questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Hello all. Just bought Dominions 3, finding it all very absorbing. A few questions which I couldn't find the answer to in the manual (although I might have missed it):

1) How do you get rid of afflictions? Will any afflictions (e.g. Limp) disappear if you just wait long enough?
2) When I cast the Nature spell which reveals all Nature sites in a province (Haruspex?), it searches the province to level 9. However the manual states that the most hidden a site can be is level 4. Is there any advantage to searching a province to level 5+?
3) Is it possible to have more than one magic site of the same type in a province, i.e. is there any point casting Haruspex on a province which already has a Nature site?
4) Do you ever get magic sites in your home province?

In general, is there a FAQ which answers these sorts of questions?

Thanks,

merlin

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Hiya, glad you're enjoying the game. It's awesome.

1) It's very hard to get rid of afflictions. There are a few units which have a "heal" order - priestesses of Arcoscephale and Fairy Queens are the two I can think of. Also the magic item the Chalice can cure afflictions in the province it's in. So if you're not Arcoscephale, Fairy Queens or the Chalice are pretty much your only options, and they're both pretty hard to get. Mostly, afflictions are things you're just stuck with. I think it's meant to represent the grim reality of a fantasy world where permanent and nasty injuries really are pretty permanent.

2) I think the search to level 9 is just to emphasise that you really have searched it thoroughly, but frankly I think it's a bit confusing and it should just put a 4 instead. A level 4 search is just as good as a level 9 search.

3) Yep, you can have multiple nature sites etc on a single province.

4) No, there's no point searching home provinces.

Not sure about an FAQ.

Cheers,

llamabeast

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

1) There are some ways to heal afflictions like a special unique item (the chalice), a global enchantment or by some national commanders like the Arcoscephale Priestess. Just waiting helps nothing.
2) no advantage, its just like doing it with a level 4 magic skill.
3) yes, its possible
4) nope

A nice site with some infos are this one
http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/

Its mainly dom2 but it helps for dom3 too.

Dom3 Wiki:
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Dominions_3:_The_Awakening

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

The global, Gift of Health, will heal afflictions in your dominion.

Note that commanders using the heal command will only heal wounds, not afflictions caused by old age. Unfortunately, there's no way to tell which an affliction is, other than keeping track of where it appeared.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

1) In addition to the ones listed, other units that are also capable of healing are early era Ermor priests and the Mother of Serpents pretender that is available to some nations. T'ien Ch'i has a national hero with that can heal troops.

2) No advantage. If you've done a lv 4 search, it's just as good as 5+ search. I agree that the radar spells should set the search level to 4 instead of 9.

3) Yes, it is, but any radar spell like Haruspex, Arcane Probing etc will always find ALL sites of that type in the province no matter what. However, if you've done a lv 1, 2 or 3 search with a mage, then there is always a chance that there is a higher level site that has not been discovered yet. Sites that you can see immediately upon conquering a province (such as Mine of Superior Iron) are lv 0.

4) No, you don't. The only way to get them is that on a specific map a certain province has been set as a special start location for your nation, your nation has fewer than 4 startsites and some site has been assigned to that province in the map file. In other words, doesn't happen.

Edi

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

4) It's also possible for a random event to create a site in a capital, but as far as I know those are all visible.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Thank you all very much, very helpful. I do think some of these things (e.g. being able to waste time searching your home province, being able to waste time doing a level 9 search when you've done a level 4 search) are a bit... quirky, but I guess it comes with the territory when you're playing a game which is such an obvious labour of love. As I say, I'm certainly finding it absorbing. I'm playing as a random nation in a single player game and I got Arcoscephale, so I noticed that my priestesses had a heal ability, I wondered how common it was. It's actually quite handy, as I've got lots of sacred troops who get regeneration after blessing. They've been taking a lot of punishment but surviving with good experience, so a turn or two healing them seems like time well spent.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Well, you're able to do a level 9 search after you've done a level 9 search as well. Or doing a level 1 search, for that matter.

There's just no mechanism to prevent searching.

I hope that the autocast searching gets rewritten and makes this easier to handle.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

To answer my own question, there is a specific FAQ at the website that calmon posted:

http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/faq.html

There's lots of other cool stuff there as well, (thanks calmon), but that's specifically the FAQ.

It's for Dominions2 though, I don't know if the information is out of date.

Incidentally having reviewed the section on the chances of getting magic sites, I think I was extremely unlucky to have cast Haruspex on about ten provinces (including 6 mountains and a forest) in a middle era game, and got two bleedin' Farms of Plenty (i.e. no gems). Although I guess a lot of the Nature sites must be in a forest. How does that work? If the random roll gives a Nature site, and then another roll determines a site which should be in a forest, do you get no Nature site? Or does it only pick among the ones which could appear in that terrain? Or is there some other complexity I'm missing (has it changed from Dominions2)?

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

to prevent your campaigns from stalling you could leave your wounded behind. If i'm not mistaken you have to click on a unit inside a group and then press 'w'. This selects all wounded inside that group.

Personally I don't care that much about them, maybe because I'm not always <font color="cyan">Acrocephale</font> , but still then. It's easy to do and there mus not be that many wounded anyways.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

If I understand correctly, it doesn't first pick a Path and then determine which site, but just picks from the sites possible in that terrain (weighted for rarity).

Forests are more likely to have Nature sites because there are more Nature sites on the list of sites permitted in forest.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Well, like I said, I have half a dozen badly afflicted sacred troops, so it's probably worth waiting a turn or two, and I could probably benefit from doing a troop build up anyway and letting my dominion spread a bit.

