Best ways to poach mages...
 

Straight forward question really.

What are the best options for mage hunting?

And yes I realize this depends on nation/research/magepaths...

Also, what kinds of protection would you give to your mages to protect them, and then what are the counter counters ;)

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

A bell, a candy-bar and a fly-whisk.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

To poach a mage:

Ingredients
1 to 1½ pounds mage fillets
½ cup dry white wine (a good Sauvignon Blanc)
½ cup water
A few thin slices of yellow onion and/or 1 shallot, peeled and sliced thin
Several sprigs of fresh dill or sprinkle of dried dill
A sprig of fresh parsley
Freshly ground black pepper

Put wine, water, dill, parsley and onions in a saute pan, and bring to a simmer on medium heat. Place mage fillets, skin-side down on the pan. Cover. Cook 5 minutes or to desired done-ness. Do not overcook. Serve sprinkled with freshly ground black pepper.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

You may seek them with thimbles
You may seek them with care
or pursue them with forks and hope.
You can threaten their lives with a railway share
and charm them with smiles and soap.

Alternatively, try remote assassination spells. Earth Attack, Infernal Disease, Ashen Angel are examples thereof. If you're really intent on only getting mages, spam flying monkeys at a province first to clear out all the non-mages :D

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

too many wise acres here ;)

And yes, I get the remote assassination spells... I suppose I was looking for a bit more in depth discussion of their relative merits vs. different mage types.

For example, mind hunt works well when there are no astral mages in the province, and is death for your mage if there are s2+ mages there correct?

Seeking Arrow works reasonably well, but if the mage is wearing armor it doesn't work very well, and if the mage has some other form of missile protection it also has a poor success rate.

Fires from Afar can hit mages, but unless you are hitting a research center with a very high mage density its not going to be very effective...

Also do these kinds of spells generally benefit from being cast with higher levels of the appropriate path?

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I'm fairly sure Seeking Arrow is AN, and hence unaffected by armour.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I think earth attack is pretty much the king of assassination spells.

If your enemy has research squads in forests, wild hunt can actually kill a few, but outside of CBM it's not worth the effort.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Doesn´t that nature spell that summons the furies allegedly target Blood Mages for attacks? (never tried it. Just checking if it works as claimed

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I've seen it in a SP game, and yeah, it was targeting my blood mages :p

Question is does it target all blood mages or just enemy mages?

Meh, I don't have the manual at work :p

How about the succubi? Are they worth the effort and how do they work?

Or that blood spell that sends devils in people dreams or whatever the description is...

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

the spell that sends dream devils just makes enemy units randomly try to assasinate enemy commanders. I didnt think it was too successful overall, through I guess it can hurt.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I prefer stealing mages.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Mind Hunt: Pointless against Astral mages, and thus pretty risky in the late game.

Seeking Arrow: Kills a 10 HP mage ~1/3 of the time. Large numbers of mages dilute the effect of spamming it.

Earth Attack: Very nasty attacker, but E5 mages can be hard to come by.

Ashen Angel: Risks suicide if you use against one or two commanders, but many consider it the most dangerous assassin spell. If you've bootstrapped Death to the point where you have multiple demiliches, it's a good choice.

Infernal Disease: Not the most dangerous of the spells, but if you're a Blood nation you may well be able to spam these in terrifying numbers towards the endgame. And of course even a failed attack may well disease the target, causing a slow and lingering death.

Send Tupilak: LA Atlantis only. Cheap and accessible for their mages, so it should be spammable. May be less effective against thugs than other assassin spells.

Flames from Afar: Only likely to be effective against large groups of researchers.

Flames from the Sky: Effective against most non-giants, but expensive.

Murdering Winter/Wolven Winter combo: Effective but expensive again.

A couple of less obvious options:

Rain of Blood: 5% of diseasing any mage in the province. Also an outside chance that the added Misfortune will trigger a nasty event.

Leprosy: 50% of mages in the province get diseased.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Not death, they get 40% chance of being feebleminded for every S level of the astral mage there. Not clear if it stacks (i.e. if there are 3 S mages, the chances are 40%,40%,40% or 120%?), but you shouldn't try anyway, too risky for a S4 mage :eek:

Well, a feebleminded mage is as good as death if you can't heal him anyway. Gems/items carrier but not much more :down:

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

On the subject of Mind Hunt:

As Arco can heal Feeblemind (you'll probably need multiple priestesses to do so quickly, though), they can blaze away with Mind Hunt to their heart (companion)'s content. It's a waste of gems against an Astral-heavy nation, but if they only have S1 or maybe S2 mages then you aren't losing much by trying.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Would an immortal mindhunting also recover in a somewhat timely fashion?

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Earth attack is really the only effective way, if your opponent has any kind of Astral mages to preclude mindhunt.

Looming hell allows body guards to attack mages - works ok.. only in situations when you have assassins in the square (to make him use bodyguards) or perhaps when you have autosummoning troops.

Leprosy works... ok. So do Disease demons.

Whirlwind and Monkey attack don't work except IF the mage is in a coastal hex and IF the water is between you and him - you can pick him up and drop him in the water.
Which may or may not kill him.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Leprosy is MR negated, so you'll want some penetration in order to affect mages.

Looming hell affects any unit under the commander, not just bodyguards.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

To snipe an astral mage. Teleport, cast Magic Duel, cast Returning. Requires Thaumaturgy 3, Evocation 3, an S9/S10 Sacred Statue (or it's equivlent), and about 5 astral gems.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Or if he's using bodyguards to protect against Earth Attack or other assassin spells :evil:

Except that flying monkeys don't ever attack mages (according to the spell description). I hadn't thought of Whirlwind, though.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Earth Attack is indeed effective. It's also high research (Conj 8, right?) and requires an E5 mage to cast. So it's not an easy solution, but it sure is fun.

