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| Misfortune is almost always a good dumping grounds to get design points. False. Luck offers a number of advantages which many overlook in paying homage to the ¿gold is King¿ myth. True, order will give you more gold over time than luck even accounting for rebuilding burned down labs & temples (though of course your missing lab also cost you research points and possibly strategic spell casting). I believe that it¿s a mistake to measure the benefit of luck in terms of gold. One big advantage of luck is greater magic diversity through random gems, indie mages joining you, and national heroes. How do you put a gold value on getting a mage plus gems to start site searching in a new path? Also, the fact that order will give you more gold in the long run does not capture the advantage of gaining 1000 gold in the first couple turns when every coin counts the most. Finally, I think the detriment of random indie attacks are not really factored in by most people. If you¿re on the ball and have some spare capacity they are no more than a gold-costing nuisance. In a tight fight though they are often the tipping point, effectively acting with your enemy to attack you and fortify what you lost. Misfortune scales are very common, and I¿ve lost track of how many times I¿ve seen people screwed over by indie attacks while another player is attacking them and they have no way to retake the lost provinces in any reasonable amount of time.
Drain is for suckers, never take it competitively. Well heck, just look at the numbers, what percentage change in research will the mage you plan to do most of your researching with have? If you plan on researching with Sauromancers (10 rp), drain 2 only subtracts 10% of your research¿so you could put those design points into 2 levels of order to gain 14% more income and theoretically 14% more mages. Again, it all depends on how everything fits together. Comments: -> Interesting thought experiment Baalz, but the problem comes from QM's basic assertion that order scales are pretty much always worth taking. If you take this as a base assumption then a lot of your following analysis doesn't hold up. For example, taking drain, even with 10RP mages, means you lose 10% research, as opposed to gaining 10% with magic 1 (your analysis also didn't include taking the obvious magic-1 pick, which is a bit disingenuous) So, a 20% swing in RP for 3 scales. If order isn't assumed to be maxed out then sure, you could get 21% more gold...seems even, aside from having to build a ton more forts and labs to pump out mages, but since you can't have order-6 you end up being forced to take growth or production instead. 6% more gold doesn't look nearly so hot all of a sudden. Nations with weaker researchers obviously have an even easier call to make there. Similarly O-3 blunts the effects of luck and misfortune, so taking some misfortune seems to be a good choice. That being said, you'll then want to avoid death, since that's when the really nasty events come in. Yes, I realize this is kind of a ridiculous chain of effects, but it's actually how things work out, for the most part, and why the common wisdom is the way it is. This leaves temp scales and production...sacrificing production to have an awake SC is pretty much always a good idea in terms of efficiency, and temperature scales aren't as important as they seem due to seasonal fluctuations, so I usually plunder them for points as well. The other problem with relying on production scales is that you could get a start with crappy neighbors...3 provinces, 2 plains and a woods isn't uncommon. Pulling in under 200 resources to your cap with high production is a pretty big hit. Perhaps a minor concern, but still, it's there. Anyhow, I will admit everything is situational, but there's a chain reaction from the order scale being so good, which is why a lot of the other scale choices get set how they are so often. -> I think you may always try to refute common wisdom with theory, but as long it isn't refuted by results of dozen of MP games it just isn't refuted. I think the base of said common wisdom is games don't finish in turn 20. And if they take good scales people want something still usefull by turn 50 or 80. Order is good in early and late game, production is not. Growth is as good for income as production in early game, 10 times better in late. There may be an exception for the few nations having recruitables using magical weapons and with sufficient hp and mr to survive against late game magic (I don't see a lot... LE Atlantis perhaps ?) so heavy national troops can remain usefull, but it's extremely niche. Drain is bad from early to late game for the 90% not drain immune nations, sloth is only really bad for early expansion with a limited number of ressource intensive nations and if they don't take an awake god. Magic lose power in endgame once research is maxed, but maxing interesting schools / reaching uniques first is such a big advantage a nation who used