Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

I make Harbingers and use them as mobile wrather's and they do an ok job at that. Heck they are one of the few summonable A2 units.

As for Arch angles, I have never used them, but I GUESS that they could be useful as ritual units.

When it comes to combat however the bane lord is pretty much 100% superior.

But that's how it goes with astral magic. You have potenial globals, potent battle magic, but really pretty gosh aweful price/performance summons. Well that's not 100% true I guess doom horrors are decent price performance. Well not really that good to be honest, but you take what you can get.

Unless I am missing something, if so please share!

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

What's a "mobile wrather"?

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Well, having had much personal experience myself with archangels (of the Dominions kind, that is), I can safely say that they have their uses. Especially for nations with an abundance of astral income, moderate air income, and no ready source for air mages otherwise. And air magics aside, they are also quite useful in their role as holy-4 priests.

BTW, contrary to the prevailing belief of some, combat isn't necessarily about who's got the biggest baddest toughest sword-swinger. You can rock your enemy's world with potent battle spells that are as much or even more effective. And that's without even getting into Gandalf's favorite area: stealth. Or the subtlety of converting the enemy units into your own. Dominions is a multidimensional game. It's too bad so much of the discussion on this forum is focused on what makes the best hammer ...

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

well, even a minimally equiped banelord will be
20 death + 10 astral +10 water and that's w/out lightning or fire resist.

for 50 astrals you get an archangel + 6 angels, each holy, armed w/ flambeaus which are vicious against demons and moderately tough undead, flying, and w/ some innate fire and lightning resist (only 50%, but more commonly needed than the banelord's poison and cold immunity). The archangel has F3 and H4, both nice and useful in their own right.

If you're running a blessing, and fighting abyssia or mictlan for instance, you might rather want to go for them...

I bought a bunch as marignon once, running an F9 S9 dual bless. Also as Jot fighting ermor, running an F4 W9 bless.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

A flying unit that is equipped with a staff of storms and with enough gems to cast Wrathful Skies where needed. An awesomely powerful battlefield spell.

I think you are getting the powers of the two units a little confused. Harbringer: 2A 3H, Arch Angel 3F 4H. But in any case it's a little bit of a stretch to say that a 50 gem summon is worth it for just Holy-4. There may be isolated cases, Ulm comes to mind, but in general that would be a huge waste of gems.

Again I'll be honest here. I have never used them against devils. No wait that's not true I now remember trying them out against devils in one of my "what the heck can beat devils" tests. They got, as you would guess from the stats, spanked by devils. Now that was with no bless effect. With a seriously bless effect ( like F9S9 or F9W9 ) maybe they could hold their own.

I was actually thinking that they would do better.

Speaking of better, what the heck is up with the harbringers horn? I have tested them in huge numbers against devils and the horn, which looks deadly, does very little if any damage. Does it perhaps have a MR check?

I think this is mostly due to the fact that SC's are quite effective in combat and are very mobile. The combination is quite deadly in a strategy game.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Oops. You're right. I did get the path of the two mixed up. (When playing R'leyh I tend to summon both in quantity.) My bad. 3F is even more useful than 3A (IMO), but that's a separate discussion.

Naturally I disagree. A nation like R'leyh can easily afford the gems (by the time I can summon them I generally produce that many astrals each turn thanks to clams) and in this case it's a relatively cheap way to quickly get casters that can bLast your foes with Fires From Afar (and other nice fire spells). To me, the H4 is just icing on the cake.

BTW, as R'leyh, I of course have much better means at hand to deal with devils than trying to face them with kitted-out archangels, which while not a bad tool, isn't the best tool available for such a task. I think it's safe to say that we all consider the AA a "suboptimal" choice for that purpose. OTOH, part of the fun of Dominions is in playing around and seeing how some battles unfold. What's the fun in predictable outcomes of lopsided combats (when you know that your uber-SC is going to slaughter its opponent? Isn't it more exciting to watch an archangel girded for battle with the minions of Hell struggle to overcome powerful foes? Any such victories achieved will taste sweet indeed.

