Pretender:
Pretender Gods can be human wizards, wondrous creatures (dragons, phoenixes...), titans (giants) or inanimate items (monoliths, fountains of blood...)
Their physical shape dictates their physical abilities and some of their magical skills.
Pretenders can choose to be proficient in magic, physical might or have a strong dominion. They can specialise in a single path of magic or be able to deal with all kinds of magic.
They must also choose scales. A typical human archmage would know 7 magic paths, have a dominion of 5 out of 10, and 1 positive scale or 2 positive and 1 negative scale. Scales are on a +3/-3 range.
Pretender design will be negotiated with the moderator to define the exact stats of the Pretender.
It is possible to start with a dormant pretender who will be stronger but who will only waken after a few updates. This may be a risky strategy.
Points you get depend on how long you plan to remain asleep/chained: 1 more point if you wake at the end of update 3, 2 at update 5, 3 at update 7.
Pretenders have 13 points to spend on dominion/scales/paths. Dragons cost 1. Titans cost 2 points. Immobile pretenders give 1 point. All of these will require an extra point if you want to pick many magic paths. Archmages cost zero. Extra abilities may cost some points too.
The magics known by the pretender and the effect of his dominion will have an impact on the abilities of some of your elite, "sacred", troops. For instance a god skilled in Fire magic will bless his holiest warriors with greater attack skill and maybe even flaming weapons.
Last, note that if a Pretender God is slain, he can be called back by his faithful priests, although it will take some time.
Pretender Magic Bless
If your pretender has strong magic paths, you will get extra effects on your sacred troops if they are blessed by priests.
The effects are gained with level 2 of magic, and get stronger with higher levels. An extra effect happens at level 4 (only inside your dominion) or 5 (everywhere).
Fire: 2+ bonus to attack skill. 4/5: Flaming weapons.
Air: 2+ protection from missiles. 4/5: Partial protection from lightning.
Water: 2+ bonus to defense (dodge). 4/5: Extra speed (boosts attack and defense, move faster, tire faster)
Earth: 2+ reinvigoration (tires less). 4/5: Boost to existing armor.
Nature: 2+ regeneration. 4/5: Berserk.
Death: 2+ cause more afflictions (nasty wounds) 4/5: Death weapons (a bit like flaming weapons but magic and can be resisted if strong magic resistance)
Astral: 2+ extra magic resistance. 4/5: Twist fate (negates first hit suffered in combat)
Blood: 2+ extra strength. 4/5: Death curse (Slain blessed units curse their killer)
The bless effects are tied to your Pretender's starting magic paths, so if they grow or shrink during the NES, it doesn't change the bless.
For reference:
http://strategywiki.org/wiki/Dominions_3:_The_Awakening/God_Design/Blessings
Economy:
There are three resources in the game: Gold, Mana and Population.
Gold buys troops, buildings and can be needed for some magic.
Mana is useful to summon powerful creatures, create magic items, perform ritual magic and can also be given to mages to increase their battlefield proficiency.
Population generates gold (and food), but they can also be sacrificed on bloody altars to perform foul magic. In such a case they act like mana. Population can also be used to raise milita or conscript armies.
Trade
It comes in three kinds:
- You can allow your people to trade with their heathen neighbours. This requires a common land border or sea access and that at least one nation have access to Sails technology. By sea, the "harbour" provinces must be no more than 2 sea provinces apart (for instance province 12 can trade by sea with province 28 but not with 25).
The effect is a 10% boost of both nations gold income, and 1% of magic research to be spilled from one nation to the next.
Note it is an automatic way magic research can be pooled but the effect is almost negligible.
- Trade goods. There are several trade goods, and each province should have at least one. These usually provide gold, sometimes mana, stability and may have effects on scales. Others are needed to recruit certain kinds of troops (horses for example).
Trade goods can be exported to as many nations as you wish, providing the recipient with their benefit. Beware that some trade goods may be copied or bred by the recipient. It's up to the trader to ask something in return for the traded good.
You can only export a trade good you produce yourself, not resell trade goods from others (no trade good brokerage).
Note that all trade goods are far from equal, and some are almost worthless in terms of trade.
- Magic trading: A nation can teach antoher nation some of its knowledge, but not much: If you know a school to level 3 to 5, you can teach another nation the level 1-3. This is not much, on purpose, but can make partnering somewhat useful.
Stability:
High stability (>100) increases your gold income, and allows for some random good events. Poor stability (<100) decreases gold and provides chance for bad random events.
Stability plays a big role in deciding what mercenaries and feudal armies will do when you stop paying their upkeep. With high stability, they'll vanish or stay idle. With low stability, they are more likely to cause all kinds of trouble.
