Adepts experience

[kokomante]

I'm still playing a PBEM against a friend of mine (just saying in case anyone remembers a thread from before the summer where I asked advice about it, that game is still going on ), me ljosalfar, him amaurites.

Now, I'm pretty scared at the army of mages he's got, with the ability to summon thousands of fireballs to burn my forests way. I started building my own elven magical army to counter him and gathered some nodes.


But I wanted to ask, I don't know where I read it, but I thought that adepts gathered experience automatically, just being fortified in cities, simulating their arcane studies, etc. Is it true? Because it's not happening to my adepts, who are stuck at level 2 and the such.

Also, I apologize for the noobish questions, but, I now have two fire nodes, does it affect in any way my adepts from having just one?


Also I'd like to ask: my druids can cast bloom and summon treant, but not always. I understand that bloom depends on the terrain the druid is on, but I've got one who is on some plains (a type of terrain I've cast bloom on before) and he doesn't have the spell avalaible. Why is that?

And what's the limit on summon treant? Is it a once per unit spell?


Thanks a lot and I hope I don't bother you with being so noobish here hehe

 

[readercolin]

An adept gains experience slowly. In regular FFH, it is some mix of random chance of gaining 1 experience point, but the more adepts you have the more likely some will get some XP faster. With the arcane trait, that chance goes up significantly. The best way to get more adept XP is to build more adepts.

As for fire nodes, if you have 1, your adepts/mages/archmages will be able to take the fire 1 promotion. If you have 2, when constructed (or upgraded), you arcane units will automatically get fire 1. If you have 3, when you upgrade an adept to a mage, or a mage to an archmage, the arcane unit will automatically get fire 1 (if they don't have it) and fire 2. If you have 4, archmages when built will automatically get fire 3. Beyond that any more will only give more fire strength to units with fire affinity. With other mana types, some give stacking bonuses (for example, every law node you own grants -5% maintenence costs). In this case, each additional mana node you have gets more of the bonus (again, using law, that would give a -5% maintenence for 1, -10% for 2, -15% for 3, etc.).

As for bloom and treants, bloom can only be cast on tiles without trees on them. Treants can only be summoned on tiles with forests or ancient forests. You can also only have 1 treant per unit able to cast create treant. So if you have 4 units that can cast summon treant, and one unit casts summon treant, then you have 3 available treants. Then any of the 4 units capable of summoning treants can summon another treant. Once you have 4 treants though, no more treants can be summoned. This works exactly like priests of leaves summoning tigers.

-Colin

 

[Calavente]

for bloom :
your druid can only do bloom (and summon treant) if he was upgraded from a priest of leaves.

you can summon as many treants as you have people able to summon one.
ie : 4druid, 1yvain... and maybe 4 archpriests of leaves...

else (upgraded from a ranger or built) a druid can only cast "entangle"

 

[kokomante]

thanks a lot!



what if treants get killed? can I resummon them?

 

[Emptiness]

Make sure you promote some adepts with Spring. If he tries to burn down your forests they will first smoke, and Spring can extinguish that before an actual fire starts. Consider promoting your units with Magic Resistance when possible (Combat III is the prerequisite for it), and then (if you can) Resist Fire well. Make an effort to build the Tower of Alteration if you can, to increase all your units resistance to magic. And finally, build Assassins and promote them with Mobility I and II so that you can take out attacking casters before they get close.

Also, Bloom cannot be cast in a tile with Flood Plains. Normally these tiles start out as Desert/Flood Plains, but with Vitalize (and/or Genesis) they can be upgraded to Plains/Flood Plains and then Grassland/Flood Plains. You still won't be able to Bloom in the tile, though, because of the Flood Plains.

-------------

Yes, you can resummon killed Treants up to the limit that you are currently eligible to control.