They may not be particularly cost-effective, but as I mentioned earlier, archangels do have their uses, especially under the right circumstances and nations.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Telestic animations become unholy with broken empire ermor. 5 astral gems for a level 3 unholy reanimator who can still preach isn't bad, I think.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Yeah Dominions is multidimensional but normally in lategame only either Battlemages or SCs , both with special troop support like devils , storm demons , living statues etc. are promising .

Special mages like soul slay/enslave mind astral mages , charm casting nature mages , deathmages with drain life and earth mages with petrify sure have good chances defeating SCs . The SC advantage is his high mobility + his resistences against some measures which normally work well against mages :
- Strategic spells like Flames / Murdering winter
- Assasins

And you can control your SC better because the mage doesn't follow his script after 5 orders anymore and/or is fatigued after 5-10 turns normally anyways .
Finally taking to much mages to battle hurts your research/summon/forging abilities too much .
SCs are just the most crucial part for most situations because they are good against almost everything and it is their natural role anyways .

I think Stealthtactics normally work rather bad . Gandalf stated this himself not long ago that he does it mainly for fun not to be effective . But you have to pay for the stealth ability so your stealthforce is more expensive then a normal force with about the same combat value .
If your stealthforce is too big it is discovered too easy by patrollers .

So Caelian/Abysian raiding forces are cheaper but have the same or even better effect .

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

What better means do you have as Ryleh to deal with devils ?
A soul slay / enslave mind etc. starspawn brigade is good too and i think you have something like this in mind .
And you need a staff of storms .
I guess vanheim is the "best" anti-devil nation cause they have good airmagic , can use a few storm demons on their own + a staff of storms is easy to get for them too .

But arch angels have definitive their uses and they are not that overpriced i think too . Especially for ermor they are probably attractive http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Actually that is a suboptimal way to deal with devils. Devils have a very good MR. The only way to win that battle is with far more forces than he has.

The only really cost effective way of beating devils is to use an SC that can tank them. This is not super easy to acheive, but is possible. You will need an actual SC, mini-SC's need not apply.

Mechanical men+wrathful skies also works against devils.

That's really good!

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Yeah devils are special . They struggle with mechanical men / living statues and storm demons for the title most useful troop for offense i think . In defense you can add vampires .

I think the savest way to kill them is by a SC as you suggested . By mages is difficult because if you mix them with storm demons then the mages have a really hard time to chose the right spell to kill both .
Only banefire / gifts from heaven may work but these spells are so hard to get casters for that you can't count on them . Only ctis desert tombs has natural Banefirecasters but they pay 150 dominiondesignpoints for this .

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

So getting back to Pythium ....

I want to hear from people that successfully used Communion. It is supposed to be the bread and butter of Pythium but when I use it the communicants almost always die.

What ratios do people use? I have even gone so far as to give the communicants an Earth Blessing ( for Rejuv ) and this does not help as the Thurges still murder them ( generally by casting ghost wolves at the end of battle that will never reach the front ).

I'll run some tests with ratios and see what I get. I know that there is no ratio once you get a silly number of thurges into the combat ( around 12 or so will kill any number of communicants if the battle goes on for any length of time ).

I'll see how it works for more sane numbers of thurges ( like 4 or so ). I have a feeling that 8 will be insufficient. Yeah just ran some tests. Sometimes they will not kill the communicants, but if the battle goes over like 10 rounds those communciants are toast. Clearly you can add more communicants and the amount of time that you can survive will increase ( if you keep the number of thurges constant ).

Probably 12 comunicants will survive 4 thurges.

Another problem I am realizing now is that having to cast communion master consumes one of the precious 5 spells that you can cast. After those 5 spells random things are going to happen. Which also limits it's power.

It is slowly comming back to me why I really use the etherial principes too much. They are brain dead easy to use, very effective, and cheap and not prone to disaster.

Communion OTOH is expensive, very difficult to use, costly, and prone to huge disasters if something outside of your planning occurs. However it can be very useful for boosting the power of your mages for a particular spell. I suppose it is not a bread and butter tactic but rather a tactic to be pulled out only for very special occasions.

Interesting.