drain will probably be still weaker than a magic nation 20 or 30 turns after all finished researchs. But magic has some side effects that may make it more or less interesting, and may even justify in rare cases to take drain (out of researchers quality, some other things may be considered : do your nation usually use many mages and fight long battles (= profits a lot from fatigue reduction) or has the kind of troops making battles short / has better ways to destroy ennemies than mages spaming spells ? do your mages use MR spells ? do your nation use thugs or undeads whose main weakness is against MR spell ?). Luck is not as good as order in early game (when your empire is small) and not as good as order in late game on big maps (if your empire is big and expanding, you run into the artificial limit on number of events, and the bad ones in recently conquered provinces often replace the good from your luck 3 lands). Luck is anyway better than order for some situations in midgame (if you have about 20 provinces, *all in your dominion and maxed in scales*, so you reliably get 2-3 good events a turn, luck clearly beats order) and is never a bad choice as it's the only gems scale. 10.5 Maths problem: fatigue vs critical hits -> A DNR (Dominions random number) works like this: Take a random number between 1 and 6. If the result is 6, take a random number between 0 and 5 and add it to the sum. If the result is a 5, repeat until the result isn't a 5. What is the probability of getting a number of X or higher with 2 DRNs? The manual lists comparisons, or chances of 2d6oe producing a value greater than 2d6 oe by a spesific amount. There comparisons are used for almost everything from attack to damage. There's only a single mechanic that I know of that uses 2d6oe value that ISN'T compared into another 2d6oe value, and that's the chance of a critical hit. Page 76 of the manual states the a critical hit happens if 2d6oe minus (fatigue/15) is less than 2. For a single DRN, chance of results between 1-5 is 5/6. Chance of results larger than 5 is 1/6, result larger than 10 is 1/36, chance of result larger than 15 is 1/216 etc etc. Any math students/professors/hobbyists want to try their hand at solving this? -> X.......Chance that 2d6oe > X 2.......0.972 3.......0.917 4.......0.833 5.......0.722 6.......0.583 7.......0.463 8.......0.361 9.......0.278 10......0.213 11......0.167 12......0.127 13......0.095 14......0.069 15......0.051 16......0.039 17......0.030 18......0.022 Unit Fatigue...... %Critical Hits 0 - 14 ................ 0.0% 15 - 29 .............. 2.8% 30 - 44 .............. 8.3% 45 - 59 .............. 16.7% 60 - 74 .............. 27.8% 75 - 89 .............. 41.7% 90 - 104 ............ 53.7% 105 - 119 .......... 63.9% 120 - 134 .......... 72.2% 135 - 149 .......... 78.7% 150 - 164 .......... 83.3% 165 - 179 .......... 87.3% 180 - 194 .......... 90.5% 195 - 200 .......... 93.1%
It's just random variation. Str 10 + spear 3 units can deal damage against a non-fatigue Colossal Fetisch with 32 body protection twice in the same turn, and then be unable to harm him for several turns while he has 30 fatigue (from Flaming Helmet). The amount of hits he takes varies a lot, but jumps in damage occur much more after the fatigue goes over 14, and then over 30 points. It's mostly 1 or 2 points of damage before critical hits, then they start dealing 4-7 points. Because spearman can score hits even before the fetish is fatigued (no helmet, so it stays at 0 fatigue all the time), actual data and statistics would be necessary to figure out if there's something wrong with the formula. The thing that surprised me in my tests was that high protection protected you from most hits, but the hits that got through could deal 5 or 7 or 13 points of damage. I guess that's why size 2 units make so poor thugs - whatever you do with them, a single stroke of bad luck will finish them off. ]
-> For all: Luck and resists (elemental and magic) as appropriate to what you're fighting. Air: Marble armor or something else that will bump their prot value above 20, just in case. They can get away with less if you need the body slot or can't lose the CR, but it's a great choice. Regen if you can spare the slot. A damage shield for chaff killing helps a lot here. Earth: Stymphalian wings (or flying carpet). These guys are pretty good to go out of the box with regen and invulnerability and summon earth power, so give them a flight item to help their mobility and go to town. The wings will also up their kill rate against small troops since you get 0-enc trample. Fire: Depends which, Pyri really wants some marble armor due to his 0 base prot, whereas rhuax gets a great boost out of a blood stone for all the good earth magic...both could use some reinvig to combo with phoenix pyre, though rhuax can get that from summon earth power...give pyri a resil amulet if you can. Both get a kick out of flight items as well, although make sure to provide them with escape routes in case they take an unexpected beating, since