Deity Empires on Sale at Steam

[bobarossa]

Picked this up on the last day of sale.  Started playing a couple days ago.  Very nice game.  Seems way more fleshed out than the old Master of Magic (although my memory has faded on that one).  Picked up a hero with Trainer ability through the mercenary system.  Unfortunately he can only train units that are lower in experience than him and he's at 0.  Should I march him out front in each battle to build up experience quickly?  I'm not even too sure I understand the experience system anyway.  I see XP gain listed at end of battle.  Is that the total gain of all units? 

Also, don't trust the power estimate for Medusa lairs.  You will lose units even when you're way more powerful. 

[solops]

I am having trouble with the UI. How do you research magic? I am generating mana and research pts but the magic tree is empty. Also, the build Queue is weird. Buildings on one side and units on the other with no explanation about which (or both?) Is being built. And my cities seem to always build settlers even with the autobuild settlers turned off and the city set to manual production.

[bobarossa]

I think you have to conjure a spellbook before you can research spells.  I only got one spell in my first level Cold spellbook (COLD).  Got two more spells in the next one.  I had expected a lot more spells per book based on other fantasy games I've played.  You have to select a magic category in setup (using those 26 points) to have access to conjuring spellbooks in that field. 

And to answer my own question.  I did a test and the number of XP's listed in the battle summary is the number of XP points added to each unit.  Units that kill a unit get additional points.  Killing conjured garrison units don't count (I think based on one battle).

[W8taminute]

In the upper left side of the screen is a dropdown called 'Cast Magic' or something like that.  Click on it and you will be presented with a list of spells you can cast.  Among them should be something like conjure spellbook. 

[bobarossa]

I am having trouble with the UI. How do you research magic? I am generating mana and research pts but the magic tree is empty. Also, the build Queue is weird. Buildings on one side and units on the other with no explanation about which (or both?) Is being built. And my cities seem to always build settlers even with the autobuild settlers turned off and the city set to manual production.

Other than the constant settler construction, there should only be one thing being constructed at once.  I know the buildings are ordered with the top one being worked on and the ones below being queued for later construction.  I think units are always constructed first if you select one.  Not sure if you can queue them because a unit will stay in continuous production until you stop it.  There is a text file in the steam folder for the game that claims it is autogenerated from the ingame manual.  It contains a lot of use stuff (much of which is in there several times) in a searchable form. 

Not sure what's going on with the settlers since I haven't tried turning them off.  I don't think they use any resources or production points.  If you click on the Cities button at the top and scroll through the pages there is a list of your cities and settler construction that shows you how fast they are being built in autobuild mode. 

[JasonPratt]

This might have a bearing on this game -- I don't know yet -- but I finally (after however many years since Master of Magic) figured out that I'm better off never scheduling more than one thing for construction or training. There are at least two connected reasons why.

1.) No game will start construction until your resources are available to begin. But if you tell the computer you're planning to start a Wizard's Tower (for example), then that city will be focused on preparing to do that -- INSTEAD OF focusing on generating extra gold or mana or some other resource (e.g. research). The normal incomes will still be going on, but there's typically a set of extra orders for generating more of some resource (e.g. population) than normal rates. So unless I'm going to start working on another project instantly, I should order my city to be focusing on extra resource production of some kind (usually cash).

2.) Once a project has been completed, the next project moves to the front of the line of course -- where it sits there waiting for enough resources to start. Not only does this distract the city from focusing on extra resource generation meanwhile (as in problem #1), but it is practically impossible to predict ahead of time whether I'll really have enough resources to start every new project advancing to the start of the line on any given turn. Usually some project(s) will kick off ahead of the others. But the situation may have changed so that I need some specific project(s) to start now, if possible, and not others!

