Newbish question

[Master_Li]

Agrajag said:
There's nothing in Enchantment.

Yes, you're absolutely right, shame on me I edited it accordingly.

[Agrajag]

Hmm, just noticed I forgot to mention this, but another big disability for immobile pretenders is that they tend not to have any item slots (beyond 2-4 misc slots), so you can't give them quite a few of the path-boosting gear, which can really weaken their potential for magic.

[GrudgeBringer]

WOW....all I could ask for and more!!!

Thanks guys...

Last night I was motoring along and actually kickin some Ai booty for a change.

And then....I decided to let my best Champion (and Prophet) fight in the Death Match arena.

Now I did give him a winged boot, ring of Lighting Protection AND Ring of missle protection.... he had heroic (was 2nd in the hall of fame) and then, and then....he got his little Butt kicked (and of course killed) in 6th round.

But being the smart gamer I am I SAVED the game BEFORE the battle (pretty smart huh!!)

Except that after I reloaded and hit turn it rewrote my save and NOW I still have a dead Prophet!!

So now I know what the warning about saved games meant (and BTW I think its a GREAT rule).

What a GREAT game!!

Thanks agian everyone and maybe someday I will let you guys whoop up on me instead of the AI (if I EVER figure all this out)!!

[hunt11]

well if you like you could join some of the newb games, because in those games everybody is inexperienced

[GrudgeBringer]

Question:

why wouldn't I want Earth 4 on my set up so I can forge medium artifacts?

If I have say Earth 4 and Death 5 are my Magic users a LvL 4 and LvL 5 in those right off the bat?

If not how do I get them to level 2 or 3 or 4 ect?

Is it like Commanders when they would 'Level Up' because of exp?

I guess I am a little confused because It doesn't seem to say " Level 4 water Mage" ect.

The other thing that confuses me is that iF they are NOT LvL 4 Mages in Earth (example) then how can they forge Items at a Lvl 4 pace?

[Wick]

Various items require various paths at various levels.

Your pretender's paths do not effect the paths of your mages.

Mostly not at all, path booster items for most of the rest, and burning gems to empower them when you really need to.

Experience somewhat increases attack, defense, research, and more but does not effect path levels.

Are you confusing research levels with path levels? Your research unlocks spells which can them be cast by a mage with sufficient paths.

[Endoperez]

There are two kinds of limits for spells and items: research requirement, and path requirement. Level 0 items are trinkets, and mostly require level 1 or 2 in a single path. Items from Construction 2 are minor and often only require level 1 in a single path, but some take level 3 (Enormous Cauldron of Broth takes Nature 3), and Soul Contract is very expensive (Blood 6 Fire 1, so 65 slaves and 5 fire gems).

Similarly for your mages, once you have researched level 4 in Evocation, all mages know the spell "Blade Wind". If they have 3 levels in Earth magic, they can cast it. If they have Earth 1, they can't. But if you give them Earth Boots (for +1 to Earth) and make them cast Conjuration spell Summon Earthpower (for +1 to Earth), even mages who only have one innate level in Earth can cast Blade Wind and other E3 spells.

Earth isn't very important for good items, but Earth 3 gives access to Dwarven Hammers which make all further forging 25% cheaper. They are supposedly one of the most important items available, often traded for in multiplayer if your nation can't forge one, and Earth-wielding pretender is a good choice for any single-player games where you want to try your hand at forging items.

[MaxWilson]

GrudgeBringer said:
If not how do I get them to level 2 or 3 or 4 ect?

Is it like Commanders when they would 'Level Up' because of exp?

I guess I am a little confused because It doesn't seem to say " Level 4 water Mage" ect.

The other thing that confuses me is that iF they are NOT LvL 4 Mages in Earth (example) then how can they forge Items at a Lvl 4 pace?

In many cases, they can't, and you have to live without them or (in Multi-player games) trade with other nations. Dominions is pretty strong on "thematic" nations that do not all behave the same, and so you can't build other nations' troops and you often can't forge the same magic items or cast the same spells as other nations. (I love Master of Magic and Master of Orion, but it's true that as the game goes on, all races tend to converge to the same general playstyle--except for the ones who took super-advantages like Creative in MOO2. Dominions tries to avoid this and I think that's valid.) As you gain more experience and/or read guides on these forums, you'll gain more insight into this. "Aha! Helheim has recruitable Air mages with hand slots. That means I can count on giving Winged Boots to slow commanders and/or SCs."

That said, just because your nation doesn't have e.g. E5 mages doesn't necessarily mean that you can't forge E5 items. This comes in two flavors: either you don't have enough levels in a path (E4 instead of E5) or you don't have a path at all (no E mages). If you don't have enough levels, you can potentially empower some mages, but it's more common to try to get enough levels, gems, and Construction research to forge some path-boosting items. If you don't have the paths at all, you can typically either 1.) recruit independent mages (for low-level items, like S1 (S=Astral) w/ Sages if you don't have S on your national mages), although you can't always count on finding the right indies, 2.) put the paths on your pretender, or 3.) try to "boot-strap" into that path by summoning creatures with that path and having them forge path boosters to boost them high enough to summon something *better* in that path then they are, then moving the path-boosters to the new creature, and repeating. This takes a lot of gems, Construction research, and Conjuration (or sometimes Enchantment) research.

By the way, some people don't like having independent mages in the game, because letting you boost yourself out of a path you don't normally have (Helheim with Nature magic) can be "unthematic." You may or may not come to feel that way, too, eventually.

-Max

Edit: the hand slots on Helheims's air mages are important in the sense that it means they can hold Dwarven Hammers forged by Helheim's Earth mages. This means they can forge *cheap* Winged Boots. Sorry, should have been more specific.