questions (and is there a FAQ anywhere?)

[thejeff]

If I understand correctly, it doesn't first pick a Path and then determine which site, but just picks from the sites possible in that terrain (weighted for rarity).

Forests are more likely to have Nature sites because there are more Nature sites on the list of sites permitted in forest.

[merlinme]

Well, like I said, I have half a dozen badly afflicted sacred troops, so it's probably worth waiting a turn or two, and I could probably benefit from doing a troop build up anyway and letting my dominion spread a bit.

That's one thing I have found interesting about the lack of a built in save and reload feature . I rarely actually reload other strategy computer games, but I always save every turn (just in case it crashes, as much as anything else). But not having that facility does tend to make me much more cautious. If you know that if it goes terribly wrong you can try again, you tend to be much more aggressive.

I kind of like the way it forces you to think about your strategy a bit more. And also I tend to crush the computer in the long run, not being able to take back stupid mistakes should make it much more challenging. I think I'll take some backup saves though, I'm still very much learning the game, and I want to try out different things if it all goes horribly wrong (rather than spend 12 hours setting it all up again).

[merlinme]

Thejeff: ah ok. I was misreading the FAQ. I thought it said that a 50% chance meant 50% for a site in each Path, whereas in fact when it was talking about multiple rolls, it meant for each of the four possible province slots (four apparently being the maximum). Which would explain why I was having trouble finding Nature sites in mountain provinces.

Would be handy to know which sites can appear in which terrain. Has anyone ever created such a list?

[Twan]

There may be some interesting answers in the beginning of a FAQ I've made some times ago (but I couldn't find the courage to continue).

[merlinme]

Thanks Twan, that was interesting too. It would be nice if this were all in one place. Any chance of a FAQ sticky, with all the different versions, edited to remove duplicates and remove things which have changed from Dom2? Or putting them on a website somewhere?

[Edi]

I'm in the middle of constructing a comprehensive document of the units, weapons, sites and other things in the game. Once that is complete, it will go along way toward producing a FAQ with detailed information regarding what kind of sites you can find in what territory and many other things.

A more generic FAQ would probably be easy to produce just by combining and editing existing Dom2 FAQs because a lot of the mechanics are still the same.

Edi

[merlinme]

On the subject of what type of magic site can be found in which types of terrain, I found an extra column I'd missed on the Excel spreadsheet complete list of sites which is at http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/, which gives the terrain the site can be found on. Which is very interesting. Actually I see the list was compiled by your good self, Edi, thanks for that.

Anyway, I can now see that there was little point casting Haruspex on mountain provinces, as there are precisely 0 Nature sites which only appear on mountains. Forests, swamps and water provinces appear to be the places to be. Which I guess kind of makes sense, but I hadn't realised there was _such_ a low chance of finding a Nature site in other provinces. I wasted a lot of turns doing that, but never mind, all part of the learning experience I guess.

[Edi]

You're welcome.

And, it seems, one learns something new every day. I didn't pay any particular attention to that relationship between mountains and nature sites when I did that list, so even I didn't know it. We have a saying about "not seeing the forest because of all those trees" and that seems rather appropriate here...

Edi

[Taqwus]

Some units do heal battle-caused afflictions naturally; these are mostly Pangaean units and certain pretender types, and have a particular icon representing recuperation. Immortals also probabilistically heal over time, regardless of whether they're in their own dominion.

In addition to EA Ermor Shroud priests, and Arcosephale priestesses, Faerie Queens and the TC immortal healer (all eras, if memory serves... but it wouldn't surprise me if they're swapped out in LA in some patch), there's a formidable Sauromatian heroine who can heal troops.

[thejeff]

There may be NO Nature sites that only appear on mountains, but there are Nature sites that can appear in any land province, and thus in mountains.

Also, as you probably know, that's the Dom2list. There have been additions, so there may now be mountain Nature sites.