fleeing sc?
 

Somehow I manage to try on building sc b4 getting overran by the mass of troops sent by impossible+agreesive ai. Unfortunately, my attempt is not very successful.

Here is what I try:

1 wraith lord + wraith sword + wraith crown + bone amour + ring of regeneration

2 wraith lord + horror helmet + standard of the damned + bone armour + ring of regeneration

They do not get killed but they always flee. In some case, it is around the time their hp drops to dangerous level. In some other case, when the undead comes with them all dies, they flee.

Any suggestion on building sc that can defeat AI troops of hundreds of garbage units, in particular, not using pretenders?

Any solution to the fleeing?


Thanks in advance.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

I pretty much think that you don't need to equip Wraith Lords with Bane Blades because they already carry them.

Read about morale checks in your manual. They were built in so that SCs don't have it too easy.

Slave collars. *shrug*

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Two solutions to the fleeing exist:
Have the SC enter combat alone, or give him the ability to berserk.

Your SC setups are big on regen but you overlook survivability. One guy with a magic weapon (to bypass the wraith crown) and a few screeners can KO the wraithlord very quickly, because his defense is not stellar (each successive attack in a round reduces defense, so you will get hit) and his prot is subpar. The most obvious issue is that Wraith Lords can cast Soul Vortex with their own magic and do not need the expensive and low-prot Bone Armor to do it for them. The Wraith Lord would be better served by Jade Armor (for quickness) or Marble Armor (for Stoneskin). I would also recomend a pendant of luck, for the 50% miss chance.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Slave collars give feeblemind which heavily reduces MR and removes magic... not very desirable on a spellcasting undead SC.

I believe that morale has been changed. In Dom2 single commanders would never route from battle AFAIK. In Dom3 a single commander who takes damage (or is affected by fear, perhaps?) can route.

Berserk units will never route, even if the army they're with does. Immortal units (like wraith lords) will not route if they are in friendly dominion.

As for your SC designs:

Antithematically, wraith lords are already ethereal so they don't really need expensive wraith crowns. Wraith lords don't really need the bone armour either. They can cast soul vortex themselves (perhaps with skullface, I forget), and bone armour is otherwise poor.
Regeneration is not so important for them. Immortal units naturally heal afflictions, and the soul vortex spell allows you to heal against chaff units.


I'm not convinced about the standard. It does add to fear but it is poor in melee and the wraith lord is a spellcaster and doesn't really need the item spell. I think it'd be better to equip an average commander with it - it'll be just as effective.

Off the top of my head, a decent design with no artifacts could be:

Any good melee weapon. Frost/fire/shadow brand do area damage. Woundflame is an army killer if you have artifacts.
Lantern shield OR Shield of gleaming gold OR lucky coin OR Charcoal shield
Skull face (if needed for soul vortex) or otherwise either spirit helmet (expensive but good) or horror helmet.
Boots of quickness - very important
Jade armour if you can't get the boots - quickness is vital for a melee SC.
Otherwise, good armours include the chain mail of displacement and the marble breastplate. Against some AIs you may want resistances though so e.g. red dragon scale mail may be useful against Abysia, but you can get resistances from misc items too. The robe of invulnerability can be good if you have super cheap forging with 'forge of the ancients'

Misc items... This varies depending on what you're up against. Luck is important so take the lucky amulet. The amulet of antimagic, bracers of protection, ring of regen are some other cheap possibilities.

Script 'cast soul vortex' followed by 'attack'

There are many designs though, and this is just one. However, this won't stop the SC from routing. It'll be effective in friendly dominion but not otherwise.

If you are in hostile dominion you want the berserk ability. This can be gotten from the berserker pelt armour, but this does have poor protection - maybe still ok against chaff units. Anyone have suggestions about other ways to get it? The Lychantropos amulet on a warith would be incredibly stupid. I seem to remember the flesh eater gave berserk in Doms2, but it's not listed now. plus, items that make you berserk from the start of the battle will stop you casting spells.

Well, hth.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

I know in Dom 2 undead couldn't become werewolves, so a lycantropos amulet is better than a slave collar.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Ah? I didn't know that. If that's the case the amulet is very nice. It'll stop you casting spells though, so maybe the bone armour is worth thinking about.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Thanks for all the replies. Nick and Potatoe Man are particularly helpful. So I think I have made the mistake of letting my chokepoint city falling in hostile dominion. (I get a temple there but I have not got enough priests to make sure that it is in my dominion).