phoenix pyre probably means they'll get off the field (especially if you give rhuax flight with the wings) Water: a shield to pimp their defense...the 2 water-only queens are kind of a crappy investment for above-water fighting, as they have no base prot, no regen, and limited buffing magic...they can survive on their high defense against limited opposition, but I'd seriously prefer a golem for most purposes (alchemize for 25 of the 30 pearls, or make some clams instead) Underwater just stack a char shield or stymph wings with resist gear and their high defense and ridiculous regen should be plenty to keep them up...you just want a way to do a lot of damage with them (hence the shield/trample) -> I must say that I didn't find Earth Knigs with Stymphalian Wings a good combo even in SP. Maybe area-effect swords and/or char shield could be more useful? Or just making them shoot away with, say, Earthquake - but here Rainbow Armor would be better... Considering Air Queens I have found them quite useful with Rime Hauberk (chill aura) & Storm Staff. The latter could probably be replaced with some sword & char shield, but they already have additional attacks, & Storm increases their power. Armor could be relaced with Bone breastplate, of course. Agree about Fire Kings. -> Earth Kings also like Bone Armor. Built-in Soul Vortex but low Prot, so you need someone with high base Prot or the ability to cast Ironskin or Invulnerability. -> Earth kings with hydra armour and ring of regen. having their innate regen. are ridiculously hard to kill [Response: In melee, yes. Watch out for mages spamming MR-resisted spells like Disintegrate, Charm, and Petrify. Also watch out for creatures with Fear--I don't believe Earth Kings are immune to Fear, and if he's raiding deep in enemy territory routing could get him killed. ]
-> I use vine shield, hydra armour, pendant of luck, and MR boosting item (can't remember name) plus an area damage weapon for Earth King (scrip to cast earthpower, iron will, invul before attacking) with good results - at least in SP. Should do quite well in MP too but may need adjustment in the misc slots to tailor against specific nations/threats. -> I'd advise that if you're facing a strong astral nation, you want at least two items with +MR. Mind Hunt is extremely cheap and fairly effective. 22MR will be decent protection from a basic S4 mage, but not an S4 mage with +3 penetration, which is easy to acquire. I'd suggest you should be looking at 25 or more MR for really important SCs. If Earth Kings don't suffer encumbrance (I've never got round to using one) a lead shield would be cheap and do: with enough protec and regeneration a vine shield to trap attackers just isn't important. -> Hmmm, what's the best penetration you can get? Eye of the Void + Rune Smasher + Green Eye + Ring of Sorcery = penetration +6. Of course he's blind but that doesn't matter for Mind Hunt. And of course most nations don't have three slots on their S4 casters, but Ashdod does on its Talmai Elders. [response: Actually Eye of the Void + Rune Smasher + Green Eye + Ring of Sorcery = penetration +7. Rishis also have 3 mics slots. ] 10.7 Minimum dominion? It is generally agreed that minimud dominion in a MP game is 5. Some opinions from thread: -> I took 5 with an imprisoned bless chassis in RAND, it was pretty tight and took a lot of priest MM (I built a fortless temple to buy indie priests from to preach for scales) but it worked out. A nice benefit from the priest building was being able to dom-kill mictlan when his last army of nasty double blessed jags was running amok around my provinces, since I had a lot of targeted dominion spread. I'd probably try to find some points elsewhere to have a bit more if I did it again, and wouldn't go under it, but I'd say it proves that 5 isn't under a minimum. -> I think the size / start positions of the map decides it. On big maps or maps with spaced fixed positions I'd use even dom 3 or 4. On typical random 15 or less prov/player maps where capitols may be only 3 provinces away I'd rather take 5 minimum, and usually 6-8 if my pretender isn't awake. Also scales are a thing to consider. Taking good scales is a waste when your dominion is too low. -> Depends on many things. The era. In the middle era, 5-6 is usually fine as there are not many good nations that can push dominion on you with blood sacrifice. If I am playing a race like Pangaea with cheap temples, 5 is plenty. But if I am playing MA Ctis where dominion is gold and also lethal to my enemies, foolish to start with less than 8 or 9. If I am playing a race where i need lots of cheap sacreds, i may need a high dominion so i can recruit the sacreds(jag warriors etc). If my pretender is immortal, and also an sc, I like at least 6 so he can be used safely in a decent amount of provinces around my capital. 10.8 Fortress to Province ratio -> goal in the early game is usually to get enough forts up that I can spend 50% of my gold or more on mages. I'm not happy until I can buy 3 to 5 mages per turn.
