Magic sites, military logistics, and swamp men.
Magic is a huge part of Dominions (over 800 spells sucka). There's too much going on with it to cover in one post, so for now I'll limit myself to talking about Magic Sites. Shala (a Gala in The Sodden Mirk) has been magically surveying the province, and she found a site!
Shala is a level 1 Nature Mage so she can only have turned up a level 1 Nature site. In this case, it was a Farm of Plenty:
Supply points are for feeding armies, and are generally unimportant until you're massing huge numbers of troops, so this isn't too exciting. Still, the fact that we're building a fort in The Sodden Mirk means that the magic farm will be of more use to us here than almost anywhere else.
Spike, who was just chilling in the woods last turn so had a look round for the sake of something to do, has failed to find any magic sites.
As the above screenshot illustrates. This means that there are almost certainly no Fire or Air sites in Raspberry Woods; I think level 4 in a path is enough to turn up the most powerful sites, though I might be wrong here.
Fomoria has apparently already searched Raspberry Woods, however, because it has a Nature magic site:
(it's on the right-hand side under Recruit units - we can see also see that they've built a lab here)
It's possible that this is a level 0 site - these are unhidden, and can be seen and used without a magical survey taking place - but it's pretty good so I reckon it's been hunted up. Check it:
The Animist's Hut in Raspberry Woods produces 1 Nature Gem per turn, and enables recruitment of Animists (with a lab):
Animists are entirely decent level 2 Nature Mages, who specialise in calling up Vine Men! We've already got more Nature Mages than we know what to do with, but this site could be quite valuable for a nation without Nature access, and there are sites that give access to other paths as well so you can see how it could get interesting.
While we're at it here are the two level 0 sites currently in our possession:
One's in the mountains and brings us a bit more gold, which is always nice, while the other is in Hiperboce just north-west of our capital and allows us to recruit rubbish but amphibious troops (it'll be a site like this that gave Fomoria access to that Merman Captain from last turn). When we've got some spare gold we'll probably drum up a little merman force to go diving in the big lake north of Ur.
Finally, we have the site Adapa turned up in the western hinterlands last turn:
Straight Nature Gems nice nice. Adapa has Air 3, Water 3 and Nature 2, meaning that with a single turn's search he'll turn up all Air and Water sites in a province up to level 3 and all Nature sites up to level 2. More efficient than having a bunch of single-path mages running around poking their noses in streams and looking for weeeeeird stuff (which I can only assume is what the Search command represents).
I really should have tried harder to get some site-searching done in Year 1 - magic sites only have a positive effect once they've been discovered (although some have negative effects, and these are always switched on), so the Glen's only now giving us Nature Gems, when we could have been harvesting them since last year. I think my excuse for not doing this was that I was scared Fomoria would sail across from their capital and take a province while a mage was searching it - I was particularly concerned with losing Adapa in this way. I needn't have been, though, as he's stealthy!
Magic gems are useful for lots of things, including casting ritual spells, pumping up your battle magic, and forging magic items (actually those are the three main things). We will go into all these in due course but suffice it to say for now that they're all well cool. Magic gems are a major part of any Dominions nation's economy, although to varying extents: some nations rely very heavily on summoned troops or forged gear, while others can fall back a little on great infantry or powerful sacreds. But everyone does use them, and as a rule magic becomes more important as games progress. For example, fun fact: if you get enough magic gems you can cause the world to end!
I should also point out that there are sites in all the capitals, which enable you to recruit your cap-only units and provide you with a basic gem income.
Magic sites are cool, but I confess I don't pay very much attention to them except to recruit the odd good wizard and to tally the gems. Gems themselves are quite abstract - I don't know that there's a specific narrative reason for The Swamps of Ur to produce 3 gems while the Glen of Verdant Greenery only produces one. I take it that gems are just a useful simplification; probably The Swamps of Ur are powerfully magical in all sorts of ways (Sirrushes live there, for one thing), while the Animist's Hut and the Glen are weaker. Possibly also the gem from the Animist's Hut comes from the Animists themselves, experimenting away in the forest and learning how to harness the power of nature, while the Glen of Verdant Greenery is just ambiguously magical, enough to make the plants grow good, and up to the value of 1 Nature Gem per turn. A contributing factor may be that magic sites are one of the few things in the game that lack flavour text. Still, they've all got great names, and this with a few other features can make them surprisingly evocative sometimes. We'll see about that in due course.
This concludes our primer on Magic Sites (and gems as it turned out). Let's look at the rest of the turn!
The biggest event this turn was Fomoria retaking Vician Forest. The 2 points of Province Defense I put there wasn't enough to do anything at all in the battle, but the fact that they showed up means I get reliable intelligence on the invading force. They have a druid!
2 Air and 1 Nature is middling-to-weak: not a big threat (although he is carrying gems, presumably to fuel some bigger spells). The rest of the force is Fomorian Javelinists (a lot less threatening than the Unmarked), Light Infantry (a lot less threatening than Fomorian Javelinist) and 5 Fomorian Giants (they are the tallest). I can only assume they'll be pressing their attack, so we have to decide what to do. Time to talk about LOGISTICS
Here I have turned on Show Neighbouring Provinces. You may have seen these mostly-yellow lines in previous screenshots, when I have forgotten to turn them off: they show links between provinces (so that you always know what you're doing, even on custom maps or ones with weird wiggly lines separating territories). I've also turned on names which I forgot I could do.
You can't skip through or bypass enemy provinces unless flying or using similar trickery, so the force in Vician Forest can only attack Raspberry Woods or Jabbernia. If they attack Raspberry Woods I don't care - I can take it back whenever with Spike, and they won't have moved any deeper into my territory. They might decline this option, however, for fear of being eaten by a giant horrible birdmonster (and rightly so!), and either way I'm more worried about losing Jabbernia so I'll defend that instead.
I have some forces in Jabbernia already, who marched out of the capital last turn with a pair of mages to rendezvous with Rob Brydon. They're only 20-odd Chosen and a handful of basic warriors, however, so I'm sending Spike to reinforce them; if the Fomorians attack that should sort them out. I do, however, have other plans for this force!
DEATH TO ALL LIZARDS
This force isn't bigger than the detachment tragically lost in the Bog of Beasts a few turns ago, but it has better mage support and (hopefully) better orders. I'm also backing it with psychotic swamp-dwelling wildmen:
A Reaver champion who, like his namesake, collects skulls, bones, and other tokens of victory from defeated foes. The Reavers are the last of the swamp troops we have to meet, and are more-or-less a straight upgrade on the Hunters:
!!!
NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL BERSERK
(Swamp Enkidu are famous for always typing in full caps)
The plan is for everyone to meet up in Bog of Beasts to finally pacify the scalies, like this:
while Spike Jonze feasts on the corpses of the invading Fomorians. I've got no way of knowing if Fomoria will attack Jabbernia before Brydon's force attacks the lizards (Spike will definitely be there for the defence, though, because movement through friendly provinces always happens before movement into enemy territory). The Enkidus might have a tough defensive battle fending off Fomoria and then march away, weakened, to be slain by lizards. In the worst case they'll die to the gigantic assault and Mark Ruffalo will go ahead with his attack anyway, badly outnumbered, and be slain by lizards. Hopefully, though, my strategy is sound enough that no-one will be slain by any lizards at all. Fingers crossed!
Finally, I have almost overlooked an Unexpected Event. It took place in Dubros, which is a plain and boring province on the eastern border:
I looked it up: 'lapidation' means 'death by stoning'. I'll leave you with that cheerful mental image. Thanks for reading!
Next time: who or what is Judith?
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