Same procedure as last year (more questions)

[Flop]

After receiving an email last week about the latest Dominions 3 patch, I remembered that I own the game, and that I haven't played for a long time.

Anyway, I'm hooked again, and I need help understanding stuff.

While reading through Baalz' excellent communion guide, I stumbled on this passage:

Masters spamming elemental attack spells want boosters, not for fatigue reduction, but for increased damage and/or area of effect. This is obviously true for most of them (note all the +s in the spell description) - what most people don't know is that the fatigue inflicted by the secondary wave (which is area 9!) from thunderstrike is also air-magic-dependant, so if you can push your air magic up higher it becomes much more devastating.

I didn't know that spell effects were increased by higher path levels, although I had noticed the pluses in some of the spell descriptions. I'm sure this must be documented somewhere, but I've failed to find it mentioned in the manual. Could someone please elaborate a bit on how this works, exactly?

Also, does anyone know if there's any way to remove old age from a character, besides the T'ien Ch'i national spells? I know how to stop aging, I'm talking about reversing it.

Thanks in advance.

[Thanatus del Dragos]

Well, this isnt a very efficient way to do it, but you could empower them with nature magic, it increases their lifespan by 25% per level of nature magic, I believe. This can take away old age.

[13lackGu4rd]

you can also cast rejuvenate with blood mages to remove 10 years of age with each casting of the spell. there are also the usual tools of freezing old age(as in not gaining new old age related afflictions) in boots of youth and elixir of life.

[llamabeast]

The plus indicates that the stat is improved somehow by level of the mage. So a spell might do "10+" damage, and actually do 2 more damage for every level the mage has beyond what's required. Unfortunately there is no way to tell how much the stat scales (e.g. is it +1 per level, +2 etc). Some spells scale quite strongly, others just get +1.

[Flop]

Originally Posted by Thanatus del Dragos

Well, this isnt a very efficient way to do it, but you could empower them with nature magic, it increases their lifespan by 25% per level of nature magic, I believe. This can take away old age.

Thanks. I'm playing Pythium, so I'd have to empower them, as you say, which is a bit beyond my spending limit on this project.

Do path bonuses from items count towards the age reduction? It wouldn't be all that helpful as Pythium, but it might come in handy later on.

Originally Posted by 13lackGu4rd

you can also cast rejuvenate with blood mages to remove 10 years of age with each casting of the spell. there are also the usual tools of freezing old age(as in not gaining new old age related afflictions) in boots of youth and elixir of life.

I've been making a few boots of youth for my valuable fire arch theurgs. I didn't know about rejuvenate. It's not that helpful as Pythium, but definitely nice to know. Thanks.

Originally Posted by llamabeast

The plus indicates that the stat is improved somehow by level of the mage. So a spell might do "10+" damage, and actually do 2 more damage for every level the mage has beyond what's required. Unfortunately there is no way to tell how much the stat scales (e.g. is it +1 per level, +2 etc). Some spells scale quite strongly, others just get +1.

Alright, thanks. I don't suppose you know a few of the spells that get a large boost? I'm doing some large communions, and it'd be nice to know which spells are potentially the best, when boosted.

[llamabeast]

Do path bonuses from items count towards the age reduction?

Yes. Although it's actually an increase in "max age" rather than an age reduction.

Alright, thanks. I don't suppose you know a few of the spells that get a large boost? I'm doing some large communions, and it'd be nice to know which spells are potentially the best, when boosted.

I'm afraid I don't. I think Shadow Blast, maybe Fire Cloud? Neither very helpful for you. It's just a matter of experimenting, but generally AOE spells scale quite nicely. Sometimes middle-of-the-road AOE damage spells become devastating when cast by a level-9 pretender.

[ExHeretic]

Path boosting items for nature will raise the starting point for old age if your mage had nature magic already. Boosting fire will lover that point.

One of the ways to reduce the age problem is taking growth scale. Growth/death scale wont affect the starting point of old age but it will reduce the amount of afflictions the old mages get. For pythium i would take some growth or atleast avoid taking death scale.

I think that best spells to boost are those that get + to the area of effect. For example falling fires have + for area and damage. For some spells the biggest advantage is the reduced fatigue from having higher level caster. Good examples of those spells are blade wind and raise skeletons.

Damn i'm slow

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by Flop

I don't suppose you know a few of the spells that get a large boost?

This link takes you to Dr.DrPraetorious's spell database, which can be used to check how various spells with the + sign scale with level. Even though this is for 3.24, I doubt much if anything has changed for 3.26 (note this does not account for changes that game mods might have made to spells)

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=45780

Just look up the spell in question, and then in the damage column you should see X +Y/level (with X being the damage of the spell, and Y being how much extra is added per level)

[Flop]

Thanks a bunch, guys. It's all useful info.

Thanks for the link, Calahan, that's an awesome effort on DrPraetorious' part. Hopefully, the spell effects won't have changed too much in the CBM and EDM mods. In any case, it gives a nice idea about which type of spells are affected by path level.

[Flop]

Sorry for the double post, but I have another question: does the fortune teller ability prevent bad events empire-wide, or just in the province where the unit is currently located?