How difficult is this game?

[Fenris99]

Amhazair said:
I suppose you mean their level in the different paths of magic (fire, death, nature and the like)? They don't improve automatically or easily. With the appropiate level in construction and the apropiate paths you can construct some items that boost one or more paths. (A list of all the boosters can be found on page 282-283 of the manual. That's the page I've used most often. )

So you're telling me that you can research all these powerful spells and have no one capable of casting them?

Also, what determines their base level in the magic disciplines? Is it the pretender's levels?

[Endoperez]

The nations specialize. Middle-Age (MA) Marignon, as an example, is a Fire/Astral nation with a touch of other paths I don't remember. Other nations have different magics. Pretenders don't affect the mages available. Gem income is often just as important as the power of your mages.

As far as magic power goes:
1 is low
2 is base power: fireballs, bolts of lightning, etc
3 allows most good stuff, most often
4 is high, and all paths have at least one booster item available at level 4 and construction 4 or 6.
5 and above is for the heroes, pretenders and epic spells, and mages that start with 5 or more can also use booster items and spells to reach most high-level goals.
9 and above is only used for spesific strategies, to reach spesific goals. Pretenders rarely take magic over level 5 or so unless the nation can also use the bless it provides.

Example with Marignon:
Their Grand Masters can get up to Fire 4 or Astral 3 with a lucky random pick (click on the question mark next to the magic paths to see what they can get). With that and research in Construction they can forge a Flaming Helmet or a Starshine Skullcap, bringing them to Fire 5 or Astral 4. The Conjuration spells "Phoenix Power", "Light of the Northern Star" and "Power of the Spheres" can be used to further increase their paths to Fire 7 and Astral 6, for battles at least.

[Fenris99]

OK, so the magic level of your mages is based on the nation that you play?

[llamabeast]

I guess my issue with them is that they are virtually the only nation he ever plays.

Who? Me? I've only played them once! I do really like them though.

I remember I spent my first Dominions demo game carting a single fire-2 mage around, getting him lots of experience, waiting for him to become fire-3. It was very frustrating! (It turns out it doesn't work like that at all).

So you're telling me that you can research all these powerful spells and have no one capable of casting them?

You have to plan what you research for the mages you've got. And always you will have heaps of spells you can't cast.

For example, as Marignon, you should research Evocation, to give you fireballs and stuff. Evocation also includes water spells (like water strike), air spells (like lightning) and so on - but they're no use to you, so you might as well ignore them.

When on the research screen you can press the 'f' key to show only fire spells - and equivalently 'w' for water, etc.. The only non-obvious one is 's' for astral. This can be very useful for seeing what spells will be useful for you.

After a while you also get a feel for what each school is likely to do. The most obvious ones are Evocation, for directly attacking people (fireballs, lightning), conjuration for summoning things, alteration for buffs (spells that make your mages and troops tougher) and construction for enabling forging of items. There are some non-obvious things though - for instance Phoenix Power, which gives fire mages an extra level of fire magic in battle, is in Conjuration.

Although there are a bajillion spells, they are all quite distinct, and after a while you will get to know a few that you like. If you're Marignon, you'll get to like Fireball, Falling Fires (both evocation) and Phoenix Power.

[Fenris99]

How do I get gems?

[Amhazair]

First, you have a gem income from your capitol, this will generally be of a type your nation is strong in. Then, in each province there is a chance there will be 1-4 magical site, most of which will give you gems of some kind. A few of those sites you will discover when you conquer the province, but most will remain hidden until you search for them.

Searching can be done in two ways: first a mage can search the province he's in for sites in the paths he possesses. Sites come in levels from 1-4, and you search in the path and levels of your mage. So a Fire3 Astral3 mage will find most, but not all fire and astral sites, but will not uncover sites of other paths. Second, there are site-searching spells spread around the different research schools. There is one for each path of magic, and casting that spell (select the 'cast ritual spell' order on a mage in a lab province once you have the appropiate research, then select the spell in question from the list you get) will cost some gems, and will search a province of your choise for all sites in that path. There are also 2 spells that search for sites of multiple paths, but one is underwater only, and the other very expensive.

Thus getting more sites of the paths your nation is strong in is quite easy, as you will have both the mages to search manually, or to cast the remote search spells, and the gems needed to cast those spells (from the gem income of your capitol), but finding sites in other paths will be harder. There are several ways to do this, the easiest being designing what is known as a 'rainbow pretender' A rainbow pretender uses a pretender chassis with cheap access to new paths (take a look at most 'human' pretenders, they fit the bill perfectly), and will buy low levels (often 2, sometimes more) of magic in as many paths as possible. This is useful for finding sites, and if you take care when choosing your magic picks (this will come with experience) will allow you to forge many useful items your national mages might not be able to forge.

[Nikolai]

> So you're telling me that you can research all these powerful spells and have no one capable of casting them?

That is very often happening. Each nation has strong magic paths, weak magic paths, paths on pretender, and paths on independant mages. First two are fixed, third you design, and fourth is random.

Some people will go out of ways to make sure that their pretender covers all path nation is missing. Others make sure that he can forge boosters for strong paths of nation. Others concentrate on making sure he can summon other mages that complete the nation. Others forsake some paths completely.

As many strategies as players. In MP, trade can close holes.

Example: MA Man has many, many air mages, but no one has solid chance of getting Air magic at level 4. But that is level required to forge items that make air magic stronger, and many awesome air spells need much more than level 3 air magic.

So some players will forget that, and really hurt. Others will make sure their Pretender has air magic at level 4 or more. Others will look at nations list in an MP game, and say "Cealum is in game, and he will want to trade air boosters for nature boosters". And then the game starts, and Cealum is closest neighbor, and only wants to trade daggers, blade first.

[Fenris99]

Nikolai said:

That is very often happening. Each nation has strong magic paths, weak magic paths, paths on pretender, and paths on independant mages. First two are fixed, third you design, and fourth is random.

Some people will go out of ways to make sure that their pretender covers all path nation is missing. Others make sure that he can forge boosters for strong paths of nation. Others concentrate on making sure he can summon other mages that complete the nation. Others forsake some paths completely.

Ahh this is very interesting.

[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.