Various Newbie Gameplay Questions

Ironhawk · #1 November 14th, 2006, 01:54 AM

1. 24mr is quite high. Are you sure it was 24? Thats really, really high. But, as with the Protection stat, nothing makes you invinicible to an attack. You were probably just unlucky. When facing astral/mind attacks it is best to bring along lots of non-mindless chaff units to prevent your key units from being killed.

2. Magic Duel must be scripted and there must be an enemy astral mage to cast it at. It resolves instantly and one of the two mages will die (or very rarely both).

3. Tricky point. Ethereal is the best, but in order to cast ethereal, you must have Astral magic, which in turn makes you vulnerable to mind duels. This is generally considered Really Bad, as your pimped-out SC could be killed by a lucky 100gp astral mage. So, if you take that into account Mistform is probably best.

4. Not sure. Could just be defense. Easy to test it out tho just put it on a commander and send him into combat. If he has mirror images then you know.

5. Lance attacks are the only attacks that are first-hit only. All other attacks happen every round of combat.

dirtywick · #2 November 14th, 2006, 02:46 AM

I find that Earth/Air or just plain Air is better than Astral. Sometimes mages get dumb and cast Body Ethereal on troops instead of themselves, as well as other buffs that may apply. Plus, casting a bunch of buffs adds up fatigue quickly. You can forge a Robe of Shadows and a Lucky Pendant, which pretty much covers what Astral buff-wise, for few gems by most Astral mages and cast spells like Mist Form, Invunerability, Mirror Image, etc. that are much better and much more difficult to replicate through items.

Of course, Air and Earth on the same mage are pretty tough to come by, but Air alone is a great SC/Thug path IMO, hard to beat.

KissBlade · #3 November 14th, 2006, 02:46 AM

Casting body ethereal on troops is an AWESOME buff!!

dirtywick · #4 November 14th, 2006, 02:58 AM

Well, yeah, but you don't want your SC doing that.

Taqwus · #5 November 14th, 2006, 03:03 AM

Ethereal units have a 75% chance of escaping completely non-magical weapon attacks. Not bad at all.

It's not TRUE ethereal, of course...

Endoperez · #6 November 14th, 2006, 10:14 AM

The manual lists some probability numbers. Mind Burn was probably 10 against magic resistance, with (virtual) open ended dice rolls on both sides. With magic resistance 24, the chance of beating it would beabout 1%. The chance to beat mag res 18 would be just 6%.

Units with low hitpoints are pretty easy to kill.

Soul Slay does work against tough guys... but only when massed. A single Soul Slay COULD kill even your pretender, but it won't - well, except when you've almost finished your enemy already and mr Murphy decides to pay you a visit.

Ether Lords and Angelic Choir are both very expensive in pearls. The first one gives you Astral 3/Death 2/Random 1 mage, which can be nice, and giant-sized, ethereal creatures that devastate magic beings. They are good against armies with lots of summoned units (all summoned units aren't magic beings, but the better ones often are). Etherealness and good protection are VERY rare combination, and very effective as well.

Heavenly Choir gives just one commander ATM. If all 13 were commanders, as the manual implies, it'd give insane amount of flying priestly power, and would give you three Air 3 mages in addition to the Seraph. However, at the moment only the Seraph is a commander. He's a 77-hp, Fire 4, Astral 4, Air 4, Holy 4 commander who can fly 7 provinces at once and can destroy armies in melee without any equipment, but 144 pearls is still a steep price for a single commander.

Golems are made used more often than either of those, and Astral gems have many other uses. I presume your question went unanswered this long because most players wouldn't choose between those two spells, having used the gems for something else entirely.

Nerfix · #7 November 14th, 2006, 10:28 AM

Magic Resistance doesn't work on nearly all spells BTW. It works only against those "Magic resistance negates" spells.

Magic Duel has a great distance so the two Astral mages don't need to be next to each other. It needs to be scripted as far as I know. The Astral Mage with higher Astral most likely wins, but I think that the Dominions Random Number gives a fleetingly small chance that the duel results in a tie which means both mages die. Not sure.

Misform is a very good spell but Ethereal/Lucky combo is hard to beat. I forgot what level Personal Luck is though. You can get Luck easily from Lucky Pendant, a 2 Cons 1 Astral trinket.

Chaimail of Displacement gives just a defence bonus.

Epaminondas · #8 November 14th, 2006, 12:53 PM

Thanks everyone for the answers! Let me respond sequentially and ask some follow-up questions as well:

Ironhawk,

*Yes, Pathos had a real high MR when he died. In fact, I may have undercounted his MR. He has a base MR of 14, and he had plus 4 from the Solaris helm, plus 4 from anti-magic trinket, and I had cast the Astral magic battlefield MR buff as well. So imagine my surprise when he went down with a Mind Blast.

**I really like Astral Shield and Body Ethereal on my Prophet thugs. But I am aware of the Magic Duel danger. So what's the comfort zone that I need the Prophet thug to get to in terms of Astral magic levels? I usually aim for 4-5--is that sufficient for SP?

Taqwus,

*Thanks for the 75 percent number for Ethereal. I wanted concrete information like that.

Endoperez,

*I agree with your comment that "Units with low hitpoints are pretty easy to kill." That's why I played Jotunheim almost exclusively in DII. Less micromanagement needed when your prophet has over 100 points with high dominion.

**What is Heavenly Choir? I don't see such a summon in the DIII units list on Sunray's website. I was actually referring to Angelic Host summon, which gives you a much weaker Archangel and apparently 5 angels. I believe this is what I remembered from DII as well.

But you as there is a much more powerful angel with more minions? Could you give me more info? So it's that one 77-HP monster and 12 lesser angels?

***Why are Golems used more often than the aforementioned summons? I confess fantasy games are "make-believe" for me, and I just cannot imagine I'd ever employ things like Golems, Devils, or the undead. That's why I limit myself to the so-called "good" creatures, and often humanoid at that.

Yes, I deliberately tie my hands late game!

Nerfix,

*So what are the nasty damage spells against which MR is useless?

thejeff · #9 November 14th, 2006, 01:17 PM

I rarely worry about Magic Duel in SP. I think I was hit by it once in Dom3 and don't ever remember it in Dom2.

In SP it's probably only a threat if you have 1 Astral. You won't run into the dozen S1 mages scripted to Duel your pretender that you'd see in MP.

Endoperez · #10 November 14th, 2006, 01:21 PM

Dominions 3 has made most of the angel-summoning spells national spells limited to Pythium and Marignon and perhaps a few other nations.

Manual lists Angelic Host as giving six Angels of the Host, but doesn't mention the Archangel. I quess it's better to test it at some point.

Any way, Angels of the Host have Flambeaus, and thus will devastate any tough devils/undeads they meet. They have rather mediocre protection rating of of 7 (no armor), but good defense (15 + 2 from Flambeau bonus), and they are sacred. Hordes of units will kill them, and archers will kill them, but they are very good against undead, demons, and probably thugs in general. They might actually hurt a SC as well. For 100 pearls, you get slightly less Angels than you'd get Ether Warriors. Both are limited in numbers. Ether Warriors do better against most units, but Angels are very powerful offensive weapon against "evil" types, and if you can increase their protection somehow they'll be very survivable as well.

Without a blessing, they've both got their uses.

Golems and such are used because they are cheaper. 90 pearls is A LOT.