Ok given that communion is not for everyday use and that pythium has a lack of summons what is one to do? Perhaps Pythium should fall back on the age old false horror spam? Not a bad tactic I suppose.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

And, while we're on the subject of communion, is it common to run more than one communion master at a time? If so, is it necessary that one of the communion masters are continuously casting relief?

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

relief is the key; hence the vital importance of an adjutant nature mage like a lizard shaman. that, and expecting any serious battle to kill of your (cheap) communicants. W/ relief I'm generally happy w/ 2 to 1 ratio, or even smaller for battles that look to be short. Castle assaults, otoh, will usually kill off all your communicants.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

So, are you saying that with castle assaults, even if you have relief, you still expect to kill all your communicants?

Let's set up a specific example:
3 theurgs
1 shaman
8 communicants

In this case, if it is expected that all communicants die, I would've guessed that adding another shaman or two wouldn't be that hard, and would be well worth saving 8 communicants. Or is it truely that problematic that simply adding relief casters doesn't suffice?

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Releif buys you exactly 5 turns. This can be huge with communion since your mages can deal great damage in those turns. However it is not a panacea. Further in large battles with many Thurges one releif caster is no where near sufficient. Even massive numbers of communicants can accumulate huge amounts of fatigue per turn when there are 12+ thurges casting.

And in a shocker to me it is actually more effective to go for evocation than for Thaumaturgy when it comes to Thurges. I was trapped in the Pythium is an astral nation hence go for Thaumaturgy for battle magic. With a good number of communicants ( and you will need a good number ) some of the early Evocation spells ( and the computer will even cast them! ) do a great job.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

No number of releif casters will buy you more than 5 turns extra. On the 6th turn they will stop casting releif. I have never seen them cast it after that point. I'm sure someone, somewhere, has seen it but I never have. So don't count on it. You *need* to get the battle over with ASAP with communion. Script the most punch spells even if they take a lot of fatigue ( thunderstike is one that comes to mind ) since time is your enemy not the guys with pointy sticks on the other side of the field.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

adding relief casters generally does nothing, other than giving you a fallback in case one is killed. the problem is that after the 5 scripted spells, your relief caster will often decide to cast whatever useles bit of drivel wanders into his head http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

so long battles, especially any serious castle assaults, will usually end up w/ all your communicants dead. having a communion master casting earthpower or some such will certainly help, though earth mages are fairly rare for the pyth.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Why go for wasteland first? Does anyone have exact stats on improved probability of sites? What I've seen to date simply says that Mtn, forest and waste are better than plains, with no specificity beyond that.


Apologies for quoting myself, but nobody's answered this one, so I'll give it another try:
So, any help this time around?


On the subject of Arch Angels, I agree with Arryn in that they're useful in specific situations. With AA's, I think you have to remember (as Arryn pointed out), that many nations (esp. any clamhoarding nation, including Pythium), is going to be Astral rich, and as such will be likely converting a good percentage of their astral gems anyhow. The other thing that hasn't been mentioned is that Angelic Host can be targeted on any province, so from a balance perspective, it's cost should be compared to Co Wind or Co Wild. For a clamhoarder the value of their astral gems asymptotically (for you mathematicians out there http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif ) approaches half that of wind or air, so it might be regarded as costing 25 gems compared to 5 for CoWind or 15 for CoWild. Which I think is reasonable when you look at what you get.

The one big lack w/r to Angelic Host is that the troops are non-replenishable, which is not true of most summoned leaders that come w/ matching troops. I think it would be cool, and not unbalanced to add a spell out there that summoned the Angel of the Host, at some low cost.

On the subject of Harbingers, I did a little bit of testing with their horns, under 2.12, and they seem to work pretty well, to me. I always have a hard time telling who did exactly what when I'm looking at combat replays, but it sure looked like the Harbingers were taking out devils with their horns, to me. It was equally clear that they weren't devestating to the devils, but it if you set them to "Fire Closest" (perhaps after a buff or two), they can play a useful support role when fighting devils. Again, as to whether they're worth the 25 astral, that's context dependent.

