Water magic on land?
 

I've been playing ma tien chi on an all-land map. I noticed that a significant portion of water magic spells deal with being underwater (summon kraken, water breathing, etc).

Besides evo-2 cold bolt/beam/deathray/whatever, what early-game water magic is appealing? Especially summons or items - how do I use all those stupid water gems? The only thing I can come up with is clam of pearls, and that takes a bit of work to finagle.

Bonus question - what's a river do, besides make a bright blue mark? I didn't find it in the terrain section.

-Jeff

Re: Water magic on land?
 

River does nothing unless it's a player made map that's set up so it does.

As to the water gems- Boots of Quickness and Bottle of Living Water are great items, you can never really have too many. Frost Brands are pretty much the best sword you can buy and a bargain at 5 gems. You will want Water Braclets for anyone who plans to use Falling Frost. Ice Drakes have uses and Winter Wolves are ok.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

A province with a river running through it has the "fresh water" terrain tag. I think this means that the province is susceptible to flooding. Some spells may be able to take advantage of this fact.

There may be some other effects related to income and such, but I really don't know what they might be.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

Fresh Water provinces are also richer IIRC.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

Numbness is a decent debuff spell for the early game. The Ice Pebble Staff at con-2 is a handy item for melee commanders who would otherwise sit around doing nothing.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

I love the bottles. Love them.

The only problem is if you are in a territory that has any levels of cold in it, all the elementals spawn as ice elementals with a cold aura http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/frown.gif Unless you're playing a nation like the giants where everyone has cold resistance it generally just kills your mages off, as the elementals have a hard time of finding their way to the front of the battle.

Jazzepi

Re: Water magic on land?
 

Does the river province affect magic sites also? I've found water magic site 'River Fortress', which gives you a free fort. I'd guess it could be restricted to river provinces.

Most of the aforementioned propositions enforce my previous feel: water gems early game are stored for mid-game where they find some use. Which applies to most gems in general, of course.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

I recommend giving the water bottles to commanders with some armor & shield (missile protection of some sort). Place them near the front lines with orders to stay behind troops.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

I agree with Atul. This doesn't make them bad, they're actually quite good, it's just akward sometimes when your nation isn't setup to use them out of the box. For nation like T'ien Ch'i with lots of magic diversity clam hording should always be an option. Since water gems are the most expensive part of that process, keep in mind they're very value if you're considering that strategy.

Jazzepi

Re: Water magic on land?
 

Thanks all for the replies. So many things. :-)

I'm mostly concerned with the first 10-20 turns of the game or so. I find these set the tone for the rest of the game. I'm trying to find stuff I can do after reasearching xxx=2.

So far I like Tien Chi for having a more practical army than Ulm. Ulm's army maybe nice and elie, but Tien Chi gains a lot of flexibility and speed while giving up very little strength. I can easily build Tien Chi armies to take out most independants (str 5 is the default, I think).

But I'm kinda at a loss when I use the mages early only. That ice pebble staff may be something for me to look at - I just ignored it in my game.

-Jeff

Re: Water magic on land?
 

TC can also make Jade Armor, and Sword of Swiftness is another good weapon. Frozen Heart. Sprinkling single water gems on a bunch of W1 mages for a sudden Summon Water Elemental tidal wave...

Re: Water magic on land?
 

Jaif, Ulm's armies are a joke :-) Everyone expects them to be elite and
effective, but I personnaly think that the developers just had an ax
to grind with Germans. The Arbalests are too slow, and their only
advantage over crossbows is that they are better for shooting your own
men in the back. Their infantry gets too tired much too easily. Real
elite infantry eats them for lunch. Their heavy cavalry is truly elite,
but standard heavy cavalry does the same job only marginally less well.
And to top it all off, despite their rather underwhelming mages, everyone
in Ulm has a vulnerability to magic, as opposed to a resistance to it, as
one would expect from a race that stays away from magic.

Oh yeah, it is very hard to get decent scales for them. The fire pick of
their mages makes them old, so you need a life scale, the resource heavy
troops prevent you from taking sloth... all in all, Ulm is a sad, sad race.

In MP games, though, Ulm does OK. Everyone wants to use their forging
services, and thus they are left alone 'till late game. Ulm is often
a member of the winning alliance.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

The arbalests are decent infantry. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif


I agree about the units, mostly. They aren't useless, but they aren't good either.