So my wraith lord flees because it is in a hostile dominion. If in a friendly dominion, it would not flee even if it takes damages?

I think during morale check, if all the units commanded by a commander flees, the commander would flees. So I should never allow an sc to command any unit? You know, I like to get my wraith lord to summon ghosts. And it appears that my wraith lords always start battle with a handful of undeads with him. Does it make it impossible to stop him fleeing when all those crappy units get killed in a turn or two?

One more thing to confirm: My sc did not flee because he gets tired, right? Undead with 0 encumbrance does not get tired with any heavy armour, right?

I like the wraith sword because I was once defeated by the heroes (two trolls, a mage, a dark knight and someone I cant remember) badly. I kill four of them with my army the first time I get beaten. The real big disaster comes later. All the weapons held by the killed four goes to the remainging troll. The wraith sword initially comes from the dark knight adds hp to him everytime he kills a guy of mine in a second big defeat. I think he kills a big army of a few hundred units of mine in my second defeat and hence I think a life drain weapon is the key to a sc.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Yeah, immortal commanders will never flee if they're in friendly dominion. They'll fight to the death. Of course, if they die you lose any items they're equipped with, so you want to make sure they win http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Encumberance doesn't affect fleeing. Wraiths won't get fatigue from fighting but they can still get it from casting spells. However, sould vortex will remove their fatigue quit quickly.

The wraith sword is ok, and some was of regaining hp is indeed vital to SCs, but it has its weaknesses. In particular, you only get 5 points of life drain damage per attack and it's two handed. Bogus /also/ has high prot and very good regeneration.

With soul vortex, you already have a source of lifedrain so I think a good shield will improve your survivability more. The fear/awe combo in particular is very nice and can dramatically cut down on attacks from low-morale chaff units. It works well with soul vortex, because you can drain enemies even if they don't attack you.

Bogus is quite vulnerable to magical attacks, by the way. A bunch of mages with 'charm' scripted is an especially nice one.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Agreed, but don't get attached to him once you charm him. Strip him of his items, because when another 'Bogus and co. attack' event happens somewhere, he'll disappear in a puff of smoke.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Sounds like you fight huge undead hordes - most basic skeletons are lifeless, so life draining weapons wont work. Neither will soul vortex... I think.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Wait for Illwinter to fix their bug so that immortal units don't flee in friendly dominion.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Immortal commanders flee all the time while in friendly dominion in Dom3.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Life draining weapons and soul vortex will still cause damage to lifeless troops. They just won't restore any hitpoints or fatigue.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

At high difficulty levels the AI get lots of extra cash so they'll often field very large armies regardless of faction. I've had a difficult (not impossible) AI on the 'eye' map throw 1000+ armies for about a dozen consecutive turns at a chokepoint fairly far from my main recruitment areas, while still carrying on the war on other fronts.

If the problem is with the ashen empire in particular then there are more effective ways of beating the hordes than by using SCs. And, as you say, life-draining will not be effective (soul vortex should still deal the same damage, but with no life or fatigue benefit for the SC it's not really worth it).

Re: fleeing sc?
 

happy to start a thread with so many ppl responding.

So although in principle immortal sc wont flee in friendly territory, it does flee because of a bug? So I still need to find a way to make my guy berserk?

And for all of you friendly guys information, I am actually fighting Tien Chi. I kill three fractions. They kill three as well. They now have an army 4 times larger than me. I have tried to keep my main army of 2xx guys with most of the sacred troops away from fighting their main army. Their main army of 9xx guys is pretty invincible and beat down my second army in a siege. (My 2nd army is around the same size as my first army but with fewer sacred troops and only 1 commander with unit sermoning items.)

I think my only hope is to come up with some sc that can at least beat down smaller armies splitted from the main army after they break into my line of forts and spread out everywhere. In the mean time, I wish I can strengthen my first army such that it can kill off a mass of 9xx crappy units.

Whether my wish can come true is one thing that I hope you guys can advice me on.

A problem with me is I cannot afford bigger army. I think I need to keep my income at least 400 more than maintenance. Otherwise, I wont get any bucks to pay mercenaries I am employing and recruit mercenaries when they show up. I am expanding into the sea and trying to use my main army to take down weakly defended province of Tien Chi. This save my income from a dramatic decrease but I cannot expand my army. But the AI, while getting not much more income than me in the graph, seems to be cheating and their number is always increasing after heavy loss.

