Hey emerson:  may the sneakiest, cleverest nation win!

This is no doubt great news for Arcoscephale. I guess besides elephants, they hire competent secret agents too!

There are a slew of errors in the manual. A list can be found here on the wiki. I have not learned all of them, and there may be some that are not on there. I am sure to be competitive at the highest levels, it helps to understand all of those intricacies.

Pangea doesn't know anything about sneaking. Nothing at all. *whistles innocently*

Is there a correlation between certain landscapes and types of magic sites? For example, are death gem mines more likely to be found in swamp or wasteland? The wiki doesn't seem to be very helpful in this regard...

I believe there is a correlation, but I do not know all of the details. I imagine nature sites are more common in forests, earth in mountains, etc.

  Swamps, Wastelands and Mountains are more likely to have magic sites.  Swamps have water and death primarily.  Wastelands are good for fire and I believe death.  Mountains have earth and air.  

There's also a cave terrain, but that's rare to find, as the random map gen doesn't create any to my knowledge, so it must be placed in a custom map.  Caves are very likely to contain earth sites.

Add forests to that list. It's not unlikely even in base settings to find 3 and 4 magic sites in a forest.

The helpful Pangean says "No. Forests are worthless. Stay out of forests. You don't want those."

Yes, forests are worthless... they have way to many resources, and thier nature gem sites just clutter up the landscape.

Arcoscephale will gladly accept all those unwanted nature gems, then

Ah, poor Arcoscephale, my strategy, since i am, basically out of the game, has been 1) to be as expensive as possible to dog-like Ninnom, And 2) to help the weakest other nations.  I will try to maintain the balance against the stronger players....  and since, i think, Arco is Just a bit stronger than Hinnom, all my earth and death gems will be going to two other nations....   oh, i feel so bad i did not send anything but info to Arco....

Tell you what... IF i have any coins left next turn, (-ie, if hinnom hasn't finished me off yet) i will send some to you... maybe you can use the coins to buy an earth gem?   

You can always come down and attack my castle.....  (smile)  i still don't know how to do smilies!    LOL.

I'm afraid it's a bit of a trip for me. I am, however, one province closer than I was before

Follow up question: do capitals ever have more sites than what you get when you start the game? Is there any point searching for sites in your home province?

I don't believe they do. I certainly can't recall ever finding any.

WAR! As the score graphs suggest, the first battle belongs to Abysia.  The forces of Marverni will break against our soldiers like waves against a cliff!  We may be slow and ponderous, we may lack archers, and we may field small armies, but to kill an Abysian is no trifle.  Underneath our metal armor, our skin is itself a second armor, our weapons doused in flame, our mages skilled in evocation, our priests turn lush battlefields into hellish desert wastelands.

And we have not yet revealed to Marverni or any other nation our greatest strength, our Lord and Protector, our Sovereign, our God.  The day will soon come when Arges will take the field of battle to command his loyal followers, and his enemies will be awed by his power, both physical and magical.

Be afraid, nations of men, for Abysia has gone to war.

Tell us more about this battle with Marveni, Emerson.

Marverni arrayed its infantry in the middle of the field, with slingers slightly behind and to the right (relative to us).  On each flank sat one elephant, primed to charge through our lines.

As the battle began, a troop of mercenaries we hired headed straight for one of the elephants, and managed to kill it, while our prophet paralyzed the other with divine magic.  We swarmed the elephant and killed it before engaging the infantry with both our standing army and newly hired province defenders.  Slowly but surely we decimated the enemy infantry, as a mage and priest both sent bolt of fire after bolt of fire into the fray.  The stones of the Marverni slingers proved incapable of damaging our soldiers, as well, and before long the route was on.  We pursued the fleeing enemies, but were unable to catch them because we're so slow.  As a result, a great many slingers survived, but they alone will not stem the tide of our coming invasion.

On our side, the band of mercenaries that valorously killed the enemy elephant proved less, ah, impervious to the Marverni attacks, and thus were utterly destroyed.  They accounted for almost all of our casualties, however, and we're not overly disappointed, as they were cheap to hire, and they died well.

More detail Lord Arges forbids me to give. 

A great epitaph, if I must say so: "They were cheap to hire, and they died well." Must write that one down.

Meanwhile, on the far north-western part of our world, a second chapter of our great drama is about to unveil. The earth is still wet with demon and giant blood, but from the north mountain ridge, sharp marching of Ermorian legions can be heard in the faint gusts of northern wind, mixed with "oook, oook!" of their new improbable tree-dwelling allies, who observe the marching manipuli from among the branches. Fate forms strange alliances indeed. The laughing rakshasa demons approach to avenge their peanut-eating king, who got flattened in the Arena. Little do they know they forgot something important...

Pants?

No province will ever have more than 4 sites. Buildings count as sites. Your capital has a fortress, lab, temple, and 1 magic site. No more room for sites.

But sometimes you find a province with more than one site, and then you can build a temple, lab, and fortress, right?

Wonderloss, where do you find all this info?  is it buried in the manual errata, or in all those docs at the dom3 site?  Thanks..

Oh, it may very well be buried in the manual, it's a massive beast. Yes, you can have more than 4 "sites" in a province, in that you can construct buildings in addition natural sites.

Additionally, some nations have more than one national "magic" site. Take my dear Arcoscephale, for instance, which has 3 national buildins, for a total of 6 sites in their starting province.

I believe, though, that wonderloss is correct in that there are never more than 4 natural magic sites in a province.

On a side note, during my water nation tests, using voice of tiamat (or aspu? Whichever detects all magical sites in a water province) I never found a single water or nature site. Instead I had numerous earth and astral sites. By the end of one game I had an earth income of over 40, yet a water income of only 9. I wonder if the spell is bugged, or if I just had a strange distribution of sites.

The manual has a lot of info, though it can be hard to find specifics.

Here is a good link for strategy, and it links to the better wiki.

We not be needing new magics just yet.  Once our great monkey demons feast on Hinnom Giant blood, we will have the powa needed to get all the magics we seek.  Peanut eating King?!  He was a great Raksharaja, a true king of our great Monkey demons.  No mere peanuts would satisfy him!  Only the finest, freshest flesh would quench his hunger.  But now, his hunger is bestowed on all our great warriors who thirst for Hinnom blood, and Hinnom blood they shall have!

-The Monkey Spirit