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[Kagus]

I really don't dare 1st-turn expansions unless I'm REALLY damn assured of the chassis I'm rocking.  Otherwise, I don't like the odd flip of fate that lands my whole strategy at the wrong end of exactly too many heavy lances...

I know about hedging the bets by not attacking farmlands/forests/swamps first turn, but there are still occasional dick indies that I'd much rather not risk throwing away my pretender on.  I don't know if 1 turn's difference is worth that, especially since you could generally also use it for a little jump-start in research.


As for bless strategies, it was my understanding that bless strategies were a kind of tradeoff in that you can start the game with a comparitively really powerful troop buff, but one that's kinda overshadowed by regular researchable buffs later in the game.  So you're basically trading in having an active pretender to help out in the early days, to just have an early "spell" that lets you help yourself.

[ArKFallen]

As for bless strategies, it was my understanding that bless strategies were a kind of tradeoff in that you can start the game with a comparitively really powerful troop buff, but one that's kinda overshadowed by regular researchable buffs later in the game.  So you're basically trading in having an active pretender to help out in the early days, to just have an early "spell" that lets you help yourself.

Emphasis added. Even with the research many buffs will simply be out of reach because of national pathing. Those researchable buffs also require a mage to be present to lay them down whereas you can simply use the cheap indie priests(or your own better ones).

Spoiler: Things you probably already know (click to show/hide)

Also note that the spell "Bless" that H1 priests cast has AoE5 +5per extra Holy and H3s get the battlefield wide "Divine Blessing". Alt4 Quickness takes W2 and has AoE1. Ench3 Regeneration takes N3 and has AoE1. The bless effects also give extra bonuses(DEF+4,HP+8) but they are limited to sacreds or shrouded commanders.

I'm actually currently in an EA noob game as Hinnom with an incidental B9F4 bless. Couldn't figure out a good bless combo for Se'ir and my mages so I settled on going for Soul Contracts very early. My first war was with W9 Dragon Vanheim so the Se'ir haven't got much use but the devils were pretty sweet at clipping Van mages. The attrition was horrible but it's Turn59(first contract devil turn17) and I've only lost 1 contractor to horror attacks.
Economically Se'ir are like 1 per 4^{1/6 (.125)}slaves while that first contract is at 1 devil per 1.31 slaves. Devils are also better patrollers and siegers +MM3 flyers. Yum.

[Kagus]

Yeah, se'ir are good, but not quite good enough to "be all they can be".  I was tooling around with the idea of a Hinnom bless a while back, but then found out that shedim aren't sacred, so that kinda fell through the cracks...

I'd probably just as soon go for a minor earth buff for the reinvigoration, since the most likely sacreds you're gonna be using are your big beefy national thug-mages.


Don't know if it still holds true, but the old Baalz guide that I'm sure we've all heard about talked about how Hinnom's nationals can actually do a non-shit job of defending against horrors.  Assign some dawn guards as bodyguards to contractors and they might be able to fight off the odd lunch ticket.


Regarding blesses, I'm aware that some blesses nowadays actually overshadow the late-game equivalents, or provide something that otherwise can't be replicated (the new B9 shenanigans, for example).  At that point, it's really more just a matter of your access to H3 priests to minimize attrition and maximize effectiveness of your armies, because even with a lot of H1s, sometimes they can be pretty bad at covering some of the gaps...

...oh hell, I remember Agartha from the Dom 3 demo.  Pale ones had such utter shit precision that they would sometimes miss when trying to bless themselves.

As an aside, I'm pretty sure that Quickness: The Spell also provides either +3 or +5 defense, so the difference is more in favor of the spell buff since it provides 2x attacks rather than 1.5x...  But coverage is still deffo in favor of the bless, even if you do somehow manage to get down to Alt 8 for the enhanced version

[Sean Mirrsen]

Well, my test game is coming to that annoying point where my eventual victory is near-assured, and I'm just trying to wrangle the remnants of the two surviving opponents into submission. Some expansive temple-building secured the survival of my dominion so that Great Big Rock doesn't just wink out of existence, and a Machakan castle built on top of a Castle Arcanum (the one that was the site of the epic pyrrhic victory I talked about earlier) gave me access to wizards and battle mages with their fire magic. Currently figuring out a way to boost a wizard with 3 fire (that I will eventually get) to 4 fire, so as to try out those fire arrows.
Is there some kind of mass-Aim spell somewhere? These longbowmen are great en masse, but they still miss a lot.

