Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

MP game. I was Atlantis vs. Ermor (Soul Gate). Things looked grim until I came up with a solid plan. Mass Acolytes (Water*1) equipped with Herald Lances! Quicken then bLast away twice per turn. Worked like a charm and turned the tide. Until "Vengeance of the Dead" that is. My opponent is casting two per turn (with his Pretender and a Loremaster with lucky magic picks I'm guessing). Whats with this spell? Only 3!?!?! Death gems to cast? Astral*3, Death*1 magic path requirement? Thats not too hard to come by. No bodyguards? Aww c'mon you guys. In order to beat the Undead you HAVE to have a very high kill ratio. So any commanders become very vulnerable to this spell. Too vulnerable I think. But then ... maybe I'm just mad. By the way, none of my commnaders have made there MR save vs. this spell yet. Grrr...

[ February 25, 2004, 03:41: Message edited by: pole_shift ]

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Vengeance of the dead always affects the unit with the highest amount of kills in the targeted province. Give this commander magic resist equipment. (Anti-Magic Amulet, Starshine Skullcap)

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

It's probably been asked before, but ...

Do magic penetration items help when casting resistable remote attack spells like VotD ?

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

One thing that would help balance VotD a bit is if killing souless undead didn't count. After all, no soul, no reason for vengeance. With regard to the animate corpse, the lights are on but no one's home. Once you rule out souless and such, the spell becomes much fairer to nations that play with living troops.

Problem is that coding such a thing is probably damn hard if not outright impossible.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

I just lost another powerful unit to this spell. Its just annoying. I feel it's unbalanced. You get way too much for way too little. Maybe the attacking units should be weaker. Its supposed to be a SC counter spell. Ok. But what about the sort of situation where you have casters who have to use "artillery" spells to take out the huge number of fodder? Like for instance vs. Ermor. These casters will all be vulnerable to this very cheap spell. Giving a MR resist item to the commander with most kills is logical but you can't always know who has the most in the particular stack. What if he isn't in the Hall of Fame? The unit I just lost was a King of the Deep. Not a wimpy caster and he got creamed. I realize I'm annoyed right now but I still think this spell is probably too powerful.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Thats the first idea I came up with as well but tossed it out for the same reason: hard to code if certain things aren't in place to begin with (like a running list not only of how many units a commander has killed but what types)

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

Er, sounds pretty easy to me, since there is a list of the destroyed units, and each unit is identifyiable as undead or mindless. Downright simple loop with two conditions to disqualify them for VotD purposes.

PvK

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

Perhaps not so easy. There is likely to be a data structure that stores the count of units a leader has killed. The same count is used for both VotD and for XPs. For the idea to work there would need to be a second count stored, that of non-undead/non-mindless, just for VotD purposes. So far so good. The problem comes in the need to expand the size of a data structure to accomodate the extra info to be saved. This may have adverse side effects up to and including invalidating earlier savegames, depending on how IW has coded the program and what the data structures look like. Only IW can tell us how much work it'll be.

It's doable, but that doesn't mean it's also simple. Straightforward != simple. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

pole_shift...

if you have developed such important commanders give them a bottle of living water. The water elemental should provide the time and defense for them to survive at least one of these vengenance of the dead attacks.

also if this commander strategy was working then keep pumping new ones out.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

Personally, rather than the elemental, I'd go with a Ring of Warning and assign the 10 hardest-to-kill (preferably ethereal) troops you can buy/summon to protect the owner of the ring. And having a damaging aura like Fire Shield (Charcoal Shield) should be a great help.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

I find it hard to be considered 'unbalanced' for the effect to be so easily resisted by MR (Which VotD is).

Consider this. You pumped out cheap units with no real survivability and put a 10 Astral Pearl item on them which decimated his armies. In order for him to counter it, he casts a 3 Astral Spell that has the potential to kill those units but is not guarenteed. It seems your opponent just got smart and you fell to the classic blunder of "I found something that works and now it's being countered and I don't like it" that comes from playing with human opponents.

You should be glad that your opponent is savy enough to make you think outside of the box as you more than likely made him. Instead of calling the 'too powerful' card.

Edit: Try using Domes or switching out your commanders with the lances to those without kills, thus you only lose 80 gold and he still loses his armies. There is a counter to everything.

[ February 25, 2004, 05:39: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

A counterpoint to the balance argument is that you can bLast undead hordes in more cost-effective ways, such as a low-level priest, such as an independent.

