[Pex]

Originally Posted by Nivm

I can't wait for the patch!
Observations and Questions:
It gets tedious after a while, but I've noticed that most of the time, 1-3 figures in towns can be taken of the current project to farm without changing the time until it's finished. Also, don't forget your refund after buying any building! When the bar is full, or near full, you can put everyone on farming for that last month.

I was doing this, but after a while (especially when you have enough food and gold) it becomes a bother to keep changine back and forth. Usually after I conquer several towns a few only work on trading goods while the rest produce buildings and units. So if I need more food, I turn workers from those trading towns into farmers.

I begin the game with books in all but death, Warlord, Alchemy, and Node Mastery. My military is never larger than my number of towns, but I use Warlord because it allows elven archers or halfling slingers to match up to the power of heroes. Oh, and Node Mastery doubles the amount of power you get from nodes, not adds 15%. Thus turning a 5 magic node into a 10 magic node. And that my mana pool is around 800 by end game, and only need to take one or two nodes in early game.

Haven't tried being a Warlord yet. On Hard level (which I'm playing now) some other abilities seem more useful. I might give it a go, though. Although longbowmen and slingers ar quite good even without it. In this last game my tactic was to cast Heroism on longbowmen. They're qame winners.

+To Hit bonuses, and other percent bonuses, are very effective on unit groups, and not so effective on heroes. Holy Weapon and Eldritch Weapon can be used together, and I often do.

Agreed.

Do not examine a character who has a whole load of different abilities. Pulling up the information for any mislabeled or misnumbered powers results in a crash. Would be a good thing to put on that patch.

I'm not sure what do you mean here. What character? A hero? Or another wizard? Never happened to me, so I don't get it.

By placing Engineers on a Planar Tower, setting a road to be built from it, then changing the Engineers' plane, will allow that road to be built over water or anything at the time cost of what you first selected. Maga project bridges! (So yes, they work.)

lol didn't know that But it's obviously a bug rather than something programmers intended to happen.

I noticed that if you take an opponents fortress, then defeat their last town before they cast the Spell of Return, you will get the treasure and graphic for banishing them like they had returned.

Both times enemy wizards managed to cast that spell, they also returned before I got to their last city so I had to defeat them again anyway But it seems fair that you get more treasure even if they don't return.

What determines the value of the treasure you get from a creep camp or node? It seems to be influenced by too many things to count, and my testing has been inconclusive.

Well, only certain thing is that you always get a spell from an Arcane Tower, though sometimes you get gold or mana crystals or item as well. It's always a spell your wizard is able to learn (as in having enough spell books of that realm), but it doesn't have to be one from the spell book. That makes it useful to attack towers once you did all researches, cause you'll get some spell you couldn't have normally researched.

As for nodes and different lairs, you get better rewards if the node/lair is better defended (cases when you get some fame as well). From what I could see, treasure of every node/lair is predetermined at the beginning of the game, but I think this works only for gold and mana crystals. Items, prisoners and books (as in extra spell books and some trait books that give you additional traits) are still there (predetermined), but it could be any item, any prisoner (not already controled by you or other wizard) and (almost) any book. So, if you like doing some 'legitimate cheating' save your game before attacking place that gives you one of those three and keep attacking it untill you get the exact thing your want

Btw, that (almost) any book is put there cause you can get chaos spell books or book of chaos mastery only from chaos node, and it's similar to sorcery and nature.

How does one get "mana lock"? It seems to randomly happen sometimes.

Hmm, what's that?

Why does visiting Sorcery nodes occasionally dispel enchantments? I get no message about it, and note nothing of else of interest.

Haven't noticed that. To be honest, I only started using heaps of enchantments now that I'm playing with Life Magic, so I wasn't paying attention.

When placing units with an Air Mage, sometimes the air mage's movement speed is used, sometimes he is as slow as the slowest unit. Why determines this?

It's always the speed of the slowest unit. So, I guess in cases when Wind Mage's speed is used, he's the slowest unit. It tends to be a drawback sometimes, especially when your unit of heroes + cavalry and/or rangers can move 4 moves (with pathfinding) and then suddenly with Wind Mage it drops down to 2. Then you give your mage some item to increase his speed, but movement remains 2, cause pathfinding doesn't count for flying and now your rangers are the slowest unit.

It was stated here that flying units will not be attacked by Great Wyrms. I have relied on this twice, and both time regretted it. Is there some other qualifier required?

I'm pretty certain they can't attack fliers, but they will retaliate if attacked by a flier in melee. One thing that crosses my mind is that there were some spiders with the wyrm - in which case they cast nets on your fliers and make them ground unit. The other option is that I was wrong in assuming they couldn't attack flying units, in which case I apologise

Btw, indents don't work well on any forum I saw so far, which is why leaving a blank row between paragraphs is recommendend. I learned that hard way myself