10.9 Keeping Helpful Enemy Dominion Alive... Do you ever hold off on wiping out an enemy player's last province if his dominion is helping you. eg Magic scales? Does enemy dominion vanish once the last province falls or does it linger? -> Yes, when there is such a situation. Though the positive side of their scales won't help you unless your own scales are negative. Their dominion vanishes instantly when their god is destroyed, but their scales remain. -> Yeah its not possible to ever benefit from positivie enemy scales - tho you can be harmed by negative enemy scales. So the best situation you can hope for is to have terrible scales of your own and have enemy dominion bring you to nuetral. -> Interestingly enough, enemy Luck is considered Misfortune. Hostile Luck: it should work as Misfortune. It only enables bad events in the province in question, doesn't affect the ratio of good and bad events in the empire. Hostile Magic: It should have no effect on research. I tested it, it doesn't help enemy research. Hostile Growth: I didn't properly test it, but two of my three inquisitors got old age afflictions in hostile Growth 3 dominion. Preaching province with Order, Production and Growth from hostile to positive dominion: no effect on income, resources or supplies. Population grew even under hostile growth. I think this means that Order and Production give full benefits even in hostile dominion, Growth gives full supply and income benefits even in hostile dominion but not old age affliction resistance. Hostile magic goesn't give research bonus and lowers everyone's magic resistance. This leaves only hostile Luck and hostile negative scales as untested. I presume they are all handled as negative scales. -> Hostile scales work if the province is under your dominion. So if you can preach a province to dom 1 without removing ennemy scales you may benefit from his magic research bonus or full effects of other positive scales. Luck seem to be a different thing as, according to JK, only capitol luck scale determines if events are good or not. 10.10 Blood Magic as Combat Magic? -> wounded (or even afflicted) blood slaves are usable, in my experience. Now, blood magic... it IS extremely cumbersome... mostly because of the high fatigue rates, but also because it´s combat spells are expensive and not too good. The fatigue can be offset with a highly empowered spellcaster, or a communion (which I think is more practical to use with Astral mages as slaves, as otherwise you´ll be spending many slaves just to set it up). If you do commune up your casters, make sure that you have the exact number of slaves you are going to use in your first five turns, and/or extra communion slaves. I had one communion with four slaves set to be reinvirgorated by a sabbath master while the other casted agony at the enemy (I sort of hope it to perform well with a death bless), which resulted in a wipeout of all the slaves when my caster decided to use his increased-due-to-communion blood level to cast the level 5 battle-wide life leeching spell, which has horribly high fatigue. My mages survived that, but in the following moments he casted mind burn four times, each one resulting in a dead turkey... -> Blood magic can be very effective in combat. As Jazzepi points out though there is a higher bar to use it as you'll only do so in the fights where it makes sense to burn gems. With that in mind, here's some suggestions: Summon imps + bloodlust is a very nice little combo to pull off with a bunch of cheap research mages and modest research. It's surprisingly effective in many situations. They're flying so they'll tangle up archers and mages, they're size 1 with 2 attacks so they'll overwhelm high defense, they do decent damage buffed, they have a good defense so they've got a bit of staying power in numbers, and they're fire immune so they're a perfect screen to drop fire evocations on or to tie up that fire brand wielding SC. Bloodlust & Rush of Strength can be worth the price of admission all alone depending on what you're fielding. Bloodletting is one of the easier battlefield wide spells to cast and you can keep casting it because it reinvigs you. One casting of this spell is a bit underwhelming, having 2 guys cast it several times though...20 blood slaves is a cheap price for killing a large army. Blood rain - fabulous for use in combination with other fear effects. Panic, terror, starvation, horrors....even super-elite forces have a breaking point. I think this is an underrated spell, you know how easy it is to break those 8 morale militia? Well in my dominion your 13 moral elites now break that easily and horrors have a *huge* fear aura. Call horror - a bit of a niche spell, but it's not too hard to find situations where 2-3 horrors will really ruin somebody's day even without counting on their fear. With horror marks it's not too difficult to point them in the right direction either. Reinvigoration - people keep this one in mind for communions, which it's great for, but it's also very worthwhile to have SCs/Thugs at 0 fatigue before going into melee, and it can allow you to cast those big spells several more times. Hellbind heart is like charm with a much larger range and easier path requirements. Leech is one of my favorite spells. Easy requirements, AOE1, no way to get resistance (unless you're already lifeless), AN. Not only is it perfect to counter most SCs, you'll be amazed at how fast 20 triple blessed whatevers evaporate before they can even close on your PD if you get 4-5 (cheap!) casters to spam this. Life for a life + go to hell - The best anti-SC spells in the game. PS wounded blood slaves are definitely usable. You can easily witness this by casting bloodletting several times as it effects your slaves. -> and don't forge Agony and Harm : there are very potent with High level mages Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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