Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

Science - I'd really appriciate it if you'd backstab Ermor now just to prove a point;)

By the way, is there any chance we might settle our own personal conflict while this crusade is going on?

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

well after a battle where i cast 26 soul slays and had 1 success
i find that somehow my god got attacked before she moved (which i didnt know was possible)
and died to the first soul slay cast
:(

this was my first multiplayer game of dom3
my opinion of the game is a bit sour today
but i am feeling the randomness of certain things is a bit to much for me
after so many months of investment in careful turns
its pretty disspointing for things to go south so quickly

congrats to man who has expertly dismantled my empire in two or three turns
i feel sad that my merciless conquest of Ctis will not be completed

as i do not want to see man inherit all my empire

i hereby formally renouce all NAP I have with anyone effective immediately
please do not expect that i am going to keep any agreements i may or may not have made with you
nor will i for this point expect that you will keep those you made with me

bye for now
anthropos

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

Well, since it's Kuritza you are up against, you can perhaps take comfort in the fact that you are being trashed by an excellent player. You might want to try a smaller map with other noobish players next time, if you prefer your lessons in dominions to be a little less brutal. :)

Soul Slay cares about MR, it's not completely random. Penetration items on the caster and MR of the intended victim matter a lot.

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

I always said that MR is an unreliable protection against spells like soul slay, charm etc. As a rule of thumb - never, ever send your SCs out without at least an antimagic amulet. Your goddess had MR 19, which is rather low. And I got lucky, of course. MR of 25 will protect you long enough, most of the time. (I still lost some Arch Devils with MR 25 to WL's charmers back then - some bad rolls). MR of 30 is more or less a proof, but its also really hard to get without gimping your SC.

To intercept armies before they move, you need a teleport or cloud trapeze. Magic movement is resolved before normal movement. Teleporting is a huge advantage, actually, because you can see the equipment of your target, you know his weaknesses and thus can attack him where it hurts.

Btw, a tip: if your SC has astral, give him two pearls. After the battle, script him for returning and move to the lab; if he gets intercepted, he just casts returning and stays alive. (Golems are a notable exception - they are dumb and can ignore scripted returning sometimes). You can also script your lone SC for retreat if you expect an ambush, if there are friendly provinces to retreat to.

Again, let me say that for a first MP game you did just great.

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

It's generous of you to provide your opponents with advice!

One point I don't agree with: scripting an SC for retreat will get it killed if there are no other commanders of yours in the province, and someone casts an assassination ritual on it.

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

Indeed, assasination spells makes retreat order a very hazardous one.

This conversation of yours reminds me of a game where I was ea TC and vfb was R'lyeh. I just kitted out my cyclops with MR items to keep his soul slays busy. None of them got through (Not a big surprise with that high MR). Too bad something got him blind a few turns before, so he was somewhat useless in close combat with his hordes of trolls, or whatever he was throwing at me.

Pic of the aforementioned cyclops here.

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

Wow. :) You forgot a magebane sword!

Yea, btw. Scripting SC for retreat might auto-kill him when he's earth-attacked or something. But your opponent has to guess that you will retreat, otherwise he just wont cast earth attack on a supercombatant. Sometimes, Dominions reminds me of poker.

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

so how do you get past an MR of 19 anyway? Do penetration items stack with each other? If not then even if you had a S9 mage with a eye of the void your soul slay bonus would still only be 15. Beating someone by 4 on a 2d6 roll doesn't happen very often.

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

Yeah, penetration bonus items stack. That's Void eye + spell focus + rune smasher = "cheap" +5 penetration iirc. Then there are RoW and RoS and probably some artifacts that also give penetration if you have third misc slot for the caster. And like you implied, more magic skill gives penetration (+1 penetration for every 2 skill over spell path requirement). At least that's how I remember it.

Re: Setsumi - LA game, upload pretenders!
 

Dice rolls are open-ended here, afaik. On a roll of 6, you roll 1d6 one more time. So actually, MR 18-19 gets penetrated routinely, even without penetration items.
...oh, and maybe some spells get some penetration bonus themselves, as an undocumented feature. At least SS, control and charm tend to work. Maybe its just Murphy's Laws though.