ZFR: Ah, I have no water sphere. Took 2 air spheres because I liked all those offensive spells + 1 Life :(
Life has Remedy at T1, which is good for some healing and for poison removal. Not quite as effective as Healing Water in restoring HP, but close.
ZFR: So buff spells like bless and enchant weapon have no expiration date, but require mana each turn, right?
Correct.
Also, be aware that if a hero dies, you still need to manually cancel any enchantments on them, or you'll keep paying upkeep. Spells are automatically cancelled when a non-hero unit dies.
ZFR: Speaking of... how are attacks actually calculated? Enchant weapon give +1 Attack, but what's that worth? Some attacks do no damage at all, so it doesn't seem to be a HoMM type calculation.
-Attack and Defense affect your To Hit roll, which is what is being shown each time you see a unit swing. Attack ranges from 1-10 usually. Base To Hit is 50%, assuming the attacker's Attack and defenders Defense are equal. For each point of difference, the To Hit chance changes by 10 percentage points (so 60% chance to hit for 6 att vs 5 def). To Hit is capped at 90% and 10%. When a hit is scored, a random number between 1 and attacker's Damage is rolled, and that is the damage assigned to the defender. Higher Damage values give you the chance to deal more damage per hit, but they don't guarantee it.
-Usually Attack and Defense are capped at 10. However, some spells/effects can silently yield a higher effective Attack value than 10, like Holy/Unholy Champion.
-For every 5 points of attack the attacker has over the defender's defense, the minimum damage is +1. So 10 attack versus 4 defense will deal a minimum of 2 damage on hit. Southern is more familiar with the specifics of this point than I am; I might have a value or two wrong. [Edit: Note that maximum damage remains the same; this increased minimum won't go over the unit's maximum. A unit with 20 attack and 3 damage hitting a unit with 1 defense will always deal 3 damage.]
-If the attacker "rolls" a 10 on their 1-10 To Hit roll, then they automatically do max damage. So a unit with 2 attack will always score max damage if they manage to hit a unit with 10 defense.
-There are some attack effects that target resistance instead of defense. There are also some effects that have to beat the defender's defense and THEN beat the defender's resistance in order to take effect. I don't remember specific examples of either of these off hand. Status effects, like poison or entangle, generally use Resistance to ignore the debuff.
ZFR: Also it would be real helpful if there was a way to see how much damage actually each spell does. Like is it worth more casting 1 chain lightnings or 2 vaporizes in a battle...
When you select the spell in combat, check the info window on the right. It should indicate the spell's attack value and damage value.
If I were to use one of them, I'd use Chain Lightning for multi-targeting or possibly stunning, while Vaporize would get used on single targets.
ZFR: Also, how is a town's income determined. I know a mill gives you 12gp and a mine gives you 10, but for towns it seems random. Is it just predetermined for each town?
Like the game so far. But it's not really a 4X as I was led to believe. More like an enhanced version of Warlords.
Towns have a base income, around 6 gold for a 1-hex town I believe. I'm not sure what the base gold is for larger towns. Each farm around a town is worth +2 gold. Merchandise, which towns default to building when they aren't building anything else, gives a percentage bonus to the town's income (10%? It says how much when you view it on the production screen). [Edit: A 4 hex town building merchandise with full farms will generate about 50 gold per turn.]
A town can have a farm in each hex that touches a hex containing the town. So a 1-hex town can have up to six farms, for a total of +12 gold per turn. Larger towns can have move farms since they touch more hexes. That said, not every hex can support a farm; forest hexes can't have farms, for example. Generally the hex needs to have clear terrain and it can't be wasteland (unless the town is Undead). Some races might not be able to farm certain terrain types (ex. Frostlings can't farm desert hexes), but I might be mixing that up with Shadow Magic.
Be aware that Mills [Edit: Wind mills! Water mills have a set value, similar to mines.] actually produce their gold through farming! If a Dread Reaper (undead T4 with Path of Decay) walks across a mill, the land will turn to wasteland and the mill won't be able to farm so it can't produce gold.
If an enemy unit spends a turn on a farm, then the farm is removed. Farms will automatically grow back after a turn or two, though I think only one farm per city/site can grow back on a given turn. If your forces are strong enough to surround an enemy city without dying but you can't get past the wall (or don't want to capture the city yet), then you can lower the city's gold income by standing on its farms. If you then leave, the farms will grow back over following turns. Units won't destroy farms of neutral cities [Edit: independent cities. The race's alignment doesn't matter].