On the question of defeating devils, so far, I like Archolaept's plan w/ the 6+ theurgs and N communicants, the best. That plan gives me some good ideas on how to prioritize spending gold, but gives me no insight on how to spend my astral gems. For all you critics of AAs and Harbingers out there - do you have any better ideas on how to spend your astral gems for the purpose of defeating devils?

It is true that AAs or Harbingers are expensive, relative to other summons, so if there were a more cost effective way to use those gems, I'm all ears. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif I suppose I could always simply convert to death/earth/water and forge more equipment for my banelords, but it seems like there must be something better than that that could be done.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

well, astrals go towards putting spell foci on your theurgs, but another good use for them is in summoning Golems, who can be turned into pretty nice little teleporting SC's. Sure, w/ a skull cap they only have S3 and so are possible targets for mind duels, but most people don't create a lot of mind duel squads as part of their anti-pythium campaign...

;p

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Mages *will* cast relief after turn 5. I don't know what conditions encourage it but I have seen relief casters cast it repeatedly through long battles, much to my relief, so to speak.

True, you can't count on it...but then that applies to most mage scripting http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

I don't know if you are already doing it but I tend to make at least some of my communion masters into communion slaves also. This does take up one of their 5 guaranteed spell slots so it's more useful in long battles (then again, I don't bother with communions early on or in small battles unless I *really* need a specific spell).

It may also be what you are casting and who your masters are since, as you knwo, the more paths you have, the cheaper each spell is.

- Kel

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

If you are talking late game then the answer all troop: doom horrors. For the cost of 3 angelic Hosts you get a commander who has a strat move of 10 and who can take out tons of devils.

Before you get to that tech level there is not much you can do other than make an SC via alchemy.

Well it's a nice plan. But it does not work out too well. Devils in quanity are very hard for Pythium to handle. Heck they are hard for most armies ( not SC's ) to handle.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

w/ pythium? my experience is that they usually don't, though their may be ways to "entice" them to do so.
Lol. well, surely it does depend on the relative numbers of theurgs and devils. as a cost effective method, given that pythium has no trouble forging staff of storms, it certainly can work. you can also script them for falling frost or orb lighting, or hell, wrathful skies and false horrors http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif, or whatever else suits your fancy. the only advantage of banishing demons is the lack of any fatigue cost, which is negated if you have a lizard anyways

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

ooh, and against devils, don't forget to throw in a water gem for "rain"

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Trolls can be summoned independently of the kings, so angels ought to be as well. OTOH, the devs may not consider an archangel as a "king/queen" type unit.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Thunder strike, astral fires, falling frost, frozen heart, raise skeletons + drain life or drain life + raise skeletons depending on what order you want them in, bladewind etc. Those are all effective spells against Devils.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

You'll probably want about 4-5 communicants per theurg when you have 4 or so theurgs.

These spells will usually be things like thunderstrike, paralyze, soul slay, and such, plus body ethereal, so they aren't that useless.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Relief gets cast when the fatigue of your entire army starts to get to be large. Cast heat from hell, rigor mortis, or rain if you want your army to generate more fatigue so that relief gets cast more often. You can also put clockwork horrors on the field, since their fatigue generation will trigger the casting of relief.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Thunder stike works quite well on devils. Astral fires not so well, MR negates and it's hard for pythium to get access to it, falling frost is ok but does not really kill devils all that well ( it really should don't know what goes wrong ), Blade wind works decently but against it is hard for Pythium to gain access to it, raise dead/drainlife works well against anything, but is hard for pythium to gain access to it.

Of those suggestions the best two for Pythium are Thunderstrike and falling frost. And thunderstrike has a cool sound effect.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

3 seems to work at 4 theurgs. They die exceedingly rarely. I have not tested for 5 theurgs.

Actually I see a tremendous amount of ghost wolves. Mostly when the opposing army is retreating. I do however also see soul slay and enslave mind which is nice.

Really? Are you sure about this? If so then clockwork horrors could be quite useful.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

A little thing I've found out about mages casting relief: If you have mass protection up, they are a LOT more likely to cast relief once the script runs out, as you dont have protection to cast.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

sounds like a good tip - I'll try it!

