Some beginner gameplay and strategies questions

[Shardphoenix]

Originally Posted by Zywack

I had a Sleeper already on hand so I geared him up with a cross between rdonj and Amhazair suggestions (plus reinvigoration boots)

Sleepers have 15 precision, and that`s really much. Give him Eye of Aiming, Bow of war - and watch the slaughter! It`s like bladewind spam, but without earth mage involved, and much more accurate.

[bbz]

I think people suggested Earthquake because half of the skeletons have 4 hp so or up to 8hp. Also the way to use it is with a single caster defending a province that an enemy is about to attack. Use some pd to distract the enemy then all you need is 1 or 2 E4 casters with 5 earth gems each, cast summon earthpower to get them to E5 then set them to: cast earthquake, retreat.(giving them the two extra gem would make them cast earthquake like an E6 mage and reduce the 300 fatigue from the spell enough so that they can retreat(and not be unconcious because of it) ,also you need high defence to avoid being hit by earthquake that is if your mages dont have enough hit points to survive it)

Answer to the second question, they do it randomly in an area around them also they tend to target less armoured targets I think(that is for legions of steel buff, not sure about the others but it has some tricks i think)
What I usually do is set the thug at the bottom and the rear of the map(or top) and place the mage behind the thug so that thier squares form a rectangle. Also I dont place anything near them so that the mage doesnt make a mistake. Another way to ensure that your thug has quickness is have the mage cast it 2-3 times before battle(at least improves the chances of affecting the thug)

About the first question I'm pretty sure it increases your dominion aswell. So if have dominion 8 and 10 temples you can get up to 10 candles in a friendly province.

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by bbz

I think people suggested Earthquake because half of the skeletons have 4 hp so or up to 8hp. Also the way to use it is with a single caster defending a province that an enemy is about to attack. Use some pd to distract the enemy then all you need is 1 or 2 E4 casters with 5 earth gems each, cast summon earthpower to get them to E5 then set them to: cast earthquake, retreat.(giving them the two extra gem would make them cast earthquake like an E6 mage and reduce the 300 fatigue from the spell enough so that they can retreat(and not be unconcious because of it) ,also you need high defence to avoid being hit by earthquake that is if your mages dont have enough hit points to survive it)

Yeah, there's basically two ways to use Earthquakes. The first is as described above, casting and retreating. (If you do it with human-hp mages don't use two in the same province though. The first caster will rack up massive fatigue from the casting, meaning he's very likely to suffer a critical hit and die from the second Earthquake. The Ideal caster would be a Troll King, they have 4E with boots, and enough hp to shrug of a couple of Earthquakes.)

The second way, if you really want to stick it to a big enemy army is to first cast army-buffs to make sure your own guys can weather the quakes. (Assuming you have the research of course.) The single best protection would be Fog Warriors. (Alt7) Since Earthquake counts as nonmagical damage, it will only do one point of damage to those affected, while being extremely unlikely to dispel the mistform. Another option would be Army of Gold/Lead or Mass Protection if you have medium armour accross the board already, both of which will mean only critical hits or very lucky rolls will do any damage at all.

Of course, if you're at the point where you can reliably cast Fog Warriors or Army of Gold/Lead in battle your problems with the AI should be pretty much over.

You can get a similar effect by bringing along a (probably smaller) army of tougher stuff. (Usually summonded. The trolls you get along with the Troll King in Troll King's court would qualify for example.)

Originally Posted by bbz

Answer to the second question, they do it randomly in an area around them also they tend to target less armoured targets I think(that is for legions of steel buff, not sure about the others but it has some tricks i think)
What I usually do is set the thug at the bottom and the rear of the map(or top) and place the mage behind the thug so that thier squares form a rectangle. Also I dont place anything near them so that the mage doesnt make a mistake. Another way to ensure that your thug has quickness is have the mage cast it 2-3 times before battle(at least improves the chances of affecting the thug)

Yeah, there's no way to be completely certain besides making sure the thug is the only unit in range. This is easy for spells with range 1 or touch, but various other spells have greater ranges.