However, Ulm has very nice choice of scales available to it.
Drain 3 and Production 3 effectively cancel each other out, and provide them with minor bonuses (to gold and to magic resistance of non-Ulmish units - the +1 mr effectively cancels Ulmish troops' weakness). They'll have lots of surplus gold flowing around, thanks to their cheap troops and mages, so they have less need for Order as well.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

I haven't played a lot, and have no MP exposure.

I did play ulm a lot in Dom II. I did that for the atmosphere, and had a lot of fun. Btw, the answer I came up with was not to mix arbs and ulms infantry. I either used arbs with cheap troups, or more often infantry with cheap archers.

But I think we're agreeing here - tien chi's military (ignoring the magic) is better than ulm's.

Btw, I should say I very much favor the opening game. A bad opening means you lose (unless there's heavy politics, which I don't get in SP). A good opening leaves tons of possibilities. I'm just trying to figure out what to do with XXXX-2 at the start of the game, and there really isn't much. I guess the smart thing is to work to conj-6 (celestial soldiers) and const-4 before I worry much about magic aiding the expansion.

-Jeff

Re: Water magic on land?
 

> The arbalests are decent infantry.

Yes. If they had a buckler, they would be good infantry. Unfortunately,
that's not allowed, not for Ulm.

> I either used arbs with cheap troups, or more often infantry with cheap archers.

You have the right idea. Heavy infantry with the "resource three" archers you
get from Druid provinces is a very nice combination against indies and AI.
And of course, the druids' relief was very useful in Dominions II, where druids
could boost themselves to N3 trivially.

Re: Water magic on land? Tier Two
 

Tier two research for water magic?

I second the Ice Pebble Staff if you have a gem surplus.
It costs a lot less fatigue than the spell, so you can have a commander cast it around 20 times, if the battle lasts that long.

Shambler Skin armor is a big letdown, but if you have a high defense supercombatant pretender, it can do you a lot of good. Plus, you can now boost your mage with waterpower if you go underwater.

The Ice Sword is a great tool if you've got a commander you want gaining experience and heroic abilities. It is a pretty damaging weapon, and that def boost will help your commanders go around killing so you can pick and choose heroic abilities to develop.

If you've got a lot of low damage troops and are facing heavy infantry/cavalry, Dessication is a decent choice. First off, it has precision 100, though MR is a factor, so it whiffs a lot less than cold bolts. In theory, it could deal 16 fatigue a turn, though averages less. You can check out page 76 for the details on fatigue, but suffice to say, it'll give you more chances at critical hits. There are lot of situations where it is a waste, however, so I don't have this scripted by default.

If you've forged that Ice Pebble Staff, it makes a decent combination with a spellcaster casting dessication. Numbness will slow down and fatigue those troops, giving Dessication a bit longer to work.

There's a few interesting spells just a bit further down the line, but of tier 2, I think this and what others mentioned above just about covers it.

I'm interested whether anyone has ever used Ice Drakes to any affect. I tried four or five against R'lyeh once, and didn't see any return for my investment, but perhaps thats due to MR.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

Ice Drakes can be good if you have other cold-immune troops, and place them appropriately.

Infantry of Ulm is no good in small numbers, but it gets strong when one has the patience to mass enough of them in line (at least, against foes who don't have something that ignores their armor). Cheap in gold for the protection, but sadly for Ulm in MP, there are many things that ignore armor and tend to be easier to amass than a lot of high-resource infantry, especially by mid/late game.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

Where is appropriately for Ice Drakes?

Re: Water magic on land?
 

I put them in small groups just behind a group of cold-resistant melee troops, with orders to Fire Closest. This way, they usually use their short-range breath attack without getting hurt by enemy hand weapons first, and when they run out of breath, they usually mix in with the melee troops, which keeps them from getting ganged up upon.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

Neat and elegant. Does that work with 50/75% resistant troops, such as LA Atlantis has, or only with 100%?

Re: Water magic on land?
 

I would say it would. The resistance should cut down on the fatigue heavily.

Jazzepi

Re: Water magic on land?
 

It does. I have also used (fire and) ice drakes with non-resistant troops. I just spread them thinner. Not then as a major strategy, just something that can help.

And to drift off topic, cave drakes and giant scorpions can just be put inside groups of melee troops of the same speed. I don't mass them, but one or two can add a little bit of ability to a group of men.

Re: Water magic on land?
 

In SP, I found that Geyser was a pretty good low level spell that did enough damage to take down the glamour on a lot of Helheim troops. If you massed enough mages together, it could put a big dent in those forces.