Heat (aura), how does it work?

[Taikei no Yuurei]

So, I've been playing around with the abysians and it really got me thinking about how the heat aura thing actually works, especially since I got the heat aura blessing to boost my lava warriors to an impressive sounding heat 6. I'm not seeing my enemies all pass out from the wave of flame rushing at them though.

From what the manual says each unit with heat deals 5 AN fire fatigue damage in a radius 3 each turn. I assume that radius is the heat (3) that most units have, which should increase my lava warriors to a radius 6. It also explicitly states that each individual unit does this, so if there are 3 units with heat that all hit the same square, that unit in the square takes the damage 3 times.

This suggests that my stack of 30ish blessed lava warriors should be doing over a hundred fatigue damage a turn to stuff that gets too close. Now, all of them won't always hit every square all the time, but even if only 4-5 are in range (and it is a really big range) that should still be 20+ fatigue a turn. Yet I'm constantly seeing baseline malitia units fighting my lava warriors without taking any particularly bad fatigue.

They don't have fire resist, they're basic human malitia from provence defense and such. We aren't fighting in cold climat (Haven't gotten my hot scales over to them yet, but it isn't cold at all) so that isn't reducing the effect (not sure if cold reduces the damage or range or both, same for heat).

So, is there something about this mechanic that I'm fundamentally misunderstanding? I feel like there must be, because if it works the way it is explicitly explained as in the book, abyssians would be unstopable because anything that actually reached melee range with them would instantly pass out from fatigue without fire resist.

So, is the book wrong? Am I misunderstanding something?

[m007kuzya]

heat(3) - not a 3 radius. It is AoE3. Read the manual, how AoE works in Dominions.
Shotly: AoE3 means 3 square randomly spread from initial square. So, not all "hit" reach the same square in front of your infantry. Some hit in back, or in lleft or any other diretion. So it is easely possible, that only 1-2 hit per raund in square on front of your infantry.
Heat(6) is much more likely to struck enemys in front, but still not guaranty...

In any case - heat and cold aura still very strong. And really, if anybody fight vs solid line of "auras" infantry in melee without certain resist - they are almost alltime go unconscious in few rounds.

[Taikei no Yuurei]

Ah, okay, that makes more sense, especially with what I see from the black smoke surrounding units seeming to come in patches instead of blanketing the ground. That makes a lot of sense and seems like a good compromise overall. Thanks for the clarification.

[Fortuna]

As I understand it, an aura targets the unit's square and spreads out from there. Since the unit's square contains your units, the first point of Heat isn't really helping you much. I suppose your unit could die/retreat and an enemy could occupy that square? I don't know how auras pulse and persist in the new combat system.

Anyway, assuming that is correct, that would mean that Heat(3) only affects 2 nearby squares. Heat(6) would affect 5 and is thus a dramatic improvement. Note that even Heat(9) would not be guaranteed to hit all neighboring squares (distance 1), because it is likely to select some more distant squares instead (distance 2+).

Heat fatigue doesn't help much against militia types (maybe it can set them on fire and produce a rout). It can do a lot against high morale heavy infantry though.