Re: Guide to Marverni
 

How many gems does it take to summon and equip it? If its fairly low I could see it just as a raider, or a thuggish supplement to your army. Its not like its mean to take on a serious army with mage support.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

7 nature gems to summon, 5 astral for MR-boost, 10 nature for regen (if you don't have a nature bless, or if you want to stack). So if you have a dwarven hammer and give it those two items you're talking 14 nature gems and 3 astral.

However, I prefer a nature bless and would rather summon another boar than equip each with a ring of regen.

I also don't think you need prot. items - trust instead to regen and not getting hit often due to ethereal & luck. Of course it is always nice to have more slots...

Like I said before though, if you really want to kill these guys you'll find a way, but in the mean time they could cause a lot of damage. The real benefit is that it's a fairly low cost.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

that is pretty cheap. And while you wait to build up a critical mass you can have them sit around summoning little boars.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

E9 Cat Charm does not give +4 Prot. In retrospect this doesn't surprise me because Prot 0 Robes also do not give the bonus although Prot 3 Robes do. (IIRC Ktonian Necromancers have the Prot 0 version).

-Max

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

In light of testing VBF did I want to revise my estimation of how effective blood sacrificing is. Here's the thread in question: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...454#post696454

So, each slave you sacrifice causes 2 temple checks. That means my suggested 5 druids teleporting in with jade knives would have the effectiveness of 45 temples in a tightly concentrated area using 1200 gold in temples. That's a three turn KO in the right situation.

Turn 1: 5 temple druids teleport around the enemy capital while golems, more druids, etc teleport onto the capital wiping out the PD and sieging it.

Turn 2: Temples go up, capital siegers retreat

Turn 3: All the temple checks from blood sacrifice go off *before* anybody in the capital can attack any of the temples.

Well, since the enemy capital is likely to be domed you might need to use something more sneaky like flying in a golem or using something stealthy. Naaaaaasty potential.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

For teleporting, what about adding some stone idols so you can immediately drop dominion even before you start building/sacrificing. Easy to build for Marverni too.

It was mentioned earlier, but Farstrike is a spell that can stop a lot of early rushes. It's Thau 1 and you can hit for (25+ (and in emergency you can craft the bear claw talisman (con0) to hit for 30+). Farstrike also has excellent range (50) and precision (5) So if you get attacked by say turn 7, you'll have far strike and should have hopefully at least 1 druid to hit hard. So your hordes of cheap troops backed by farstrike should make Marv a bit harder to rush than other nations.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

1 guy farstriking isn't going to make much difference unless you're being rushed with low hp expensive units.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

No, but 7 druids farstriking might. That's about as much precision/damage as Lightning (more vs. low-armor EA units). The real question: Lightning ignores shield parry even though it's not Prec 100. Does Farstrike ignore shield parry too?

(Yes, I know Farstrike is Prec 100 in CBM.)

-Max

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

It was once.

I don't know if it's the shield but it's possible to resist farstrike even with 100 precision.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

In cbm I see farstrike miss a lot. It often appears to hit, but still misses, so that's either shields or not hitting somehow despite hitting the square. The stats on farstrike look good but in cbm right now it doesn't seem anywhere near as good as lightning bolt to me.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

It got changed recently in CBM (maybe 1.5). Used to be S/E mages would pick off enemy mages because of their lack of armor and the 100 precision....most frustrating to have a sniper spell with essentially a "target low armor & hitpoint units" because of the way the AI evaluates targets.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

Lol.
So that's why my strength of gianted bearclaw talismaned girdle of mighted 1 shot 1 kill bear (transformation) farstrikers were doomed to snipe archers...

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

So expanding on this I guess Gifts from Heaven and similar spells target units with high armor?

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

I've never tried Farstrike for sniping, I'm surprised it would target mages. I'd have thought it would still favour a higher HP target.

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

From what I understand the AI does several theoretical test castings of a spell and sees how many hitpoints damage are caused for a given spell against a given target. Farstrike is largely mitigated by armor, so if you have several mages behind heavy infantry blockers the mages will exclusively be targeted. For gifts from heaven you have to consider the accuracy as well as the number of units affected. If you've got a clump of 10 hitpoint humans which over several theoretical tries the AI usually manages to mostly hit vs a moderate hitpoint leader that the gifts tend to miss then the AI will target the infantry. If you've got a 150 hitpoint tartarian though....

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

That's quite interesting, thank you. With 16+Str (say 24-26) damage, I'd assumed the AI would look at a 9HP 0protec mage and a 10HP 10protec grunt and think it would readily deal 10HP damage to the grunt.

However, I presume you could arrange alternative chaff: a unit like a shambler with weak protec and plenty of HP would probably be a more attractive target?

Re: Guide to Marverni
 

For farstrike (earlier version) I think the way the AI thinks is "Out of my tests I kill the 10 protection infantry 80% of the time, but I kill the 0 protection mage 100% of the time, on average dealing more hitpoints of damage if I target the mage". Shamblers are some of my favorite mage decoys for this reasons, because of their hitpoints, protection & MR they'll often be targeted by mages. Of course it's prohibitively expensive to use them as, say blade wind decoys. ;)