Disease Demons also work pretty well.

Vengeance of the Dead can be highly effective against a battlemage (or anyone else who's killed a lot of people), but you might need some MR-penetration gear. Useless against mages who haven't ever left the library....

As another option:
Gift of Health + spamming Mind Hunt = loads of dead commanders

Just make sure that your Mind Hunters are hiding in a province with strong friendly Dominion. If they happen to stumble over an enemy Astral mage, Gift of Health will rehabilitate them pretty quickly.

I whacked an enemy Pretender once with Mind Hunt. MR-penetration gear is a good thing....

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

It's pretty bad, and only works on enemy commanders in your domininon.

Jazzepi

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

If you have a very long lived nation, or mages with recuperation (pangaea, I'm looking at you), or gift of health (or a combination of the above) (Cough Pangaea Cough), burden of time is a devestatingly powerful spell to cast against most other nations, as many mages have old age.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

One minor caveat to Mind Hunt... a single cast won't kill units that transform to a second shape when hurt badly. (Like Machaka Black Sorcerors and Lamia Queens). The message will say theat they are injured, but survived the attack. Two casts can do the job, but it becomes much less efficient for the hunter. (Especially considering that the unit has to fail two magic resist checks rather than one)

A counter to many of the assassination spells is simply to have cheap indy commanders tag along with your expensive, important mages.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I assume domes can work as well to protect mages, but I guess they tend not to be worth it.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Is there a way to mod in an "Earth Attack"-like spell? I'd like to add a couple versions of it to my Dis Nation, but is it going to be a hassle?

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

They do work well, and probably are thought worth it to protect sensitive sites like research centres or clam farms. Spending 5 gems or less to knock off a clam holder is a good exchange.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Doesn't the clam fall into the lab? :D

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I don't believe so. I'm pretty sure Fever Fetishes disappear if you don't remove them before the wearer dies, and I don't think clams would behave differently.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

As far as I know, the 'falling off' effect only happens to commanders who are at a lab and who are changing forms.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

If you can #copyspell Earth Attack and changing damage changes the type of creature that attacks, it's possible. If damage is reserved for something else, it's not.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I'll have to give that a try-thanks Endoperez!

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

The Tupilak never impressed me. It might be cheap, but the att/def stats give it very low odds against anybody who isn't pretty feeble.

Didn't see any mention of the Strands of Arcane Power or Astral Corruption, both of which might be fun given good circumstances.

I suppose that if you're hard-pressed by a mage-heavy attack, it -might- be interesting to spam blood domes across your empire, but that's rather double-edged.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Its not hard. Just copy earth attack as a start. Then code dive see if you can see the code for earth elemental - change it to something else. or somethings elses

It would be fun to send a swarm of dragonflies.. Queen Maub's irritation, or the little elf faeries that shoot stun ....

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

So it'd be fine against the average human mage then :) It can even take a hard-hitting attack spell or two, which might be useful.

Astral Corruption is okayish. It'll knock out low-level forge mages on a semi-regular basis, but it's a late-game spell and by then important ritual-casting mages can be well-enough bodyguarded to survive a Horror attack. It won't touch battle mages in invading armies.

That said, about 20% of horror attacks from this spell will be upgraded by one notch, so any mages spamming Wish are likely to get eaten by Doom Horrors sooner or later.

I think Strands of Arcane Power would be most useful defensively, unless your domain is so deep in enemy territory that you've effectively won anyway.

I haven't dared use the Blood domes.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I used astral corruption to great effect by casting it the turn after declaring war. When someone starts a war, players generally respond by having their mages pump out various summons, magic items, and rituals in an attempt to pump up their power. I believe that I took out a huge number of mages with this, since the magnitude of rituals cast at me dropped sharply after that turn, and stayed down even after AC was dispelled.

Thus, it can work wonders if timed to do maximum damage.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

well inside a battle where the enemy has alot of mage support (i'm sure most of us know this can be very deadly mid/late game) rain of stones is one that seems to come up quite useful, though you will need some way to protect you're troops/mages and if the enemy mages have high hp like R'lyehs illithids, the big shambler mages atlantis has (basalt kings, angakoks...etc) or whatever they may survive the spell and need you too go through more risk and batter you're remaining troops yet again to get at them.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Concur. Rain of Stones + Fog Warriors = glee.

-Max

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

I prefer seducers. Not only knock out one of their mages, but gain one at the same time.

Altho the seducers have been greatly increased in number, they seem to have gone down in effectiveness. A failed seduction becomes a 1-on-1 combat, like an assassination. So you can deck them out with lots of equipment so they can kill the target.

But the BEST thing I have found is combining the two actions. With Arcos Oreiads for they often have 3 nature magic so getting Charm is great. Set their script so that if the seduction fails they do 1 attack (to move forward) then 2 Charms, then move into kill mode. An advantage is that it will also work on females. If you charm the target then a combat will occur in that province with your new commander fighting their old comrades.
If its the last commander in that province then you get to watch the commanders old troops rout which gives you the province.

With Succubus you can do the same taking advantage of their blood magic and using Hellbind Heart spell.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Dude that's evil. I love it so much, taking advantage of you're enemies reactions - now that's real strategy.

I salute you.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Nice tactic, though Astral Corruption is banned in most MP games, I believe.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

Perish the thought! That doesn't sound very much fun to me.

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

News to me. Why so? Is it too strong, or just too much of a bother?

Re: Best ways to poach mages...
 

aww come on there are loads of MP games where it isn't.

i do know i shall be using it with a vengeance though.