Other than that there's some tricks that can help nudge the spell AI along: Single target spells are more likely to be cast on the single unit with the highest hit points. (Which in many cases will be your thug, but keep away other high hp units like elephants, vine ogres, fall bears, the various golems, etc...) AoE spells on the other hands tend to target big troop squads, so you might want to park your thug in the middle of the biggest group of regular dudes around) Spells without perfect accuracy will also tend to target units that are close to others. And a last important consideration is the stat to be boosted: spells that boost protection tend to go to units that have low protection to begin with. I'm less sure if the same reasoning goes for other stats though. (Does quikness prioritise units with low action points? Iron Will to those with low MR? I wouldn't be surprised based on the "logic" of the spellcasting system, but never actually noticed such a corelation myself.)

Originally Posted by Zywack

I had a Sleeper already on hand so I geared him up with a cross between rdonj and Amhazair suggestions (plus reinvigoration boots)[...]

Yeah, good call on the boots. The biggest diference between the two chassis is that, not being undead, the sleeper doesn't have 0 encumberance. If you want to send him out against big AI hordes solo he has to be fatigue neutral, or he'll die. (He also has significantly less hp, meaning he also regains less from regen. The better att/def/prec/move of the sleeper mean very, very little in a chaff-killing role unfortunately, so for this purpose he's strictly inferior. Which doesn't mean it can't work.)

[llamabeast]

To address your Oceania question, I think you would find them much more fun in CBM (Conceptual Balance Mod, latest version 1.92). Clams are effectively removed, so turtling becomes much less attractive. Land-water interactions have become easier, and lots more spells work underwater. I think MA Oceania has also been made somewhat stronger, although I can't remember exact details.

[Zywack]

That sounds promising... I'll give it a look, thanks!

Quick question: How do you assign the 5 bodyguards to your mage to protect them from assassins and horrors? Is it simply by setting 5 troops to "guard commander" and hope for the best, or is there an actual "set bodyguard" command for that purpose?

[parone]

'guard commander' units will fight in an assasination attempt. that is the correct command

[Legendary League]

The only way to guarantee it is to have the mage and thug be the only two units on the field, and for them to share the same AoE (I believe). Another way to guarantee it is to communion slave the thug and have the masters cast self-buffs like personal luck, which will affect the thug that way (be careful of building up too much fatigue on them though). Other than that, I'm not sure how the AI scripts spell cast locations.

[Shangrila00]

Regarding Dominion, more temples increase your max dominion and holy points. However, your dom spread doesn't increase so far as anyone knows. So at dom 2, only 1 in 5 temple checks will produce a candle. Needless to say, that's pretty bad. Anyone that seriously makes an effort to domkill you will do it very easily even without blood sac simply with stone idols and preaching unless you are a nation with strong priests or better yet inquisitor priests. And even with strong priests, and tons of recruitment turns given to recruiting priests, you are unlikely to see your scales in much of your empire. That might not be such a terrible thing if you have absolutely awful scales.

[Zywack]

I'll probably have the chance to try out a Sleeper with bow of war this weekend: Looking foward to it!

For the thug, I had some underwater fighting to do so I geared up a Sea Troll King. It worked. My god did it work. A huge thank you for all the recommendations everyone

I didn't have the chance to try out Earthquake yet (2 Earth is the best late age T'ien Ch'i gets so it takes some effort to cast a 4 earth spell in battle) but I'll be sure to do so before the game is over for learning sake.


I have a new question and for once it's super straightfoward:

What happens if your capital is under siege and you have an Immortal unit that die? Do they:

a) Die and never respawn
b) Respawn and immediately attack the enemy that is sieging the castle
C) Respawn inside the castle with the other defenders

[Knai]

Originally Posted by Zywack

I didn't have the chance to try out Earthquake yet (2 Earth is the best late age T'ien Ch'i gets so it takes some effort to cast a 4 earth spell in battle) but I'll be sure to do so before the game is over for learning sake.

You have everything you need already, and should be able to get this up quickly, as the research is more than covered.
Step 1) Craft Earth Boots.
Step 2) Troll King's Court.
Step 3) Transfer Earth Boots to Troll King.
Step 4) Load Troll King up with gems.
Step 5) Script Summon Earthpower, Earthquake, Earthquake. With that, the fatigue isn't even that bad, and the reinvig will let the Troll King cast a few more spells.

Regarding immortal units - I'm reasonably sure that it works like this.
1) They die.
2) They respawn, and attack the defenders.
3) They probably die again.
4) They stay dead.

With that said, I'm basing this on what happens after they die in a successful storming attempt, so that might not be quite correct.