Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

[quote=Sombre;742055]Speaking just of SP and facing down the AI, the most dramatic way to see the power of spells is to take EA Abysia and expand and hire mages to research as normal until your mages have researched both phoenix power and falling fires. Then take a huge chunk of your research mages and join them up with a reltively small army. Script them to PP then FFx4. If you have a critical mass of them, it doesn't matter what the enemy is throwing at you, they'll burn it to a crisp in a few rounds.
[quote]

Abysia is a "special case" -- I have tried sending out Anethemant Salamanders with a small army and watched with glee as they set the world on fire. I call it a special case because of one key element -- abysian troops are fire immune. So when my mages try to incinerate my own troops (which they seem to love to do!), they fail.

Anethemant Salamander: 130gold. 3 Falling fires, area effect 3, doesn't incinerate my own troops, so net 60 per casting, 180 total, a nice 50% bonus over troops.

I think the trouble is that I'm slightly spoiled by how effective this is, as well as MA Ulm's magma eruptions. I was hoping to find something similar for most other nations, but it's just not to be.

Karl

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

LOL!!! You know, now I'm going to have to try this and see what happens!!! This may be the ultimate AI opponent killer strategy! ;->

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

I run the kind of games where AI armies just roll over 50 PD. I doubt 125 PD is going to stop Impossible AI beyond year 3 or so.

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

Just play a single MP game, just one, and you'll learn a lot more about the power of magic than possible in a forum thread.

Magic is cruical for all nations, in one way or another. The Abysian approach is obvious, but not the most powerful.

In SP many strategies will seem cost ineffective simply because the AI is stupid. You'll never get the kind of resistance where you *have to* use magic competetively.

In MP you are faced with the simple condition: maximise your magic potential or die. Which is what the AI will do when you bring this new understanding back into SP.

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

Your maths is not correct at all, because the mages (should) survive the battle. So you can't calculate the cost of a shadow blast as being (cost of mage) + (cost of gem).

I suppose if you wanted to analyse it like that, you'd have to consider the expected number of castings the mage would make over his entire life. Say you'd expect N. Then the question is whether the troops killed by N shadow blasts cost more than N death gems and one death mage.

Anyway, Shadow Blast is an awesome spell, but should be saved for special occasions, when you really NEED to win. Mostly, as other people have mentioned, you should use skelly spam.

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

As a further example... it is relatively easy to take out 8000 gp worth of pd. It can be done with as little as 100 gp worth of troops....

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

I can't think of a 100gp troop that the AI uses that will kill 125 PD. But feel free to prove me wrong.

Also, I'm not sure that the game's difficulty level affects this much. They get more gold and resources but they aren't any smarter. Most of the time the PD is such a deterrent that they will not even attack you. Even if they do have a huge army on your border, they rarely attack with the full stack and/or they use poor orders. The difference between 50 PD and 125 PD is unbelievable, just make a SP game and try it out.

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

Late-game AI on impossible difficulty will wipe through 125 PD without effort. 125 PD w/ a dozen decent battlemages backing it up though will stop most late-game AI armies, but will suffer occasional mage casualties to enemy fliers and spells and be defeated occasionally by particularly strong armies. Also useful for stopping AI armies in defensive situations: PD + half a dozen battlemages + some middling zero-upkeep-unit-producers (unholy priests, fairy queens, whatever). If the province gets left alone for a while it will start building up a few hundred zero-upkeep no-need-to-eat soldiers, which should hopefully make it impossible for the enemy to take it later on as long as the combat mages stay to support the troops.

In my experience vs AIs you generally want troops until about research levels 4-5, then a mix of mages and troops (possibly using PD or summoned troops to minimize upkeep) until research levels 8-9, then an end-game strategy (massed clams if not using a mod that makes them unique, massed juggernoughts, massed vampire lord or wraith lords, some wished up seraphs or chayots w/ full items).

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

Huge PD is rarely worth it even against the AI. Maybe at a chokepoint if you want to concentrate on other fronts.

Thugs are the real way to go against the AI. It's not hard to build high end thugs/ low end SCs that essentially can't be killed by normal troops. The AI isn't creative about killing them, so it's worth investing the gems. You know the main paths that nation has, so protect against them and the AI won't surprise you like a human player will.

Re: Troops vs magic, what am I doing wrong?
 

Have you ever seen AI armies in the four-digits?