Beating down the Undead
 

Ermor's free spawn may not be the Cat's Meow, but when you're outnumbered on a strategic scale by 50:1, I don't suppose they have to be. So, what are the general strategies for dealing with hordes and hordes of undead? Assume the player is competent and and does his blessed and buffs.

P.S. PS, if the anti-undead talk could focus on air magic, that'd be great.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

I would say... lot's of priests, with some chaff for protection? Also some spells like solar rays, if I remember correctly. There is also an astral spell that makes everyone blind and makes all undead on the field lose hitpoints gradually. Also, there is a nice fire ritual "Purgatory", together with strong dominion you can hit them skellies even before seeing them...

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Air magic isn't a lot of help versus undead, unfortunately.

Wrathful Skies will work on any kind of chaff. Fog Warriors will help keep your meat shield alive. Lighting/Orb lightning/Thunderstrike can take out the tougher undead. Use flying/cloud teleporting teams to burn temples to cut down on his dominion and thus free spawn.

More generally as suggested, lots of priests. Astral/Fire/Death magic, if you've got them.
More priests.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Air magic: One man casts "Wrathful Skies" and retreats. One SC designed to _last_ keeps the battle going. It isn't so hard to survive massive undead for 50 turns. And with a bit luck, they will not survive 50 turns for "Wrathful Skies".

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

What turn in the game are you in? What does your research look like?

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Magic: 4-Conj, 5-Alt, 6-Evo, 7-Ench, 5-Thua, 0-BM.

I have wrathful skies, a plentiful Air Gem income for making Storm Staffs and Air Boosters, but no real supercombatants. I was going for Storm Army to comine with Wrathful skies, but I just figued out that this spell only conveighs half resistance. Still might be enough to keep my Skinshifters alive (Yeah, I'm playing Midgard, so priests are all capital only). Fire Magic is out of the question, but I do have limited earth, death, nature and blood. Then I have units that are 2-Astral and only 2-Astral, but I'm hoarding my Pearls for Dispel.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Solar Brilliance (Ench 7) is the single best spell to use against hordes of Undead (save Undead Mastery). IF you are playing against the AI it should wipe them out provided your meat shield can hold. Even in MP it can be crippling if the other player hasn't been getting ready for it.

Get a communion up (with astral boosters) and use it. It shouldn't really take that many pearls away from your hording.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

When we say priests we're talking indy priests. If you haven't yet, build temples in every province that has indy priests and isn't on the front lines and start pumping out the cheap priests.

Air elementals and Spring Hawks are lightning resistant. They might be able to slow down the hordes long enough for Wrathful skies to do it's work.

Do you have the research to get to Air Queens in time? SCs/thugs are the way to go against hordes of chaff. Even properly equipped Banelords or Sleepers would help slow the hordes down and let the priests and mages work.
I assume you don't have a bless or an SC pretender?

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Yeah, when the hoards get to really absurd sizes your only option is battlefield wide effects. A lot of the undead counters (solar rays, banishment, dust to dust, cleansing waters, holy pyre, etc) will work when you're merely extremely outnumbered, (put boots of quickness on people with flabeaus or herald lances for instance) but LA Ermor does get to a point where you really have to deal with them as a homogeneous army rather than a set of units. Solar brilliance, earth quake, rain of stones, acid rain, etc. is what you want to be thinking about by that time, depending on your capabilities.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

From Baalz list I second the spells solar brilliance and rain of stones. The first will turn almost any undead horde to dust and the second is extremely destructive against poorly armoured/low health troops(most soulless and longdead respectively).

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

How about living clouds ? Undead generally have a low defense, and ethereal tramplers should go right through them.. And if you have air gems to burn, it should not be a problem to cast it several times in one battle, assuming you have the casters for it

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Well, for Pretender I did go for a SC, but mostly I invested points into scales (3-Order, 3-Growth, 2-Drain... oops) to maximize money. I'm easily the biggest economy right now (yes, we're talking MP). But, I stupidly managed to get my Pretender killed early on to lancers (how'd they beat mistform?), and since then have been unwilling to put her on the frong again. Beyond using her to cast Air Globals and summon Air Queens, though thats a long ways away, I hope to empower her scant nature magic so as to cast Gift of Health.

P.S. How about those various phatasmal summons (ghost wovles, etc.) Could spamming those distract a couple k of undead?

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

No. I might suggest trying to take out the guys in back. If you have astral, mind hunt and soul slay will target his commanders, causing undead to dissolve.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

The thing is, once you start talking about an Ermor who is fielding 5k+ armies you can't fight them with a war of attrition. You can't dump all your air gems into summoning 50 air elementals because there's just gonna be another army showing up on your doorstep in a few turns. For phantasmal summons you're gonna have to use waaaay too many mages to make it worthwhile. The real insidious thing about the undead is they...just...keep...coming!

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Mists of Deception could occupy the army long enough for the sustained onslaught of Banishing Priests to do their work (and might kill commanders).

