Gently Murderous Winter?
 

I just cast Murdering Winter, a 50 water gem spell, on an enemy army of 440 estimated. I killed only 7. That is a very bad return for a 50 gem spell. Yes, the heat scale was a positive 1, but I still expected more for such a pricy spell targeted at such a huge army. I couldn’t kill more chaff than that?

Can anyone else share their experiences with this?

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

'nuff said. You should have cast Wolven Winter (Alt 4) at least two times before going for the Murderous Winter and the spell would indeed have been Murderous.

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

How much does it scale up?

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

7+2*province cold scale AN damage to all units in target province, will kill at most 50% of units

Heat counts as negative, I guess.

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

Wow! Yes, some cold scale would have made a big difference, I probably just killed off the diseased and chest wound chaff units.

Good tip on Wolven Winter, shall use when I can. In my given situation, I needed to blunt the attack immediately, as the 440 army and a 370 army were funneling in on my choke point province. I did not have time to Wolven Winter, but I would have saved the gems for something else.

And yes, I still won the battle, but the casualties were appalling. The offensive is on hold, but they suffered more, so over all positive.

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

Echo that advice ... Always "soften up" your Murderous Winter targets with a few Wolven Winter castings first. It makes a huge difference.

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

Yeah. Catching an enemy army in a cold-3 province with Murderous Winter is... well, murderous. I once killed 200/300 men with it once. Blew my mind!

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

If they were going for your choke point province, you could have cast Wolven Winter on the choke point and then hit them when they were inside of it. Pull your armies back out of the chokepoint when they're about to enter it, cast Wolven Winter; next turn, cast Murderous Winter while moving all your armies back into the chokepoint to intercept the enemy from moving out of the chokepoint. Maybe that's too risky, though, inviting defeat in detail; it also depends upon how much you mind losing all your PD in the chokepoint.

Another thing to do is to combine map-killer spells like Murderous Winter with a pre-casting of Leprosy. Normally you mostly only care about units killed, but if they're diseased the wounds persist. Nice synergy.

-Max

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

It gets expensive, but you can also cast these artillery spells more than once, and the damage accumulates. You can even take out big guys like elemental royalty this way, if you're dedicated enough.

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

Ygorls right there. The best thing is hitting an enemy army(supported by thugs/SCs) with enough artillery to both take out most of his units and thugs aswell as damaging SCs(and maybe giving afflictions).

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

On the subject of artillery spells, what works vs EA Nief? Possibly disease at least hoping afflictions accumulate... with such high HP and cold resist it would take like 10 castings of flames from above it seems.

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

A couple of flames from afar due to their weakness to fire? Not too useful using artillery spells against a few, high health units unless they are extremely costly(well equipped SCs and such) so i wouldnt even bother casting unless he has a VERY large army.

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

Vs. Niefelheim? I doubt Beckoning would be cost-effective, given their high MR. Leprosy would help, but take forever to kill them. Flames From The Sky doesn't kill them but can sometimes give afflictions (you'd probably need 2 or 3 to actually kill more than 10% or so of the units).

Niefelheim is basically not vulnerable to artillery spells. You could try assassination spells instead, or battlefield enchantments like Plague (Woundflame) and Astral Tempest (on teleporting SCs if necessary).

-Max

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

As something of a Niefel expert-or atleast a Niefel madman-the worst low-level thing we regularly encouter is Curse. It has regular success even against high MR, it targets Niefel Jarls as well as troops, and it makes those expensive, melee giants more vulnerable to afflictions. It won't kill a giant by itself, but enough of them will hurt a lot, in the long run.

Re: Gently Murderous Winter?
 

Max,

Good points, but I did not provide two bits of info. First, I am playing as Abysia! I don't actually want to push the cold scale down. Second, it is a big, long term choke point, so I have 51 PD. Protecting that investment was important, so pulling out was not an attractive option. I do not normally put such levels of PD down, but in key locations where you expect multiple attacks, it is a valuable tool.

Why was Abysia casting Murderous Winter? Well, obviously I did not understand it well to start with. Also, the water gems were not terribly valuable to me otherwise and I figured that knocking out half an army would be a good use of them.