How difficult is this game?

[Nikolai]

> How do I get gems?

Your capital generates some.

Magic sites are assigned randomly to provinces at start, or even appear sometimes out of their own. Some are hidden, so you have to search for them with mages.

Some items generate gems every month.

Some lucky events give you gems.

And there is trade in MP.

And there are spells that give you gems periodically or in one go. And if you are total bastard, you can hunt your population down to sacrifice them as slaves, or you can kill them to send crows to collect death gems (not recommeded)

There are no simple answers in Dominions III. :-)

[Fenris99]

Thanks for the answers, guys.

The manual is good but it doesn't cover everything.

I'm sure I will have more questions after I play tonight. I'm reading the Marignon strategy page, they look straightforward for a beginner.

[Edi]

As far as what determines the paths of your mages, the magic paths are an intrinsic part of the unit itself, so a mage may have certain paths fixed and some randomly determined (randoms can only be less than 100% sure, so not all of your mages always get them all).

Units that have been intended for a specific nation ahve been designed with that nation in mind, so for example the magic paths of mages reflect that.

[Yrkoon]

As well as empowering your mages (permanent increase for a lot of gems) you can also use the gems in combat to boost your level temporarily. You can use one gem per spell to increase you level by one. It's a good way of casting spells you would normally not be able too.

For example a weak fire mage with one level in fire magic can use one gem to cast phoenix power (level 2 fire spell). Phoenix power boost your level in fire by 1 for the whole battle. You mage is now level 2. By using another gem, your mage can cast a level 3 spell. All of a sudden your crappy mage is quite deadly.

[Yrkoon]

There is also communions and sabbaths to increase your mages' power. You can find more about those in the forums, and propably in Edi's FAQ.

[Fenris99]

This is all great advice, thank you

[Taqwus]

Just note that blood magic is different. Non-trivially useful blood-magic magic sites are quite rare. The vast majority of your sacrificial blood slaves will need to be gathered by your commanders (preferably blood mages -- everybody else is bad at it) spending their turns to do so, thus costing you commander-turns as well as a mix of population/income as you patrol to keep the resulting unrest down.

Mictlan (EA,LA) is a bit difficult to start with, as it's completely dependent on blood for even spreading dominion.

[KissBlade]

Fenris99 said:
This is all great advice, thank you

Hey I noticed you mentioned buying the game in downtown NYC. I live in Astoria, NYC just so ya know. =)

[Ubercat]

Nikolai said:
> How do I get gems?

And there are spells that give you gems periodically or in one go. And if you are total bastard, you can hunt your population down to sacrifice them as slaves, or you can kill them to send crows to collect death gems (not recommeded)

There are no simple answers in Dominions III. :-)

How do you kill your population for death gems? I never heard of that. Can any faction do it?

-Ubercat

[Nikolai]

Taxes at 200% and pillage, then send the crows (air spell) I did say it was not recommended. :-) But I have done it with Cealum because I had air gems to burn, and no death income.