And as semi-relevant anecdotal evidence of the effectiveness of magic resistance, in Dominions 1, my pretender was attacked by this four or five times IIRC, and always resisted. I did lose a priest or two to it who had banished many undead, but at 50 gold - c'est la morte.

I'd still welcome a change so that undead, soulless, and/or mindless didn't qualify for vengeance, on the basis of meaning more than balance. I think it might be good too if banishing tons of undead didn't get priests so easily into elite status and the hall of fame, but that's mainly just a preference.

By the way, does anyone know whether Vengeance of the Dead will involve people who were killed but ressurrected? Multiple times? E.g. If you kill Bozo the prophet three times do you face him three times in VotD? If he's currently alive does it make a difference to VotD? Mainly just curious...

PvK

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Bodyguards don't help when you're dreaming. VotD is a dream attack.

PvK

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

VotD doesn't need to store a seperate list. VotD is an uncommon event, and when it happens, you can just run through the vanquished list and make a temporary list in memory, which you'll need to do anyway, to resolve the battle. (Actually, you'd need to make a list for each commander present, but it will take very little time and is an infrequent event, so it's not a performance issue.) No issue with saved games.

PvK

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You sure about that? Because the Last time I was attacked by VotD there was an actual battle replay. My commander didn't just drop dead on the spot as if by an Arrow ritual. Battle replay = battle. A battle usually means you can defend ...

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

By the descriptive text in the game it's considered a dream attack (meaning the dead are channeled and funneled to the unit and attack him in his mind. The body cannot live without the mind.) The battle is there because it's not uncommon to defeat the horde.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I got hit by it once, my SC killed them all anyway though, but I am pretty sure his bodyguards were not included.

From a common sense point of view it would be pretty silly if they were, given that it's supposedly an enchanted dream.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

Okay, makes sense. But it's sort of silly (and confusing) to include the battle replay. Why treat this ritual differently than getting Arrowed? (that's a rhetorical question, boys)

Thanks for the perspective.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

Battle Replay
Battle replay is there because it's a "real" battle - guess it's (code-wise) some kind of assassination (bodyguards left out), including spellcasting, dying from exhaustion, melee etc.

my opinion
It doesn't make sense to me that undead are counted as kills. It's especially strange that killing the soulless from VotD acutally counts against the rating, too - had a really strange incident with a Sidhe Lord. He got VotD'ed when he had 21 kills and wasn't in the hall of fame. He killed off those soulles and jumped there with 42 kills. Obviously the AI had a good time tracing him with spells or scouts (or blatantly cheated), 'cause he resisted 3 or more castings, killed those 42 souls off again before he finally exhausted himself frying the 3 Last soulless of the attacking 84 when he failed the MR test the third time he(I still wonder why the idiot chose a fat-20 spell when at 90 already, instead of doing melee what would have cost him net 2 pts/turn..)

Last but ..
Could anyone tell me why the attacking souls are actually represented by soulless? Wouldn't be Ghosts or Spirits more appropiate?


edited: faulty memory - the commander got VotD'ed 3 times succesfully - the first 2 times where pretty funny as they gave him a nice boost

[ February 25, 2004, 09:17: Message edited by: Arralen ]

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It would, but that would make the spell really ugly ...

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

Spell should be easier to resist. My Sidhe Lord had MR of 18 or so, but the spell got through roughly 1/3 of the times or so.
And if undead don't count, they wouldn't pile up as with my poor commander.

And spirits should be way easier to kill with area effect spells or multi-attack waepons or whatever .. On the other hand, they do the paralysation of doom, so maybe you're right ..

[ February 25, 2004, 09:23: Message edited by: Arralen ]

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Not "undead don't count". The proposal is for "mindless/souless undead don't count". Ghosts have souls (pg 73). Spirits (such as a Wraith) do as well. Both would count. Replacing VotD attackers with non-corporeal, non-souless, non-mindless ghosts/spirits would indeed be ugly ...

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

by the way its a design decision that VoTD soulless killed count as kills, and thus will double the number of VotD soulless you will encounter next time (happened 4 times for my Natajara in a PBEM, in the end she (he...) butchered more then 1000 soulless.

In a test game of mine, I crashed the game too, as the number of soulless kept of doubling. I think the game engine was smoked around 8000 soulless.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

They are not soulless, but 'dead ones'. No big difference, but higher mr and ethereal IIRC.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's new. Right? So VoD is even stronger in Dom 2?