Shall I give up?

Re: fleeing sc?
 

True. A phoneix with phoenix pyre going on will autorout the instant he is killed even in friendly dominion. Very annoying.

Edi

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Flames from the sky is a very easy way to deal with a 9xx army

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Depends on definition of "easy". If you have the research, the gems, and a mage that can cast it, sure it's easy. Not always the case though.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

That is true, I didn't say that the casting was easy:). But fielding the described (or differently equipped) wrath lords is a similar investment regarding research, gems and mages. Although death gems are probably easier to come by

Re: fleeing sc?
 

I haven't used them too much in Dom3, but in dom2 a well-designed SC can hold a province against any size of AI army pretty much forever. I think that they are more effective than 'flames from the sky' in that respect

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Immortal units fighting in positive dominion, which flee because of the turn rule and have no place to retreat to because the province is surrounded by enemy provinces will really die without coming back, is that right?

Re: fleeing sc?
 

What does woundflame actually do? Never crafted it, and its on hit:plage...which means what? A contagious disease? Will it affect the wielder? Undead wielder?

For my banelords/wraithlords I usually use the setup Nick_K proposes. Although I found shield of gleaming gold to be more effective with the wraiths cuz they already have vortex. And I always use boots of flying (unless water) and chain of displacement.

So standard build:
vortex, attack rear
flame brand
shield of gleaming gold (charcoal for banelords)
spirit helm (wraith for banelords)
chain of displace
boots of flying
ring of regen
lucky charm

with changes as needed, MR, quickness, etc

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Plague is a death spell (Thaum-6?) which does IIRC 1-2 hit points and 1-4 fatigue damage per combat round to a unit which is infected. It also spreads (check MR) to any units adjacent to an infected unit. I think once you catch the plague you automatically die even if you rout or win the battle, so if you can manage to infect one unit with plague it will often spread to the rest of the whole army in big puffing black clouds of plague. My problem with trying to use Woundflame to spread plague is that when a Wraith Lord hits somebody with Woundflame they usually die immediately and thus have no chance to catch the plague. Very sad.

-Max

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Don't give a wraith lord marble armor if you might come up against undrainable/lifeless enemies. It'll make him kill himself with his own chill aura since stoneskin lowers cold resistance. Not a problem if you've got soul vortex up and running, but if he gets hung up in skeleton-spam chaff for 10 turns it's bad news.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

Oh! This might explain what I thought was a bug, where Boots of Stone caused my Wraith Lord to take extreme amounts of fatigue from spell-casting. I've observed on other occasions that spellcasters take extra fatigue if they cast within a chill/heat aura (apparently in addition to the chill effect itself, which comes at the beginning of a combat round).

-Max

Re: fleeing sc?
 

re: woundflame

Does it affect the wielder? Are undead affected? Or because it says Diseased, On hit: Plague Does that mean the wielder automatically gets diseased? Can this disease be healed via chalice, etc?

Isn't there a pretender chassis that comes with a plague bow... is that the same effect?

Re: fleeing sc?
 

I think the wearer gets diseased unless undead. Regeneration also stops disease causing health damage. The 4 armed guy with air and death might have a plague bow but i didnt think it was the same effect.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

I've never used it, didn't realize that it cast plague.

It might actually be good for your SC to flee in that case.

Get a weak (low str) SC with high attack, wound, boots and defense items, attack nearest, atk, atk, atk, flee http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Maybe have a chump commander in farthest back at 5xhold just to give the disease time to work.

How quick does it spread?

Re: fleeing sc?
 

I think every turn. All units adjacent to the plague carrier must take a MR check(not sure if its easily resistable though) or succumb to the plague. All this information is purely from memory.

Re: fleeing sc?
 

I'm pretty sure the Plague Bow merely causes disease on whatever unit it hits. Far inferior to Woundflame.

It spreads relatively quickly, but not so quickly that a five-round attack/flee will have killed off the enemy army. I believe I've had it kill off 80% of a 150-man army, but the fight lasted for 20-odd rounds. Woundflame is, in my eyes, a way of ensuring that a defeated army doesn't get to rout and regroup.

-Max

Edit: just noticed the other questions. Yes, the wielder gets diseased. No, if he's undead it doesn't hurt him. I presume the Chalice would heal this disease like any other but I don't know for certain since I've only ever given Woundflame to undead.