Dom2: Follow the Leader (strategy question)

[Rywill]

It's a Dom2 twofer today!

It's become increasingly apparent to me that the real measure of an empire's strength, once you get past the middle game, is its magic potential: how many gems it's getting, how good its research is, and how good its casters are. Others have posted (in other threads) about how they get frustrated when players fail to recognize the "true threat" in a game--something I've done that at least once, maybe twice (vastly underestimated a magically powerful enemy). My question: what do you use to judge an enemy's magical strength?

It's pretty easy to judge their military might, especially if you have some scouts out. You check the size of their empire, number of forts, and get a rough idea of the size and composition of their armies. Magic, though, is a little tougher. You can't see what sorts of magical sites someone has (unless you have spies). You can see what globals they have up, but sometimes enemies wait to cast a good global until they're involved in a major war, and then it's too late to stop them. Scouts can give you some info, because they might spot an army that has lots of high-level summons, or a good summoned leader (elemental king, etc.). But an empire's overall magical strength seems to be mostly cloaked in mystery. Maybe that's by design, but are there good methods/tricks for figuring out the real picture?

[SlyFrog]

It's a Dom2 twofer today!

It's become increasingly apparent to me that the real measure of an empire's strength, once you get past the middle game, is its magic potential: how many gems it's getting, how good its research is, and how good its casters are. Others have posted (in other threads) about how they get frustrated when players fail to recognize the "true threat" in a game--something I've done that at least once, maybe twice (vastly underestimated a magically powerful enemy). My question: what do you use to judge an enemy's magical strength?

It's pretty easy to judge their military might, especially if you have some scouts out. You check the size of their empire, number of forts, and get a rough idea of the size and composition of their armies. Magic, though, is a little tougher. You can't see what sorts of magical sites someone has (unless you have spies). You can see what globals they have up, but sometimes enemies wait to cast a good global until they're involved in a major war, and then it's too late to stop them. Scouts can give you some info, because they might spot an army that has lots of high-level summons, or a good summoned leader (elemental king, etc.). But an empire's overall magical strength seems to be mostly cloaked in mystery. Maybe that's by design, but are there good methods/tricks for figuring out the real picture?

There are methods that are just good logical common sense, yet people seem to miss them:

1. How many territories does he have? It should be pretty obvious that, on average, more territories give the possibility for more gem cites.

2. Here's a biggy that people just don't seem to get, though it's obvious to me - has everyone else been fighting, while one guy is more or less sitting there or just mopping up and cherry picking provinces from everyone else's fights? In other words, has that guy been able to expend less to get to the same (or a better point) than everyone else; has he been harrassed as much as everyone else?

3. Are you watching the battles they are fighting with your scouts, to see what spells they are using? If you are not seeing battles, then please reread #2.

I don't think you necessarily need to know exactly how much magic potential someone has; you can generally get a pretty good gut feeling that "this guy must be getting strong (or he's a noob and not taking advantage) because he hasn't been mixing it up with the other players and appears to be trying to quietly gain strength."

[Enidigm]

Some stealth units can see magic sites - and i think the basic spy can. Scouts and most of the others cannot. Sacrifice a scout to see a large army moving out of a castle.

[Jack Black]

This really depends on the particular nation and independants they find/utilize.

If you know what the base mages of a nation are capable of. (For Example. Marignon's Witch Hunters or Grand Masters) You know what the most prevalant or synergy of magics will be used.

Knowing and estimating what someone is using their pretender for is also a good indicator of what kind of magical preference that any given nation is attempting to aqquire. If you see any 'rainbow' pretenders, you know that their nation's lands are going to tend to be very well searched, more than likely as quickly as possible. Ripe for the taking, as it were.

If you see a Pretender that is counter the paths of a nation, while being a strong combatant, you might be looking at primarily a gem income that is based around natural magics and maybe a few other paths.

Underwater nations have an upper hand here because of Voice of Tiamat, allowing them to have Elemental's covered and using their national or Pretender cover other paths that are important (Nature and Astral in particular).

As for magic, the research level can give you an estimate of how many mages can be fielded for magical usage later in the game, or when hard pressed. Most players will not take their research force and send them into battle, unless they are extremely taxed and have an opportunity to turn the tide. Knowing how your opponent would react can help you know what kind of magical plot they are going to develop and feel comfortable playing with.

Nations that are magically potent, regardless of their pretender and often will have a high core of fortresses in order to produce large amounts of mages are:

C'tis
Caelum
Arcosephale
Pythium
Jotunheim - Utgard

Of course other nations can afford to produce alot of mages (Vanehim for example can create mass dwarfs). But because of the nature of the above mages (Sauromancers being made for combat/summons, Caelum having flying, Arco needing randoms, Pythium with Communion, Jotun with Nornas) that is one of their strengths and it shouldn't be an uncommon thing to expect summon/battlemagic from such nations to be a primary goal.