Re: Demon Lords
 

Yes, you sneak into the province and choose 'Seduce'. There's an attempt at seduction which can fail, I have no idea what the parameters are. MR? Morale? If the seduction fails, it's an assassination attempt instead.

Re: Demon Lords
 

My understanding that it was both MR and morale.

Unfortunately, assassins/seducers seem fairly useless in competitive MP games. I wish they had an ability to "stalk" a particular unit, raising their stats during the eventual fight for each turn stalked, and keeping them attached to that unit indefinitely, following them around. Would make them more useful, I think.

Jazzepi

Re: Demon Lords
 

I disagree, they are not useless.

They are *hard to use*, but that's not the same as useless.

Furthermore, they are, generally speaking, not as good as the mages you would otherwise recruit out of your national forts.

Personally, I think the game would benefit from parallel recruitment - you can recruit one mage out of your lab, one priest out of your temple, and one non-mage non-priest out of your fortress. That way, people would actually use their national commanders, assassins, spies, etc. because they wouldn't be instead-of a mage.

Re: Demon Lords
 

I agree with Dr Praetorius there. I've thought about national spells that take a gem (or a couple) of the type the nation has income for, and summons a group of national commanders. I'm not sure if it should be one summon for e.g. 2 scouts, 3 melee commanders and a weak priest, or spesific spells for summoning e.g. 6 scouts or 5 assassins or 4 spies, and another for 6 non-mage commanders (one or two of the highest tier (e.g. Black Lords) and others of the lower tier (e.g. Commanders of Ulm).

This only works if #nextspell enables linking several spells together (casting the spell summons a Black Lord and activates a spell that: 1) summons another Black Lord and 2) activates a spell that... ... 1) summons the last commander and doesn't activate anything. Still, it seems like it could work. I'm not sure how much the spell should cost. 3 gems sounds about right. Coming up with good names will be another difficult one.

Re: Demon Lords
 

I would definitely quantify them as useless, or 98% of the time useless. You have to kite them out with some kind of gear, even if its minimal, and those gem resources end up being better spent on actual thugs and SCs, which have a greater impact on the game anyways.

Besides that, assassinating mages can be an exercise in getting owned, especially once the higher level spells are researched.

Jazzepi

Re: Demon Lords
 

I used Belial in an MP game, and by the time I had him, I was pulling in at least 200 slaves a month as EA Mictlan. If he had died, it would have been a cheap resummon.

I snagged at least one Anointed from Abysia, and a Sauromancer from CTis in that game, along with other odds and ends.

He's got more than enough firepower using just Leech or Life for a Life to take on nearly anyone he has to fight when seduction fails, without any kit at all. I'm not sure exactly where stealth units are hiding their 30 blood slaves though. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Demon Lords
 

In their sizeable pants pocket of course! Especially in the case of size 6 monsters like Belial there!

Re: Demon Lords
 

The Lord of Night just tows them along behind in his silent flight.

Re: Demon Lords
 

One little-known thing about Belial: his weapon (Flail of Misfortune) is the ONLY weapon in the game that can cause the special effect Curse Luck, outside of Doom Horrors. Unfortunately, it SUCKS. IMO, Belial should get a bonus attack "Touch of Misfortune", not the sucky weapon.

Re: Demon Lords
 

So I saw in the SC Arena that it was storming in Pazuzu's fights even though no one had a staff of storms.

Does Pazuzu just straight up make it storm?