Pole_sift: forget about "Initiate of the Deep" (Acolytes?). Consorts or land-based priests usually work equally well versus the undeads and they're expendible. Is you opponent using Soul-Gate or Ashen-Empire?

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah "Acolytes" = "Initiates of the Deep"

My opponent is using Soul Gate.

Consorts instead? Not a bad idea but I have to tell you - Initiates with Herald Lances are VERY effective. 2 Solar Rays per combat round and the fatigue hit is not too bad.

But even if I went Consorts and they were as effective that wouldn't solve my problem of getting hit by 2 VotD per turn and having only one survivor so far (7 attempts, 1 MR save, 6 lost nightmare battles).

I play one-on-one with my brother. The winner of the previous game has to choose a race first then the loser chooses.

I chose Atlantis this game. He chose Ermor-Soul Gate to counter. I decided on a heavy Astral Pretender to counter his choice (thinking of Teleporting around and hitting big ethereal armies with Solar Brilliance but I was inexperienced with the spell and it wasn't as effective as I had planned (still an intersting spell though)). When that didn't work out I switched up and starting pumping out Initiates with Herald Lances (also some Fathers of the Sea from a special site which are also good with Water*2, Holy*2 = Quickness+Banishment). Very effective strategy until my opponent countered with the above mentioned (I mean below! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) VotD.

Ok. So maybe the spell isn't overpowered. But it does seem a bit cheap to cast (4*Thaum, 3*Astral/1*Death, 3 Death Gems) for its extreme effectiveness vs. opponents who have killed a lot of "fodder". Its true that I'm annoyed and my perspective may be a bit skewed but does anybody think I have a leg to stand on here? Maybe raise the cost to 5 gems? Slightly weaker nightmare undead? Or maybe the penetration is too high. All my commanders had MR of at least 14. Seems to get through more frequently then it should but it could have been bad luck.

One more thing: Any breaking ideas on a possible counter-strat?

[ February 25, 2004, 15:34: Message edited by: pole_shift ]

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

[quote]Originally posted by pole_shift:

Quote:

One more thing: Any breaking ideas on a possible counter-strat?

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">More of the same http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif If he's killing two of your undead bLasters a turn, make sure you produce 4 !!

Add priests to your mix. Recruiting 10 basic priests is not very expensive, most land province can produce them with a temple, and they also are quite effective. Better yet, if he kills one, you only lose a 50 gold priest, not a herald lance.

As an additional suggestion, you could try to move your worst killers around, to make it more difficult for him to find them, and to hand over their lances to a "safe" leader when not using them.

If you are fealing particularly vengeful, look at the various "dome" spells. Some of them have nasty consequences for whoever tries to cast a spell in a province they protect. With some work and a little luck, you might be able to catch his pretender or his other caster with a nasty feedback.

[ February 25, 2004, 15:44: Message edited by: General Tacticus ]

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

Pocus, that seems awful.

You are serious that a killed "dead one" during a VotD attack counts as a killed creature for the next VotD? AND the killing of the "dead one" doesn't destroy the "dead one" for next time?

Doubling the dead ones like this seems a bit odd. If there exists, something to exact vengeance, surely there is only one such thing per living being?

When you die, does your VotD count start over? One can only hope.

I've only rarely been subjected to this spell...and never anything I was upset about losing. Because I've used Rainbows in SP. Now that I'm starting to experiment with SCs though.... Ugh.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yeah "Acolytes" = "Initiates of the Deep"

My opponent is using Soul Gate.

Consorts instead? Not a bad idea but I have to tell you - Initiates with Herald Lances are VERY effective. 2 Solar Rays per combat round and the fatigue hit is not too bad.

But even if I went Consorts and they were as effective that wouldn't solve my problem of getting hit by 2 VotD per turn and having only one survivor so far (7 attempts, 1 MR save, 6 lost nightmare battles).

I play one-on-one with my brother. The winner of the previous game has to choose a race first then the loser chooses.

I chose Atlantis this game. He chose Ermor-Soul Gate to counter. I decided on a heavy Astral Pretender to counter his choice (thinking of Teleporting around and hitting big ethereal armies with Solar Brilliance but I was inexperienced with the spell and it wasn't as effective as I had planned (still an intersting spell though)). When that didn't work out I switched up and starting pumping out Initiates with Herald Lances (also some Fathers of the Sea from a special site which are also good with Water*2, Holy*2 = Quickness+Banishment). Very effective strategy until my opponent countered with the above mentioned (I mean below! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif ) VotD.

