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- - Lab Secrets (http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=19739)

I empower astral for humor once in a while maybe 1-2 out of 20+ neifel jarls i hope to have by turn 30. I always have +2 hit and +2 defense bless, its cheap and very effective . While a neifel might lose a one on one to a bane lord, the neifel has better damage and way more useful overall effect with his priest/magic abiliteis. The neifel gets quickness by acsting it the bane lord needs boots which means he goes w/o quickness (bad) or he loses the flying booties that make my paratrooper neifels so much fun.The bane lord being undead is subject to alot of crap that the neifel isnt, also nothing is stopping you from having both. Good armor used to mean elemental armor but since nerf I am not sure. Plate is fine as long as the wraith sword is equipped but I tend to favor jade or hydra skin. I'll use chainmail of displacement if i get the chance (seldom). Nothing is more amusing than a ethereal neifel casting ethereal weapon.

frosted flake

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almost all afflictions hurt you . losing an arm e.g. means armslot item lost + -2 attack or something like that .
there are plenty of these afflictions .
all greatly decrease your odds to hit other sc's so they are a problem right ?

Yes, they all hurt, technically, but no, they don't all "greatly" affect you. A Niefel Jarl going from 25 str to 21 str because he has the weakened affliction (for example) is a minor effect. Even had I access to healing, I would not pull him off the lines to heal him, unless I really had nothing to do with him. If he lost both eyes, otoh, he would be practically useless with 0 atk.

Losing an arm is in that moderate area, depending on what you are fighting (and if you need a charc shield real bad)...but a Niefel with a blood thorn, for example, could still be quite formidable against many opponents.

- Kel

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Originally posted by Borg:
Fact : we all play in our own distinctive way.
But what is that way ?
How different or how similar do we play compared to the others ?

Let's focus on Research Management as this is obviously one of the more important aspects of the game.

- Is there a certain "Research Rate" that you like to maintain throughout the game ? How many RP's are you gunning for per turn ?

- Do you sometimes interrupt that research ? For shorter or longer periods ? Or do you maintain research at all times ?

- When you forge items. Do you appoint one or several mages to forge continually or do you sometimes forge 4, 5, 6 items at the same time - so you can fully equip one of your Commanders right away ?

- Is there maybe a certain Research level where you stop researching and go on the offensive, because you can cast all the spells you're looking for ?

- Do you have special tips on research which you think other people haven't thought about or might find very usefull ?

In other words, I'd really like to hear how you approach and manage Research.

Thanks very much.

To answer the original questions:

I don't focus on research rate goals. If graphs are on, though, I do keep an eye on others' progress, and sometimes respond to that, one way or another.

I do interrupt research to do things. The point of research is to be able to do things, unless the victory conditions are set to research, which I've never played.

Again with forging, I usually forge things for a reason, and look at what mages can forge what, frequently shuffling around who does what. Rarely do I have people continually forging the same things unless I'm Ulm or hit on something I have a reason to mass-produce. Sometimes I do try to make a full kit for a commander all at once.

Yes, I do sometimes stop researching because I have learned the magic I need to do something, and want to use the mages who were researching, to go do it.

I rarely go all-out for research, and I see there are some people who do and are better at maximizing it than I am. However I do keep my mages busy with other tasks, and it depends which nation I am leading, what's going on, and what I'm trying to do.

Often, particularly as Ulm, I will have cheapo mages doing research (e.g. Revenants), loaded with items. Rule of thumb is that if my mages have something effective they can do, that can't be done by the army or someone else, they're better doing that than just researching. A counterpoint is that sometimes if everyone researches, they can develop some very useful new tricks.

PvK

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Originally posted by Boron:
so how many targets are then chosen for the soul vortex effect each round ?
is it then something like randomly select 1-5 targets in soul vortex range each one randomly suffers e.g. 1-10 hp drained x fatigue added for y drained life ?

