Newbie questions, sitesearching + lots more Qs

[binarysolo]

Random side question, and I'm not sure if this is an appropriate question to ask on the forums, given that it pertains to the one MP game I'm playing.

As a complete MP noob with only a few SP games under my belt, I feel that I'm slightly disadvantaged compared to some of the other players around, so hopefully this justifies utilizing the wisdom of the Dom3 crowd.

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/7255/unknownsite.jpg <-- what the heck could this site be?

Given that the enemy pretender is camped there along with a massive entourage for a few turns already, and given that he has both Nature and Death, I'm assuming it's a bonus site for either magic school.

...Any suggestions? If people don't want to just hand me the answer, I would be more than willing to learn how I can edit map files in SP to insert all the different magic bonus sites onto a province and see what matches. Just point me in the right direction for that, too.

[Stavis_L]

Originally Posted by binarysolo

http://img188.imageshack.us/img188/7255/unknownsite.jpg <-- what the heck could this site be?

Given that the enemy pretender is camped there along with a massive entourage for a few turns already, and given that he has both Nature and Death, I'm assuming it's a bonus site for either magic school.

First of all, it's not clear what you mean by bonus sites in this context. There are sites that allow a mage of "X" magic type to summon "Y" unit type. Then there are sites that allow casting spells or forging for cheaper (percentage off the cost.) The latter type do not have a school of magic associated (except as far as discovery goes), e.g. if it's a nature site giving a 30% enchantment bonus, death spells will also cost 305 less. There's also sites that allow mage of x school to scry...

For the first type, it's not likely worth a pretender's time to sit and summon single unit, even for free. For the 2nd type, bonuses to allow cheaper casting of an important ritual or item forge, yah, definitely worth it to park the pretender there. No way is it worth it just for scrying.

That said, you're unlikely to be able to ascertain the exact site. You can tell it's an earth site from the icon, and you know the terrain is mountains or border mountain (you should be able to tell which from hovering over the icon in game, but it's the same icon so we can't tell from the screenshot.) From there, you could see what earth sites are allowed in mountains...but I think it's a longshot to assume it's a school bonus site just because a pretender sat there two or three turns in a row. Not sure if anyone's compiled a resource to be able to cross-reference those, though. Edi's database has columns for terrain types, but it's not yet filled in.

[binarysolo]

I guess I wasn't clear, but by bonus site I meant "ritual/forge discount" site. Obviously just considering opportunity costs it most likely wouldn't be any other kind of site.

Most earth sites look like a different icon... slightly brighter and mistakable to look like a brown harp (for me, I blame my poor vision :P), whileas this one looks like... uhm, something else, so I assumed it was a more unique site. I'm not writing off the Death site either, but if it is a death bonus site I sure as hell won't be able to tell since that icon looks like the generic death magic site.

I'm assuming the sites are somewhat special since I know several nations in the game have pelted the province with a variety of things and the pretender who can stealth is instead sitting there not moving. We're on turn 57 (or 58?) on an easy-research game with most artifacts forged so I'm putting more money that it's a ritual discount site than anything else. Yarg I'm confusssssseeed.

PANGAEA STOP READING MY NOOB QUESTIONS ABOUT WHAT YOU'RE DOING!!!! (Ahem, j/k )


PS - Oh, I vaguely remember a bug in earlier versions of Dom3 where if you overcast your discounted global, the bonus gems didn't apply until you exceeded the original cast cost. (Example - I cast GoH at a 20% discount site for 40N instead of 50N, but if I put 50N gems in it total I do not get the +10DRN bonus.) Is that still true or did they fix it?

[vfb]

It's probably a rare site, judging from the icon. My favorite E sites are a 30% Conj discount site, a 20% Conj discount site, and a Gnome recruitment site. Like Stavis, sys, have a look at Edi's DB. Or better yet, capture the province.

[binarysolo]

BTW Stavis, what I really intended on doing is basically go to the Dom3DB file, find the few discount sites there are, mod a map to be completely visible and populate them with all the different discount sites and just play a matchup game to see if any icons match, at which point I can assign certain probabilities to guessing what site that is.

I've been playing an exceptionally scout/skeptic-heavy game to more or less keep tabs on everything (they're cheap at 25-30gp and easily spammable... oh and the player in question is a blood pusher, so multiple birds with the same stone). I really enjoy watching the big battles by other players to learn nifty tactics from other players but I'm kinda cheap on my Astral Windows/Stone Spheres. Given all this extra intel I just enjoy trying to optimize what I can do with it. Yes, I enjoy figuring out the exact trajectory of how the 800-lb gorilla will charge at me a LOT more than figuring out how I should deal with it.

[thejeff]

I'm pretty sure that the icons map to the level of the path needed to find the site, ie all level 4 Earth sites use the same icon.

And as far as I know the globals cast at discount sites still behave that way.

[Illuminated One]

Yeah, site image equals to path level (there are also useless level 4 sites I think).
However if you see the province filling with high level mages and summons appearing it's most likely a discount site.

[binarysolo]

Ah, awesome, that's what I needed to know -- that the site icons map to a corresponding level. Browsing the Dom3db .xls file, I think the icon may correspond to a lvl3 site, which makes it possibly Conj+30. Iono.

Too bad about the globals and discounts, though I can see how that would get pretty overpowering if discounts were applied towards overcasting.