To kill the sphinx
 

Yes, this is my first post on the Shrapnel forums, which is odd as I feel I've been here for much longer.
I played the Dom3 demo and loved it. I bought the game 2 days later.

I'm on my first SP game going right now. I'm played as Ulm, and I'm up against C'tis. They have a Sphinx pretender, and for the life of me, I can't kill the darn thing. I really don't know how to approach killing this thing.
The odd thing is, I beat this thing by seiging the fort it was in and conquering it. However, it somehow appeared (teleported? I found a few mentions of this by searching for Sphinx) in the some province. I THINK it got brought back to the world by some C'tis priests, but I'm too new to have experienced a thing like this before.
Any advice for a n00b like me?

Also, it is amazing how much this game has sucked my last 2 days away. When I'm not playing Dom3, I'm thinking about it.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

Pretenders can be braught back to life by priests as you said.

Tho no idea if the Ai uses the teleport spell or not..

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

The way to kill a sphinx is to either use armour negating or piercing spells and weapons, and lots of them, or to preach out the pretender's dominion. With no dominion, you don't need to kill the sphinx.

Sphinxes are the only truly immobile pretender that can never move, even via teleport. Every other immobile pretender can use the teleport spell to move around if there is a lab, they have astral 3, they have enough gems, and they have the spell researched.

When a pretender dies, priests can resurrect it in the capital province by using the call god command. It takes 40 priest level turns to bring the god back. It would therefore take 40 turns for a single level 1 priest, or one turn for 40 level 1 priests, or one turn for ten level 4 priests.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

If you're too impatient for the dominion kill --

Black Bow of Botulf helps (guaranteed feeblemind if it hits, and a feebleminded Sphinx is of little threat unless its items attack). Staff of Kurgi works too, but that's Cons 8.

AN/AP afterwards (Gate Cleaver is a nasty case; and recall that fire is generally AP, while lightning is AN), or very heavy-damage attacks (Gifts from Heaven being one example). Feeblemind also hurts MR, if memory serves, which gives you a better chance via Soul Slay and similar spells.

Spam horror-marking and let the horrors do it.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

Your Ulm, build some manly commanders with armor piercing weapons and some strenght boosters. Then send them again the Sphinx. Not a foolproof plan but I'd do that.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

I'm still not sure what happened to you.. you conquered C'tis home provinced, sieged the fort and finally stormed it. As the Sphinx can't move, you must have killed it if you have won the fight.

But where and when did it reappear exactly?

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

Ulm is such a beautiful nation! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

And maybe the Sphinx was killed previously and just got called back into it's now-conquered capitol?

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

It was only a turn or 2 before it reappeared. C'tis still has a lot of other provinces, so I guess it'd be possible for them to have 20-40 priests all calling back their pretender, but wouldn't the pretender return to a friendly province?
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'll be trying out a few of these strategies tonight.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

The pretender always returns to the capital, whether or not it's currently occupied by an enemt.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

Crossbowmen are cheap, common, and armor piercing. But I'd say just preach out his dominion and he'll go away.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

Wouldn't Shatter work?

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

C'tis has lots of highlevel priests on their roster even in the middle age, so two rounds sounds about right if they are still a force to be reckoned with.

The pretender when called back appears in their capital province. If you control that province, the pretender will appear nevertheless and engage the province defenses, which is likely to get him killed.

That of course means you should never perform Call God unless you hold your capital, but somebody forgot to tell the AI.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

I would say send some astral mages/sages and horror mark the fella a few times. From what I've been reading horror marks are very deadly right now.

Another suggestion is make sure to curse him... which will increase his afflictions in battle and thus easier to kill him.

Based on the information you've given it sounds like the game is in the middle or late stages, so you could also create a SC to send him to the graveyard.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

I forgot to mention that this is Early Age.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

It is entirely possible that you never killed the sphinx in the first place and that it appeared for the first time when it awoke from its slumber or broke free of its imprisonment. At about turn 12 and about turn 36 a god might appear and go on a rampage.

In any case, the sphinx has a crap tonne of hit points and a very good protection. Plausible methods of dealing with it include:

Incinerate it about a gajillion times (or otherwise dump armor negating elemntal damage on it).
Send in a bunch of guys with armor negating weapons.
Cry.

Re: To kill the sphinx
 

Ah, used lots of spells and strong commanders to finally take that sucker down and win.

It seems Ulm has really poor priests, and I really just had to sweep across the plains and take on C'tis face to face. They overwhelmed me at first, but after a lot of battles and me finally figuring out to hire mercs, I took the advantage and swept through the land to claim my true throne!

SO MUCH FUN!