Population:
Provides gold and food. Armies consume food, so they may starve if you place too many in a single province.
Technology:
Technologies can be researched by paying some gold. They cannot be traded. Some nations will start with some techs, some won't have any, and there will be nation-specific techs.
However, different nations have different troop qualities and mage qualities.
The tech tree is very shallow, but known techs include:
Conscription, Advanced infantry, Advanced Cavalry (both of these provide better-equipped units or at least more unit variety), Late Era Magic (opens new paths and/or different mages), Feudalism, Recovered secrets (allows building some units thought to have disappeared), Spying, Sails, Triremes, Catapults.
There are others, some of which may be restricted to certain civilizations. Effects of advanced infantry/cavalry and Recovered secrets vary depending on the nation, and some of these may not be available at all for certain nations (if you have no national cavalry for instance).
It is possible to ask the creation of a new tech for your nation, which would provide a benefit to be defined with the moderator (like a project).
Scales:
Heat and Cold both hurt taxes and population growth. Effect may vary based on race (some races like it hot).
Growth scale increases population growth, whiel Death lowers it.
Magic scales makes magic rsearch easier and makes it harder to resist spells, while Drain does the opposite.
Order scale increases gold income and lowers the chance of random events while Turmoil lowers income but increases the chance of random events.
Luck/Misfortune scales makes it more or less likely that a random event will be good.
Note that scales impact random events a lot, and also note that stories you write will make random events more or less likely and more or less harmful/beneficial.
Buildings:
Infrastructure level increases gold income.
Forts, Temples, Capital, Magic Sites.
Forts provide stability, must be breached to take total control of the province, and store some food.
Temples increase dominion and stability. Certain nations would perform bloody rituals there to further boost their dominion.
Capital can't be built but provide mana, dominion and stability.
Infrastructure boosts gold output of province.
Magic sites provide various effects, the most common being to provide mana. Magic sites can either be found or created.
Finding magic sites is done by sending wizards explore a region. The strongest they are in their magic paths, the more likely they are to find some site. Once a certain level of magic is reached, it is possible to have wizards look for magic sites in a distant province from their current province.
Creating magic sites requires gold and/or mana and maybe something else. Site effects are proposed by the players. The moderator then checks it and proposes a cost and an effect.
Possible effects include gold and mana income, food production, scales changes, allowing to recruit a special kind of unit or to summon a kind of unit for free. Use our imagination, this is magic.
(Edit: I removed the need to build labs)
Dominion:
Dominion is the strength of the people's faith in your Pretender God. The higher the dominion, the more powerful your Pretender God in this province.
Strong dominion also slowly shifts scales in a province. For instance the dominion of a Fire god with a Scale of Heat 2 will cause heat to rise in the provinces who most believe in him.
Dominion has other effects like increasing the morale of your troops, and may have some special effect based on your nation (making people mad, catching spies...).
Some spells are effective only or mostly inside one's dominion.
Last, a Pretender God who isn't worshipped will vanish, so you must make sure to always have a dominion higher than that of any of your opponents in at least one province.
To increase one's dominion, build temples or priests. Temples automatically strengthtn your dominion. Priests must be ordered to.
The presence of yoru Pretender God in a province also increases his dominion in that province.
Priests are not solely useful for preaching. Some are also holy wizards or army leaders. Furthermore, if the physical form of your Pretender God has been slain, priests can call him back by praying.
Magic:
Magic is categorised by two separate concepts: Schools and paths.
- Paths are Air, Astral, Blood, Death, Earth, Fire, Nature and Water. Each mage has a certain value in these paths, ranging from 0 to 5. Most mages will have 1 in a single path, with elite mages having 2 or maybe 3. 4s and 5s are usually only available to Pretender Gods, or can be achieved through the use of magic items or sacrificing lots of gems.
The higher a mage level in a path, the more powerful the spells he casts. Msot powerful spells require a minimal level before they can be cast.
Cost in gems to increase one mage's level in one path (empowerment) is:
From level 0 to 1: Costs 25 mana. 1 to 2: 20 mana. 2 to 3: 30 mana. 3 to 4: 40 mana. 4 to 5: 50 mana.
Empowerment takes one full turn (no moving, searching or hatever-else-ing for that mage except defending against attacks during that update).
Construction allows building path boosters: 1 booster gives +1 level in this path to the mage, 2 boosters = +2, 4 boosters = +3.
- Schools are Conjuration, Alteration, Evocation, Cosntruction, Enchantment, Thaumaturgy and Blood Magic.
