Various Questions

[Jack_Trowell]

Originally Posted by shatner

Can afflictions caused by unremovable items (Eye of Aiming -> Lost an Eye, The Heart of Life -> Chest Wound, etc.) be healed with a healer, recuperation, Gift of Health or The Chalice? Can the chance of them occurring be mitigated by giving the commander regeneration ahead of time?

The only way I know would be to remove the cursed item first (by changing unit type with a shapechange ability or the transformation spell to a form without the cursed item slot, or by dieing (immortal unit, recalled god, ritual of rebirth ...)), as long as the item is equipped you cannot remove the affliction

Getting thos affliction when equipping the item is automatic, regeneration has no effect here.

Furthermore, can the starting afflictions on pretenders (for example the Forge Lord's limp or the Allfather's missing eye) be healed?

I'm almost sure that they can be healed.

Finally, does regeneration do anything to heal existing afflictions or is it solely preventative?

Regeneration will only lessen the chance to get an affliction when damaged.

To remove afflictions on a unit you can use any of the following methods:

- using a healer
- casting gift of health
- Chalice in same province
- units with recuperation
- immortal units heal afflictions with time too (I think that it works less often that with recuperation)
- changing unit ID (transformation, forced shapechange (not with the shapechange command, but with werejaguars transformation for exemple), transformation in wight or mummy with the appropriate rituals, ...
- unit being ressurected (immortal unit killed in dominion, god recalled after death, etc ...)

Undead cannot be healed by healers units, but gift of health and the Chalice works on then (say hello to the Tartarian factory )

[shatner]

Two distinct, but related questions:

1) Is higher taxes + growth + patrolling worth it vs just growth?

For example, I'm playing as MA T'ien Ch'i and their Eunuch gets a +15 patrol bonus plus their two guardsmen (imperial and ministry) have patrol bonuses of +2 and +1 respectively. This makes it pretty cheap and easy to get a patrolling force of 6 that equals 31. So, my capitol produces roughly an extra 100 gold/turn when cranked to 120% tax rate and the patrolling die-off SEEMS to be roughly equal to the population growth. My question is, is it worth it? In theory my population would keep growing if I weren't squeezing it and eventually I would get that extra 100 gold/turn without the cost and micro of maintaining a goon squad to follow the tax collector. What tax rates can the various levels of Growth support?


2) What tax rates worth of unrest can X patrollers handle?

It seems to me that the success of your patrollers on a turn-by-turn basis is random, but assuming average rolls, how much unrest can a force of 10 patrollers handle? It's nice having the extra chance of catching enemy scouts, so I may be tempted to patrol anyway, but I'm curious how much tax-related unrest I can throw at these guys while they are busy de-stealthing...


Area of Effect mentions in his LA Man guide that a force of 21 patrollers (a single Judge) can manage the unrest from a tax rate of 120%. He also implies that you can break even on population with Growth-3 and 120% taxes. Has this changed? Has anyone verified this?

[thejeff]

In the long run it's not worth it. At least in the simple analysis. You will get more gold from one province over the course of a game by not overtaxing it. On the other hand, if you overtax, you get more gold now, which you can use to buy troops to take/hold more provinces and make more gold that way.
That's the trade off and that's always situational.

What you have for growth/death is mostly irrelevant. You may be able to keep your population up while taxing with Growth, but you're paying 120 design points and not getting the actual growth.

[militarist]

I Agree with thejeff. Both options can be used, regarding of your strategy.
If you are are not relying on sacreds unints, going to mass usual chaff, and beat all with magic in midgame, it is good to have good scales, and it's a big question - to tax or not to tax. If you use blessed units heavily, and going to have very agressive start/midgame, you even can take most of your scales deeply negative to get better bless, win 2 first wars easeir, your ecoomy still can be better, because of more provinces.

[militarist]

Actually, during initial expansion, immidiately before war and during war, I believe that it's better to overtax then undertax without thinking, if, of course you use patrullers which can't be effectively used in fighting. Because it's better to have 5% less pop in provinces, but still have these provinces unnder your rulership

[chrispedersen]

It is common (and good play) to overtax the first couple of turns to get necessary commanders, troops etc. A good start more than pays of usually vs. slightly more money over the life of the game.

[BigDaddy]

It is also better to use free or efficient patrolers. Using expensive patrolers really doesn't make sense. Mictlan can use slaves, and anyone with a little blood and nature can use cross breeds, especially the wimpy ones. You can also use these to pillage provinces you arne't likely to hold near enemy lines. If you have a bunch of commanders you can just set them to flee. I don't know if animals are good at pillaging or not (Horde of Animals).

So, can you use a horde of animals to pillage?

Another thing to keep in mind is that while you're thinking compounding interest, your opponent sees your growth scales and is thinking plague.

[militarist]

How exactly course of stones works? What mathematics is behind it?
How does it look like (result, not graphics)?

[Gregstrom]

Curse of stones?

Cast it 3 or 4 times against big armies, using pen boosters if you can make them. Watch the other side gradually fall over due to fatigue.

[militarist]

It works on whole battlefield, so affects all troops, including mine. The question was how much of fatigue it adds, to understand if it would be effective to cast this spell, having E8-blessed sacreds, who would recover fatigue and wait till all non-E blessed units will die. Sacreds usually have quite a lot of armor, so it's interesting if reinvig 4 will overweight enough the effect of this spell on own troops, and how it will affect others.