Stomping
 

Hi All,

I have a lot of experience in single player, no experience in multiplayer, so a typical game involves me trying to survive the endless hordes the AI cheats into existence on "difficult" level. The best strategy I've found is tramplers. While two or three elephants are easily enveloped and eaten by an infantry mob, the same is not true for twenty or thirty. *squish* is the sound of the AI's army disintigrating...

...my question is, what happens to people in multiplayer who try to do this? I imagine there's an effective strategy when someone comes at you with 3,000 AU worth of elephants, but I don't know what it is. Archers/slingers maybe? (Keep in mind that LA Arcosephale elephants have high protections too -- nice!)

Also, does the AI ever come up with an effective counterattack later in the game? I tend to play small short games.

Re: Stomping
 

Trampling with elephants can be great, but don't forget Boots of the Behemoth. 30 equipped Basalt Kings (Atlantis EA) stomp even nicer than 30 elephants, when you consider how much more versatile they can be in combat, especially with a Nature 9 regenerating/berserk bless.

Re: Stomping
 

Good tactics.

Im not sure how the ai can cheat in hordes. It only gets bonuses on god-making. But you can slow that by turning the independents higher.

Re: Stomping
 

Elephants can be countered by players fairly easily either with high strength(giants/bandar ect), high defence(w9 sacreds, mounted units) and magic, specifically signle target high damage/instant death spells(soul slay vrs low mr elephants is deadly)

Re: Stomping
 

The standard counter to pachiderms is MR targeting spells, soul slay & enslave mind are particularly devastating.

Targeting their morale can also work: missile troops backed by fear causing critters or spells (terror, panic...)

Other options: high defense troops boosted with body ethereal will be highly resistant to being trampled. A size 6 SC cannot be trampled at all, and the elephants have to fall back to their subpar combat skills.

Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

Tramplers have difficulty trampling anything that's ethereal, and can't trample anything that's the same size or larger. It's not too hard to get etherealness.

Try, say, a Bane Lord with a Robe of Shadows, a Snake Bladder Stick, and a Lucky Coin or Luck Pendant. It's fairly cheap, hard to trample, and will be spamming the area with poison gas *and* its innate chill aura. Or running against a C'tis front line of Dispossessed Spirits (ethereal, so hard to trample; *and* a cheap bulk summon, so easily replaceable) backed by Poison Slingers.

The AI doesn't really make plans of this sort; it doesn't even have a good grasp of what different magic items do, so it distributes pretty oddly

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

Speaking of morale and fear, is there any way to mod a fear effect onto a missle weapon, so that anyone struck by say an arrow would have to perform a fear-check or run away? Sorry, it's a little OT, but I was just thinking that if such an animal existed, it would be a great thing to use against charging elephants.

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

I think you can since LA tien chi ancestor vessels have fear causing bows(and scorpion men from the national spell have a ranged gaze of fear attack)

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

Excellent. I can definitely use that in a mod. Thanks Shovah

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

The easiest to deploy counter to elephants is: Fire Largest.

Shoot them enough times and thier morale will break, turning them into a liability for thier owner, not you. Xbows work terrificially for this if you can get them. Generally speaking tho, they are great vs AI, but I will never use breakable-morale tramplers against another human player. There is just too much danger of them backfiring.

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

Yep, that's why I recommend Basalt Kings, you can sacred them up so they go berserk when the enemy shoots them, they work just as well underwater, and they're useful for more than just making infantry-juice.

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

I always did ok against elephants using swarms of slingers. Plus it makes the elephants charge back thru their allies.

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

Yeah, elephants can't hold shields. In real life you could probably train them to hold shields with their trunks, and then they couldn't see where they were going and wouldn't have any more morale problems http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

Lots of good ideas, thanks, it looks like there's a way to counter anything in Dominions, which is what makes it a great game http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

The best suggestion I saw was the cheap ethereal trick, dispossessed spirits. I think regular ethereal/high defense troops would be too expensive... LA Arcosephale elephants get three attacks per turn (trunk & 2 spear), so even without the trample I think they'd be strong against them.

How good are slingers against high-protection but shieldless troops? LA Elephants have strong armor too.

That's probably the best strategy -- lots of high-def troops up front to absorb the charge, lots of slingers/archers in the back to actually do damage.

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

They dont do alot of damage. But elephants seem to be routed esily by a rain of missiles. Thats actually better than killing them since they rout back thru their own troops and trample them. If you are lucky, maybe even one of the commanders.

Re: Stomping
 

In MP elephants are not that useful when the opponent expects them, as many said.
Yet if you have either Berserk, "Ironed", Ethereal and/or Flying (lol) Elephants (through spells Berserkers, Iron Warriors, Body Ethereal and Flight), they're rather fun and more difficult to counter/kill http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif .
Behemoths are a nice variant, they're rather "better" tramplers because they don't rout, but have very low MR and are banishable (undead).

Re: Stomping
 

They're pretty expensive for 10gems too since a pack of PaleRiders are the same price. A truly very powerful cheap summon are the Umbrals from Argatha... they're only 2 death gems, big&strong, 18MG resist and super nasty.

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

@krpeters : an unit that is trampling do not make any other attack.

Those attacks are only used agains ennemy of equal of larger size (meaning that LA arco elephant have at least a more decent chance of fighting versus other size-6 units (mainly others elephants, as dragons and titants SC won't usually have much difficulty to win)

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

Iron Dragons are flying, unbreakable tramplers... but if memory serves, there MR is not that high for the research level, and you still aren't allowed to do a flying body slam.

The whole "doesn't use its other attacks" bit is why I rarely build Boots of the Behemoth or the Stymphalian Wings.


(Edit: addition)
In addition, aye, it's pretty true that pretty much anything can be stopped by something. That counter may require much research or luck, and there are sometimes balance issues (see the arguments regarding Helheim/Vanheim in blitzes, the extremely high utility of lifedraining weapons and quickness boots in the previous iteration), but the game isn't really designed among nigh-unstoppable superunits.

Not like you've got just a platoon of M4A3s staring across a 2km open plain versus a hull-down Jagdtiger which is already positioned to aim at a bridge you've been ordered to cross. Even a lowly Flagellant has a slight chance to cause some lasting pain... especially if it's D9 or B9 blessed, and the target's defense has been lowered by swarming and fatigue (or better, paralysis).

Even a Tartarian Titan with Magebane + Aegis will be, at a minimum, paralyzed by a Petrify spell, or sent to Inferno with the Infernal Sword, or seriously wounded if hit by Gifts from Heaven, or taking unstoppable damage from Dust to Dust or Wither Bones, or so forth. There are ugly situations, some potentially quite unfair (Ancient Presence event smacking capital or getting 2x 3000-gold + magic items events early might also be huge) but there's normally more than one possible counter rather than a strict hierarchy of tactics or anything unbeatable.

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

On elephants vs. ethereals... well, I just found out the hard way that you guys were right. I just tried to take a castle from Midgaard, and I ran into an army of dispossessed spirits. My elephants won, but took significant casualties (a pack of 30 elephants normally wipes out 100 light infantry with no casualties at all)

Then Midgaard struck back with spring hawks, and my elephants got ripped apart brutally.

So... the moral seems to be, tramplers are great in the early game before ethereal troops show up. After that, it looks like it's better to switch over to knights (if you have them -- LA Arcosephale has "companions")

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

Having a few low-level priests on hand can wipe out huge numbers of dispossessed spirits.

They're undead, and their lonely hit point means that if they even catch a whiff of banishment they burn up in a hurry. You can still bring the elephants along if you have the right counter-counters http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Elemental paths, crippling, ethereals...
 

You could also bring in a bunch of priests and have the elephants "hold and attack" rearmost. That way the priests have a chance to blow away lots of undead before your elephants charge to the rear.

Re: Stomping
 

Yes Behemoths are (somewhat too much) expensive but much more survivable than Riders, that tend to be killed in doves by a couple Banishments ,or by any hit, fireball, Fire cloud, whatever...