Except for Blood Magic, each school provides spells for all the paths. Blood magic school and path are linked, as they work differently from the rest (requires blood sacrifices instead of mana gems).
Schools open different kinds of spells and each school must be researched by a nation separately. When the nation knows a school to a given level, all its mages benefit from it.
Levels range fromm 0 o 5. Reaching level N from level (N-1) requires 10*N*N research points. One mage unit provides 3 or more research points. Pretender Gods also provide research points, usually equal to the sum of their path levels.
This means that level 1 needs 10 rp, 40 more for level 2 (total 50), 90 more for level 3 (140), 160 more for level 4 (300) and 250 more for the fifth and last level (550).
- Spells generic effects are described in the following table:
Level / School / General effect
1
Conjuration / Summon minor monster
Alteration / Personal defense
Evocation / Minor distance attack
Construction / Construct magic trinkets
Enchantment / Minor protection of others
Thaumaturgy / Magic site detection
Blood Magic
2
Conjuration / Battle summons
Alteration / Auras
Evocation / Strong distance personal attack
Construction / Construct magic items
Enchantment / Small effect boost
Thaumaturgy / Mind affecting attacks
Blood Magic
3
Conjuration / Strong monster, thugs
Alteration / Strong aura or personal boost
Evocation / Aera of effect attack
Construction / Construct strong magic items
Enchantment / Dispel, large effect defense
Thaumaturgy / Multi target mind attacks
Blood Magic
4
Conjuration / Elemental lords
Alteration / Area of effect buff/debuff
Evocation / Strong area of effect attack
Construction / Construct artefacts
Enchantment / Mass protection, Constant spells
Thaumaturgy / Overland morale spells, travel
Blood Magic
5
Conjuration / Summon Super Combatants
Alteration / Powerful army buffs or personal attack spells
Evocation / Overland attacks (i.e. attacking a different province without moving there)
Construction / Construct Super Combatants
Enchantment / Overland enchantments, mass protection
Thaumaturgy / Travel, Control
Blood Magic
Specific effects depend on the path. For instance Evocation 1 will provide lightning bolt, vine arrow or cold bolt spells for air, nature and water respectively.
Battle spell effects will be determined by the moderator when simulating the battles. Specific spells or use of magic can be requested. The moderator will determine what school, paths, level and mana are required to achieve these.
When research is completed, you will be provided with a list of summons, items, and spells that you can cast. Other spells can be devised with the moderator consent.
Blood generally does two things: Summoning various kinds of demons or horrors, and causing direct damage. The only school that affects the Blood path are Blood School and Construction School.
Regarding stories, please refrain from saying your mages did this or that when you don't have the knowledge to do so. In particular, spells like teleport and long distance travel are level 2 or 3 just for the caster and not available to all paths. The fifth level Thaumaturgy "Travel" means being able to move armies around the strategic map by magic disregarding distances.
Magic items can be transported magically through labs and thus can be shared no matter the location if there's a wizard unit in both the sender and the receiver province.
Note magic has been mostly forbidden under the reign of the One, so what magic does or can do is very mysterious.
Blood magic:
Now that enough people know about blood magic, I'll explain some stuff in detail here:
Blood magic requires blood slaves. They must be brought with you to the province you want to use them in (on the battlefield or to forge items or cast spells). Slaves are found by blood-hunters: 1 hunter will get you (usually) stability slaves, at the cost of (6 - blood level) times that number in population (usually). It will also cause stability to drop by 1 unless the hunter is a priest or a priest is going with him to soothe the population. If you blood hunt in provinces where your dominion isn't the highest, stability will likely lower no matter what your priests may say or do. A very rough measure to compare mana and blood slave is 1 mana is about equivalent to 20 blood slaves in power. Blood battle magic requires lots and lots of slaves. Who may be killed by enemies before you use them.
Projects:
Projects can be of different kinds. Typically, these will be magic sites or spells. They could be mundane buildings too, or the creation of a trade resource or just whatever. If you want to do something, ask the moderator.
Projects usually cost gold, mana, time and often one or more mages. It is possible to reduce some costs by increasing others (like putting more mages working on the ritual for more time in order to pay less gold and mana), but some costs can't be totally avoided.
Sneaky things:
Spying will be available to those with the Spies tech. Scouting is available to everybody, but less efficient. Spying missions will cost 5 gold, + 5 per province removed from your capital (i.e. expensive if far). It will provide information, and the ability to cause unrest (lower stability) at the cost of being found out.