It uses the same area of effect selection that all aura type effects use. Every unit in an affected square takes damage, but I am not sure or how large the area of effect is, nor how much damage is caused.

My guess is that it causes somewhere around 1 armor negating damage in the 12 or so squares that are closest to the unit with soul vortex.

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almost all afflictions hurt you . losing an arm e.g. means armslot item lost + -2 attack or something like that.

Thes they hurt you, but they don't really affect your combat ability that much.

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]more questions to eyeshield : so will the eyeshield when you are hit always give the hitter the lost an eye affliction ?
or is there a saving roll ?

Like I stated the first time, the eyeshield will only cause an affliction if the damage it applies to the unit gets through the protection of the unit. There is no MR roll involved at all, and you are not guaranteed to cause eye loss on any particular hit.

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furthermore what is hit by opponent:

It refers to a hit, regardless of whether the unit penetrates the protection of the victim.

[ July 27, 2004, 19:29: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

Regarding Niefels and bane lords, I might note that they benefit differently from the same equipment in certain cases -- notably, bane lords ignore encumberance and rarely have much need for reinvigoration or life-draining items and can reasonably use much heavier armor. A bane lord has less reason to limit itself to a blood thorn or wraith sword, for instance.

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Originally posted by Taqwus:
Regarding Niefels and bane lords, I might note that they benefit differently from the same equipment in certain cases -- notably, bane lords ignore encumberance and rarely have much need for reinvigoration or life-draining items and can reasonably use much heavier armor. A bane lord has less reason to limit itself to a blood thorn or wraith sword, for instance.

hm but a bane lord has 42 hp so if not hit e.g. by a niefel jarl with an an weapon he will not get killed by 1 hit or ?
so with the lifedrain weapon he has good chances to get to full hp again or ?

a wraith lord can naturally cast soul vortex so there is really little need for a life drain weapon i would agree http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif
but for the bane lord i think it is in general quite useful + very cheap .

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Originally posted by Boron:
hm but a bane lord has 42 hp so if not hit e.g. by a niefel jarl with an an weapon he will not get killed by 1 hit or ?
so with the lifedrain weapon he has good chances to get to full hp again or ?

Yes, a bane lord will be killed by a sngle hit from a gate cleaver wielded by a niefel jarl. That's 56 points of armor negating damage.

As a friendly aside, I'm thinking that English might be your second language. When asking a question you don't need to add the word "or" at the end. It would be more correct to say "So with the lifedrain weapon he has good chances to get to full hp again?"

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Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
As a friendly aside, I'm thinking that English might be your second language. When asking a question you don't need to add the word "or" at the end. It would be more correct to say "So with the lifedrain weapon he has good chances to get to full hp again?"

yeah you guessed right . thnx for that tip .
will be hard to get rid off though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon9.gif .
because in german to pronounce a question you always use the word "oder" for which or is the correct english translation .
that's another problem with german :
our language is quite long most 1 : 1 translated books from english to german or the other way round the german book has about 50% more pages but in both books stands EXACTLY the same .

as you may have noticed my Posts are often very long ^^ . that's partially because we germans use more words and make longer sentences and partially because i tend to ramble sometimes much more than the "average" german .

Quote:

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Yes, a bane lord will be killed by a sngle hit from a gate cleaver wielded by a niefel jarl. That's 56 points of armor negating damage.

btw is here a good statistician who could make a small chart for me where some hitting odd percentages are shown ?

like hitting chance vs
-20 higher
-19 higher
....
-20 lower defensive rating .

would be really helpful i think .
if something like this already exists somewhere here on the Boards give me a link plz .

cause i wanna e.g. figure out if i could "swarm" niefel jarls then with an undead horde or something similiar and how my odds are then .
my second main implementation will be then to see what it really means for hitting chances in sc vs sc / semi-sc's if one has a e.g. 2 lower attack rating than his opponents defense rating .

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Originally posted by Boron:
i tend to ramble sometimes much more than the "average" german .

Yikes! That's really bad then. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif