Most powerful spells?
 

This game has really a wonderful wide range of spells, yet ther are a few that are so powerful, with such a huge benefit, that you see them used every game.
So I thought a list would be nice and those spells that show up too often will hopefully get a nerf in future patches.

So here is my list:

early game: (lvl 1-4)
1. Mistform (best buff spell in the game)
2. flaming arrows (better than a lvl 9 fire blessing for just 1 gem)
3. paralyze ( very cheap and very good at killing SCs)

mid game: (lvl 5-7)
1. wrathful skies (need to kill an army? here you go!)
2. bind ice devil (cheap and one of the best scs)
3. forge of the ancients (quite nice to build all the toys)

late game: (lvl 8-9)
1. wish (well can´t really beat this spell)
2. manifestation (very cheap commander assasination)
3. earth attack (see above)

So please post your lists
Greets

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

early game -
1. Communion Master
2. Communion Slave

midgame -
1. Communion Master
2. Communion Slave

late game -
1. Communion Master
2. Communion Slave

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

Early - Almost anything that scales up with power if you have right pretender.


Mid - Quickness. It really starts to rock in midgame, and in lategame the big foozles will need many casters anyway.

Other combos, like Communion master/slave + Summon Earthpower + attack spells.

Late - all the bombs that "should be nerfed", inluding Ghost Riders and Wish, plus everything that will surprise your enemy.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

Phoenix Pyre
Bind Arch Devil + Phoenix Pyre = fun

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

If you're looking for _funny_ devastating comboes, then the absolute funniest has to be -

(now guess, which combo could annihilate a ~400-strong invading army, half of them hoplites and hypaspists, the rest being mainly Vine Men/Ogres and Claymen, with some flagellants, shortbows and 2 elephants thrown in - when you only have 1 Lamia Queen, 9 Black Dryads, less than a dozen harpies and even less Manikins to defend your province? And I really mean annihilate: I have more fingers than I need to count the enemies who survived that battle)

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

That combo would be haunted forest + swarm.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

Correct. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

The Lamia Queen was here only for her undead leadership (I could have used a Panic Apostate instead), as I didn't want to rely solely on the provincial Manikin leader. Undead leadership makes Hauted Forest much more effective, the reanimated Manikins actually move and fight for the whole battle, instead of dissolving almost immediately.

Watching this battle reminded me of Borg assimilation in VGAPlanets. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

So when you have haunted forest up the dragonflies from swarm are manikins ?

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

Ah descpription from haunted forest says everyone killed gets a manikin .

Does "undead or lifeless are not affected" in spelldescription mean that i can't spam raise skeletons and they get reanimated as manikins too ?

If the manikins created through haunted forest effect survive the battle do you keep them then or do they dissolve after battle ?

Furthermore spelldescription states that it works only in own dominion .
So i wonder how useful this spell is all in all ?

Swarm costs 1 nature gem but is 100 fatigue so the spell scripting ai should use more then 1 nature gem / swarm .

So you have the effect only in own dominion + either invest a lot of nature gems for swarm or have something like militia getting killed that you benefit from the spell ?

Is this really worth it when you can with zero gemcosts either spam false horrors or skeleton hordes ?

And there is always the dispel problem . Per pearl you only get 0,5 nature gems so normally the dispeller has to invest not as many gems as you have to invest + not to forget the continuing investment of nature gems for swarm + the micro you need to do this .

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

haunted forest + swarm is an exploit IMNSHO.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

Totally.

Love it! I'm using that from now on.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

It's a game-winner.

It doesn't tend to.

It's not just your troops that turn into manikins.

A dead dragonfly leads to a single manikin. When that manikin kills something, that also turns into a manikin. This snowballs very effectively. Two castings of swarm for example, can easily kill more than 50 devils, and probably much more than that.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

Mages can only use 1 gem per skill level, and I'm not sure how many gems a high level nature mage would put into it, but it shouldn't be so bad.

A couple nature gems for 20+ flying manikins? Yes, it's really worth it.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

True . Can dragon flies fly during a storm ?

Hmmmm should be nice for nations which get lots of fodder pd like mictlan/machaka then too http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .

The only thing which lets me still doubt is if it is worth the massive amount of gems required to keep it up at least some turns .


How many gems would you invest ? 100 ? 200 ? 500 ? 999 ?

Would you try to cast it asap or rather later but with lots of gems ?

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

I'd invest the minimum, with mabye a small random amount extra at first. Make people waste their gems on dispels.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

Correct.

The later.

Obviously it's best used when you're on the defensive.

Not a real concern with nature-1 mages.

Exactly. Haunted Forest is pretty nasty with vanilla Pangaea if you have max turmoil, a fairly high dominion and enough Panii to supply an endless stream of maenads.

I didn't know that Pangaea could spam False Horrors so easily. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Anyway you didn't pay much attention to what I wrote: read that again, funniest devastating combo - devastating it surely is, and I can't easily imagine anything more funny in Dominions than watching at the chain reactions Haunted Forest may trigger - an unit dies, a manikin rises and kills an enemy nearby, a new manikin rises and kills another enemy unit nearby, a new manikin rises, etc. - all that in the same round! Spamming False Horrors gets rapidly boring in comparison.

Fact is, in that game my Haunted Forest Lasted only 1 turn http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif. But spending 60 gems on it, plus 27 more on Swarms, to destroy 400 enemy units that were worth much more was quite a bargain. And I had no real choice anyway: in that game the Pangaean player I subbed for decided to quit because he found himself in a desperate situation, with his god killed, 7 depleted provinces left, the troops I listed plus an Apostate, a High Priest and a few scouts - nothing more! - and that big Arco army marching towards the capital, and only 2 provinces away from it.

I don't know what you would have done without troops in that situation, but I noticed that the Apostate had the items he needed to cast Haunted Forest - so I decided to alchemize every gem I had to nature and ended with 87 - enough for an unbuffed Haunted Forest and 3 Swarms/Dryad. So the Apostate performed the ritual , while the LQ and Dryads marched againts the invaders. And you know what happened http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif . It sure didn't make me win that war, but at least it delayed Pangaea's extinction by several years!

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

You are right Nagot i overread the word funniest cause i never tried haunted forest so far and was curious about the spell then http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif .

I think i should open a new thread for this cause it is not really OT here but i am now curious about other ppls tactics with globals + dispelling http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

Your loss then. It's really the cooooooooooooolest Global Enchantment out there! My all-time favorite since the earliest days of Dom PPP. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

It reminds me very funny battle I've seen: Optimistic army led by Tartarian Cyclops decides to conquer a province defended by puny Pangaeans maenads. On arrival it becomes clear that Panageans has prepared swarm attack which quickly converts most of the invading army in Pangaeans manikins. But the battle is not lost yet. Cyclops casts rain of stones which kills some manikins and converts most of maenads, plus some other troops in many more manikins. Now the battlefield is full of crawling manikins. Cylclops continues rain of stones in rapid succession until it falls unconcsious. By that time he's the sole remaining invader, however Pangaea has lost all their commander and the few survived manikins start to dissolve. In the dramatic final Cyclops regain consciousnes and tries to flee. The Last manikin survivor gets in the way of fleeing Cyclops and falls a victim to Cyclop's fist.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

I'll put this Haunted Forest + Swarm debate to rest. I have much experience with this combo. You'd be surprised what it's NOT capable of. If the dragonflies cannot fly (because of a storm) then you're going to have lots of trouble. If not enough dragonflies turn into manikins at the same time, that's aditional trouble. This combo cannot always kill a horde of devils. This combo sometimes can't even kill SCs. It's a good combo, but it has its limits. If someone is totally destroying your dominion (Mictlan, Marignon), you are screwed. This has happened to me more than once even with 10 dominion from the start.

But everyone should know this combo works best with C'tis because of the fact that C'tis assassins and mages have death and nature magic. The only problem is they lack nature gems, so Pangaea is a good choice too.

ANYWAY, you see... It has its limits. It is not a cheap combo compared to all the other strategies out there. I've lost a good amount of games using this strategy.

Re: Most powerful spells?
 

And Utgard. Haunted Forest + Nether Darts (+ the occasional Swarm) = yummy!