If I just ignore the option to schedule projects in advance, I not only gain maximum extra resources in any situation, but I also have maximum flexibility to focus on starting projects at the most efficient times as circumstances vary. For example, oh a hero has shown up wanting to be hired, and now I've not only got extra cash on hand that I wouldn't have had before, but I can flexibly decide which project(s) I can delay starting in order to hire the hero asap -- or, alternately, I can decide whether I really need to start all those projects even if the hero may ride away before I can gather up enough resources again to hire.

[bobarossa]

Anyone know how to get a prospector?  I guess you build them but they're not an option at any of my cities.  Is there a building I need?  Kind of hard to search for one.  I really want to start mining Mithril, etc so I can craft items.

edit:  Found it!  Have to build Builders Hall, Mason Guild, Miner Guild and then Prospector Guild.  There is also a civic research path to increase prospecting success rate.

Jason, I'm not sure I get your comments about saving up to build something.  Setting a city to create trade goods uses up the resources you are collecting each turn from that cities area so nothing gets put in storage.  You can set up a city to collect resources so that it will have plenty when you want to start building things.  I haven't checked to see the breakeven point on that as there is an initial penalty to resource production when you set it to collect.  You can also set a city to transfer its resources to other cities but I don't know how it determines which city gets it or how to select the target city. 

I have tried running a supply wagon around with my army to collect food and resources from battles and then send it off to dump in a city that can use them (has higher production value than resource income).

[JasonPratt]

No, I was just curious whether Deity Empires would function the same as prior Civ-type fantasy games along that line; so I described them for the comparison.

(I'm running an mp game in AoW3 and a pseudo-mp in AoW:SM right now, which is when I finally learned it's significantly more efficient not to queue up production schedules.)

[solops]

Attached is a save from my throw-away Deity Empires game. When I get a new game I do a run-through to learn the mechanics, so the game itself is pretty ugly. Anyway, can someone tell me why I cannot initiate Magic Research and what has to happen for me to do so? You'll have to rename the file by eliminating the"dot-txt" extension.

[bobarossa]

I get an error on loading saying it has a bad save game version.  Which shouldn't be possible on Steam.  Also your file is 4x the size of my save files.  Did you use a really large map?

edit: in your game, click on the Deities button on top right of map screen and tell me how many spellbooks you have in what magic categories (I have 4 spellbooks each in Cold and Nature magic).
edit2:  I checked my earliest games to refresh my memory and I had to conjure (cast) my first spellbook in each category.  That gave me the chance to research the same spellbook.  After researching both of my spellbook categories, the conjure (cast) option came back up again.  After conjuring them a second time I finally had level 1 spells to research.  And there was only 1 spell in the level one spellbook.  Was very unintuitive. 

[Tuna]

Attached is a save from my throw-away Deity Empires game. When I get a new game I do a run-through to learn the mechanics, so the game itself is pretty ugly. Anyway, can someone tell me why I cannot initiate Magic Research and what has to happen for me to do so? You'll have to rename the file by eliminating the"dot-txt" extension.

I didn't load it.. but when your Deity i on the board, you can't research Magic right?

[bobarossa]

I thought you couldn't cast spells.  I assumed that meant battle spells but it might mean both types.  My diety is 'dead' (not on board). 

edit: reread the part of the help file on spellbooks.  You can only cast a spell of level X if you have X+1 spellbooks.  So you get no spells with the first spellbook.  You have to research/conjure 2 spellbooks in a magic category before you have access to research your first spell.

[FarAway Sooner]

So you can add spellbooks as the game goes on?  You don't have to just get really lucky searching an Abandoned Wizard's Tower?

(And why do wizards always live in towers, anyways?  Never a manse, a pyramid, or even a keep?)

[bobarossa]

You can't add new categories of magic unless you find one (I haven't yet) but you can increase the number of spellbooks of one you already own (and gain spells and strength) through that whole conjure/research thing.

[solops]

This game got its hooks into me. I have played nothing else for about two weeks, other than co-op Rome2 with my son. I tried the hi-res graphics but found that I like the stock graphics better.