Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

Stellar Cascades is _so_ sweet spell. Just this turn one Niefel Jarl was killed by them and other would have too should those damned Markatas stopped rock-throwing and started clubbing.

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

I actually got that idea from exactly that battle where a small force of monkey PD plus 4 stellar cascade casting chimps took out a fully kited Niefel Jarl SC. Thanks Atul! I was wracking my brains trying to think of a way to take down 2 Chayots and 6 Ophans I think. Then lo and behold, a little scout came and showed me the way! :D

Gath is a very tough nation. I think I will pick them next game.

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

Oh it's a useful spell, and I like using it. Just figured at 22MR (I know, coulda/shoulda been higher), that not enough of something like that should stick.

Worst part is, Chayots aren't that high HP, if I hadn't had the Ophanim clustered with them, your mages could have found something else to mess with.

Not that I think it would have made so much difference with your 55 commanders throwing all hell at me. ;) Which BTW, good move getting rid of all the human sized troops with the RoS/Earthquake combos - if you play them, remember they get no access to Arrow Fend. :p

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

I am not sure mr protects from stellar cascades. Though I think it did once upon a time. In Alpaca my e9n9 White Centaurs fought many an astral race and seemed never to be bothered by the spell. And I do recall specifically watching battle replays looking at that issue.

Was the E9 bless enough to offset the mass spam from stellar cascades? i do not think it was. I remember literally 30-40 mages spamming my White Centaurs and they just did not get much fatigue. Though i had 40-50 of them and you do not get to spam them all that long before they are on top of you. But I think at some past point MR was a counter. But it does not appear to help anymore.

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

What made you think you got an MR roll against Stellar Cascades?

Edit: Ninja'd. as for the centaurs, I'd guess that bonus armour from E9 as well as reinvig could have let the centaurs shrug off a lot of the stun damage.

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

MR certainly does not help against SCs (Stellar Cascades, dummy :p ), but with E9 bless the extra armour helps a bit and extra reinvigoration even more. Only problem with SC is that the AI won't cast it, preferring Paralyze even against MR 30+ opponents. Which is plain silly.

IMHO the AI statistical analysis shouldn't be just about the expected return (effect * probability), but should take variance into account. Even taking just median result would help against high-effect outliers that make AI cast paralyze on night-immune targets.

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

Anecdotal, non-scientific observation? O.o

I just thought I saw even ordinary troops sometimes suffer no Fatigue.

At any rate, that's just brutal with a large enough force casting it. Seriously, by the end of the second volley, one of the Chayots was already ~130 Fatigue. You can't reinvig from that. :p

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

There are effective counters to Stellar Cascades. You saw them in the battle you watched with me fighting marignon. He had like 40 astral mages there, and you might have noticed most were spamming that spell, but you did not see many of my troops bothered by it.

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

Well that's more typical of a larger engagement - the mages spread it around. In this particular case, all I had left was 2 Chayots, 7 Ophanim, and a handful of Kohen thugs. The Ophanim were set to Guard Commander on one of the Chayots, and that made that particular spot on the field my highest HP density, so they just bombarded that Chayot over and over again.

So if the most effective counter is large numbers of troops, we were a couple of turns late for me to make use of that. :D

Re: KingMaker - let the Ascension War commence!
 

Oh, boy do I feel stupid. Stellar Cascades is not AN! I was staring straight at the data dump and I didn't realize it!

I had more or less resigned myself to losing a bunch of Jarls, but if all I have to do is boost their prot to 25 (easy enough to do), then it's not an issue.

Sigh. I wish I had the time to devote myself fully to this game :(.

Thesis work, election, etc. etc.