Gift of Nature's Bounty?

[The Art Of Losing]

Anyone know how much can this spell increase the growth scale by? Can it increase it by 3 levels if my initial growth scale is 0?

[Althaea]

It actually does nothing to your growth scale AFAIK. Rather it increases income in a province by +20% per candle. So If a province had five candles in it you'd get +100% or double income. If it had ten candles you'd get +200% or triple income.

[meglobob1]

It makes you rich, beyond your wildest dreams...as long as you have high dominion over alot of provinces that is...

[The Art Of Losing]

Thanks!

[sunbeam]

If you can actually get the research done, and have the gems I've always liked its cousin, Enchanted Forests.

The Air global Fata Morgana was really disappointing. Enchanted Forests is pretty darn good.

[fogandsteel]

Originally posted by sunbeam:

If you can actually get the research done, and have the gems I've always liked its cousin, Enchanted Forests.

The Air global Fata Morgana was really disappointing. Enchanted Forests is pretty darn good.

I play as Hinnom with Turmoil 3, and have huge unrest values that go down very slowly, especially in newly conquered provinces with rival dominion. Last game I tried Fata Morgana for the first time, and it is now one of my favorite spells. Any nation with high unrest due to its unrest-causing units and/or blood hunting will greatly benefit from it.

[sunbeam]

Hmmm, ok I can see that.

If you don't blood hunt, and have O3 it doesn't seem that useful. I was mainly looking to enhance PD, and it didn't seem very good for that.

[fogandsteel]

Originally posted by sunbeam:

Hmmm, ok I can see that.

If you don't blood hunt, and have O3 it doesn't seem that useful. I was mainly looking to enhance PD, and it didn't seem very good for that.

Agreed. Mechanical Militia is much better.

[Twogun]

it's really cool how different play styles have totally different experiences with spells.

[jojeck]

Originally posted by algulod:

It actually does nothing to your growth scale AFAIK. Rather it increases income in a province by +20% per candle. So If a province had five candles in it you'd get +100% or double income. If it had ten candles you'd get +200% or triple income.

Gift of Nature is an amazing spell for some nations in some circumstances (e.g where nation has recruit any fort sacreds with a good bless). I never knew it gave so much extra gold assuming it might be say 50% extra, but 200% is crazy good even for a level 9 spell.

I have several SP games where this would be the quickest way to win in terms of player effort and probably elapsed time. These games are effectively won since I consider my position to be a winning one and can't be bothered to put the effort in to finish off mutiple AI opponents.

Take a MA Marignon game I'm playing, for instance. Prior to hearing about this spell I assumed the best way to mobilise the nation was to use Eternal Pyre and Distil Gold to finance the troops needed. Once the process of expansion starts then if it is successful there is a sort of snowball as long as the lands taken haven't suffered pop loss from death scales. But the gold gained from capturing new lands is a lot less than the costs or building temples, labs and maybe upgrading forts, adding PD and replacing the troops and mages lost in battles. At least that is the case for a few months and then once these costs have been absorbed the "snowball effect" can take over. It is a sort of delayed effect in my experience.

In my game I have 29 land provinces (having taken out Machaka who had Growth 3 scales) and started taking 8 underwater provinces. Total income is 3900 and upkeep is 1700 so there is a net 2200 gold each turn on turn 49. Machaka's lands have been fully absorbed and have temples and forts in place and site searched. I've raised armies and summoned some Harbingers and recruited indy Enchantress. I do have 2 easy targets I could attack with my Knights of the Chalice and Flagellants with mage support and could continue the underwater expansion (using Ichtyid Warriors) but the game would be a slog. I've tried to diversify my gem income into N, A, D and W and that has taken time and required a lot of research into Conj 7, Thau, Const 6, Evoc and Ench to achieve. Const 6 is justified by giving access to Lightless lanterns which combined with the Initiate gives a cost effective researcher costing 45 gold and 3 F gems for 19 RP.

It seems that if I had concentrated on researching Const 6 first (for research boost) and then Enchantment 9 for Gift of Nature it would have put me in a much better strategic position and much quicker victory once my imprisoned pretender turned up. My current strategy is unfocussed and spreads my limited gold and mage turns between many conflicting requirements including recruiting sacred troops that were not used for sometime, building labs, temple and fort to recruit Liz Shaman and other distractions.

