Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

I've done some searching, and it appears (to my surprise) that both Thunder Ward and Storm Warriors provide only 50% SR. Does this mean that it is impractical to use Wrathful Skies in combat where there are substantial numbers of troops without natural lightning resistance?

It is possible, I suppose to cast both TW and SW (I would guess they stack), but that sounds expensive, in terms of gems, fatigue and casting rounds. Or perhaps w/ only SW or TW, do normal troops Last long enough w/ 50% res to make it worthwhile? Does anyone out there have experience using Wrathful Skies w/ normal troops and any combination of these spells?

TIA,

Thufir

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

I have a painful experience - my first use of Wrathful Skies.

Enemy besieged my castle with a force of an Arch Devil, 30 each devils and imps and a hundred infantrymen. I frantically teleported in anything I could.

My Air Queen with staff of Storms cast Wrathful Skies, Air mages cast Thunder Wards - pretty much every my troop had 50% shock resistance.

Battle didn't Last very long - about 10 rounds. Invading army was obliterated, as well as 12 of my commanders and all my troops, safe for a dozen crossbowmen and a few mechanical men. I lost loads of equipment. The only commanders which survived had air magic and cast Resist lightning, which gives 100 SR.

Never, ever use Wrathful skies with non-immune troops.
50% SR just isn't enough.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

...Unless you can cast mass regeneration and your troops have high base hitpoints, that is.

...But as a general rule, I must agree with you: Don't take anything along without SR when doing a Wrathful Skies attack that you cannot afford to lose.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

I would rather say "Don't use Wrathful skies with non-immune troops unless you're prepared to lose them"

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

it would be nice if it were more of a viable option to protect troops. even 75% resist would be ok, i think.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

Thanks for the replies, everyone. It's nice not to have to learn about this one by painful experience. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

I've also killed off my own army by that storm warriors and wrathful skies combo. Pretty effective! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

I actually like it that there is no protection against WS: It not a support spell (except for 100%immune armies), but a great raiding spell!

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

Used my Phoenix to cast it once, forgetting that, unlike the Virtue, he did not have 100% SR. Ooops!

At least he was in Dominion when he bit the dust!

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

So does anyone out there have any favorite troop types to go with wrathers then? I know storm demons would be nice, but lets assume you don't have access to blood summons.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

Mechanical men work, as would spring hawks, but the latter are fairly fragile against magical attacks. Hmmmm, Air-9 blessed units combined with a 50% ward spell should also work. As if Vans, Black Templars or Black Hunters aren't brutal enough...

An Air Queen wielding Tempest and accompanied by air elementals or sylphs is -very- thematic, but that's not a combination that can be fielded in numbers...

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

Why not? Add a ring of lightning resistance to any Air4 mage, stir in some air gems and you have all the ingredients for some living clouds. Add some bags of winds just for the looks of it...

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

Pretty nasty with Serpent Dancers too: lightning & poison immune troops -> Wrathful Skies and Foul Vapors at the same time.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

Welll, regarding AQ + Tempest, there's only 3 AQs and 1 Tempest. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

But 3 AQs, two of them using Staff of Storms, would also be quite thematic; since Tempest also acts as Staff of Storms, all three allow the AQ to jump into casting Wrathful Skies instead of casting Storm.

Lightning AND poison? Ouch.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

Yep, a very powerful combo. I've tried it a couple times with both Serpent Cult and standard C'tis, and I've found it works extremely well with the latter: the Air-9 Titan has become my favorite 'high bless' pretender with the lizards.

Beware though, Thunder Ward/Storm Warriors don't stack with Elemental Fortitude (oversight?), so give your Sauromancers Rings of Tamed Lightning - or Shrouds of the Battle Saint, which is IMO an even better option once you have Storm Warriors researched. Blessed Shamen don't have this problem.

C'tis has a strong focus on Enchantment, and the beauty of this bless strategy is you can get the most out of your research in this field (Raise Dead/Skels, reanimation rituals like Behemoths and Pale Riders, Foul Vapors, Relief, Thunder/Poison Ward, and later their battlefield-wide Version).

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

One unit I haven't seen mentioned yet is Wyverns - both 100% poison and lightning immune, albeit a tad bit overpriced IMO at 8 air gems.

Also, when using WS on the defensive, if you cast Mechanical Militia then you wind up with some lightning immune troops in every province in which you have PD.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

Yup, another problem with them is if you're using Wrathful Skies you're probably using Storm (or Staff of -) as well.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

True - but if you're wrathing, you probably don't want them flying up and getting chewed up in melee, they're more for Hold and Attack orders, to slow down the enemy troops while they're getting decimated by the lightning flurries.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

I suspect that Wyverns are cost in-efficient by design. You can summon them at low levels, and they look to be parallelled by Fire Drakes and Cave Drakes (also low level, expensive summons). It may make sense to use these summonings in specific opening game instances, but probably none of these would be widely used from mid-game on.

It would seem to me that in mid-game/end-game (which we're surely talking about here, given it's Wrathful Skies that started this), that Vine Ogres combined with mass regeneration would give you better bang for the buck than Wyverns. I've experimented with Wyverns a bit in SP, and I found it pretty hard to keep them alive. Given the 8 gem cost, I've stayed away from them ever since.

Re: Using Wrathful Skies w/ National Troops
 

The wrathing/poisoning thing just reminded me of something I just have to share:

Once in the good-old days of elemental armor with 100 of all resistaces and cheap vampire queen, I played a game on rich urgaia with magic sites 75%. I was ulm, he was pythium. The game just went on and on and on, with both sides castling everything and neither could advance at all. So we decided to end it all in a cataclysmic battle in a pre-decided neutral territory, with 10 turns to prepare.

He brought uber communion squad with huge amount of living troops, quite some sc's and a few doom horrors.

I brought an assload of mechanical men, some iron dragons, some siege golems, firestorm(cast first), storm, wrathful skies, and foul vapors. Few turns before the 10 turns were over I put up forge of the ancients, and made many many elemental armors.

Everyone of his mages had at least some resistance open, so they all perished. Communicants stayed alive though. The living army just perished. DH's just can't take the elemental damage.

His reaction after the battle was "wtf?", esp because I had not use even near that amount of different magic before in that game. (I gave the VQ the communion master item and boots of quickness, used sages as communicants. With forge up you can make slave matrixes with total 4 gems with any mage.)

I lost only a few dozen troops and few commanders. He lost almost 1000 normal troops and all commanders, in just a few turns.