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

While we're on the subject of death spells, if you're willing to spend gems how about shadow bLast and/or summon lammashtas? Do either of those work well against devils?

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

I'm not a big fan of anything that needs an MR check against devils. As for Lammashtas I find that they hurt me more than they do the enemy!

So getting back to Pythium what spells do people like to use with their pumped up casters? Here are some that I have used in normal combats with success:

Soul Slay -- effective
Enslave mind -- even more effective
Thunder Strike -- shockingly effective!
Falling Frost -- not quite as excellent as thunder strike
Stellar Cascades -- effective, but I feel lame scripting a spell when my caster is S5.
Orb Lighting -- very powerful but very short ranged. Have not figured out how to use it effectivly. If anyone knows please tell me.

Are there any others that cost no gems that can be cast by a A4W4S5 or A5W5S6? Anything I am overlooking?

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

There's always false horrors.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

false horrors and those who overuse them suck

someone really abusing false horrors should quickly be eliminated by any and all neighbours, irrespective of any previous diplomatic agreements, IMO.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

I think that raising their required path to air 3 would help a great deal.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

yeah 3 is a good choice

my suggestion was A2 and 20 fat which is pretty similar

zen's suggesion was A2 and 25 fat

I think truper wanted them to be A6 and 100 fatigue or something...

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

though really the worst offender by far is Caelum, so I get around that just by banning their feathery little asses

;p

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Heh - a guy needs a chance to rave once in a while http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif I think I may have mentioned 100 fatigue, but the A6 is an exaggeration http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

The problem as it stands now is that quickened Seraphs can cast 2 False Horrors per round until they pass out - and they can do it for somewhere around 12 rounds (exact calculations are hard, since I don't have a formula for the fatigue reduction of magic dominions, which are common - and also because after the scripts run out, the Seraph will mix in the occasional Phantasmal Warrior or a spell like Charge Body). Then when they *do* finally exhaust themselves, they wake after a one or two rounds, and spam another 2 horrors. It wouldn't be that great a problem, if one had any way to get things to attack mages, but in my experience, no matter what you have on attack rear, those things will prefer to attack anything *but* mages, no matter how relatively harmless the things they're attacking.

There are things which will defeat a horror-spam, but those things are much more expensive than a Seraph and his 5 archers scattered about the field, in one way or another.

Adding insult to injury is the way a Caelum Horrifying Horrors strategy hangs together. To get horrors, you need to research alteration. Alteration is the primary path requirement for the all-too-common Quickness/Mistform/Mirror-Image/Invulnerability SC pretender - which Caelum can afford better than most nations.

My considered suggestion, as opposed to my bitter, raving, pulling-my-hair-out I've-been-spammed-again sarcastic suggestion, is that the path should be left at A1, so that False Horrors would still be available to say Vanherses or mages with a random in air, but that the fatigue should be raised to 30.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

You see I can never set that up. My seraphs cast it 4 times ( as scripted ) but then do random stuff. It's still *very* powerful no doubt. But if I could make then do it x12 it would be FAR more powerful.

That's also why I'm not a huge fan of the fatigue cost increase since you could still do it x4. I kind of the A3 requirement. Of course Caelum could still do it then and it would only be 75% more expensive. Perhaps A3 and more fatigue.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

This would not stop your bitter, raving, pulling-my-hair-out I've-been-spammed-again feelings.

For your amusement:

False Horror
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Lvl of Air Base Fat w/Storm Power Casts to 100 (4Enc)
Base Spell 10 5 20

Truper (1Air) 30 15 5.26
Archae (1Air) -- 20 4.16
Zen (1Air) -- 30 2.94

Truper (2Air) 15 10 10
Archae (2Air) 20 10 10
Zen (2Air) 25 12.5 8

Truper (3Air) 10 7.5 8.69
Archae (3Air) 10 7.5 8.69
Zen (3Air) 12.5 8.3 8.1</pre><hr />

Compare with:
Raise Skeletons
<font class="small">Code:</font><hr /><pre>
Death Base Fatigue Casts to 100 (4 Enc)
2 40 2.27
3 20 4.16
4 10 7.14</pre><hr />

Of course the # of effects is different, 5 -&gt; 1. Yet it seems odd, that Air should have the ability to battlefield summon better than Death. While False Horrors have their weaknesses, so do Undead. The only other alternative is Elementals which are by and large gem unefficient because of poor AI.

