.com.unity Forums
  The Official e-Store of Shrapnel Games

This Month's Specials

BCT Commander- Save $8.00
winSPWW2- Save $5.00

   







Go Back   .com.unity Forums > Illwinter Game Design > Dominions 3: The Awakening

 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
Prev Previous Post   Next Post Next
  #1  
Old March 14th, 2007, 06:02 PM
Hellboy's Avatar

Hellboy Hellboy is offline
Second Lieutenant
 
Join Date: Jul 2004
Posts: 449
Thanks: 0
Thanked 0 Times in 0 Posts
Hellboy is on a distinguished road
Default Site Searching Strategy

A recent post on expansion strategy included a post by KissBlade that had the following link: thread

This excellent post has a paragraph on the end on site searching strategy that is in all likelihood excellent advice but I am still balking at taking this advice (please forgive me my noobishness). As the post suggests I do find acashic record very tempting. Maybe this because of my latent OCD, or my lack of experience in MP games, but I do seem to have a hard time adjusting to the idea of not using acashic record.

Now, most of my experience is with EA T'ien Ch'i, so that's my reference point, but I'd be interested in comment from the point of view of any nation. I've read posts indicating acashic vs the individual spells is a tradeoff of gems vs mage time. That makes perfect sense, but we are talking about a lot of mage time, here, right? I mean wouldn't that equate to 8 casts of the individual spells vs 1 cast of acashic? That could translate to an awful lot of research or mage combat availability.

Also, given that you're going down the single spell road, that still means you're not hitting the holy sites. Now this could easily be a reflection of my OCD, but it just bugs me that in all probability I would be missing out not just on holy, but in the case of a non-blood nation, also blood and maybe some of the other sites, as well.


Having said all the above, here are some detailed questions:

1) One thing that surprises me is that in the post it says that almost all of your site searching is done with spells. Would this apply even to TC, which seems to have such an excellent cadre of mages for searching? In SP testing, I do find myself going through a phase in the early game where I do a fair bit of searching with 2-3 Masters of the 5 Elems, and/or 2-3 CMs. Is that just plain bad mage use?

2) Does this question of the relative cost of acashic vs single spells change when site frequency changes? Say 35% vs 50%?

3) Same question, but say you have a 20% conjuration bonus site, does this dramatically change the balance in favor acashic?

4) I imagine in practice, that experienced players using the spells don't actually cast 8 different spells on every province. Obviously, if you already found 4 sites you're not going to cast more spells, but would anyone care other rules of thumb on how much work they put into casting site searching spells?

5) If you're not using acashic, how much work do you put into finding the holy sites? Just send an indy priest around, or do you take your best national priest? Or do you just skip this holy site thing, for the most part?

Last edited by Edi; August 21st, 2008 at 05:41 AM.. Reason: Added prefix
Reply With Quote
 

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is On

Forum Jump


All times are GMT -4. The time now is 11:59 AM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.8.1
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©1999 - 2024, Shrapnel Games, Inc. - All Rights Reserved.