 

[megamanx06]

Make sure you promote some adepts with Spring. If he tries to burn down your forests they will first smoke, and Spring can extinguish that before an actual fire starts. Consider promoting your units with Magic Resistance when possible (Combat III is the prerequisite for it), and then (if you can) Resist Fire well. Make an effort to build the Tower of Alteration if you can, to increase all your units resistance to magic. And finally, build Assassins and promote them with Mobility I and II so that you can take out attacking casters before they get close.

Also, Bloom cannot be cast in a tile with Flood Plains. Normally these tiles start out as Desert/Flood Plains, but with Vitalize (and/or Genesis) they can be upgraded to Plains/Flood Plains and then Grassland/Flood Plains. You still won't be able to Bloom in the tile, though, because of the Flood Plains.

That's a little much for a new player, even if it is a good strategy. To address your situation, koko, if you want any real magic power, you need to upgrade your adepts to mages at level 4. They will get exp automatically, but unless you are Thessa, your friend will always get exp faster than you, so I'd recommend a non-magic approach.

and @Calavente, they can also cast treetop defense because of their nature I and if upgraded to nature II or III, they can also cast poison blade and vitalize.

 

[Calavente]

and @Calavente, they can also cast treetop defense because of their nature I and if upgraded to nature II or III, they can also cast poison blade and vitalize.

true. I forgot to mention it as I almost never upgrade the druids into those paths...

I'd rather upgrade them from an Order priest (vicar?) and then promote them combat V, march and Command I-IV (or depending on the situation command III or IV then Combat V.
I also like to have one upgraded from a built or "commanded" stonewarden... in order to get 1 earthquake druid

 

[popejubal]

thanks a lot!



what if treants get killed? can I resummon them?

If you have 3 units that can cast Summon Treant, then you can have 3 Treants. If two are killed, then you can summon two more.

Also, it doesn't matter which summoner casts the spell. You can have three units with Summon Treant and one of those units has Combat V while the other two have only Combat I and the Combat V caster can cast Summon Treant three times instead of having all three cast it once.

This is true for all of the permanent summons, but that's mostly the Skeletons, Tigers and Treants that you'll see in any particular game.

Also, don't forget that you can throw your summoned Tigers into Tiger Cages once you build a Carnival. That's free Culture and free for the city since you can just summon another Tiger next turn.

 

[Bad Player]

Another thing - adepts gain XP more slowly than do mages who in turn gain XP more slowly than archmages.

 

[SilverKnight]

Another thing - adepts gain XP more slowly than do mages who in turn gain XP more slowly than archmages.

Despite this I've never had a non-heroic arcane unit hit 100xp, since I'm too chicken to put them in combat by that time. Staying on-topic, an effective strategy would then be to focus on just one sphere of magic for your archmagi/druids (nature) and pumping in some heavy magic resistance as mentioned above, with some Combat just for good luck.

SilverKnight

 

[UncleJJ]

According to the FfH2 manual the exact rates of experience gains are:

Channelling 1 20%
Channelling 2 30%
Channelling 3 40%
Potency 20%

So a basic adept starting at 0 exp will take, on average, 50 turns to gain the 10exp needed to become a mage. A mage will then take about 21 turns to get to 17 exp and a further promotion.

That is the basic rate of exp gain, but it can be sped up by creating adepts in a city with a Command Post, by Form of Titan and a couple of civics that boost exp. With luck and careful arrangement it should be possible to get 6 or 8 exp for a starting adept and then that would only take 10 to 20 turns to become a mage.

Another route is to use combat and here a Great Commander can be invaluable for boosting the strength and exp for the adept (or mage wanting to become archmage). The basic technique is to pick on a weakened animal, barbarian or enemy when at war. You want to use either a unit like a catapult, which does limited damage but won't kill the target, or use a weak expendable units like a skeleton, or a damage spell like fireball, and then when the odds are good (say 95%) attack with the adept. It is risky but you could pick up 3 exp from one combat and that saves, on average, 15 turns waiting to become a mage and all for a 5% chance of dying. In some circumstances, and particularly with a Great Commander and some other useful equipment like Orthus Axe, adepts can be levelled quickly by combat.