Beginner Questions

[Buatha]

I've seen enemy commanders with magic gear and the battle says Commanders were killed, yet I never find anything.

Do random maps have Fog of War? I started a game with a random map just for fun, and I noticed the screen wasn't completely available like the pre-built maps.

[dirtywick]

It depends. Against indies, if the enemy routs it counts as a kill on the message screen even though they didn't actually die. If you did actually kill that commander, there's a percentage that you'll find the item if one of your commanders has a slot open to hold it.

As for the fog of war, not that I'm aware of. Were you playing a pre-built wraparound map? Random maps aren't wraparound, maybe that's what you're seeing?

[Patriot]

This question isn't related to Buatha's question, but I'm a beginner so I thought this place was appropriate.

An independent province separates me from my enemy and I planned to take it, but I've failed a couple of times already. The independents have assorted barbarian units and knights that probably came from random events, they number about 100 or so.

The biggest problem is a priest commander there that has Soul Contract? item in his possession. I don't know if it's a random event or if the priest is a reminder from a defeated pretender, but there are hundreds of devils in the province, probably about 400 or so. They just fly to my troops and tear away most of it on the first turn. My army routs or just gets decimated. I'm new so I don't know what to do. Devils keep making babies or something.

[bleach168]

That happened to me once, Patriot. What I did was send in an assassin to take out all the commanders. Then send in one dude to attack and all the devils should rout.

Good luck.

[Taqwus]

Assassins and assassination spells (ex. Seeking Arrow) are reasonable.

If you have a Staff of Storms, that'll help -- devils can't fly in storms, and their heat will probably set some of the indy troops on fire.

In some cases, it's simply easier to use stealth or magic to bypass the province.

[CogDissident]

Additionally, you could prepare a strong ground force, spearmen (longer weapons will repell the demon attacks) mixed 1-to-1 with something with a strong melee, and have two mages with them casting an armor buff and fire-resist buff (or one mage, if you've got someone strong enough to do the earth spell "skin of gold", which does both). They'll fly to you and get ripped apart by a sufficiently strong force that knows what they're up against, but you'd need a good 500-600 human troops to do so.

I'm used to playing Ulm or Man, and throwing a million troops at a problem is usually my playstyle, because hey, people are cheap. And a properly buffed army of 100 cheapo units can take out an unbuffed army of 100 giants.

[Endoperez]

Buatha said:
I've seen enemy commanders with magic gear and the battle says Commanders were killed, yet I never find anything.

Do random maps have Fog of War? I started a game with a random map just for fun, and I noticed the screen wasn't completely available like the pre-built maps.

Was your non-random map a Wraparound map? Most Dominions map are squares or scrolls or what-have-you, with definite borders. Some are spesifically made to be wrap-around maps, so that if you go left for long enough, you'll be at the place you started from.

[Teraswaerto]

A commander with the Staff of Storms and a generous amount of mages casting Blade Wind should wipe out the devils with no problems. They don't have very high protection.

Having some higly armoured troops to engage the devils while the blades are slicing them up would probably be needed though.