Fatigue - comprehensive explanation Thread - Dominions 3: The Awakening

Hi all,

I find it hard to get comprehensive explanation about fatigue counting and I hope that someone here can help me.

As far as I get it unit gets fatigue every battle turn equal to its encumbrance for attack and spells + casting spells add additional fatigue which is given in spell description. But after clicking encumbrance in units stats there is third value. Is this value describes how much unit take fatigue for just standing and doing nothing?

Will doing nothing decrease fatigue?

How can I understand Reinvigoration 2? Is it reduction of fatigue by 2 per battle turn? Does reinvigoration from bless stack with the item and spell reinvigoration?

Best regards,

Units don't get any fatigue from just standing around and doing nothing, nor do they get it from moving around. They only get it when casting spells or attacking in melee.
There are of course spells and attacks that may cause or reduce fatigue, but for now we can ignore those.

The three values are base, melee and spell casting encumbrance.

Base is largely important if you are making some sort of thug as it is, surprisingly, the baseline for units. It's always nice to have as low base encumbrance as possible. Undeads and constructs usually have a 0 here, which is important for later.

Melee is the amount of fatigue a unit will get every time it attacks in melee. It's base + armour modifiers, which is the reason why units with tower shields and/or heavy armour usually fatigue out quickly. Undeads, constructs and other units with 0 base fatigue will also always have 0 melee fatigue, meaning they can fight pretty much forever.
A quickened unit that makes two attack actions will obviously get double the fatigue for double the attacks, something to look out for,
Also note that mounted units get to ignore armour modifiers for this one, only counting base fatigue

Spellcasting encumbrance is added to a units fatigue every time it casts spells, after the spells fatigue has been calculated. As such, an E3 mage with 4 spellcasting encumbrance casting blade wind will get 84 fatigue, while an E4 mage with the same stats will get 44.
Spellcasting encumbrance is base + double armour modifier. Wearing heavy armour can be a crappy idea for a mage who is set up to spam battle magic.
Note that undeads and constructs still suffer this kind of encumbrance, although in that case it's only the doubled armour modifier as base encumbrance is 0.

Reinvigoration reduces fatigue equal to its number every combat round, regardless if the unit is just standing around, attacking or casting spells. Normally most sources of reinvigoration stacks, regardless if they come from blessings, spells or items. I'm a bit unsure if copies of the same item stack, but different items do.

There are a few ways to reduce fatigue outside reinvigoration, even if it's the most normal way to do it. Life draining spells and attacks reduce fatigue, as does the mass spell relief. Finally, any unit with more than 100 fatigue will get its fatigue reduced by 5 every combat round.

...this became a little longer than I expected.

Edited by: Oscarius

Wow. Thank you for quick and comprehensive answer.

Could you also confirm if I am getting reinvigoration calculation right? I mean - Reinvigoration 2 = 2 fatigue reduction per battle turn.

How is flying and strength affecting fatigue?

Can I somehow force unit or prohibit it to use gems while casting spells to reduce fatigue?

Best regards,

makson96 wrote:
Could you also confirm if I am getting reinvigoration calculation right? I mean - Reinvigoration 2 = 2 fatigue reduction per battle turn.

Yup, exactly.
For example, an unit with 4 melee fatigue and 2 reinvigoration will gain 2 fatigue every turn he attacks (4-2) and lose 2 fatigue every turn he just moves around (0-2).

makson96 wrote:
How is flying and strength affecting fatigue?

Strength has no effect. IIRC flying units with more than 0 base fatigue gets some extra when just moving around. However, I'm not sure how much that is.

makson96 wrote:
Can I somehow force unit or prohibit it to use gems while casting spells to reduce fatigue?

You cannot really force or prohibit a unit from using gems. The easiest way to avoid using gems is simply to not have more than absolutely needed on a mage. Having a normal commander or, even better, a scout ferrying around gems is the easiest way.
The AI will try to avoid using gems in battles where victory is pretty much guaranteed, so you won't burn 10 gems on battlefield enchants against 3 points on PD.

