Combat spells in water

[Eggplant]

I rarely see water talked about. What are some essential combat spells in water? Including both support and directly damaging spells.

[Legowarrior]

It pretty much boils down to Water Elementals.

[terve886]

Dominions has really lack luster interaction when it comes to moving troops from land to water or water to land. This is also noticeable in how one dimensional UW (Under Water) combat tends to be.

There isn't much variety when it comes to spells that can be casted while UW because so many spells are limited to just land warfare, and the few pure UW spells are mostly Water path spells.
However, the bigger problem remains that even if you did have the correct spell paths, the logistics needed to bring any kind of viable army that isn't already ambitian or aquatic makes waging war extremely favorable for UW nations. Not only are water path spells the strongest UW, a land nation can't even hope to try compete with water nations when it comes to number of troops or mages.

As such, the UW combat is toned down to who can spam most water elementals. Water elementals are already plenty strong outside water, but Under Water they get a huge bonus regen while also enjoying much limited number of tools to counter them. The side that spams most water elementals easily wins the battle.

Other notable spells that work on UW are some buffs, small amount of Evocations and Horde of Skeletons. Astral buffs such as become ethereal are especially good to cast on water elementals since it highly reduces the amount of damage water elementals might face agaisnst another water elemental.

[Eggplant]

I am sorry that OP is confusing, I meant water spells as in the water path, not spells cast underwater.

[terve886]

Originally posted by Eggplant:

I am sorry that OP is confusing, I meant water spells as in the water path, not spells cast underwater.

Oh, well. You will be in for a nasty surprise, since while water is extremely dominant in UW combat, it isn't that strong on land battles and lacks more useful buffs.

Still, there is some extremely useful water spells and there is plenty of water boosters and other magical items that can be useful.

From ritual spells, Murdering Winter is extremely strong and can heavily damage humanoid armies since it is extremely hard to resists AN elemental damage on tactical map unless you are already resistant. Green lions, although a fire crosspath unit, are decent use for water gems. Same applies to bottles of living water.
For thug items frost band can be really decent pick although it is weaker than frirebrand, but at least it is cheaper.


For combat spells your bigger better spells aside from water elementals are Grip of Winter and Rain. Rain isn't necessarily useful if you aren't fighting fire nations, but it is easy to access and use when you need it. Grip of WInter on the other hand dooms your opponent to devastating fatigue if the battle lasts longer and the opponent has no access to cold resistance spells, which you should also use if you are planning to deploy it.

Quaqmire is another possibly useful, but situational spell, since it might affect you just as much as the enemy if you aren't immune to swamp effects.

Other than that, Water has few useful damaging spells like Falling Frost and Frozen heart. Falling Frost is basically a weaker Maws of Earth that doesn't cost gems to cast, but water 3 mages are still much more rare compared to Earth 2 mages that can just cast summon earthpower everywhere.

Frozen Heart on the other hand is good anti thug spell since it has AN damage that ignores protection.

Demon CLeansing and Cleansing water are you dedicated anti undead and anti demon spells since most of the water evocations are weak against undead which are cold resistant.

I would really like to list freezing mist as one of the better and extremely good water spells, but sadly water air crosspath is so rare that you are unlikely to have access to it.

Water does have some troop applicable buffs, like liquid warriors and quickness, but all of them have extremely limited AoE and they both come with their drawbacks. Liquid body reduces attack damage quite dramatically while quickness generates a lot of fatigue.

The bigger problem with water magic is how many of the cold damage dealing spells scale in effectiviness based on cold scales, but cold turns your water elementals into ice elementals, which are basically earth elementals with regeneration switched to cold aura. I personally find actual water elementals to scale better with buffs like Iron skin if you have access to them or beating thugs with their 4x20AP damage attacks.


Overral the common opinion is that water magic alongside fire magic could use a bit more variety when it comes to spells.

[Eggplant]

Would you therefore say that death is better than water with equivalent access? I have used many death nations, but I find its combat spells underwhelming. Are there any good death combat spells if your army consists of mortals? (I know that skellispam is a thing, but if you already have troops on the field I'd rather have my mages do damage or buff the troops already there.)

[terve886]

Originally posted by Eggplant:

Would you therefore say that death is better than water with equivalent access? I have used many death nations, but I find its combat spells underwhelming. Are there any good death combat spells if your army consists of mortals? (I know that skellispam is a thing, but if you already have troops on the field I'd rather have my mages do damage or buff the troops already there.)

Death is extremely strong path. Not only are its ritual summons extremely strong (Wraithlords and Lichess), it has plethora of extremely strong spells ranging from personal buffs such as Invulnerability and Soul Vortex To devastating battlefield effects like Darkness and Rigor Mortis that synergy extremely well with all undead troops, be they elites from rituals or just chaff raised with Hordes of skeletons in the hundreds. Actually Soul VOrtex and invulnerability alone are enough to turn wraithlords into killing machines that can take non magic wielding army solo and win.

I know you mentioned living troops, but that is really not Death's thing. You will absolutely want your casters to cast twiceborn to achieve undead status so you can ignore the devastating fatigue penalty from Rigor Mortis and just drown enemy in skeletons till life gets drained out of them.

If you really want to do damage with Death mages, you will be casting Shadow blast and Cloud of Death. Life Drain is also going to kill any thug or SC not immune to it just fine and Plague can also wipe hordes of living infrantry if Rigor Mortis isn't already getting them for some reason.

And if that isn't enough for some reason, you might want to cast Bone Grinding and Life After Death with your pretender. Life After death allows all of your units to return to the battlefield as undead and even stay after the battle is over. Bone Grinding on the other hand can wipe entire armies of humans in few casts, and any remaining troops are likely completely crippled.

You can kinda treat Horde of skeletons and other battefield summoned chaff as evocation projectiles that seek their target. Having great numbers of cheap chaff you can summon also plays excellently into attrition warfare where you just wait for the enemy to pass out from fatigue. Against darkvisionless troops, the -9 attack and defence skill penalty from Darkness turns the weak undead into elites in comparison to their living counterparts.

[Eggplant]

Does life after death depend on what unit it's being cast on? I.e. if I cast it on stronger infantry, will I get stronger soulless?

[TheMeInTeam]

I wouldn't recommend underestimating quickness. Even at AoE 1, you can still get 5 squares of that per mage, and that will outperform a lot of evos if the things receiving quickness are good. Quickened troops do a lot more damage, and thanks to def they take less. There are times the extra fatigue hurts, but most battles frontloading damage faster means you just win with fewer casualties, period.

If you're a nation with a lot of water mages, you probably should be looking for things to put quickness on with them.

Direct damage from water isn't so good, other than frozen heart. Since it's a 20 fatigue spell, mages can cast it a lot if they have W2 or W3, and 14AN at W3 will be noticeable to all but the cold-3 style nations.

In late game, water does get a kill spell (liquify), though it's easy to negate. The cripple affliction it causes is the opposite though, hard to negate.

Finally, I know this isn't about UW, but shark attack wasn't mentioned above, and shark attack is a very obnoxious UW equivalent of howl. Especially so in fort battles.