Some nations can have assassins, who can try to kill enemy commanders (mostly mages and priests). These must be paid or summoned and are quite expensive. They'll need detailed orders on how to proceed to have chances of success. They can either cripple or totally eliminate an enemy wizard or priest unit, or hold a military unit in place for the tie of the update due to generals being killed and lots of disorganisation that follows. May be very nasty if used against mercenaries.
Also note some armies are exceptionally stealthy and may try to get through enemy territory unnoticed. Large armies tend to badly fail at that but small groups may succeed.
Units and Combat:
Recruitment and upkeep:
There are six ways to recruit units, of different kinds:
Standing army is your regular army. If you stop paying upkeep, the army remains for one turn and then disappears. You can't pay twice the upkeep on next turn if you want to keep it and you skipped a turn but must pay full cost.
Mercenaries can be bought for much cheaper and require upkeep too. When you stop paying, others can bid for them starting at 80% of the cost. If not rented they can either remain a few turns, vanish or cause some problems.
Feudal armies are like standing armies but remain for 2 turns instead of 1 if not paid. They will either defend their current province or return to their home province (random, can be influenced by player, more likely if high stablity).
Militia armies can be raised for cheap in one turn but vanish immediately. They cost population to buy, but pop is reimbursed when they are disbanded.
Conscripts are exactly as militia except they are way better fighters.
Magic troops must be summoned and usually don't require upkeep.
Note that Feudal and conscript armies require a specific technology before they can be hired, and Magic troops require magic research.
Unit types:
When hiring a unit, players specify a unit type:
Militia, Light or heavy infantry, light or heavy cavalry, chariot, elephant.
There are other special troops (hydras, ...) who are usually summoned rather than bought.
The exact type of unit varies from one nation to the next. For instance Man's light infantry will be made mostly of longbowmen while Mictlan's light infantry will be equipped of slings, maces and hide shields.
Holy units cost more than regular units, but cost the same upkeep. Holy units must be standing army or summons. They have extra powers depending on your Pretender God's magicks.
Militia are (crappy) troops with little or no armor and bad weapons and morale.
Light infantry includes slingers, archers, javelin throwers and lightly armored melee troops. They are usually armorless and with low morale.
Heavy infantry wear body armor and wield either two handed weapons, pole arms or shields. They rarely have ranged weapons.
Light cavalry are mounted archers or javelineers.
Heavy cavalry are knights and cataphracts.
Chariots and Elephants are self explanatory.
Cavalry and chariots requires steeds (usually horse resource), and Elephants require elephant resource.
Infantry and mages can move 2 provinces per turn. Ships can move 3 naval provinces per turn (embarking/disembarking counts as one move for both land units and ships). Cavalry and flying units can move 3 provinces per turn.
Static defense:
A cost of 1 gold per province can be paid to provide a defensive army of militia, conscripts or feudal armies to help defend against invasions (N.B. Militia sucks).
It is possible to pay more for province defense but there are diminishing returns: 1 gold = 1 unit, 4 gold for 2 units, 9 for 3 units, 16 for 4, 25 for 5, etc.
Note that this cost may also help thwart spies, but that it is generally not very good, particularly if you know neither conscription nor feudalism.
Thugs and Super Combatants:
Mundane troops will be useful until magic or powerful creatures kick in. Some Pretender Gods and summoned creatures are able to single handedly defeat armies, particularly if they are equipped with strong magic items.
Depending on their power, they will be called thugs or super combatants, and may receive special abilities due to their feats. It is likely that as the NES progresses, regular armies will become thug-fodder used to delay enemies' super combatants.
NESers are encouraged to write stories about their super combatants and heroes, who will receive bonuses for that, but must be warned that these characters are very likely to die on the front.
Navies:
You need navies to move troops around the seas. This includes flying units: They can't sleep flying, so they need ships to cross seas too. Exceptions are for small straits like Lanka/Bandar Log or Pangaea/Pythium.
Each navy unit can carry up to 7 units, +1 per sea tech known (so 8 if you have sails, 9 if you have sails + triremes...). 'Small' units like wizards count as 1/10th of a unit. To keep things simple for me, all navies are always considered to be the most up to date ships you can have (look at the high upkeep costs for rationales - I don't pretend to have a rationale, just to keep it manageable).
Combat resolution:
Combats will be resolved based on tactical orders given by the players. These will provide some advantages to the various players, and fights will be resolved using a modded version of Dominions 3. Note that over several years periods, there may be several battles for a given army in a single update.
Details will remain murky on purpose, as innovative strategies will be rendered either by corresponding troop placement, boosts to stats, numbers, and more or less intelligent orders given to the simulation, but you can expect some pictures of your fights in the udpates.
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