'Must have' mana types?

[Emptiness]

I've meant to try domination a few times but in the end I just can't stomach the idea of losing an archmage promotion. I know I should try it though, any tips for breaking through resistance? How strong is it if I wait until I have the Tower of Alteration and Metamagic III promo?

Just play the Balseraphs, then you won't have to care about failures. Summon a puppet, and have the puppet cast Domination. Alternatively you can use a national hero caster (Corlindale, Govannon) to do your dominating, and if they fail then kill them off and resurrect them (of course that requires a unit that can cast resurrection, and entails a certain down time after a failure in which Domination is unavailable to you).

Even if shadowwalk does work it only negates the bonus from palisades and walls of stone and such, if it negated culture deference too it would be good but as it is it helps what 20% tops?

Palisade: 10%
Archery Range: 10%
Walls: 25%
Wall of Stone: 25%
Heron Throne: 25%
Khazad Palace Bonus: 20%
Chancel of Guardians: 25%
Citadel of Light: 5%

A city won't have all those bonuses at once, naturally, but can have quite a few of them. Shadowwalk is not as good as lowering defenses to 0%, but is better than attacking with no reduction. Of course, Shadowwalk will be less helpful if your opponent doesn't have many physical defenses built. Using siege or Fireball to fully reduce a city's defenses does nothing to counter first strikes or defensive strikes, so they are not perfect either. When the opportunity presents itself, I prefer to have both Shadow and Fire magic available so that I can use whatever tools are called for by the job at hand.

 

[Tlalynet]

I see why I get the 20% impression whenever I've used Shadowwalk. The rest are race specific or a wonder the AI tends not to build very much anymore. Funny I haven't seen more wall of stone though. Blur is a great spell though, I've got no arguments there.

I do play Balseraphs quite a bit, and I did know about their advantage, but I've still never used it yet. It sounds like fun. What is the basic fail rate of Domination? ToA and metamagic III would give it +25% so if its high already it may become nearly foolproof. I'm trying a Malkim domination game with a mind mana focus and lots of domination priests. I have a decent start but I haven't decided on a religion yet, only OO and ROK are taken.

 

[xalien]

What is the basic fail rate of Domination? ToA and metamagic III would give it +25% so if its high already it may become nearly foolproof.

See this: http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=300977

 

[Neomega]

Meta - of course, node switching is essential, and if well planned gives massive free promotions

entropy - rust... especially if you play a recon heavy civ... it turns those swordsman stacks to garbage.

Body - haste

enchant - enchanted blade early is very powerful, and flaming arrows is also very powerful... and enchant spellstaff can be a makeshift twincast until you get twincast.

nature - I want that poison blade, because I play a recon heavy civ



The worst is Shadow. Sahdowwalk is such a lame spell, almost every single tier 1 spell is better than shadowwalk.


Of course, there are times a couple of law nodes can be a lifesaver, if you find yourself in a terrible financial crunch.

 

[Tlalynet]

Thanks for the link xalien

Hmm, I always thought the Tower of Alteration was the weakest, these stats don't change my view. Because Domination is always cast by a unit with Channeling III its fail rate is 15% out of the box, Metamagic II reduces that to 5%, which is the minimum fail rate for any spell. ToA and Metamagic III are useless. Or you could have no metamagic and the ToA to get 95% success rate, but metamagic is easier to get.

I guess the ToA helps with spells like rust cast by adepts or charm person cast by mages. Blinding fails the most, 50% base, but only 40% when a mage casts it (as they must) so the ToA would bring that down to 20%, and if you had Metamagic II it would be down too 10%. With Charm Person your fail rate is only 30% The ToA would make it 10%, thats not too bad.

I am getting through my mind game, my impression was that Dominate had a higher success rate than 95%, I've gotten at least 50 units with it and haven't lost it on any archmages. Even if I lost it it wouldn't be that bad, I've dominated so many adepts and mages and thrown them at the enemy that I could replace my archemages in a turn if they lost their usefulness. I guess I've just been lucky.

 

[apenpaap]

I have found that a good way to use Domination is to give it to one archmage only, and then not give him any other promotions, so that if it fails, you can just repromote him to Mind III again.

 

[Tlalynet]

Its a good idea, but I have to say it was fun to use dominate and charm person to take entire cities or SoD's and for that I needed all my archmages to dominate. If you could really spam that plan with 4 mind nodes. Combat doesn't help dominate, spell extension doesn't help, the only thing you might want is mobility. That leaves 8 promotions to restore domination. Hmm, I think I will start a new dominate game with that setup

Order Malkim + Dominate archmages = free armies... Wow, with command 4 priors and command 4 Sepher you turn their SOD into your SOD. Yeah, Mind is definitely a good mama type. I can see why its perk is only 3%

 

[Tlalynet]

Double Post

 

[JonathanStrange]

Generally, I choose mana types mostly based on the civilization I'm leading, with some consideration of the map type, enemy civilizations, nearby resources, etc. I think that most players, to some extent, do too but I really make my decision based almost entirely on those factors, rather than choosing a mana that sounds awesome but isn't specific to what my civ or troops need. I'll examine what my civ lacks, if I'm leading the Ljosalfars, I'll note their mediocre military will need all the help it can get in the form of Enchanted Blades and Flaming Arrows so I'll need an Enchantment mana source much more and sooner than other stronger civs.

I don't pretend the mana I go for is always (or ever) "the bestest" in itself or flashiest but it's what I've think is the most appropriate or most economical in that particular game.

Probably the closest I come to a general-purpose "must have mana rule" is Leverage Your Starting Mana. They're often appropriate to begin with, and as a free mana source headstart, I find it's more efficient to use the Palace manas to get higher level spells quicker and economically.

The Ljosalfars, for example, don't have the best (imo) starting manas but working with their Air, Nature, and Life manas as a base, I can easily get Maelstrom for attacking cities, Treetop Defense for instantly fortifying moving stacks, etc. Not spectacular spells but simple to get and useful for Elves.

I prefer to be a bit more aggressive earlier and take the fancier manas from the civs that have them.