The AI will also generally not use gems to reduce fatigue from very cheap spells, like the ones that cost 20/30 fatigue or less, but you shouldn't have gems on those kinds of mages to begin with.
I'd like to say that the cutoff point for when the AI will start burning gems just for fatigue is around 50 casting fatigue, but don't quote me on that. That is at least the point where you might consider adding in a gem or two to reduce fatigue. An extra blade wind or thunder strike can do nasty things.

Edited by: Oscarius

Great stuff, Oscarius. Some extra tidbits:

Heat/cold
Extra encumbrance starts at heat/cold 2. (Edit: Um. This is not quite accurate. See Calahan's post below.) Resistance from 50% up negates extra encumbrance due to weather.

Stuff that does stun damage
Most of it is elemental (e.g., cold auras, cold and lightning spells), some is MR-negated (e.g., Sleep (Vines), Curse of Stones), some can be resisted with protection (Stellar Cascades is only AP, while elemental stun is usually (always?) AN), and some can't be resisted at all (a hit from an Axe of Hate or Mage Bane).

Even enc-0 critters can fatigue out and die due to stun damage unless they are immune to its source. E.g., if you're MA Agartha and think you can attack somebody in their cold-3 dominion because your golems are enc-0, think twice. Grip of Winter kills you dead fast.

Stun is a very egalitarian type of damage. A 100 HP dragon and a 5 HP markata both die once they exceed 200 fatigue. When you see something big and scary and think ZOMG I'm never gonna kill that, ask yourself: Can I stun it? (The third question is 'Can I scare it?', but I digress.)

Critical hits
With every hit you take the engine makes a check: DRN - fatigue/15 < 2. If it succeeds, your protection is halved.

Missile fire
Being fatigued makes it harder to block arrows. I don't remember the exact formula (Edit: Looked it up. The manual says on p. 77 that it's -1 to the block check for every 20 fatigue), but it's significant and makes for a nice double whammy with the critical hit rule against people who think their heavy infantry is 'essentially immune to shortbows'.

Edited by: tenuki

tenuki wrote: Heat/cold
Extra encumbrance starts at heat/cold 2. Resistance from 50% up negates extra encumbrance due to weather.

Quick correction in passing. The +2 fatigue for severe Heat/Cold encumbrance occurs at Heat 3 / Cold 3. And it's reduced by 1 for every 25% resistance value you have for FR/CR respectively. So 25% FR in a Heat 3 province means +1 fatigue due to severe heat (a quick SP game with a nation like Gath demonstrates this, as they have 25R; troops), and 50% negates it (so as you said)

The proper place for this thread is in The Codex.

The 40% fire resistance unit that Gath has also doesn't suffer from the severe heat penalty so it isn't true that this starts at 50%.

tenuki wrote: Stun is a very egalitarian type of damage. A 100 HP dragon and a 5 HP markata both die once they exceed 200 fatigue. When you see something big and scary and think ZOMG I'm never gonna kill that, ask yourself: Can I stun it? (The third question is 'Can I scare it?', but I digress.)

This is a bit misleading.

Consistent critical hits and unconsciousness happens at 100 fatigue, and both are essentially done for at this level if they're in melee. It might still take a few rounds for a dragon to die.

At above 200 fatigue further fatigue leads to hp damage. The conversion is static though, and at a very unfavorable rate for the fatigue. The markata would probably die in a few additional fatiguing effects (most sources will deal 1 or 2 damage each) while the dragon might take dozens and dozens of hits. If the dragon is also regenerating it's functionally unkillable as regards stun damage without prohibitive amount of attackers.

Being knocked out isn't instantly lethal for a big hp target. Since casters might still focus their spells on them they'll remain effective at drawing enemy fire, but this is usually something that happens coincidentally. Worth remembering when you use stellar cascades or ghost grip as your casters will keep casting it on koed targets even if it barely does any damage.

