The complete !?!? FAQ

[Twan]

This faq was originally made to answer questions from the legendary "rsolow" (who disappeared soon after). But it may be the beginning good base for a community ressource.


SUMMARY...

GAME BASICS - This post, all questions about general rules, orders, buildings etc.

SITES & SITE SEARCHING - post n�2, all questions about magical sites.

UNIT POWERS & SPELL EFFECTS - post n�2 all questions about units & spells.

MAGIC ITEMS & COMBOS - post n�3, all questions about magic items or their effect combined with spells.

MISCELLANOUS - post n�3, all other questions

NATIONS & STRATEGIES - post n�4 reserved, all questions about a specific nation and it's strategic choices.


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GAME BASICS
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-Why build Fortresses?

Building a fort will allow you to recruit most of your national units.


-Recruiting National Units away from home ????? Although the new provinces allow me to build most of my national units, none (except my original fortress) allows me to recruit Niefel Jarls and Niefel Gaints. Am I doing something incorrectly or are some units only able to be build in your initial province?

Yes.


-Global Enchantments -- Are they Mine ?!?!?! Surely there must be somewhere where I can see which global enchantments I currently control?


Yeah, the Global Enchaments screen in the lab [or hitF6]. Looks like a planet with a sword in it. Shows a list of all enchaments and their owner.


-Attacking Enemy Commanders ???? -

The option to attack commanders and mages existed in Dom 1, but was removed in Dom2 as unbalancing. It is very difficult if not impossible to get troops to attack commanders in Dom3, which is what makes some tactics like skelly-spam so powerful.
There are assassins and assassination spells though.


-Ordering Archers to Attach Enemy Archers ???

You shouldn't order them to "attack archers" , as this will make the charge them to kill them in melee.
Better order them to "fire at: archers". They will switch to another target ( : nearest) as soon as there is no more valid pre-set target, e.g. no archers, or all enemy archers routing.
Only special items like the gladiator chains can ""attach"" other units.


- How do I engage the Enemy if I am in my Fort ??? If I set my troops to "Patrol" will that enable me to engage enemies as soon as they move into my fortified province?

Yes.

Does encumbrance matter?

Encumbrance affects how much fatigue you get from making melee attacks and spellcasting. As detailed in the manual, when your fatigue goes up your attack and defense go down (attack goes down by 1 per 20 points of fatigue, defense goes down by 1 per 10 points) and your Prot is effectively halved. (The manual has details, but at 45 fatigue many attacks will be vs. 1/2 Prot, and at 75 most attacks will be vs. 1/2 Prot.) This is why you may see some fairly tough, regenerating critters like squadrons of trolls cut through most of an army of chaff and then all suddenly evaporate--fatigue gets too high and suddenly they're taking more damage than they can regenerate.

-What does 0 encumbrance mean?

Units with 0 encumbrance can fight in melee combat without accumulating any fatigue. Their melee encumbrance remains zero no matter how much heavy armor, shields, etc., they wear. They are subject to the usual armor encumbrance penalties when spellcasting though
-Conversion Rates ?!?!?!??

Explanation is on p. 43 (note : but the system is probably bugged, tests showed that actual dominion isn't really used for all spreads)


- Where to build Temples????

Successful temple checks result in "Dominion blobs" which wander around unless they find a place to settle, i.e. a province with low or enemy dominion. This could be several provinces away .. . At least thats was the programmer told when I asked how in Dom2 my dominion could spread into a province 5(!) hops away from my border ....

If you build all your temple into the center of your empire, you'll have max dominion there first, and only after all provinces are "filled up" the dominions will really spread into enemy provinces. With a temple at the border, there's at least a chance the "dominion blob" travels into an enemy province, so that you get a chance of increasing your dominion there now, instead of 20 turns later when your mainland is 'overflowing' ...


-Afflic(a!!?)tions ?????

1. Can Afflications be cured by spell?

Afflictions can be cured by commanders who have the "Heal Troops" order. These commanders include, but are not limited to:
Arcoscephale Priestesses, Arch Bishops of the Sacred Shroud, and one of the T'ien C'hi national heroes.
The faery queen summoned by the "Faery Court" spell has the ability to cure afflictions.
These commanders cannot cure afflictions caused by old age. I'm not sure if the game differentiates between afflictions caused by old age, and afflictions caused by battle damaged to people who have the old age symbol. Commanders are also unable to cure the afflictions of undead units.
The global spell "Gift of Health" gives units a 10%*(province dominion level) boost to hitpoints, and cures afflictions of any unit (including undead) in the pretender's dominion.
The artifact "The Chalice" cures afflictions for all units (including undead) in the province where it's carrier is located.

