Dominions 3: The Awakening/Units

Units

Units are the heart of Dominoins 3: The Awakening. With units you wage ware, conquer provinces, fight battles, forge items, cast spells and win the game. Units can be classified:

• Units can be either Commanders or Troops
• Units can be either recruited or summoned
• Units can be either stealth or non-stealth
• Units can be either national or independent

Commanders

Commanders are different in some ways from other units:

• only commanders can wear Magic Items.
• only commanders can lead other troops (if the commander has the right leadership skill).
• only commanders can cast spells, build buildings or search for/ enter into Magic Sites.
• only commanders can increase unrest or perform Assasinations.
• only one recruitable commander can be recruited per province per turn.

Armies can only move when they are led by a commander. Commanders have different leadership ratings, which determine how many units they can control. Commanders can be classified into priests, mages, or generals. Right-click on them to get all their vital details.

Some commanders have the Stealth skill and serve in different roles such as scouts, spies, or assassins. A high value at the stealth skill means a better chance of infiltrating enemy provinces without becoming detected. Scouts provide basic information on enemy assets, while spies provide more detailed information and can raise unrest. Assassins provide the option of attacking one random commander per turn -- and his bodyguards. Scouts, spies, and assassins rarely have the skills necessary to lead other troops. All face the risk of detection and attack by enemy patrols.

Commanders are often reffered by their main role, like Mage, Priest, Scout, Spie, Assassin, Prophet and Pretender. Common roles for Commanders are also Thug and Super Combatant (SC).

Troops

There are a vast amount of different kinds of troops, units and creatures in Dominions 3 but they all have something in common. Troops require a commander with approriate type of Leadership to lead them -- standard, magical, or undead/demon. Troops cannot move around on their own. Recruitable troops can be recruited in great amounts per turn unlike commanders who can only be recruited at pace of one commander per province per turn. Troops also cannot wield magic weapons forged by mages.

Troops have a money and resource cost. Money is permanently reduced from your treasure but resource act more as a limit to how many troops you can build in a province. Every province has it's own resource value. Resource value can change over time but it does not accumulate over turn. So a province with 22 resources in turn 1 won't have 44 resource in turn 2. Resources are replenished at the start of every turn. Troops also cost maintenance for as long as they live.

Sacred units also use the "Holy" that is shown in the recruitment screen. "Holy" equals the level of your Dominion in the province and you can only recruit a number of sacred units equal to the level of "Holy" in the province. "Holy" acts like resources.

Land nations cannot expect to be able to recruit their national units underwater; they will not even be able to construct castles there without the aid of magic. On land, underwater nations may build castles, but will have very limited national troop recruitment regardless.