Tried something cool, found some cool magic sites!

[DeathDaemon]

I've been trying to perfect my abysia strategies most of which depend on how things go in the map. I almost never go with soul contracts, vampires are hard to use on big maps and small maps, your fire is predictable so you try to use something else. A lot seems to depend on finding libraries as most of abysia's mages seem to be fighting or patrolling.

So a couple games ago against the AI I found over 7 libraries and even a place that had the citidel of the lore masters and an academy of high magics. That's a lore master 150 4? 12RP, a sage 80 1? 7RP, and two wizards 140 3? 10R. Of course the lore master is the only way to go so the others are a waste, but still I could have been spending thousands a turn to crank out some serious research. I only produced research at a couple places so I could protect them under nearby flaming domes. I've played a lot of games and 1-3 libraries is typical for a map, but this game I had only 20% of karan and access to so many libraries that I could have dominated even more than I already was. OK, enough with that game - the next game is where things got interesting.

I created a game on karan with 11 players, all human (i'm using the conceptp172 mod). I played all 11 races w/o biased decisions as much as possible. I focused on starting fort construction at a strategic spot if possible. I would start the fort and turn the computers to AI. I think that with 10 AI on karan, each with 2 forts this might make for an interesting AI game. So I try Abysia and actually have slow expanision. I do some site searches with my rainbow warlock in a third of my 15 provinces and find some pretty cool stuff other than just gems:

2 onyx amazon provinces
good for death and some earth forging

1 library

The temple of the raging god. 3 recruitable cmdrs, 2 fire/turn. I'm not sure I've seen this one before!
1. High Priest 3H (cool but I'm abysia so no biggie).
2. Pyromancer 60g 1F 3R (again I'm abysia bleh)
3. Fire lord - a sweet knight with 2F! Awesome for abysia, too bad it doesn't have innate fire resistance.

Castle Arcanum. Castle fortification found! I think I've only seen this site once.
1. wizard 140 3? 10R. Cool forger/researcher
2. Warrior Mage - Another knight mage with 2?. Super sweet...

I've decided this game's strategy for abysia will be:
Lots and lots of knights that cast their own buffs. I'll probably spend my blood on demon knights, something which I rarely do. This will most likely never ever happen again in my hands of Abysia I'm amazed that I've been playing Dominions 2 for many months and each game can still really differ.

I've attached screenshots of the 2 knights that will be the driving force for my nation.

[Boron]

I found out myself that i should always search after blood with any blood nation .
If you find the summoning circle then it is extremely cool . I think no other site decides a game more .

Especially with Abysia i am normally quite sloppy in sitesearching .

[deccan]

Boron said:
Especially with Abysia i am normally quite sloppy in sitesearching .

Same for me when I played Abysia in Musical Chairs. Generally, I think I'm pretty bad at site searching. Making a RP is no brainer, but what else? Do people generally think that taking a researcher's time to do a level 1 search is worth it (e.g. a sage)? Acashic is cool but very expensive. Or do you cast the single path search spells, focusing on the gems that you lack most?

[Edi]

I use single path spells all the time, typically when I can afford it, I designate a group of mages that contains most (sometimes even all) of the required magics as a radar squad and when I get a new province, it gets hit with everything.

I'm almost religious about site searching whichever way I can get it done, because it directly impacts on survivability.

Astral and death are easiest to get, you need just one magic to get lv 9 search and you can do it every turn. Nature is also easy (as long as you find druids if you don't have it natively). The elements are generally rather difficult to get if you don't have native mages who can do the searches. Of course, it's possible to find a site with indie mages who can give you some capability, but most of those are already lv2+ elemental sites, or nature (Enchanted Forest, Flowering Forest etc, N### Enchantresses will eventually produce radar mages).

Edi

[Boron]

Edi said:
I use single path spells all the time, typically when I can afford it, I designate a group of mages that contains most (sometimes even all) of the required magics as a radar squad and when I get a new province, it gets hit with everything.
Edi

If you play e.g. Arco/Ryleh do you then Accashic or still search every province with your single path spells ?
Pythium is imo designed for searching via Accashic but with Arco it is already a bit more complicated especially since their Mystics can get the elementals quite quick and Pythium has slightly higher starting astral income .

In SP i like accashic record most while in MP if i play a blood nation i normally don't focus too much on site searching or i play Ermor or Pythium or Arco which have not so big difficulties in sitesearching .

I think at least in MP i could never play a nation like marignon base , man etc. cause my sitesearching would suck then completely . In my single marignon MP game i failed promptly then as i assumed .

[Edi]

I prefer radar to Acashic scanning, because it wastes less gems and I can use the astral gems for something else. Of course, after some time the micro involved in it just gets tiring and I'll start throwing Acashic around if I can afford it. Arco usually has no need of Acashic Record until expansion rate outstrips radar scanning rate, which doesn't happen very early, usually.

Edi

[Wauthan]

Usually go with Edis' strategy and assemble a squad of searcher-finders asap. Most of the time this just means sending one of each highest tier national mage out to search each conquered province. Once the spellresearch meets the needs I hopefully have enough resources to create a minimum casting group that tosses spells at one province at the time. Starting with the welldefended core provinces and work their way in a spiral towards the frontier. In the mid and late game I tend to revert to Achasic record though since spellcasters are too valuable to waste on site searching. It's expensive, yes, but saves a lot of valuable time and manpower.

That said I don't think I ever do a dedicated blood, holy or unholy search. Would such a search even be rewarding? Just about all the blood sites cause unrest and can spotted that way. I never found any good holy/unholy site and they seem to be very rare as well.

[Boron]

Wauthan said:
That said I don't think I ever do a dedicated blood, holy or unholy search. Would such a search even be rewarding? Just about all the blood sites cause unrest and can spotted that way. I never found any good holy/unholy site and they seem to be very rare as well.

The summoning circle gives 60% discout on all blood spells . It is a blood 3 site .
I dunno how sites are assigned but there are 435 different sites in sites.xls shown and the special nation only sites are included . So something like a total of 350-400 sites .

Does anyone know a bit about the probabilities of sites ?
Is it like a site is with 50% possibility a lvl 1 site , with 25% a lvl 2 , 15% lvl 3 and 10% lvl 4 e.g. ?
Would be interesting to know

[Taqwus]

Some of the unholy sites let unholy priests enter to summon ghouls, mummies, possibly others (there are undead-summoning sites for shadows, CW undead, banes as well, but I think these might belong to death magic). The ghoul sites are of somewhat limited use to most nations as they're not likely to get any unholy priest other than a Mound Fiend, which can reanimate ghouls without a site at a similar rate IIRC.

I don't remember any holy site giving discounts or summons, just gems / unrest reduction / perhaps a local Purgatory (?), but I can't claim to have seen them all.

[Tuidjy]

There is an extrelemy powerful site called the 'Devil's Gate'. It lets
a blood mage summon a devil per turn. It is blood 3, so most people would
never find it, except that it also generates 15 unrest. I remember my
girlfriend trading for slaves and blood boosters in a game, just so that
she can empover a mage and find the site.

As for searching, I am partial to single path search spells, combined with
taking a turn away from expansion to search very promising provinces. Even
when I have an income of 100+ astral gems, I seldom use acashic record,
except when I know there is a major site in the province, or when hopping
for an underwater castle.

Two paths I always search for are astral and death, which are my favorite
paths at the moment. That is, unless you ask Saint Cohen, who is always
fighting the Last war he lost, and still calls me Air (Ab)user.