Tactics (against communions)
 

In a current EA game I was recently crushed by an massive communion army of Gift of Heaven spamming Marvarni druids (skillfully managed by vfb) as Neifelheim. Now in a different game I am looking at facing off with another player playing Marverni who also likes the massive communions of death (and the accompanying Gifts of Heaven), this time as Sauromatia. I've got some ideas about how to deal with them (Sauromatia has some unit and thug flexability that Niefelheim didn't), but was wondering if a guide had been done up about it, or if any of the more experienced players have some advice for a relative newbie.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

rain of stones!

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Rain of stones, blade wind,... or.. big dummy bait.

Got some large useless schmuck with lots of hp.... put him in front and body ethereal him. They usually chace the big guys...

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

spellcatchers in front; any battlefield damage spells - rain of stones, earthquake, being classics; seeking arrows, assassins; your own communion, casting buffs; fliers

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Fog Warriors would be highly effective in this case, I believe Gifts of Heaven are mundane, meaning only 1 damage to whatever it targets with mistform. However, even if they magical damage, the first hit would still only do 1 damage, meaning much effectiveness.

Beyond that, go after the communion mages. Remote spells like Murdering Winter or battlefield wide stuff like Earthquake should do a lot to shut down communions.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Gifts From Heaven is not mundane, but yes, Fog Warriors will prevent the first one from doing more than 1 point of damage, and with its low Prec it may not hit twice. I've got to second the idea of attacking the communion mages, especially during the magic phase (Cloud Trapeze + Mistform + Rain of Stones). Even if you can't do that, communions tend not to be very strategically mobile (more like an anvil than a hammer) and you should potentially be able to raid around them.

Rigor Mortis is also good against communions because it usually prevents any non-reinvig'ed mage from ever coming back online once he's gone unconscious. The masters will go unconscious (from encumbrance if nothing else) and hopefully the slaves will die of fatigue. Actually if you can just get a few good thugs in there the communion may start popping off its own slaves from fatigue damage if you hang in there long enough; it depends upon how smart he is about master/slave ratios.

-Max

P.S. I bet raise dead spam would work too. Communions, like banishing priests, prefer to target for a lot of HP damage. A sufficient number of death mages raising dead should keep the masters casting until the slaves pop, just like thugs would. The problem here is that an army of necromancers is not any more strategically nimble than a communion is.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

I guess the biggest problem of Communions is lacking mobility. Artillery spells always work perfectly since they must move step by step, and entering new provinces usually means they gain no protection of Dome.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Foul vapors!

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

For getting the rear units Ive found this tactic helpful.
I place most of my forward units high on the formation screen (left side of the battlefield). And sometimes some sort of a charging unit (wolves, cavalry, flyers, etc) set to Attack Rearmost. This tends to draw the enemy army to that side of the battlefield.

Then I place another charging unit (hvy cavalry, tramplers etc) on the very bottom and slightly back from the lead units (my far right of battlefield) set for Hold and Attack Rearmost. The enemy swarm shifting toward my left flank seems to clear the right flank so the second group of chargers gets a "clearer view" of what is meant by "rearmost". They seem to get farther back and a large enough group will hit the casters fairly early.

But Im sure that better testers than I will have specific numbers on whether or not thats a real tactic.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

If you keep your battlefield wide spells unpredictable, you can quickly flatten communion attempts. Most communion's effectiveness comes from them deciding when and where to fight. Take that away and they're going to be losing lots of mages. Also, next time, just rush the crap out of Maverni.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

I would have rushed him except we are at opposite sides of the map and only share a small border (three provinces he grabbed that are completely seperate from his empire). He's got a couple of teleport spells/items and Arcane Nexus up, but none of his neighbors are messing with him so now he is coming after me. I can hurt him a bit, but it is primarily unconventional, and I've got to be able to defend myself against his ground attack and hopefully grind out that little bridgehead he secured on my side of the map.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

What are his neighbors thinking? AN usually calls for a gankfest!

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

I honestly don't know, the game I think he is talking about is Principe a game all about doing what's in your own interests, so the lack of action does seem strange

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Surely it's still all in their best interests to flatten the guy with AN up?

It can depend on what magic you have available beyond your basic mages, who as I recall are death/nature with some astral and water. Fog Warriors and Earthquake/Rain of Stones may not be viable, nor big artillery like Murdering Winter or raining fire. If he's got AN up, quite likely he can also cast Army of Gold/Lead, which blunts Earthquake/Rain of Stones a lot.

Skeleton spam might be good - GfH is high fatigue and inaccurate, so it might drain his fatigue lots whilst you don't take much damage. Your undead are immune to cold and poison, so foul vapours to poison his army and Grip of Winter to fatigue them - particularly powerful in a long battle where you're throwing spam - although you'd want to protect any of your mages from posion/cold as well.