To those who cry "Your Kung-Fu is weak! Death also has a 1 Death summoning spell" I would remind you it's summon effect is 1, and it's fatigue is 30.

Taking into account the differences in statistics of False Horrors, School, and ultimately Level of Spell (Alteration 6) it is not grossly overpowered, but I do not see your suggestion giving you any relief. In your example, even a level 1 (with storm power, and if you are being spammed then you are inextricably having a Staff of Storms used against you) It takes 4 turns of unconsiousness before being able to churn out another.

Take into account a Magic 3 Enviroment (a 30% Reduction in Fatigue Cost), you suddenly are in very much the same predicament, with all those charming level 1 Air casters (Harab Seraphs?) as you were before. Also Air already has a very decent 1Air spell in Orb Lightning, why do they need another? I have yet to see any other school of magic have such versatility with such cheap mages, allowing even sages and randoms to produce terrifying results.

If I had a choice between the 3 suggestions, I would choose either A.) Archae (if I wanted no real change other than requiring a Storm in place to cast the spell, and a slight fatigue bump. or B.) Zen's to drastically tone down the speed at which lower end Air Users can deliver False Horrors, but allow it to be a factor for high level air Users or perhaps communion.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Your Kung-Fu is weak! The numbers above aren't taking casting either quickness or summon storm power into account, and a horror-spammer would prefer *not* to have a storm in place, since horrors fly. Then somebody has to either cast the storm, or be holding a Staff of Storms, either of which is going to increase the cost of the strategy significantly, and require more research before it can be implemented.

And the true terror of the Caelum Horror-spam is not that it can be used to win large battles, but that single Seraphs, or sometimes pairs, can fan out over an entire empire in a matter of just a few turns, taking every province not defended by a major army. They require no gems or items to do it, and Seraphs are notoriously cheap. All they require is a handful of flying troops - just enough to distract the defenders until the spam gets started.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

That seems more like a problem with seraphs, though. Seraphs are pretty good at making normal troops rout. Horrors might be the best way but not the only way.

Not that I am taking a side against seraphs, I am just pointing out that seraphs would still be able to fan out and raid many provinces at once, even without horrors.

- Kel

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Truper is absolutely right.

I did some experiments with False Horrors and posted results in the thread about a month ago. Single quickned serpah with no troops can reliably rout 20 Jotuns PD, not to mention other weaker PD.


Same goes for most average morale soldiers. What worse, Sermon of Courage doesn't seem to help. Or it helps so little it's virtually impossible to notice. In another experiment I've added level 3 prist chain casting Sermon of courage. The large PD troops routed exactly the same due to fear aura of FHs from the single seraph.


Comaparing Summon Lesser Horror with other battle summons is not really valid without taking into account the Fear Aura. Unlike other summons, false horrors hardly kill or even wound anyone. Yet they rout 10x their number of regular morale soldiers with ease. Combining with cheap caleum mages and ability to fly and strike anywhere, it is a bit too much IMHO.

(an yes, there are countertactics of course, but the ammount of efforts and resourses needed to balance single seraph with easely reseached spell is very disproportional)


So I agree with Truper and others and I think something need to be done about it. Either Sermon of Courage need to be able to cope better with Fear Auras, or Fear aura of LH need to be reduced, or price of the spell increase. I would not want to see it nerfed into obvliion by any means, it is cool spell, but as it is now it is a bit too uch, especially for Caelum, who are already great riders and one of the strongest nation.


Just my two cents.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

The main problem with False Horrors is that there is apparently a bug (documented by Arryn I believe), because the priests _never_ cast Sermon of Courage to counteract the fear.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Hmm... I suppose fixing that would balance the spell considerably. Much better idea than randomly nerfing it, IMO.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

The logic which IW appears to have encoded is to cast Sermon/Fanaticism if units take damage (1+ points), not if units take morale losses.

