How to Study

It is widely known that study is a basic part of a kingdom's play in the world of Shadowmere. It doesnt matter if you rule a kingdom of intelligent Hight Elves or one of Ogres with a "I smash you" attitude; study must be done in order to achieve conquest and prosperity for your kingdom.

We will analyze study in two different sections: study and magic study.

Study

A kingdom can study economy, construction, equipment (weapons/armor/warmachines) and troops.

Hight economy gives you more gold per turn from taxing your population (note: Market Places' and Coliseums' income is irrelevant to % economy). Construction allows you to build more buildings, weapons, armor and warmachines per turn (compared to what the same number of of laborers could built before and after the study). Weapons, armor and warmachines study allows you to make equipment of better % (check the equipment section for more details on building and using weapons/armor/warmachines). Finally there is the the option to study your troops, so that you improve their % experience. Studying troops doesn't mean the base % xp in which you hire them, but the current % xp your kingdoms' troops have.

The above study fields can be studied only with Scholars. Generally, the more scholars you have the greater increment % you'll have. Note that unhoused scholars do not participate in study and that you cannot study in greater steps than 100%.

Schools increase your study modifier and in doing so help you get bigger % increments to your study fields per turn (important note: troops study depends on training capacity, i.e training fields for most troops, cathedrals for clerics and mage towers for mages and castles for all troops; nonetheless having gigantic numbers of schools is always the best choice). This means that when you want to study, you better build as many schools as you can. Taking down defensive buildings (meaning Outposts and Guard Towers) to build schools is your best option. You can also take down cathedrals, villages, farms and granaries, provided that you can feed your people with the remaining population/farms. Keep in mind that castles give a study mod bonus, though not as great as the same land in schools does (actually one full castle - that is 500 castle parts - gives the same bonus as 250 school parts).

Generally, it's better to study when you are fully abused (meaning you have been attacked 10 times and have not given retals to others the last 24 hours) and have more than 150 turns stacked. You just sell all your troops, build as many schools as you can and hire loads of scholars (as many as you can house and feed). Then study for at least 100 turns, sell your scholars and build back your land in "defensive mode"; and hire back troops - from yourself or the Open Market, whatever suits your needs that is ;)

The higher your % on each of the study fields, the more difficult it is to study it further. In effect, as you study you will get less and less increment to your field with each turn you study - supposing you constantly have the same number of scholars/schools/castles.

Magic Study

Now, there are more fields that you can study with your kingdoms. These are the fields of magic. They are the Magic Skill and the six realms of magic: Life Magic, Death Magic, Enchantment Magic, Illusion/Mind Magic, Nature Magic and Chaos Magic. Studying the magic realms gives you access to more spells (check spell section here) and the magic skill increases the mana your kingdom's population can produce (according to your race of course) and the ability to use scrolls.

The above mean that even Ogres or Trolls that has very small racial mana modifier must study Magic Skill to be able to use scrolls of great mana power; if not, most of the power of the scroll will be lost upon casting. Study in the magic realms must go for non-mana races (races with small mana mod) to at least 200% enchantment asap (dispel is a must have spell), and later to 700% illusion and 1300% death (Death Barrier always comes in handy, no matter your mana production). Mana races, of course, must study magic realms and skill as much as they can since their power lies in their ability to cast powerful spells.

To go from theory to action, one must also know the following for magic study. Not just scholars, but Mages as well participate in magic study. The % exp of the mages has no effect on the study, just their numbers: each housed mage is considered the same as one housed scholar in magic study. Also Mage Towers (MTs for short) contribute to magic study along with schools and Castles; MTs are giving greater study bonus than schools for magic study. Plus, MTs house mages so one could build MTs bringing down Barracks to house the "studying" mages AND also get the bonus to the magic study mods. The only drawback is that MTs are more difficult to build than barracks/schools, so it may be a bit tough to build them if you have not studied construction skill much yet and/or play a race with low build mod. Apparently, schools and castles contribute to magic study in exactly the same way as to the other study section.

A very, VERY important thing that you gotta remember in studying magic realms is that the study in those is connected between them. This means that when someone studies 200% enchantment and 600% illusion, he is considered to have studied 800% in the magic realms. If another has studied 300% nature, 350% enchantment and 150% death he is considered to have studied 800% as well. The difficulty to study magic realms (i.e. the number of scholars/mages you need to study in greater % steps) depends on the total sum of your study in the magic realms, not how much you have studied in each one of them. For the two above examples, lets say that the first kingdom and the second one have the exact same number of scholars, mages, MTs, schools and castles. The first kingdom studies one turn and increases 19.3% the chaos realm; it would increase the same amount % (meaning 19.3%) for life magic or enchantment magic as well, had it studied one of them instead of chaos magic. If the second kingdom studies a magic realm one turn, it will also get an increment to the magic realm of 19.3%, no matter which realm it is (the second kingdom has a total magic realms study 800% just like the first one).

The council for magic study concerning when and how to do it is almost identical to the first study section, with the variation that mages can be used as well as scholars and MTs contribute better than schools in magic study

Study aspects

There is also a possibility to have a friend or ally that can help you study. They can do that by casting the spells Create Food and Fasting on you, so that you can destroy even more farms to build more schools. And your friend can trade you troops/gold or barrier you up as well, after you finish your study run (usually your friend is a mana race).

Some people study using rangers to feed their pop/scholars/mages via Ranger Farming. This method is especially popular to Werewolves, Wood Elves and Centaurs that have the ability to find 125 food per land instead of 100 and have very good search modifier. Also Trolls are known to do that since they eat very small amounts of food.

Calculators and study mods

Stein has created an excellent study calculator on his site, which allows you to see what is the best study-based land usage for your kingdom, and more. Be sure to check it out before you begin your study run.

Following is a list of the study and spell study modifiers for each race of Shadowmere. Study mod is for all the study sections (even Magic Skill), except the magic realms studying. Spell study mod is only for the spell realms study.

I hope the explanations in this guide are adequate to help a new player understand how study works in Shadowmere.

If anyone has any observations or notes for this guide, please contact me in game or at shadowmeredoom@yahoo.com

"Eureka!" - Archimedes

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Written by Doom. Article taken from Shadowmere Compendium