2. Will Afflications go away on there own over time? If so, does "resting" increase the speed with which they go away??

They don't (except if your unit has the "recuperation" power).

3. Can units become "diseased" and is this considered an afflication (with red hearts) that spreads from unit to unit within a squad (or within an army) ?

Disease is an affliction, but is not contagious. Disease can be spread on the battlefield by a unit with the disease cloud ability, such as the Master with the Iron Crutch for T'ien C'hi, certain units, or a death spell that causes disease on the battlefield.


Non-?!? questions...


When two of your armies move into the same province, do they combine forces to attack, or do you do two attacks, one after the other?

If both armies are from the attacking side they combine. If one is from the defending side, and the other from the attacking side, the defender's armies combine. If both armies and the defender are all from different nations, one army will attack the defender, then the other army will attack whoever is left from the results of that battle. It is therefore an obvious advantage to go last but there is no way to control (or, really, even predict) which nation will go in which order.

If you press 'y' when you have selected a province several of your armies are moving into, you can give orders and select the placement of all the forces moving there. It's currently slightly bugged in that you can't change the orders of units already in the selected province (like stealthy forces).


- Spies, and rooting them out? What's the best ways to find spies ?

Page 67-68 of the manual describes stealth, patrol etc. If a Spy has Stealth 20, you'd need 60 units precision 10, AP 10 units to have a 50/50 chance of catching it, worse chance with unrest, better chance with high PD. Fast units and high-precision units are better at patrolling and catching enemies than other units. Flying units are counted as very fast (30 AP).

The best way is flyers, moving around your empire and patroling. The spell Call of the Winds is excellent. I usually use this spell offensively to attack an enemy for the surprise value. Then any surviving flying leaders gather the remaining hawks and patrol my empire from then on. I usually have 10-20 hawks under 1 hawk leader, excellent use of 5A gems!

Also another cheap way is Ring of Warning +10 patrol bonus on a cavalry leader.


- unrest? I may have missed this but how angry can your population get before they revolt etc? Is there some specific number they reach when bad things start to happen?

Many events scale with unrest, mostly attacking and revolting ones (size and frequency goes up IIRC).
100 unrest makes you unable to recruit in that province. Unrest also reduce the chances of blood hunting.
Unrest is capped at 500


- Arrows vs shields in dom3

Attacker rolls DRN + (Size points in the square) +2 if magic weapon
Defender rolls 2 + DRN + (shield parry x2) - (Fatigue / 20)

Take a shortbow hitting a square filled with units (6 size points) which have no fatigue.

With no shield:76% chance to hit.
With a buckler : 46% to hit.
With a round shield : 18%
With a tower shield : 3%


- AI doesn't follow orders ?

It will ignore your orders if:
* There is no valid target for the spell it is trying to cast. It's not very smart about this, either. At least in dom2, it wouldn't cast for instance resist fire, if you had a 50% fire resist item, so having such an item actually made your resistance WORSE than if you didn't have it. I don't know if this aggravating problem is still around. Of course, the AI will happily try to summon soulless, even if there are no corpses...
* The AI thinks the enemy army is too weak and does not want to waste the spell.
* The AI thinks the fatigue cost would be too high for the spell (the AI will never cast a spell that puts it over 200 fatigue, and sometimes won't cast them to put it over 100 fatigue).


- You killed our God! (AI diplomacy...)

At the start of the game you are at peace with every AI player, until he declares war, or until you attack him.
From time to time, after a war was started but then stopped, the AI will think that some truce has been made an "make peace" (without any message notification).
The exception is the "You killed our God!" war, which never stops


- How to dispel global enchantments ?

There's a [rather long] explanation of global enchantment mechanics on pages 87-88.

Only five global enchantments can be active at a time. If there are five active, then I think it is something like each enchantment gets "points" equal to extra gems used + DRN (I believe there is also a bonus for levels the caster is above the required magic skill level). Whichever one is lowest gets dispelled / doesn't take effect.

You have three options:
1) Cast Dispel on one of the enchantments.
2) Hunt down and kill the mages that cast the enchantments. They die, so does the enchantment.
3) Use more gems when casting a new global (if it's the same it will override the ennemy spell, if it's another it will try to override a random enchant)
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