Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Ok, here's the rundown, after downloading the absolutely wonderful middle-earth map from www.ascenciongames.com i couldnt resist the urge to do a little roleplaying as Sauron, dark lord of middle earth http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif So after starting a game as Soul Gate Ermor (yes, yes, you all hate me) i have proceeded to carve myself a dark empire out of the eastern portion of the map with no great difficulty, but much dark laughter, pillaging, and fun. No great difficulty until i ran into pithium's hometown in angmar and the sphinx sitting inside of it. on 3 seperate occasions i have not managed to take their castle simply because the sphinx casts astral shield and im not able to kill it before time elapses (or so i assume... with the 500 odd units in the armies i send and multitudes of str 2 unholy priests it would take forever for me to actually watch it that far) This has resulted in the loss of some choice commanders due to inability to run away when time elapses because they are paralyzed. How do i kill that damn sphinx?

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

What's his MR and Astral level? Soul slay, disintegrate, or Magic duel could all work. Otherwise just bring a lot high damage lifeless or high MR troops and some mages with high precision, high damage single target spells.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Off the top of my head i believe his MR is 24 and astral level is 9. And i've been attacking with all the byproducts of casting Tartarian Gate 4 times a turn. The commanders i've lost have generally been a titan of some sort with stymphian wings, a ring o regen, and some other stuff on them.

[ April 21, 2004, 05:13: Message edited by: Cheezeninja ]

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

You need some kind of armor negating weapons or spells. You can also just build temples surrounding him, and wait for his dominion to be overrun.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

The Last time I tried to fight a Sphinx, it cast Astral Shield and Soul Vortex and killed pretty much my entire army. The description for that Pretender says that its all but impossible to kill, and I'm inclined to agree. So I'm with Graeme, smoke the bugger out.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

I think that you may want to look at the problem slightly more philosophically... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Do you need to kill the sphinx?

In the long run, you need him to 'dissapear', so that you can win. However, he can't move anywhere. He can't even attack you or try to break the siege. All he can do is sit there.

Do you need the castle?

Unless you're playing the default theme, you can't do build anything with ermorian castles.

Do you need the province?

The pop would be nice, lots of corpses if you can get your dominion along.

The real question you want to ask yourself is this though: will taking the province strenghten you or weaken you? Are the gems, income and corpses worth the exorbitant cost (including the cost of not expanding while you're building a strong enough army) you have to pay to capture it all?

So let him sit there happily. Have a few skeletons guard his closet, while you go and amuse yourself elsewhere. Use your army to capture worthwhile provinces on open ground, where they will be most effective. Eventually (no rush though), you may want to build 1, or maybe even 2 temples in the vicinity. He'll go away eventually. Most problems do.

[ April 21, 2004, 16:20: Message edited by: Firebreath ]

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

You are of course correct, I dont NEED to kill him, it would just be oh so satisfying. He is actually located in a chokepoint of sorts but it would be easy for me to just take the province and never try to assault the castle. But i am trying to be the dark lord of middle earth and all..and it just doesnt seem Dark Lordlike to tiptoe around a province instead of crushing it mercilessly beneath my boot. Plus the province is Angmar...and etimmu can't very well be my witch king of Angmar if i dont even control Angmar. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

Its not a question of winning the game, that would be pretty easy from the position im in, its just a question of killing this damn sphinx in battle. 30 protection, 24 Mr, 9 astral, and 1200 hp is hard to take down.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

A while back, I thought I was going to have similar results storming a castle with a Sphinx inside. I also did not wait for the dominion to lower, so was faced with a 1300+ hp Sphinx at the time.

Much to my surprise, once my vine ogres broke inside the castle and surrounded it, they easily beat it down within 10-15 rounds or so (could have been more, but they seemed to be doing 100+ damage per round).

I am not sure whether Astral Shield was up, but I would assume so. I see vine ogres are mindless. Does that make them immune to the paralyzing effect of Astral Shield? Perhaps I was just lucky, but I seem to recall the vine ogres killed it alone without any debuffing at all http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif .

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Sending somebody in with a Black Bow of Botulf + Eye of Aiming + Wind Guide/Aim should help, as would sending a flyer to thwap the Sphinx with the Staff of Kurgi. Both cause Feeblemind, which neutralizes the spellcasting and if memory serves gives a penalty to MR.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

OT: I tried that link you gave to the map but cant get it to work. A ME map sounds good to me.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Thats because a small spelling error, try this and shouldn't have any problems.
http://www.ascensiongames.com/

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

How about mandragoras? They'd get him to 200 fatigue in a round or two and they should be immune to paralyze. 200 fatigue gives a great chance to pierce armor. I'm not sure they'd be able to do enough damage by themselves (but maybe they can) so you might want to back them with some mages amd archers.

Mandragoras are one of my favorite units in the game. Those sleep vines are great.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Yes, the middle earth map is pretty cool. The impassable mountain ranges make things interesting, with some good bottlenecks. The downside I found was that some of the home castle provinces were butted up to assorted impassable mountains, which reduces the number of effective neighboring provinces, thus making for less gold and resources than typical in those home provinces.

Also: are you aware that it's possible as of the latest patch to speed up the battle viewing? 'f' makes things move faster, and 'n' skips to the next round. Between those two, you should be able to get to viewing the late battle rounds without too much delay.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

you can speed up replay now? Exceeelleeent.....

Mandragora's huh... sounds good.
On a sleep vinte note, i recently started a game with a carrion dragon pretender because he looked pretty nifty. What i failed to note was that despite his giant wings he CANNOT fly. Strange.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I imagine that's because he's actually a rotting corpse covered with moss.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

When it comes to Sphinx killing, a personal favourite is the quickened Son of Niefel equipped with 2 dusk daggers: aprox 120 protection negating damage per combat round. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

edit-maths

[ April 23, 2004, 16:14: Message edited by: Wendigo ]

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

I once took down a Personal Luck'ed, Ethereal (forgot how he got it) Sphinx inside a castle. I ended up losing about 2/3 of my forces, but since tower fire can berserk some einheres, they didn't route when everyone else did. They were so tired they ended up attacking once every two turns.

