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[EnigmaticHat]

My advice to new players would be to figure out an army that uses both mid level (2-3 in their best path) mages as well as national troops.  Then repeatedly play the first 6-18 months, restarting whenever you fuck up, until you reliably have a large nation AND you get your target army together ASAP.

So... You should figure out an army that uses mages and then repeatedly stop playing when you get to the part where mages begin to matter?

You should have one or two tricks at reaseatch 5 or less, ready for your army to use at turn 18 maximum (ideally way earlier).

Even meat and potatoes like skeleton summons or lightning will let you beat another noob, because at least you're using magic and its decently cost efficient.

Your goal for your first game of dominions should be to last as long as possible.  You want to learn and have fun.  Not getting rushed to death is vital to this goal.

[Mech#4]

I have been playing a fair bit of this recently, trying to get methods down for Early Age R'lyeh. I've been looking over the units and what's available from magic and I have a question.

Quicken Self doesn't affect spell casting, but it should affect Mind Blast of Aboleths and similar since Mind Blast is a ranged attack, not a spell yes? In a similar vein, the Quicken bless buff from having 9 Water Magic on your Pretender would work in the same way?


Also, since the game doesn't give enough combat information on this even with full detail combat logs, apparently Mind Blast only deals 1 magic damage when it hits but according to what I see and Dom4 Mod Inspector Mind Blast deals 12 Paralyze. Is that the strength of the paralyze or just damage?

[Sean Mirrsen]

The Quicken bless from W9 is only half the Quicken spell effect. W9 blessed units get to act twice every other turn, instead of every turn, so the Quicken spell still has an effect for them. Doesn't stack, just brings it up to regular Quicken levels.

[Mech#4]

Right, thanks. I remember reading someone suggesting the bless quicken for Helheim and the Valkaries and understanding it's different from the spell helps.


Because there is a lot of spells to go through, what are some of the most common spells people use to buff their entire armies (other than blesses)? Or spells that can buff large amounts of their army if the spell caster is higher level, as I believe caster skill can affect the AOE of some spells?

[ThtblovesDF]

 https://larzm42.github.io/dom4inspector/

will show you all spells and any spell that says "area of effect:    100% of battlefield" doesn't care for aim
all spells with a fixed number (Summon Amphiptere = 1) will summon that number,
any with one + (Summon Crocodiles: Crocodile x 5+) will summon 1 extra for each level of that skill
and with more then one + improves by that number, i.e. 2 extra (Living Statue x 10++) or 3 extra wights (Legion of Wights: Wight x 20+++)

For Combat spells it just plainly says (+5/lvl)


The games I won I mostly won because I lost less then anyone else, had better scales, bigger armys and some mass-blesses on them, Minotaurs with Mass Regeneration, Howl, Gaia's Blessing and Mass protection will just win. You also need to get lucky.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Depends on what you mean by "common". In my experience the "common" way to buff an army isn't by a single mage casting a huge spell, it's with a mass of lower-level mages casting lots of smaller spells. Cheaper (big spells usually cost gems) and less susceptible to random assassinations.

As for the "mass buffs", there aren't that many of them, and most of them are equally "common" depending on what you specialize in. The only ones that stand out are Flaming Arrows, Antimagic, and Wind Guide, because of the low(er) research requirement than most mass buffs.

[Mech#4]

Thanks. It helps me understand where the magic system fits into things in the game and how it's meant to be used. I thought I might've been overlooking mass buffs but if there isn't that many, or they're much higher in the magic level, than that makes sense.

Though, with mages casting buffs on groups of units, don't you end up with a lot of the mages casting the spells on the already buffed units? The randomness of things I suppose.

[Sean Mirrsen]

Mages actually aim to hit units unaffected by a given buff if they can manage it. They'll still cast the buff if it's in their script but they have no valid targets, though.

[Mech#4]

That is good to know. Gives me more confidence in the A.I. managing itself as the hands off approach to battle is a bit frustrating sometimes.

[AlStar]

Because there is a lot of spells to go through, what are some of the most common spells people use to buff their entire armies (other than blesses)? Or spells that can buff large amounts of their army if the spell caster is higher level, as I believe caster skill can affect the AOE of some spells?

I'm a big fan of strength of giants (enchantment 3, 3E, 25 AoE gives +3 strength) if you've got the casters for it. +3 strength might not sound like a whole lot, but on humans it gives them like a 30% buff to damage... and you get even better returns if you cast it on something tiny - casting swarm followed (immediately, since they'll all fly away otherwise) by a strength of giants can be fun.

[Jilladilla]

They'll still cast the buff if it's in their script but they have no valid targets, though.

I'm fairly sure they won't if there's absolutely no more valid targets... (If there is just one guy that can benefit though...)
Probably easiest way to test is boot up Sceleria, reanimate some Longdead, research Thaumaturgy 1 (for communions), and then try to cast Power of the Sepulchre twice. (+4 attack and AP for ALL friendly undead. Needs H4 to cast, but communions do boost priest level.)
That said, only fairly sure, prove me wrong here and I'll endeavor to reread the entire manual again because obviously I'm forgetting a lot of stuff recently...

To Mech#4, the spellcasting AI is usually pretty good. It just doesn't have a plan.
And for your Mindblast question: Yes, it only inflicts one point of HP damage (on average). Paralyze damage is just how long it paralyzes the victim for. Note that when you paralyze an already paralyzed target, the duration of the paralyses will only be the greater of the two durations, but they'll take HP damage equal to half the smaller duration.
Remember that mindblast is still more of a support role than damage, DO NOT rely solely on it.

AlStar, aren't most of the things summoned by Swarm only capable of doing 1 damage MAX? No matter how high their strength becomes?

[ThtblovesDF]

They they have dmg cap (1)

Also they have moral 50, so those bugs are more motivated then some gods... I imagine they simply relish the oppertunity to deliver payback to all those filithy mortals.

[Mech#4]

I have found that while having units with 50 moral/mindless good for holding, the loss of them still ends up with my commanders fleeing even if there's still quite a lot of the army left. Lobo Guard die in droves, which is what they're for but my commanders lose hope and flee.


Also, I've seen the fun of fighting undead armies with R'lyeh. Your entire army is mindless except for your commanders? Guess who's getting mind blasted!
The rest of the fights are quite hard though. What's a good balance of Giboleths to slaves, which slaves to use and so on. The frustration of being an underwater faction who's units have iron weapons that rust, as well as having only Mind Lords as reasonable commanders moral wise.

[Frumple]

Yeah, even if moral isn't an issue HP routing still is, though I forget the exact details. Moral of the story is to make sure your army isn't made entirely of sacrificial chaff, heh. Or at least that it's using the body wall to let it kill things fast enough it doesn't become an issue.

[AlStar]

AlStar, aren't most of the things summoned by Swarm only capable of doing 1 damage MAX? No matter how high their strength becomes?

Huh, I didn't know that - shame (annoyingly, I'm fairly sure your mages will happily cast it on the swarm, since I've done that before.)

It still works wonders for things like hawks, halflings and other low-strength critters.