[tompliss]

You want Wind Guide : Alteration 4, Air2 spell, requires 1 gem.

And about spells, and Flaming Arrows : you don't need a mage with F4 to cast it. Mages can cast spells a level higher than they actually are, by spending an extra gem. So a F3 mage can cast Flaming Arrows by spending 2 gems.

And if you think you will cast it more than 5 times, I recommend forging a Fire in a Jar, the F1 constr1 misc item that gives 1 temporary gem per combat to its wielder

[E. Albright]

What tompliss said. A fire wizard with F2 is good enough: Phoenix Power->F3->extra fire gem + F3 => F4 for one any spell (assuming the spell doesn't require 3 or more gems, as you can't use more total gems per spell than your boosted level), so Flaming Arrows for 2f. An F3 can just cast Phoenix Power, become F4, and be done with it. An F1S1 can take that one astral, cast Power of the Spheres for 1 pearl, cast Phoenix Power, wait two turns for fatigue to get back under 100, and then cast Flaming Arrows with as an F3 using an extra gem.

[Sean Mirrsen]

I'd really rather have it go off on the opening volley, since that's usually when it really counts, before any counterattacks and potential deadly magics.

I think I forgot that particular feature of using magic gems. I do recall reading something about that in the manual. And yes, I was already planning on giving him a fire jar.

And thanks for pointing me at the Wind Guide spell. Seriously, how do they (the game's creators) expect someone to keep track of all this stuff? There's like three hundred spells in there! :\

[ArKFallen]

Seriously, how do they (the game's creators) expect someone to keep track of all this stuff? There's like three hundred spells in there! :\

Fanworks I expect. People tout the inspector which has most everything and I love to examine the slightly outdated spell breakdown.

I'd really rather have it go off on the opening volley, since that's usually when it really counts, before any counterattacks and potential deadly magics.

Defenders act first in battle. I think spells are also the first part of the turn. So you are going to need to boost a mage to F3 out-of-combat to get that first strike capability. The end of the manual has a list of magic boosters by Const level that shows what is boosted. The inspector allows item sorting based on boosted paths and also shows all the requirements to forge.

[Kagus]

If you have any mages with death and fire, they can make flaming skulls which provide +1 to fire magic.  Otherwise the fire helmet booster needs 4F, or you could use an elemental staff that needs either 4E4A or 4F4W...  So you generally kinda need 4F in order to get to 4F.


Also, there's a new conjuration spell (I think it's Conj. 6?) that lets you summon a commander that has innate 3F, which then goes up to 4F with any kind of booster, or potentially empowerment.

There are a couple other booster items, but they're both demanding pathwise and exorbitantly expensive.



On a completely different note, I've just been doing some dicking around with a test game...  Turns out stacking two eyes of aiming doesn't give you anything good even on a blind unit, as the +8 bonus only applies from the first eye.  The second one just eats a misc slot and does nothing.

However, one eye of aiming will give an olm sage (EA Agartha cap-only commander) 20 precision before any other modifiers...  Which is nothing to sneeze at, considering Agartha can also get the forge lord pretender and potentially make eyes of aiming for 1 gem each.

Another thing I found out is perhaps even more interesting...  You know how the spell description for flaming arrows mentions how it doesn't affect magic weapons?  That generally means that any bows o' botulf or whatnot you've got your commanders toting around won't get the bonus.

However, a fire bless DOES affect magic weapons.  If you've got a sacred commander and a fire bless, you can give them a bow of war and turn it into a bow of FLAMING war; which is pretty nifty, all things considered.

And thanks for pointing me at the Wind Guide spell. Seriously, how do they (the game's creators) expect someone to keep track of all this stuff? There's like three hundred spells in there! :\

I think a lot of people tend to think of it as "okay, there are some 300+ spells, of which 20 are worth remembering".  It's more just a matter of figuring out which ones are noteworthy (wind guide, flaming arrows), and which ones aren't (bog beasts, ghost ship armada).

[E. Albright]

FWIW, Ghost Ship Armada got buffed in Dom4. It'll still fall to serious resistance, but Torgrin and his officers have better gear and paths, his crew is tougher, and there's more of them. You also get a moderate pile of of gold every month if they succeeded in pillaging their target.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Another thing I found out is perhaps even more interesting...  You know how the spell description for flaming arrows mentions how it doesn't affect magic weapons?  That generally means that any bows o' botulf or whatnot you've got your commanders toting around won't get the bonus.