So, to recap, dual weapon soldiers are good if you have no alternatives. I'm talking Falchioneers, Einheres, and Centaur cataphracts, to a lesser extent. When it's inside a fort of some sort, berserkers are almost essential.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Gate Cleaver, armor-negating axe dishing out damage with about 30 points of weapon damage added to the strength... As Caelum you might be able to give few Storm Generals Gate Cleavers and maybe amulets of antimagic. Most other nations don't have access to flyer commanders able to use weapons, but if the Sphinx is you only problem even an independant Knight Commander can dish out some damage until paralyzed...

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Oh, and if you have a 3E/1S caster, you can always try Gifts from Heaven. It's not too precise, but with quickness you can toss six meteors a turn at 150 pts each. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif 900 points in one turn would wipe the smile off the face of even a Sphinx.
Granted, a 3E caster is probably better used casting Weapons of Sharpness so even your regular troops get the AP flag, while an astral mage could go for Astral Weapon then start swinging if he's buff enough.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

True. But can the Dracolich fly? I'm at work and i've never used a Dracolich, but if memory serves me right then they can. Its something of a convention in fantasy that undead things with wings can fly through innate magical abilities or whatnot. I'm not saying its a problem that needs to be fixed, i just failed to look closely enough and was surprised when he couldnt in fact, fly.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Haha, found out what works really well. A casting or two of Living Clouds may not kill him, but I just tried it against a 1400 hp sphinx, and while I only brought him down to about 500 hps, I think he got every affliction possible. Then once he's feebleminded and blind you can kill him with anything.

[ April 24, 2004, 03:00: Message edited by: Yossar ]

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

After seeing all of these sphinx killing ideas, I've concluded that it's much easier and efficient to just kill his dominion... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

That was my Sphinx you killed, Yossar http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif . He was also cursed which might skew your results. I learned that if it gets to the point where your Sphinx is in battle, the game is over. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Well, there's your answer, then: CURSE the Sphinx first, THEN try to kill him. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Really, though, killing a Sphinx isn't a battle, it's a demolitions project. The Sphinx is completely immobile now, so there's really no point to taking it anyway: The teleporting Sphinx of Doom is gone. Now it's just a greatly overpriced chassis that doesn't offer anything other, far cheaper immobiles don't, and loses even the ability to teleportate.

[ April 24, 2004, 20:12: Message edited by: Norfleet ]

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Norfleet, although this wouldn't matter to a ludicrously (my word of the day) large sieging army, the sphinx would be bLasting your units with stone age every turn, and then every couple turns when his fatigue gets high. Towers will also be demoralizing your soldiers while you beat on the aforementioned sphinx. Unless you have a large enough army, they would rout before the job is done.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Sphinx and Mountain Citadel are both wonderful if you are planning to get your home citadel sieged... Unfortunately, that isn't a very good strategy! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif

If the other player knows that he will have a hard time taking your home from you, then it is a different thing altogether. You just need some gem income so that you can do something while under siege. The problem is that in the early game, if you can't recruit your national troops the enemy will eventually take out all your provinces.

I would suggest making the Sphinx always be "on-patrol", or outside the fort, whatever he is doing. You could build your fort around your god, but in the stories and in history Sphinxes were guarding the city, or the pyramids, or whatever. At the moment that is not happening... I don't know how this new ability would be called, but it would add some interesting options to thematically enchance the game... As an example, Druids might be so accustomed to the Nature that they wouldn't even come inside a fort!

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

Too lazy to check right now but I didn't think immobiles could patrol.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">And why, exactly, are you using soldiers to storm the fort when the only target is a Sphinx they probably can't damage with their puny weapons?

This isn't a job for an army, this is a job for a demolitions team. Send in some guys equipped with armor-piercing and negating weapons that are immune to things like Breath of Winter and Soul Vortex. You'll quickly find this to be a trivial exercise once you realize that this is not a battle, this is a demolitions project.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

When I talked about auto-patrol, I meant that Sphinx would not patrol but would always be conisdered to be outside the fort, just as all patrollers are ATM. So, that Sphinx could very well be researching, but it would still be exposed to attack. It wouldn't have the towers of your fortress to defend it, but it would have all its magics, and of course would have to be destroyed by those special demolition teams. The only problem is the fact that if everybody else routs, the Sphunx dies... But that is totally different problemm, and not really related to the Sphinx-problem.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

I can't think of one morale-less unit that can even put a dent in a properly built sphinx before tower fire or spells would cut them apart.

I've said it once, but I'll say it again, the best method is to de-dominion-ify ( http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon10.gif ) the sphinx.

Re: Sphinx Killin Tips
 

What's a "properly built sphinx"? At 60 points and 40 per new path, building an immobile SC is not cheap and not at all worth it. I'd say you could reasonably add one or two other paths at most.

If we're assuming the sphinx is alone, communion isnt a factor so he'll fatigue out after casting a few spells, so you probably dont even need armor piercing. What's the chance to pierce armor at 100 fatigue? Only ways he can get back fatigue are with drain life/soul vortex and relief. You should send lifeless troops to deal with the astral shield, so you don't have to worry about drain life. I doubt he would spam Relief but if he does you'll have to bring armor piercing troops. Otherwise just get the highest damage lifeless troops you can find. You could use Arrow Fend/Storm to take care of the tower fire.

[ April 26, 2004, 09:34: Message edited by: Yossar ]