Afflictions

[Immaculate]

Afflictions ignite a sort of macabre interest. Normal units with afflictions get sent to the front lines and thrown back into the fight. Afflicted commanders are sometimes retired. But when its your first and early thug, or worse yet, your awakened pretender, what do you do?

So really, what do you do? Whats the best way to minimize or get rid of early afflictions? Specifcally:

1) whats the earliest and first way to get rid of afflictions?
2) does regeneration have a chance of getting rid of an old affliction?
3) does recuperation have a chance of getting rid of an old affliction?

Thanks,

I.

[Graeme Dice]

You should probably go read the third post in the stickied FAQ thread. It answers all of your questions.

[Immaculate]

I'll repost what it says there here incase others have the same questions as me and use the search function of the forum and find this thread



AFFLICTIONS

Q: My units have one or more red hearts in their display screens. What does that mean?
Your units have accumulated afflictions. Afflictions are permanent wounds that hamper the unit in some way and there is a wide variety of them, some more severe than others. Each heart indicates one affliction.

Q: How do units get afflictions?
They may get afflictions if they are hit and suffer damage in battle. They may also get afflictions from old age. Accumulation of old age afflictions is checked at the end of each game year (i.e. every 12 turns). Any unit with the affliction Diseased has a high chance of getting one or more additional afflictions every turn until it dies. Undead and demons are not affected by disease. Being cursed will double your chances of getting a battle affliction. Having regeneration will reduce your chance of getting a battle affliction. The reduction is dependent on the amount of regeneration, the greater the regeneration as percentage of hitpoints, the less likely the unit is to get an affliction.

Q: How do I tell what afflictions my units have and what the afflictions do?
Right-click on the heart icon. It will tell you what penalty that affliction gives to the unit (e.g. Chest Wound: -1 str, +5 enc)

Q: I want to place all of my units with afflictions in a separate stack. How do I do that quickly?
Click to select any unit in a stack. Press 'w' and all afflicted units will be selected. Put them in a separate squad. Remember to check whether the unit you first selected had an affliction or not and put it back if it didn't.


Q: Can I get rid of afflictions? How?
Yes, but it depends on whether the affliction is a battle affliction or caused by old age. The source of the affliction is not indicated when you look at the affliction. A short summary of how afflictions can be removed:

* Units with the special ability Recuperation heal afflictions on their own over time. So do creatures with immortality.
* Units that have an involuntary shapechange ability, such as Mictlan's Jaguar Warriors, may heal afflictions when they change back to their normal shape after battle. This is checked every time they change from their secondshape back to their firstshape. It is not a reliable method of healing afflictions, but can sometimes give you pleasant surprises with shapechanging commanders (e.g. Machakan Black Sorcerer)
* Battle afflictions can be healed by units that have the Heal troops ability. Units with this ability have an icon (since patch 3.14) that says 'Healer (value)'. Some units with the Heal Troops ability are Priestess (Arcoscephale, all ages), the Faery Queen (a Lv 8 Conjuration summon, requires Lv 4 Nature) and the Mother of Serpents (a pretender goddess available to certain nations). There are other units with this ability as well, but they are mostly restricted to certain nations.
* The chance to heal a battle affliction differs for each of these units and some afflictions are more difficult to heal than others (Never Healing Wound being the most difficult). Healing works so that the number you see is the chance to successfully use a healing ability that turn. If the check is successful, it checks against the difficulty of the affliction and if that succeeds as well, the affliction is removed.
* Units with Heal troops command CANNOT heal afflictions on undead units or old age afflictions.
* Old age afflictions and afflictions on undead units can ONLY be healed if you have cast the global enchantment Gift of Health or have built the artefact The Chalice and equipped it on a commander in the same province as the afflicted units. Without Gift of Health or The Chalice, you're out of luck. You can prevent old age afflictions by forging the magic items Boots of Youth or Elixir of Life, which freeze the aging process on the owner.
* There are also two magic sites that heal afflictions: Healing Spring and Lyfjaberg. It is unknown if they heal old age afflictions as well as battle afflictions, but they probably only affect battle afflictions. It is also unknown if undead are healed of afflictions, but probably not.
* Finally, afflictions caused by items such as Black Heart or Eye of Aiming cannot be healed in any way. They can be healed only if the item is removed, which is very difficult in most cases and involves powerful magic when possible at all.

[rdonj]

1) Play someone who has recruitable healers :P. Other than that, you probably will have to summon a faerie queen. If you can pull it off though, gift of health takes less research.
2) No.
3) Yes.

Personally, I try to deal with afflictions by not getting them in the first place, by using undead commanders who are less likely to be impacted by them, or by using commanders who have recuperation. But in the case that I couldn't heal my commander, I would look at the specific affliction and decide how large of an impact it will have on my commander. You can probably deal with a lost eye, and you might, just might, be able to get away with having battle fright on a pd raider. Especially if you give them an item to help deal with said lack of morale. Most limping and crippled thugs can easily be killed if routed, but boots of flying can fix that. Some commanders have enough ap that they can still function with a limp, particularly cavalry commanders. If your thug is undead, a chest wound is also probably not a big deal, but will more or less cripple anything else. Mute is also not a big deal with magicless thugs. Pretty much any other affliction is an invitation for disaster.

