A Few Questions From a Newb

[ChaosReigns]

Hi guys, I just started playing Dominions 3 last week, and I have to say, wow , it's unlike any game I've played before, turn-based or otherwise. I mean that in the best possible way. Anyway, I have a few questions. Any help would be much appreciated.

First of all, searching for magic sites with mages seems to be a woefully inefficient thing to do. Is there any better or more reliable way to find magic sites?

Also, is there a spell I can use to summon multiple Devils per mage per turn? There are Soul Contracts, I suppose, but those are pretty expensive.

Is there a way to increase resources that a province produces intrinsically (building a castle doesn't count exactly, as it just siphons resources from neighboring provinces, if I'm not mistaken).

How do you guys find the Demon Lords as uber summons go? They look pretty cool to me, but what do I know?

That's it for the moment. Thanks guys.

[Finalgenesis]

Hi and welcome~

blood lvl 9 contains all the best mass demon summons, devils are one of them.

For site search, there's a remote search spell for every spell path sprinkled in lvl 2-3 spells over various schools (thau 2, conj 2/3?, evo 2...etc). There's also Voice of tiamat which search all 4 elemental path in water (conj 4), and acashic record that search every path in a province but has a very very high cost (not recommended in most cases).

no to resource =P not quick or reliably at least, there's events but don't count on it. prod scales is really the only way to do it.

Demon lords are so-so to niche, usually they are summoned for something other then SC purpose, they fit more as major caster / support and each usually comes with something special. One can corrupt, one gets free blood slaves, one starts the battle with storm (not sure on this), and one starts battle with heat from hell, most or all of them does something bad to the province they are in every turn I think, like unrest, disease, losing dominion ...etc.

[Olive]

You can increase production by casting Riches from Beneath. Never used it, so I can't tell if it's efficient.

[Finalgenesis]

Slipped my mind, nice to know my back is covered ;-)

Shoot for the Earth gem global in the same tree though, I think its called earth blood well or something like that and 1 lvl higher then riches from beneath.

Troops you eventually top out or have enough forts for thus resource decreasing in importance, gems you can never have enough of.

[thejeff]

Forts actually increase the resources from the province as well as siphoning from the neighbors.

[Soyweiser]

Well technically, forts allow you to use the full 100% of recources, normal provinces only get 50%.

[ChaosReigns]

Thanks for the help guys.

Alright, I have another question, if anyone would be willing to help me out.

I summoned, among other demons, a Fallen Angel earlier today. Now, I hardly expected him to be a super-combatant but his poor performance in combat did raise some questions in my mind. If I kit him out with items he has good survivability, and with the Flesh Ward, most of the units that attack him are sustaining damage. He does next to no damage himself though, in the great scheme of things. He has a strong attack, but it does very little against rank and file infantry because he only attacks once per turn (or so it seems). Is there any way to counter this? Or do I need multi-armed/multi-attack big units to be efficient at dealing damage?

As it is I think I'm better off using the Fallen Angel for his combat magic.

The same goes for the Demon Lords actually. I obviously don't expect them to take down entire armies by themselves, but Belial particularly seems a bit inefficient in melee.

[Amhazair]

There are a couple of ways to increase the killing potential of thugs/SC's. One important thing to be aware of though, is that no matter how many attacks you have, one 'round' of attacks will only target a single square, so even with 4 arms wielding blades of swiftness, along with chi boots, horned helmet and what not, will still only net you 3 kills. (against human sized opponents.) Things to do:

* Make sure that one round of attacks can take out the square you target. Fire and frost brand weapons are popular for that, since they are quite cheap, do an elemental attack on the entire square as well as providing elemental resistance. The shadow brand actually damages several squares, but is more expensive, and doesn't provide resistances, so it's a trade off. Weapons with multiple attacks (swords of swiftness and the like) can work too, especially if you already have a bonus attack of some kind.

* Quikness gives you two rounds of attacks, thereby doubling your killing potential. Be aware though that it also doubles your fatigue by having you act twice a turn, and fatigue kills, so it's best for units with a 0 encumberance score, (Undead mainly) otherwise make sure you have reinvigoration. Often the best/easiest way to gain quickness is to forge boots of quickness, otherwise the Jade Armour works too, but it's quite heavy, so (in general) only use for 0 encumberance units. Water mages can quicken themselves, and at later levels also other friendly units through battlefield magic. Finally the water bless grants you an extra (round of) attack(s) every other round.