However, a fire bless DOES affect magic weapons.  If you've got a sacred commander and a fire bless, you can give them a bow of war and turn it into a bow of FLAMING war; which is pretty nifty, all things considered.

Hm. Middle Age Man has dirt cheap sacred commanders. Horrible logistics issues of moving around hordes of monks aside, would a fire-blessed Bow of War be an in any way decent enough weapon to even consider using that combination? I.e. a platoon of monks wielding bows of war with fire blessings (that they can themselves apply)? Obviously with some kind of other support for tougher opponents, but would it be viable in principle?

You can even stockpile Eyes of Aiming while you wait for the Construction research to hit level 6. One-man MLRS batteries.
Maybe even toss in Handfuls of Acorns to give them some melee support.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Eh... A Bow of War is essentially just 13 bowmen packed into one weapon, with nothing special besides that. You might as well just pay 130 gold for 13 archers and be done with it. Of course that doesn't mean that monks with Bows of War aren't going to be effective in battle with a fire bless and maybe a minor air bless. It's just that you have to go up to Const 6 to forge all of those bows, which doesn't really get you much else that would be effective in combat. Whereas Flaming Arrows is much easier to research, and lets you pick up a few useful spells along the way. So in other words... it's not less powerful, just much less efficient. Much less.

Also I can't remember, does the extra fire damage from Flaming Arrows trigger on a hit or on damage? Because if it's only on damage than massed arrows aren't going to be all that effective, especially against anyone with a good shield and some armour. Though with massed crossbows...

[Sean Mirrsen]

Also I can't remember, does the extra fire damage from Flaming Arrows trigger on a hit or on damage? Because if it's only on damage than massed arrows aren't going to be all that effective, especially against anyone with a good shield and some armour. Though with massed crossbows...

The description for fire arrows explicitly states that the fire damage will go through even if the arrow itself is stopped by armor.
edit: correction, it says it will affect ethereal and invulnerable creatures even if the arrow itself doesn't, so whether armor counts is not so certain.

Also, all monks are sneaky and priests, so that's another potential upside to that strategy.
Ten commando monks with bows of war, aiming eyes, and handfuls of acorns (beside any other potential gear) would be like a miniature sneaky army of 130 flaming archers and 30 vinemen that you could conceivably have pop up anywhere you need it to (where the enemy isn't looking very hard, because their sneak is what, 40?). Give them a few Mothers of Avalon as magic backup (also sneaky), and they could wreck quite a lot of havoc.

edit3: edit2 moved to separate post.

[Kagus]

Last I'd heard, the consensus was that it was on hit rather than on damage.  It's a separate instance of damage, which is why stuff like ancestor spirits (who normally can't do any damage outside of paralysis) can be buffed with flaming weapons and start chewing up enemies.  Also why it suddenly becomes so much more effective against ethereals (if it were on damage, the mundane arrow would have to bypass the 75% ethereal defense first in order to trigger the damage effect).

Yeah, in the case of Man it'd almost certainly be better to just use those great longbowmen you get anyways.  Monks have plenty of uses (more so than ever now) anyways, but nothing to consider taking a big bless for.  The main thing a monk patrol would have over a bunch of bowmen is the fact that they'd be stealthy, but it would still be a gigantic drain on gems and a logistics nightmare getting everyone equipped/ready.

Reason I mentioned the bow of war is that it has by far the most spectacular visuals associated with a fire bless, hehehehehe.  For monks, a perfectly decent alternative would be to just give them longbows of accuracy.  It does okay damage on its own, and as the name suggests is really accurate.  Helps out a lot since monks aren't exactly the best marksmen around, and it lets them assist proper armies by plinking out long-range sniper fire against whatever happens to be in the targeting bracket of "rearmost enemies" (man, I remember when you could script to "fire magic users"...  Fucking hell).


Anyways, the example with the olm seer is probably the more interesting one, since getting 20 base precision on a commander who is unaffected by the biggest accuracy reductions (darkness, blindness, haven't tested with mists or storms yet) is pretty sweet, especially when you can hand him oh, say, a banefire crossbow?  He'll even spew out a mind blast simultaneously.  With a bunch of Alteration research he can also be super-accurate with frozen heart spam if he doesn't have a weapon.

[tompliss]

Its easier to have a stealthy/glamoured comander than 13 archers. And it's easier to have a 11+ prec commander than 13 high prec archers (especially if you forge eyes).
Oh, and heroes with heroic high precision