[Immaculate]

So, i read that any degree of regeneration reduces your chances of getting an affliction by 7/8s (ie- your chance of getting an affliction is 1/8 what it normally would be).

So, in line with this, i guess a good way to avoid getting an affliction is to get regeneration. This is a newbie question, but does regeneration work for undead? Can i put a ring of regeneration on an undead commander and hope to get the same affliction protection?

I.

[Graeme Dice]

I'm not certain if it is a flat 1/8 chance, or if it is affected by the amount of regeneration. I've heard that the amount of regeneration might affect the chance recently. Undead can regenerate. Lifeless units cannot regenerate. Not all undead are lifeless.

[Jack_Trowell]

The 1/8 chance is listed in one of the tips displayed in game while hosting, so it's official, but it might be something that has been changed from dominions II and not updated in the tips.

[Ironhawk]

I believe that the lifeless tag is what prevents regeneration from working? But not undead. The more powerful undead usually have the undead tag but not lifeless so regen may work.

[chrispedersen]

I'm kind of surprised this hasn't been mentioned..
but transformation and second chance (or whatever it is that turns you into a wight) also can work.

[Immaculate]

Twiceborn?

i.

[thejeff]

Any thing that shifts you into a second form can work. Other than the actual "Change Shape" command. Being "killed" into your second form in battle has a chance of healing afflictions.

Pretenders dying and being called back also have a chance.

[Edi]

The 1/8 chance is listed in one of the tips displayed in game while hosting, so it's official, but it might be something that has been changed from dominions II and not updated in the tips.
It was either JK or KO who said that it'd dependent on the regen percentage, but I don't remember when and in which thread.

[HoneyBadger]

Is there any way to add new afflictions to the game?

Yes... Other than going to Sweden.

[Thilock_Dominus]

The Amulet of Luck is a good way to avoid afflictions. It's not bullet prof, though.

[Luckmann]

Huge necro, I know, but I did a test as Marignon, using my Grand Masters, which I consume huge quantities of for research purposes. As we all know, the start with old age and die in droves.

But I placed a Healing Spring to test this out right next to my capital (map editing) and it seems Healing Spring does indeed cure afflictions aquired through Old Age.

It's not universal, though. On a single turn shift, one of my Grand Masters was healed of his affliction (Diseased) whilst another one aquired yet another affliction, and a third one didn't change at all.

I don't know what the #% of being healed by the Healing Spring is, but even if it's only 10% it may be worth it to put old aged farts on it, to keep them alive longer. I know I will, whenever I find a spring, the first thing going there is defenses, a temple and a lab. :p

[Luckmann]

I may just be blind, but I can't find an edit button, so I apologize for the double-post. Several more turns in, the Grand Master that previously got his second affliction whilst in the province of the Healing Spring just went back down to one affliction. So yeah, just wanted to say that I am now 100% sure that Healing Spring is healing Old Age afflictions and that nothing otherwise hinky is going on. :)

[Baneslave]

I may just be blind, but I can't find an edit button, so I apologize for the double-post.

There is some kind of limit on the time you can edit. Original posts (thread starters) don't have this limit.

[Corporal Kindel]

Huge necro, I know, but I did a test as Marignon, using my Grand Masters, which I consume huge quantities of for research purposes. As we all know, the start with old age and die in droves.



It's pretty much a necessity for Marignon to buy 3levels of Growth in pre-game magic purchases, otherwise their mages die so fast it's impossible to get value from them. At 380 bucks, they're expensive, but they are superior mages IMO.

I have noticed that some of the Marignon mages actually have a 100 year (and a few 75 year old) age limit, instead of the usual 50 year old-age. I've only noticed this a couple of times and I haven't figured out if the game just randomly did at mage recruitment or if it was the result of an artifact/spell.

[Gregstrom]

Did you empower in Nature, perhaps?

[Corporal Kindel]

Did you empower in Nature, perhaps?

That might've happened. I don't remember the specifics of the mage in that particular game. I just remember right-clicking on the fatigue, or whichever of the tabs that shows his age, and it said 100yr age which I thought was unique.

I take it that Maringnon Mages always are supposed to start with a 50-year age cap after initial recruitment and there are no exceptions to this?

[Baneslave]

From modding manual:

"7.6.2 #maxage <age>
This maximum age for a monster. After this age it
will risk getting afflictions and eventually die.
Default is 50 for humans, 500 for undead, 1000
for demons. Different magic paths increase
maxage 50% of this value per point of magic,
depending on the type of creature. Inanimate
creatures are affected by Earth magic, undead by
Death magic, demons by Blood magic and all
others by Nature magic."

So human mage with 2 points in nature magic would have max age of 100.

[Corporal Kindel]

Ok thanks, it makes sense now. I probably had an item on the mage that increased his nature magic by one level, like a thistle mace, which I sometimes get for guys with nature magic. So the item actually has the secondary effect of increasing his old-age base level, which is something I never noticed before (or was unaware of as being the cause).

[Luckmann]

When does old age start relative to maxage?

[Luckmann]

Nevermind, had a brain fart.