That's one thing I have found interesting about the lack of a built in save and reload feature . I rarely actually reload other strategy computer games, but I always save every turn (just in case it crashes, as much as anything else). But not having that facility does tend to make me much more cautious. If you know that if it goes terribly wrong you can try again, you tend to be much more aggressive.

I kind of like the way it forces you to think about your strategy a bit more. And also I tend to crush the computer in the long run, not being able to take back stupid mistakes should make it much more challenging. I think I'll take some backup saves though, I'm still very much learning the game, and I want to try out different things if it all goes horribly wrong (rather than spend 12 hours setting it all up again).

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Thejeff: ah ok. I was misreading the FAQ. I thought it said that a 50% chance meant 50% for a site in each Path, whereas in fact when it was talking about multiple rolls, it meant for each of the four possible province slots (four apparently being the maximum). Which would explain why I was having trouble finding Nature sites in mountain provinces.

Would be handy to know which sites can appear in which terrain. Has anyone ever created such a list?

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

There may be some interesting answers in the beginning of a FAQ I've made some times ago (but I couldn't find the courage to continue).

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Thanks Twan, that was interesting too. It would be nice if this were all in one place. Any chance of a FAQ sticky, with all the different versions, edited to remove duplicates and remove things which have changed from Dom2? Or putting them on a website somewhere?

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

I'm in the middle of constructing a comprehensive document of the units, weapons, sites and other things in the game. Once that is complete, it will go along way toward producing a FAQ with detailed information regarding what kind of sites you can find in what territory and many other things.

A more generic FAQ would probably be easy to produce just by combining and editing existing Dom2 FAQs because a lot of the mechanics are still the same.

Edi

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

On the subject of what type of magic site can be found in which types of terrain, I found an extra column I'd missed on the Excel spreadsheet complete list of sites which is at http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/, which gives the terrain the site can be found on. Which is very interesting. Actually I see the list was compiled by your good self, Edi, thanks for that.

Anyway, I can now see that there was little point casting Haruspex on mountain provinces, as there are precisely 0 Nature sites which only appear on mountains. Forests, swamps and water provinces appear to be the places to be. Which I guess kind of makes sense, but I hadn't realised there was _such_ a low chance of finding a Nature site in other provinces. I wasted a lot of turns doing that, but never mind, all part of the learning experience I guess.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

You're welcome. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

And, it seems, one learns something new every day. I didn't pay any particular attention to that relationship between mountains and nature sites when I did that list, so even I didn't know it. We have a saying about "not seeing the forest because of all those trees" and that seems rather appropriate here...

Edi

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Some units do heal battle-caused afflictions naturally; these are mostly Pangaean units and certain pretender types, and have a particular icon representing recuperation. Immortals also probabilistically heal over time, regardless of whether they're in their own dominion.

In addition to EA Ermor Shroud priests, and Arcosephale priestesses, Faerie Queens and the TC immortal healer (all eras, if memory serves... but it wouldn't surprise me if they're swapped out in LA in some patch), there's a formidable Sauromatian heroine who can heal troops.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

There may be NO Nature sites that only appear on mountains, but there are Nature sites that can appear in any land province, and thus in mountains.

Also, as you probably know, that's the Dom2list. There have been additions, so there may now be mountain Nature sites.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Yes I realise that the "Any Land" Nature sites can appear in mountains. However if (as I assume) the game compiles a weighted list (allowing on rarity) for each site in a province, then the chances are significantly lower of getting a Nature site in mountains. If we just look at Common frequency sites, then in a mountain province you would have a chance of 3 Nature sites, one of which doesn't give gems so is fairly useless. So that's two Common sites giving a Nature gem. There are 21 Any terrain Common sites which don't give a Nature gem, and 15 other Common sites which can appear on Mountains. So, if a mountain province has two sites, the chances of one of them giving you a Nature gem are (very approximately) 1 - (36/38 * 36/38). Which I make to be about 10%.

In a Forest province there are 5 Common Nature sites which give a gem, and eight other Common Forest sites. So the chances of getting a Nature gem casting Haruspex are (very approximately) 1 - (22/29 * 22/29). Which I make to be about 42%.

Obviously the maths is all very approximate and I'm sure there will be some errors there, and it depends on the exact formula. But the fact remains that if you check two Forest sites in Dom2 using Haruspex, the chances are you should get a Nature gem, whereas you can check 6 mountains provinces using Haruspex (as I did) and still only be about 50/50 to find a Nature gem.

Re: questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)
 

Sounds like a good idea. Go for it.

Besides my docs collection (mostly for mappers and modders)
http://www.Dom3Minions.com/docs
I also hope to have a collection of How-To articles. So far my list is:
How-To::
keep multiple gods (left over from Dom2)
do switches/config
make an icon for each game Im in
battle simulator
save/restore
screenshots
alarms so I dont miss real-world things
host
take notes in the game
make notes on the map
make a map
make a mod
make an AI (i.e. play against myself)
change the music
speed up the game
beat the AI
beat Ermor
beat that perfect strategy (changing game types)
bank my money
run a game without leaving my machine up 24/7
run a pbem game
host a blitz game
see the scoreboards with dead-nations included
see what the AI is "thinking" when it processes
play on a lan with one copy

Gandalf Parker
-- DOMINIONS 3:
the Everliving, the Emperor of Strategy, the Tyrrant of Time, the Destructor of Health, the Stealer of Sleep, and a game too.