New empowerment strategy?

[SurvivalistMerc]

Ok...I'm a dominions newb. A total newb. So please bear with me.

Does anyone consider it to be a viable strategy to start a pretender off with a lot or "3" ranks as a rainbow mage and then empower to 4 for purposes of getting all or almost all of the bless effects for sacred troops?

Also, has anyone ever found a blood magic site? I never did despite generally having blood 2 on my rainbow mage searcher. At least not in the sense that I would have a steady income of blood slaves or a blood summoning site that required fewer slaves to do something neat.

Final question...Castles only draw resources from provinces you control, right? Not adjacent enemy provinces?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Does anyone consider it to be a viable strategy to start a pretender off with a lot or "3" ranks as a rainbow mage and then empower to 4 for purposes of getting all or almost all of the bless effects for sacred troops?

The bless effects are determined on pretender creation, not their current statistics.

[SurvivalistMerc]

I just got my manual yesterday. Can you tell me how you know that? In the manual? Experience?

This would be a good thing if you got killed and lost some skills, though.

[Nerfix]

Originally posted by SurvivalistMerc:
Ok...I'm a dominions newb. A total newb. So please bear with me.

Does anyone consider it to be a viable strategy to start a pretender off with a lot or "3" ranks as a rainbow mage and then empower to 4 for purposes of getting all or almost all of the bless effects for sacred troops?

Also, has anyone ever found a blood magic site? I never did despite generally having blood 2 on my rainbow mage searcher. At least not in the sense that I would have a steady income of blood slaves or a blood summoning site that required fewer slaves to do something neat.

Final question...Castles only draw resources from provinces you control, right? Not adjacent enemy provinces?

Graeme Dice said.

Yes. They are very rare though...

Only your provinces.

[Gandalf Parker]

There are not alot of blood sites but the ones that are out there can be VERY important to find.

Castles only draw from neighboring dominions you own. I rarely play in a circle-growth mode spreading equally from a home province (lots of pros and cons there) but I always try to remember to take every neighbor attached to a castle.

I often took gods with 2 or 3 in as many magics as possible as searchers. I figured that if I found a ton of air sites, then I would have a ton of air gems, I would want to be very capable of using those gems effectively, it wouldnt hurt me any to empower him another level in air, etc etc etc. If I found lots of earth gem sites, etc etc etc.

In other words I let my random luck decide where my pretender was headed. Having him 2 or 3 levels toward that goal was good for searching and for empowering (not too expensive). At 3 or 4 in a magic you can usually make 1 or 2 items that can give you the next few levels in that magic bringing you up to 5 or 6 or even 7 in a magic that you just happened to find a ton of sites giving you gems for. Ahhh the POWER!!!

[apoger]

Looks like forts no longer pull resources from other forts. Glad to see that gone.