Strategery for Elemental

Hi, folks, Winnihym here.

I'd like to make an open plea, since this last build is the first one, essentially, that has been stable enough to do any learning on, and with Beta 2 coming on multiplayer, I find myself behind the times on what works and what doesn't from the game mechanics. So, I'm looking for answers to what are undoubtedly foolish questions.

1) How do you get spell points to cast a spell?

2) How do you recruit NPCs?

3) What are good buildings for spellcasting? For economy? For defense?

4) I can see that I need to build a certain number of huts to upgrade to L3 cities, and then upgrade those to houses to get L4 and L5. What are the other early game critical builds? (command post, watchtower, ?)

5) It is possible (or advisable) to build a city not near a food resource? What is the benefit/penalty of the scouting unit that can meld with resources? What percentage of the resource is allocated to the global resource pool (as opposed to being attached to the city)?

Help me catch up, please, so that I don't get frustrated when I'm playing MP in Beta 2.

Thanks!

elemental

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1) You get spell points by selecting the Meditative trait and/or building Magic buildings like Arcane Towers.

these points *Buy* new spells.

You need Mana to cast spells. Max Mana = Essence value, and Mana regeneration is dependent on Wisdom score. Usually 1 or 2 per turn.

2) You recruit NPCs by having a high Charisma Score, traits that help with recruitment (both on Sov level and race level), and by researching recruitment in the Adventure branch of the tech tree.

3) Arcane Towers and the like are good spellcasting buildings because they provide Spell Points.

Schools and Markets are good buildings for economy.

Having walls is good for defense. Having a Command Post (units) and Watchtower (LOS) can be useful as well. Unit training can be sped up with Barracks and Armories.

4) It is possible to build a city away from food, however your first couple cities need to be near food and invest in Farms/Gardens (at least in part). To build away from food, make sure you have enough extra food to spend first, and then use the extra space for something non-food oriented.

I haven't paid close attention to Pioneers, although I assume that they are useful.

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Winnihym,

This is based on personal observations so there is a probability of error.

1) SOV essence (and heroes and SOV children who have been embued) is the source of mana for spell casting. There are modifiers but I don't think it is worse that 1:1. So a SOV with 25 essence should be able to cast any spells that have a casting cost of 25 mana or less. Note this is a different stat that what is used to determine what spells you can acquire via research.

2) When an NPC enters territory in your area of control click on the NPC icon. A purpleish button on the bottom left will be evident, click on that and it will present the conditions for recruitment.

3) There are a wide variety of buildings for kingdom players at each city level. Of note there are structures that allow for spell research (a time variable), and structures that generate spell points (a power variable) used to acquire increasingly powerful spells. There are 6 sets of spell books that determine what spells are researchable.

4) Command post allows you to recruit troops, watch towers push back the fog of war. Buildings are still being tweaked for balance and to counter unintended effects, each comes with a description but for now there will be a period of trial and error. Currently you don't see what you don't know so future structure options are opaque. Essentially, you don't know about a building option if you haven't researched that tech to know what it does. Since the tech tree is still being filled in....

5) Building a city to block a narrow pass is a valid reason. Since resources are now global for your kingdom/empire the impact is not as great. The explorer units can exploit resources (for which you have the tech) within your kingdoms area of ownership. I don't know what impacts the zone of control but it will be very obvious when it grows.

Good luck.

Darvroth

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