I have 7 forts including Machaka's and my own capitals and not enough gold to recruit battlemages everywhere. Alternatively I could recruit about 30 knights (due to resource or rec point restrictions) and a load of flagellants and other troops each turn.

Researching any magic path to level 9 is a major achievement and takes a total 17650 RP which at 2000 RP per month would only take 9 turns. If I had concentrated on raising my RP rate efficiently (as well as fighting Machaka) I could have researched Gift of Nature several turns ago. Once Gift of Nature is cast my economy is transformed and I estimate my income would be over 8000 (without underwater expansion) and that would give 6500 gold to spend per turn which means I could recruit Knights and mages at maximum in all forts and raise flagellants in any province with temples. Underwater expansion would also be possible then. All these conflicting objectives could be attempted because the insane amounts of gold from the spell allows such an explosive expansion if enough infrastructure is in place to turn gold into troops and mages. Obviously the researchers could be switched to other magic paths including Conj or Evoc or Thau and recover any lost time very quickly.

I think I'll go back to an older save and see how it works out :)

[BoboYagga]

Out of curiosity how do you get enough nature to cast it as marignon? I assume it's on your god, but your flagelents and knights unfortunately don't really benefit that much from a full nature bless.
What strategies were you considering?
Rainbow with nature 4? So you can build boosters up to the required level?

[sunbeam]

Nature is pretty easy to boost up with research. The Treelord's Staff is +2 N. The Moonvine Bracer is +1N.

Assuming you had N4S4 (might as well take S4 so you can forge booster rings), if you have the gems you can easily Mother Oak->... whatever really.

There are 4 really good N globals, Mother Oak/Nature's Bounty/Gift of Health/Enchanted Forests. The others aren't bad, but don't change games like these.

Oh yeah, and Wild Hunt - well since it is random in picking targets it can actually be a total pita since you have to give key units a lot of gear to survive Cernunnos probably.

The KIndly Ones ought to take notes.

[jojeck]

I looked at my old games folder and see that the MA Marignon game was started on Dec 8 and played into Jan. So the bless and pretender was an early one when I was still experimenting. She was an imprisoned Enchantress with F4A3W3E3S4D3N4B4 and she gets some national bonus bless points in F and S. Scales were not that impressive with Dom 6 with O1P2H3G2 due to taking too much magic I guess. The bless worked extremely well for the Knights and included magic weapons and blood surge and 10% fire resist so I could use them freely with the nations fire magic and elementals (and for the Flagellants supporting mages).

My vague plan was to forge Rings of Sorcery and Wizardry to boost paths but I found that conflicts with the need to use pearls to cast Harbingers and there were not many S sites in my lands. Eternal Pyre plus F sites gave 35 F gems per turn so alchemising for some pearls was wasteful but not a big problem.

Originally posted by sunbeam:

Nature is pretty easy to boost up with research. The Treelord's Staff is +2 N. The Moonvine Bracer is +1N.

That's how I'd do it or maybe use a Ring of Sorcery.

There are 4 really good N globals, Mother Oak/Nature's Bounty/Gift of Health/Enchanted Forests. The others aren't bad, but don't change games like these.

Agree, all these are great, and I've used 3 of them many times in Dom 4 except Nature's Bounty which I never realised was so powerful as an economy boosting spell. Hence my above post.

[BoboYagga]

Don't you need A5 to easily buff into the Rings?
I mean you could build an elemental staff, then the horror marked wizard cloak thing that buffs all magic by 1, then add a coin and a starshine cap and build the rings that way, but it's a bit roundabout...

[sunbeam]

S4 with a Starshine Cap and a Crystal Coin will take you to S6, which is enough to build the first ring. Then wear that one as well and you can make the other.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by algulod:

It actually does nothing to your growth scale AFAIK. Rather it increases income in a province by +20% per candle. So If a province had five candles in it you'd get +100% or double income. If it had ten candles you'd get +200% or triple income.

So nerfed from Dom4 eh