkeep-free. And the CM will get Holy-4, the only way you can get such a high priest. ATM, you Chariot Prophet might be killed by a lucky hit anyway (Prot 8, HP 11 isn't enough even with DEF21 and etherealness).
• Start a new game: Your choice of scales doesn't make much sense. Productivity-3 and a Watchtower mean you get more ressources in every province, but you don't gather them in your recruitment centers (forts) because of low admin value. So you either need to put a castle into every province, or you recruit troops in nearly every province every turn. You havn't done both up to now. So better get yourself some growth (which gives as much money per scale as productivity in CBM 5.2, but pop growth and supplies as well) and maybe a better fort or some magic on your pretender.

[KissBlade]

I summoned like 15 Demons of Heavenly River and they got slaughtered by tritons. =( Also, by "correcting" my mages to try to get guys with extra magic skills, should I just empower them? Also, with site searching, would it reveal all the sites or only sites up to my spell level? For example, master of dead casts the death search, would he come up empty on a 4 gem death?

[Cainehill]

Casting the site spell searches the province, totally - at level 9 search ability, albeit there's no sites above 4th.

[KissBlade]

Also, on the topic of spending points, how would you advise my point spread look? Mind you, this is already for a game where the settings are rich province, difficult research, indie str: 7 and magic sites: 55

[Ironhawk]

Arralen said:
Do not send the expensive Celestial Masters (CM) into combat, unless you really need one there because of his magic pathes. Better use Masters of the 5 Elements (Mo5E), maybe with a path booster.

Huh?? With only a few exceptions, that is what expensive mages are designed to do. This is like playing Man and not sending your crones off to war. Sure you keep a couple back if they have the right paths to forge or summon something special. But otherwise they need to be out there on the front lines, earning thier keep.

[Oversway]

I think the idea was to recruit Mo5E for combat and have a few CM for research/forging.

[shovah]

yes, because the CM can also summon those lovely demons (and with flying can quickly reach the front lines if needed)

[Turin]

Why do you recruit so many mo5e? a mo5e gets you 6 paths for 190 gp. A CM gets you 8 paths, one higher holy level and flying for only 60 gp more. And they are far more effective as combat mages. The only reason where I´d consider recruiting mo5e is when you are desperate for a 2e or 2n mage.

Then why don´t you use the CMs for sitesearching? any province should be immediately searched by a CM, if that doesn´t turn up anything use sitesearching spells for the paths that the cm doesn´t have.

Then build a second fort with lab and temple to recruit masters of the way, those will be your primary type of mages with a fire/air/nature/water random they make good combat mages, with a blood ranfom they make EXCELLENT bloodhunters, with an astral random they will summon demons of heavenly rivers, with earth or death you can use them as researchers.

Then learn to use demons of heavenly rivers. The trick is to group them with your cms, so that they get bodyetherealed/lucked and take a good bless( I´m particularly fond of w9 since it is very powerful, helps all your mages and you get it quite cheap on a dragon.)

Oh and put some PD in your provinces, helps against losing them to sneaky scouts.