* Even if your heavy hitter is essentially immune to what your opponent does, battle will end in 50 turns if you're the attacker, 75 on defence. This means that even if everything goes perfect and every attack manages to clear an entire square, at most you'll be able to kill 2x3x50= 300 units. That's a LOT, but not allways enough, (especially against AI hordes) so for heavy-duty SC's designed to clear out massive hordes of chaff, it's often more efficient to work with damage shields/area effects to provide most of the damage. Several ways to acquire this: Some units (Fire Royalty for example) have an in-built damage shield. Then, there are several items that provide one. Looks like you already found the flesh ward, a staple is the charcoal shield, (Since, again it also provides fire resistance. Allways look for items to fill fultiple needs when at all possible.) there are some others. If you haven't found/used it before, try out the artifact shield: 'The Aegis', it's absolutely hilarious. (Or be a Medusa, they share the same effect.) Third, there are several spells spread out over the various paths and schools that can grant you these effects.

With the Fallen Angel you mentioned, you actually have the perfect paths to cast several of the spells in question: Fire can give you fire shield, (ench.3) blood gives Blood Vengeance. (though it's a hassle to have the necessary slaves at hand.) Probably the most powerful spell of this kind is Soul Vortex. (D3, Alt6) It does not work against lifeless opponents, and is quite fatiquing to cast, so be careful in its use, but it deals damage in a largish area around the caster as well as healing and removing fatigue at quite a large rate as long as enough (living) units are surrounding him, so it's pretty much ideal for a chaff-clearing SC against anything but skeleton hordes. (There's also an armor that provides this effect, but it's horribly expensive, as well as being poor in every other department, so really not very useful most of the time.)

As an aside, this also means that I wouldn't consider the flesh ward an optimal choice for a Fallen Angel, since it's quite redundant with the effects he can cast on himself, and is quite poor aside from the blood vengeance. There's almost certainly an armor around that can benefit you more by provideing something you don't natively have. Feel free to experiment though.

[rdonj]

Some units also *can* SC by casting spells to kill things, but it's a bit more dangerous. Let's use your Fallen Angel again, since you were talking about using it as a caster. The main difference between a caster SC and a melee SC is that the caster needs to have as much reinvigoration as possible, so that its spellcasting doesn't cause it to fatigue out. In most cases this almost necessitates that the caster be able to cast soul vortex to keep its batteries full. They're going to be a bit less survivable than melee SCs due to having different gear requirements and having a higher average fatigue level. So defensive buffs are important. One of the best ones for this is phoenix pyre, which happens to combine very nicely with all that reinvigoration you should have, because as long as you don't go over 100 fatigue your caster can't die. Things like fire shield or blood vengeance aren't as important now, but still not a bad idea if you don't have better buffs to cast. And if you've built a lot of fatigue at the end of your buff cycle you can end with Reinvigoration. Example buff cycle: Phoenix Pyre, Soul Vortex, Blood Vengeance, Reinvigoration, Attack Closest, Cast Spells. The angel should default to spamming flame eruption and immolate for the most part, but will randomly melee attack things and cast random spells occasionally. These sorts of casters tend to work pretty well against enormous AI armies and if a normal SC setup isn't cutting it for those 1,000 man impossible AI armies, a caster SC like that may help you whittle them down a bit faster.

[ChaosReigns]

Thanks for the advice guys. Okay, a couple more questions:

First of all, what are some good ways to get recuperation or regeneration? I seem to be particularly unlucky when it comes to my units picking up afflictions.

Also, if I empower the Fallen Angel with Astral 1 (which is apparently what's required to cast Body Ethereal according to the Wiki) I could theoretically have the Fallen Angel cast Body Ethereal and then Blood Vengeance which seems like a pretty good combination (normally he won't get hit, on the off chance that someone manages to hit him he is much less likely to take damage). Or maybe Fire Shield is a better option because a unit just has to attack him to take damage, rather than actually wounding him also?

I suppose then I should have him attack and cast Soul Vortex (sounds like a pretty awesome spell).

As for items, I was reading a LA Marignon guide earlier today that mentioned the Fallen Angel have an "in-built brand weapon" (fire brand, I suppose). Am I missing something? This doesn't seem to be the case currently, was it removed in a patch or something?

Also, how about the Horror Helmet to enhance his feat aura?

If I'm equipping him with a Fire Brand (assuming his Dark Fire Sword does not provide a brand effect), I could also give him an Eye Shield to further decrease the effectiveness of (nearly) anything that strikes him.

As for armour, I was thinking two pieces. There's one suit of armour (Astral Plate, or something to that effect, anyway it's a white breast plate) that sounds like it causes awe. The only problem being that it also mentioned something about whisking the wearer away from battle if he's wounded. Does anyone know what I'm talking about? What's the actual effect of this item?

And then there's the Dragon Scale suits. I could always give him the Green Dragon Scale armour to give him resistance to poison. Red seems to be less useful because he's already immune to fire damage.

As for trinkets, what works? Do the Brand Weapons factor your unit's strength and accuracy into their damage?

Are there any other items that confer quickness? Unfortunately Water casting doesn't seem to be an option at the moment.

I'm not necessarily going for an optimal build for the record, just trying to choose the best of what is realistically available to me at the moment.

Anyway, thanks for the help guys. This is my first game besides the tutorial, so I'm not exactly the most competent player out there.