Edited by: Bоо

Well, functionally, a unit at 100 fatigue even with massive regen will take so many afflictions it will die. I've seen 1000 hp monster prophets die of criticals when fatigued even with huge regen. But an accurate point. I consider fatigue the most effective way to kill huge SC's. I've used some pretty simple methods like air elementals in front of thunderstrikers. A few thunderstrikes and any sc not 100% LR is dead dead dead.

It's very important, when using fatigue, to have combined arms. You need something doing real damage and that can penetrate protection.

Edited by: Maerlande

Do people mind if I salvage this thread for a wiki page?

I think that nobody yet explained relationship between fatigue and being cold blooded.

@Soyweiser:
I don't mind, go ahead and use it if you like.

@makson96:
Cold-blooded units get severe penalties to encumbrance in cold climate, such in Cold3 they get a +7 enc penalty. On top of base and everything from armor. That means they go unconscious really quickly if they have heavy armor, or start getting critical hits. Cold-blooded spellcasters in cold climate won't be firing off too many spells for the same reason because it adds up really quickly.

For cold-blooded it's +4 enc in cold-1, +7 enc in cold-2, and +10 in cold-3. And in cold-3 they also get the normal +2 enc everyone gets in there, unless they get cold resist from somewhere.

Oscarius wrote: Units don't get any fatigue from just standing around and doing nothing, nor do they get it from moving around. They only get it when casting spells or attacking in melee.

Moving does cause fatigue if the unit has Flight. I think it's variable, depending on how far the unit moves.

-Max

tenuki wrote:
Heat/cold
Extra encumbrance starts at heat/cold 2. (Edit: Um. This is not quite accurate. See Calahan's post below.) Resistance from 50% up negates extra encumbrance due to weather.

It doesn't have to be 50%. 25% Fire Resistance negates the Heat enc penalty, although it does do weird things to the display. (It will say: "Severe heat: +1 enc" but it won't apply any +1 enc penalty.)

tenuki wrote: Stun is a very egalitarian type of damage. A 100 HP dragon and a 5 HP markata both die once they exceed 200 fatigue.

A 100 HP dragon will take ages and ages to die from fatigue damage. I'm not sure what the conversion rate is but I'm sure that is better than 10:1 for fatigue:HP conversion. (Regenerating Communion Slaves pick up plenty of afflictions if there's lots of overcasting past 200 fatigue, but they don't die easily. E10N8 Ktonian Necromancers and especially Zamzummites live forever as communion slaves.)

-Max

DegenerateArt wrote: For cold-blooded it's +4 enc in cold-1, +7 enc in cold-2, and +10 in cold-3. And in cold-3 they also get the normal +2 enc everyone gets in there, unless they get cold resist from somewhere.

They also get +1 enc at cold 0.

wilsonmax wrote:
A 100 HP dragon will take ages and ages to die from fatigue damage.

A dragon at fatigue 100 can and will be chopped to bits by pretty much anything with a high enough morale. Though that is not literally death by fatigue, the distinction is largely technical because ALL fatigue strategies rely on having some way of causing real damage once the opposition is (teetering on the edge of) unconscious (ness).

Edited by: tenuki

tenuki wrote:

wilsonmax wrote:
A 100 HP dragon will take ages and ages to die from fatigue damage.

A dragon at fatigue 100 can and will be chopped to bits by pretty much anything with a high enough morale. Though that is not literally death by fatigue, the distinction is largely technical because ALL fatigue strategies rely on having some way of causing real damage once the opposition is (teetering on the edge of) unconscious (ness).

I was confused by the reference to 200 fatigue which made it sound like you were talking about fatigue damage, which happens at 200 fatigue. I fully agree that anyone with fatigue over 70 will swiftly die in melee. Really, even fatigue over 20 starts causing problems if you are in melee.