Another test that someone should make is to equip Horror Helms on non-combatants sent into the enemy ranks and see if effects similar to FHs occur (with enemy priests failing to cast Sermon/Fanaticism).

There's nothing "wrong" (unbalanced) with the FH spell. The problem is in the anti-morale loss spells. If I'm correct in my observations.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

I have to disagree. Compare FH to any other battlefield summon. FH has a lower path cost than anything but Animate Skeleton, Animate Dead or Will o' the Wisp. The undead summoning spells have 3 and 2 times the fatigue repectively, and I doubt we'll argue much about the relative effectiveness of a Skeleton as compared to a False Horror. Which may be fair enough, since we're comparing Enchantment 1 to Alteration 6.

Let's compare to Will o' the Wisp. Conjuration 5 vs Alteration 6. WotW gets you 2 Wisps, which share many properties with False Horrors, but costs 100 fatigue as opposed to 10 and a gem .

Now compare to Summon Lesser Air Elemental. This to me is a most interesting comparison, since our hypothetical Seraph would have his choice. 2A, 100 fatigue and a gem. Supposing our Seraph is carrying a gem. Should he spend it to summon a single Lesser Air Elemental and pass out in the process, or should he cast Quickness and spend the next 12 rounds or so summoning 2 Horrors per turn?

The fear aura on the Horrors is just complicating the argument, IMO. Remove it entirely, and they'll still rout you nearly as fast as before, through the "death of a thousand cuts" effect - the Horrors are skilled, if not strong.

Lastly, it doesn't really matter that False Horrors only have 1 Hit Point and under the right circumstances can be easily killed, since my entire argument is that it doesn't matter how many you kill since they will just keep coming throughout an entire battle.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Yeah we see that now in our special teamgame too .

My question now is what countermeasures do you have against false horror with the same research ? With twice as much research ?
Caelum / Pythium , the 2 nations which can run such a strat very effective are probably the 2 fastest researchers too . Pythium is not as effective here as Caelume because it lacks the flying ability and has 2S on their theurgs so Ryleh / Arco could counter that with mind duel quite a bit .

So please tell me how you can counter the false horrors in early-midgame effective with any other nation ?

Truper is very right with saying the false horror is strong . 16 att/def is really good and combined with etheralness this way he is not easy to kill by most normal troops . Then he is not targeted any longer by your mages or they kill your own troops .

But the main point is with a staff of storms you could probably take away a lot of fear from the false horrors because they would be slow then . BUT we are mainly talking about the caelum raiding strat with 1-3 seraphs + a few decoy archers . You can't have everywhere a commander with a staff of storms or a SC .

So you are reduced to 3-4 provinces and can't do much against by the time caelum can do this . Meanwhile they just need e.g. to tech to the Airqueens and finish you with them .

So give me examples with which you can defend against this earlygame . I myself don't find too many and most are extremely expensive .

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

Well Caelum with 100 gold mages and A2W1 are damn good, and Arch Seraphs aren't capitol only.
How can you compete.
Pithium too has cheap Theurg for what they obtain (150 gold for S2 A W H3, sacred).

False Horror IMO should have more fatigue and/or be A2. (like 20 or 30 fatigue). And no fear aura.
Repel is almost useless cause of etherealness, the auras like the abysyan one doesn't burn them so quickly and your troops rout before.

They still represent a good stopping wall if you count on a wrathful skies (I'm playing with that strat in a game).

And in another game with Caelum that I choosed to play without False Horrors, Caelum did well too (Truper was in as Abysya) and all the other 3 player ganged up against Caelum in order to defeat him.

Re: I suck with Pythium ... please help!
 

I think there is almost no counter for a timespan of 5-20 turns against caelum using 1-3 seraphs in a planned attack .
By the time caelum gets false horror you have your Sc pretender if you have one and perhaps 1-2 weak Scs .
Mages at that stage can't defeat them as well i think .

So you can't defend more than 2-3 provinces against that once caelum has false horrors .

It maybe that i still lack a bit of experience so if you see any counter which is not too costy then plz say .