[llamabeast]

Hi,

I've never played Marverni, so can't answer many of your questions. I'll try some of them though!

(Written after everything else: I seem to have rambled endlessly, and almost not at all about Marverni - hope it's still helpful though!)

1) Hmm, don't know.

2) This is a very difficult one, and I don't think there's a right answer. Personally I like to go site searching as early as possible, to get things going. The amount of research the pretender will generate in the game compared to all the mages you're going to build (1 a turn, at least) is fairly small, but he can make a huge contribution to site searching. On the other hand, his research might be critical if there's some early research targets you want to get to. If I have death (which Marverni don't, I think?) I often rush to Construction 4 to get Skull Mentors, which can make a huge difference.

3) No ideas here really.

4) Black servant is good because he's ethereal, so 75% of normal attacks miss him straight away. All the undead are good because they don't ever get tired no matter what armour you put on them, so you can give them super heavy stuff and they'll just keep on fighting for ever. I think maybe they benefit from immunity to some spells by not being alive, but I'm not sure about that.

The general plan with thugs and SCs, as I understand it, is to not let them die. Being ethereal, lucky, with high defense and high protection should all be priorities. If your thug is not dying (and not getting tired - give them reinvigoration items if they're not undead), they can hang around long enough to cause some damage. If you don't have some kind of anti-dying plan, they tend to die straight away in my experience.

5) I found the entire game largely inexplicable for a while I must say. The single best thing to do is play a multiplayer game. Really, I can't recommend it enough. I don't usually play multiplayer games, and only ended up in one half by accident. In single player, dominions is just a pretty good game. In multiplayer it's the Best Game Ever, just because your opponents are so much more interesting, and the depth of the game has a chance to become important.

I learnt hugely more from my first MP game than I did from a couple of weeks of playing lots of SP. Watching other people play is very interesting. Also reading the forum is very educational, just learning how people think about things. The main pattern of thinking for success in dominions is, I think, defining your weaknesses and strengths and trying to find ways to fix/improve them. e.g. Abysia thrashing you with fire magic? Cast rain so he gets tired, and storm and mist so he can't see. Want to make your hordes of weak skeletons an advantage? Cast Darkness to give them an advantage. Of course you might not have known that any of those spells existed, but you could look through the manual for spells that adversely affected fire magic or precision, and then see what there was.

Being effective takes quite a bit of plotting. That's one big reason I like MP, I get about 24 hours of plotting and scheming time for every turn. In SP I find I just can't help myself hitting the turn button all the time, and I do things carelessly and don't plan enough.

6. I don't really understand what you mean by "give everyone on the battlefield 1 rank in astral". How? Spells like Power of the Spheres and Light of the Northern Star (and all other boosting spells and items) only boost paths you already have.

Also communion slaves won't cast spells once they're slaved. And as Wick says, magic duel only attacks enemy astral mages.

Hope some of that's useful!