Good luck getting together the mages and research necessary to cast it. Basically, Air magic blows for taking down large armies.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

RE: OmikronWarrior

Mist Form has a 1% chance of failing each time you're hit. As well, a sufficiently strong hit (IIRC, 21 points after protection) will cause Mist Form to fail. Given the charge bonus of lancers, magic weapons may not have been needed.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Hmmm

Army of mist, mass regeneration, and relief might combine to give you quite the potent combo. Assuming you have nature magic.

Relief is vital in large battles, though.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Agreed

Yea if you are talking about a large game the amount of huge armies LA Ermor can field is pretty insane by the late game. Priests are only really helpful in the early game unless you mass some outrageous number (30+)? Battlefield wide spells like solar brilliance and undead mastery will cripple them quickly however and are the most cost effective solutions at that point. Communion/sabbath it up!

The real question is if your mages can reach the target armies before succumbing to assassination spells/thugs http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif (at least that's the question in MP).

Another thing to try is to mass teleporting thugs to assault his undefended temples (he should have alot). This will hurt him a lot in the long run (but might not be enough to save you at the moment).

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Although I wouldn't dare use it in MP now, mists of deception+retreat(+wrathful) will kill the entire undead army for about 10 gems.

What would confusion do, out of curiosity? The dead are mindless, so I'd have thought it wouldn't target them, but I've never actually tried.

You're playing midgard in MP without a bles, correct? With an air pretender? Absolutely no hope of undead mastery, I suppose?

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

I don't really understand how anyone is ever able to cast Undead Mastery. It is a D7, 700 fatigue spell. Can someone explain this to me? In general I am frustrated by my inability to successfully script even 100 fatigue spells, the AI seems to stop my mages from getting even that much fatigue. Am I missing something? I mean how would you get your death magic up to like D12 or whatever it would have to be to cast Undead mastery?

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

D7 mage (Demilich + skull staff + skull helmet + ring of sorcery) will cast D7 spell with 7 death gems. He will end with 200 fatigue, not 700. True - checked!

But notice that if a spell has X00 fatigue, mage needs X gems (or more). If he hasn't, we won't cast. Even if he has higher level than X, he still needs X gems.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Without hitting 200 fatigue? Communion. Use a communion mastery collar if you need to.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Nikolai - I know he needs the 7 gems, but I thought he still takes 700 fatigue, which means no dice. And also it often seems to me that the AI won't let you cast a spell if it will put you over 100 fatigue. I can't really understand how that works, but at least it seems like some spells you script aren't cast for fatigue reasons even though they wouldn't kill you. I wish I knew how that worked because it really annoys me when I script someone to cast a spell that I realize will get him over 100 and he won't cast it.

I can see how communion would make this possible yes, but that would be seriously hard too. and if i'm doing the math right, you'd need to get to D10 to get the fatigue from Undead Mastery under 200, and D14 to get the fatigue down to 100. As I said, I don't understand when the game lets you cast spells over 100 fatigue, but it doesn't seem to let you do it all the time.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Actually, you can do this:

Ctissian saurolich (for example).

D10. Scepter of dark regency, crystal shield, jade mask, robe of the magi, ring of sorc, ring of wiz, cast power of the spheres.

You are D20. undead mastery gives about 5 fatigue.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Well, sometimes, AI will refuse to cast. It thinks enemy is not worth it, and it can be VERY wrong. Sometimes, AI finds no target. I just watched a battle, wraith lord with D10 was scripted for shadow blast, there were targets in range, he decided to cast "raise dead". He was right in particular, cause enemy was beated, so maybe your caster thought Undead Mastery was not effective?

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Question about Solar Brilliance, how worried should I be about the Blindness thing. For example, does Blindness mean no more spellcasting? How about my troops? How vulnerable are they to the blindness affliction? I can put together a communion no problem, the question is keeping them safe and useful.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Blindness has no effect on casting besides the fact that you will no longer be able to hit with spells that have percision less than 100. You can still hit with ones like soul slay, paralyze, and horror mark. You can also cast spells like Swarm, Relief, Rain, stuff that doesn't rely on them targeting anything.

I'm sure you still could cast stuff like blade wind, but your derivation would be *so bad* you wouldn't want to bother with it.

Lastly, if you have mages with darkvision 100, I believe they can cast normally even while blind. I'm not 100% sure on this, so you'd have to test it first. You can also heal afflictions such as blindness after a big battle, but that's time consuming and probably not pratical without gift of health up.

Jazzepi

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

I am pretty sure it does ot work that way, and if it does its a bug. In real life cats have darkvision, but if you pluck out thier eyes they are blinder than bats.

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Darkvision 100 should not give blind sight. There is however a 'blind' flag that meant the unit doesn't use sight to orientate itself (some r'lyeh monsters etc).

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Sorry, this is what I was thinking of. I think the statue pretender has this, where you can give her two eyes and it turns her blind, but it doesn't matter. Does that sound right?

Jazzepi

Re: Beating down the Undead
 

Yeah, statues and fountains just get the "lost useless part"(or something) affliction. It allows for really nasty astral fountains with thier 4 misc slots. You can put 2 eyes of the void on them.