ick! Earthquake
 

I'm currently playing marverni in a 10 player map, and am closing in on argatha. This is early game. much to my surprise, argatha has developed earthquake and badly mauled two of my armies (hundreds of casualties). Any advice for a counter to this spell? The argatha pretender is a pretty beefy pale one undead with D9E6N4S4.

I'm thinking about trying out a dominion kill or spending a few turns researching enough construction to pimp my E9 Cyclops and just stomp him.

thanks!

Re: ick! Earthquake
 

Spam horror marks on him one battle. 20 or so will make him functionally useless. Even if you don't get him, your opponent will suddenly stop using him in battle to avoid the horror marks.

Re: ick! Earthquake
 

That'll work against the pretender, yes, but Agartha has plenty of mages that can cast earthquake, so it's not a solution.

Defense gives a save against earthquake though, so the Eponi knights should hold up alright, especially since high defense works well against Agartha anyhow. You can try to script twist fate for your druids, although that won't help if the earthquake goes off first turn when you attack, so if you can get him to attack you and then cast twist if he's not multi-casting it you should be ok.

Re: ick! Earthquake
 

Does protection help against Earthquake?

Re: ick! Earthquake
 

the slaughters occured because he was multicasting. 3 casts in a row caused a massive rout.

Re: ick! Earthquake
 

As well, it is a mundane spell, like most earth magics.
You may try casting body ethereal and luck on a thug, if you've got a worthy chassis, and Agartha doesn't have much support/bodyguards. Protection helps as well (but only slightly) since it's AP and not AN. Shields generally won't help.

Re: ick! Earthquake
 

But how does it penetrate any armor? If it only does 8 damage, how does it penetrate any armor, or am I missing something? Even if is is AP, armor would still get halved and get its die roll, right?

Re: ick! Earthquake
 

8 damage is actually 8 + d6 (open ended ) - ( half of the armor + d6 (open ended) )
So with the open ended rollsyou can get 344 damage if you're unlucky. I'm not sure whether there is an armor roll if you have 0 armor, though.
On a large army with armors along 10-12, you can expect damage of 2-3 on average with many taking 0 damage and many takind 5,6 or even more. So this can be devastating with several casters.
Spells like protection/barkskin/ironskin and such should help a bit if you can cast them prior to your opponent.

Some actual numbers...
 

Assuming the targets have 10 hit points and armour 10, the earthquake will fail to
injure 31.6%, kill 10.7%, and cause an average of 4.7 points of damage to everyone else.

If the armour is 15, the respective numbers are: 46%, 6.7%, and 3.71 damage to
the remaining ones.

(The above assumes everything hits. Defense has not been taken into account.)

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

Thank you for the actual numbers. that helped a lot. The problem with my first two routs was that my parmies were 0-6 armor archers in bulk plus a few big units. I'll focus on some tough guys and SC next.

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

Counters to earthquake:
Etherealness
high protection (16+)
high defense (16+)
high hit points
take out the casters before they can cast
rely on combat summons scripted to go after the earthquake (elementals, skellispam, etc).

Now, obviously many of those counters are gonna be hard to get on a bunch of units unless you're lucky enough to have the right stuff available nationally. What you'll want to do if you don't have those units is use fairly concentrated squads you can more easily buff. Forge some heavy armor for your mages (encumbrance is gonna suck but it beats dying), outfit some thugs with high defense/protection/etherealness, and generally don't field large armies of tasty targets.

In the realm of stopping him before he can cast it you've got two choices, you could try and assassinate if that's an option, or you can try to outguess where your opponent is moving and have a counter-squad there to meet him, getting the first turn drop. What you do with that first turn drop depends on what's avaible to you and what type of army he's got supporting his earthquake casters. Scripting anti-undead spells will all target that risin oracle if there are no other undead. Scripting flyers to attack large enemy monsters or rearmost could be a good choice depending on his army. Heck, just having a bunch of cheap mages cast body ethereal on some elephants first turn could work.

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

If you can throw Robes of Shadows on the mages instead of heavy armor, that'll be better for encumbrance and protection.

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

I get that high protection helps at the moment of the damage roll, but how does defense help against earthquake?

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

If you read the description for earthquake, there's a defense roll in there somewhere.

Jazzepi

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

I don't know what the roll is based on, but I'll assume 10+DRN.

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

57.7% wounded for 4.7 damage and 47.3% wounded for 3.7 damage is still very bad news. His casters are all sacred with a death nine bless; they have +350% chance to cause afflictions with all damage they do. Just a few castings will badly wreck any army that lacks regeneration.

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

I'm curious... with that death-9 blessing, do they get afflictions on themselves, as well? Since earthquake damages all units, including the caster.

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

I would think that they would.

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

Yes, the death bless does effect friendly fire.

Re: Some actual numbers...
 

Since the guy is immortal, though, and has a lot of hit points, he isn't in all that much danger.