As a desperation tactic, you could always create a load of S1 mages and try to kamikaze arcane duel his communioned mages to death.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

I'd like to underline something which was briefly mentioned - battlefield summons can be fabulous counters to communions depending on how the communion is being used. Nothing is more frustrating than having all the good targets out of range but burning out all your communion slaves trying to squish giant ants or dragonflies or longdead. Bonus points if you can use a summon immune to whatever the communion likes to use (fire elementals vs falling fires, etc). Particularly useful is spells which summon units to the edge of the battle field like howl or willow wisp as they'll not only have a good chance of missing the sparsely spaced guys, they'll also have a good chance of inflicting friendly fire damage as their own guys run towards them. Elementals make a pretty good choice vs gifts from heaven because they have several forms so they each have to be hit several times regardless of the damage (I think). Air elementals should work particularly well as the gifts from heaven will cause hideous friendly damage.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

I think the friendly-damage check will prevent in most cases the mages' AI to spam GfH on fliers which came near friendly troops, but I may be wrong :) I'll test as soon as I find time :D

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Gifts from Heaven + Communion is a low cost tactic because it only take Evocation 5 and Thaum 1 and it can be brought online before the opposition has any real research.

That being said, it is only really effective against high-cost big units like Neifle giants and elephants.

So here are a number of "counters":

1. Send chaff. The precision is so low that he'll be hitting his own stuff on the front line as much as yours, and if in the early part of the battle he is losing a 15 gold infantry for every 5 gold markata you lose, the battle can be a "win" regardless of who retreats.

2. You are Sauromatia! Hydras can take a GoH hit and all they lose is a head. Toss in some longdead chaff and you can just survive GoH long enough for your archers and mages to do their thing.

3. Straight out-mage them. Load up your mages with Death gems and Shadow Blast until his army is dead. Remember that if someone is sending mages, the best and often only counter is to send as many mages to counter. Feel free to use your own communions.

4. The Fear army. You get Nature and Death and Blood, so that means you have several ways to get Fear units and get Fear spells. Getting a communion to retreat will scatter them to several provinces and effectively turn them back into crap mages. With a little planning, you can destroy them completely by making sure they have no place to retreat to.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

I think it can be fairly effective against normal troops as well.
If the enemy army is large enough and/or you are enhancing your precision you don't miss very often.
A GoH cost 50 fatigue and can kill up 9 normal troops. And you don't care about hp, armor, shields, etherealness and air shields.

The much loved Blade Wind can kill up to 40 troops but will often kill less than 10 because of all the things mentioned. And it costs 80 fatigue.

Of course there's better spells against troops, but you've gotta use what you have. :)

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

I have never seen Blade Wind kill anything remotely close to 40 troops. Even against Barbarians I'm lucky to kill 10; 2 or 3 heavily damaged is more typical IME, in MA.

-Max

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Having done a fair number of precision tests with this spell, I can tell you that unless you have a fair pile of mages spamming it it doesn't pay off compared to other options.

Try the same experiment with the same number of mages spamming Falling Foo (Falling Fire and/or Falling Frost). Against regular national troops your Foo mages will rack up kills much faster which means less chance of enemy fighters reaching mages.

The rule of dominions is small army < Thug < Large army < SCs, mages and "trick armies" like "demons + Mandaha" or "Marble Warriors + Foul Vapors". By the mid-game, large armies get eaten by mages casting battlefield spells and thug armies are executed gangster-style by spams of spells like Frozen Heart.

That being said, most players vastly prefer to keep mages researching and not fighting in battles, so getting experience in mage on mage action can be hard to get. Send ten mages and half a plan with any army and things get brutal very fast.

Every spell has it's niche. Bladewind isn't even in my top five battle Evocation spells considering how rarely humans field light or no armored troops.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Assassins are rarely useful. But one of the times they *can* be useful is when an enemy communion is on or near your assassin producing castles.

Even if you only make him burn gems, it can throw off his gem allocation for the big fight.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Generally it's not to hard to kill 1-2 slaves with assassins, which even if it doesn't lead to a victory in the next battle, greatly increases the odds of the remaining slaves burning out, thus neutering the communion until replacement slaves can be fetched.

Re: Tactics (against communions)
 

Sorry, I didn't make that clear.
40 is the theoretical maximum, but unless you are really lucky you will be below 10.
Still I thought Blade Wind was considered a good spell for EA?

Yes, you are of course right here.
But GoH still has a solid (while not spectacular) damage output against national troops. All in all I'd say it pays off greatly. I'll explain why and how later.