Ok. So maybe the spell isn't overpowered. But it does seem a bit cheap to cast (4*Thaum, 3*Astral/1*Death, 3 Death Gems) for its extreme effectiveness vs. opponents who have killed a lot of "fodder". Its true that I'm annoyed and my perspective may be a bit skewed but does anybody think I have a leg to stand on here? Maybe raise the cost to 5 gems? Slightly weaker nightmare undead? Or maybe the penetration is too high. All my commanders had MR of at least 14. Seems to get through more frequently then it should but it could have been bad luck.

One more thing: Any breaking ideas on a possible counter-strat? </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Soul-Gate's undeads have high MR. I don't know how well Consorts or priests work.

The suggestion of VoD being overpowered is around since almost day 1. People might disagree but your opinion is in no way biased.

He could have a powerful caster (his pretender) using it, so that your MR is not as effective. Otherwise, it could be a bug.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

One idea...

Give the Herald Lance to Mount Kings. They kill half as fast but they're not affected by VoD. Mount Kings need only Death 1 so, even a Revenant should be able to cast it. Cheap mindless commanders, if you have access to any will also work.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

Another idea...

I think the weapons of many of the troops of Soulgate can be negated by a successful MR check. So, "Antimagic" might also help.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes MR protects from so-called "Spectral" weapons. Thanks. I have access to Antimagic spell and will use if needed.
Note: in the first epic battle with my Herald Lanced Initiates the Undead armies barely even got close enough to engage so wasn't an issue but could become one.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Pretty good suggestion. I didn't realize Undead commnaders were immune. Will lose the quickness but at least it gives me options. Thanks.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Soulgate=High MR is TRUE. I don't find I am able to produce enough inde priests (or Consorts for that matter) to handle the hoards of undead.
I was really loving those Sea Fathers (which I had never seen before and was delighted to happen upon) with Water*2, Holy*2.
Great combo is Quickness/Banishment but Sea Fathers are 170 Gold a pop.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That is a relief at least. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I hope it is the former as I hate losing to a bug (frustrating but still one of my fav games of all time).

Thanks for the advice Ywl and others.

The bottom line is the game is about over.
I will stick in for a few more turns but things look very grim.
Hoards of Undead impinging from all four corners.
I feel I had a good chance if it hadn't been for VotD.
My strategy didn't anticipate it.
Thats not an indictment (much) against the spell.
I mostly chalk it up to inexperience.

[ February 25, 2004, 18:44: Message edited by: pole_shift ]

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, and yes. <font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">No. The spell appears to use the same counter as the commander's total kills for the HoF.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

One thing to consider with VotD is for your commanders that got killed by it - what's their chance of surviving a seeking arrow ? what's their chance of surviving wind ride ?

VotD is a bit of a two edged sword insofar as under normal circumstances it can only target the commanders most likely to survive it.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

The real problem woth VotD is that it's game-breaking: If you start targetting a commander with only 1 kill, in about 14 castings, the number of undead involved will be over 10000, and the game will surely have barfed. There really has to be a limit somewhere, if only for sanity.

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

If you mean that VotD should limit the total number of vengeful dead, so you don't end up with a battle that freezes the server, I would agree.

If you mean that the spell is too powerful because you can keep on casting it on one commander until you finally swamp him, I would disagree. The amount of resources you would have had to invest in casting the spell over and over (by a spellcaster with high enough penetration to overcome any MR of the target) would seem to justify the end result.

(Not to mention the effort you would have to expend to keep track of that one commander so as to target him. Or the various Dome spells that could be used to protect the voctim and/or hit back at the caster)

Re: Need to vent about "Vengeance of the Dead"
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That was my point, yes: The number of undead should be kept at a sane level so that the server doesn't simply die: Plus it brings up the auto-rout issues if the battle becomes TOO immensely long: The target in question may very well be able to utterly annihilate an unlimited quantity of the vengeful dead, since they can't harm him faster than he can regenerate, but the battle may very well easily drag out past 70 rounds: Does the targetted victim end up auto-routing and die automatically, or get automatically slain by the timer?

The fact that VotD has an exponential growth and no sanity brake is generally a bad thing, though, since it will very easily lock up the server in only a few castings.

[ February 26, 2004, 20:44: Message edited by: Norfleet ]