Dominions 3: The Awakening/Magic/Magic Sites

In the fantasy world of Dominions sites of great magic power exist. These sites are filled with power than can be turned into Magic Gems used to fuel rituals and the more powerful battlefield spells. However, the sites are often hidden and they must be found by skilled mages. Sometimes the sites have helpful or harmful side effects.

The chance for finding magic sites can be set when starting a new game, and can have a big effect on strategy.

Magic Sites
Magic sites are found in the provinces, and there can be four magic sites at max per province. Magic sites can occasionaly be found in great number in one province as every site increses the chance that the province contains another magic site. Magic sites are always aligned with one of the Paths of Magic or then with divine energies. This is important when it comes to finding the sites.

Most of magic sites have a monthly magic gem income. These gems will go to your gem pool even if you wouldn't have commanders or a laboratory in the province.

Some magic sites come with other effects. There are sites than can be entered by commanders to provide seer skills, combat training or monster summoning for the time they stay there. Some magic sites alter the Scales of Dominion in a province for better or worse and some magic sites have even more ominous side effects such as spreading deadly diseases to your troops or causing Horror Marks. Some magic sites allow you to recruit new units in the province and some provide you a building in the province like a laboratory and in some cases even a special fortress.

Some of the magic sites are visible immediatedly when entering the province but often these sites are either minor or have unpleasant side effects. Instead magic sites must be found by a mage.

Finding a Magic Site
All mages and priests have a special commaned called "Search magic" which will make the commander to look for magic sites in the province for the round. Searching for sites always takes on round and it is always complete, so if a mage didn't find sites during his first search run he won't find new sites.

However this doesn't mean that there wouldn't be sites in the province. All magic sites have a hidden Level along with their magic type which goes from 0 to 4. Level 0 sites are immediatedly visible, level 1 sites need a mage with 1 pick in aproriate skill in a Path of Magic to find it and so on. So for example a Death 1 mage would find a Death 1 site in a province while he would miss a Fire 1 site because he hasn't got any Fire magic.

There are also ritual spells that search for a certain type of magic site or in the case of Acashic Record for all types of site. These rituals can be set to be repeated untill all provinces are scanned or gems run out. The power of a sweep from such a spell equals a level 9 mage searching the province so the Fire search spell Augury will find all Fire magic sites.

Magic Gems
Magic gems are condensed magic energy and seven out of the eight paths of magic has gems while Blood magic has Blood Slaves. Magic gems are used to fuel rituals, powerful battle spells and in forging magic items. Mages can also used a great number of gems of aproriate type to gain a permanent level in magic (called Empowering)and they can use them in combat to quench fatigue caused by spellcasting. A mage in combat that has a gem that is of same type as one of his magic picks gets a +1 bonus to that magic pick in combat. So far an example a Nature 1 mage with one Nature gem would count as a Nature 2 mage while making spells. Only the first such gem per cast counts so a Nature 1 mage with 2 nature gems still counts as Nature 2 mage.

In addition, with battle spells the use of gems reduces fatigue; if N extra gems are consumed during casting, fatigue from the casting is reduced to 1/(N+1) of normal. Battlefield spells which cause at least 100 fatigue all require the use of one gem per 100 fatigue.