earth grip
 

Am I correct in my understanding that a mage that can chain cast earth grip forever with a hundred percent accuracy can prevent any unit from performing any actions?

It seems to work on horrors anyway.

How do people deal with that vis a vis their SCs given that earth grip is so easy to cast?

And yes I know that they can break the grip, but they lose their turn doing so and then they just get gripped again immediately.

Am I missing something?

Re: earth grip
 

well for one, i guess a mage could fatiuge out, and i think you can cast spells, it has a limited range, or it could miss.

Re: earth grip
 

Yes, you are missing several things. First, earth grip has 10 fatigue, plus spellcasting fatigue of the mage means a level 1 mage cannot cast it forever. A higher level mage with summon earthpower probably more or less could though. Also, it doesn't have 100% accuracy, it has caster's precision + 5. Which is usually about 15. That's pretty good for a spell with only 20 range anyway, but it can still miss. It will not miss on horrors though because they will tend to be very close to you.

Re: earth grip
 

Yeah I know it doesn't have 100 precision, but you only need 15 precision to be perfectly accurate out to 13 hexes, or 20 precision to go out to 18. So joe mage with eye of aiming and someone casting aim on him, 3 gems for for a hammer forged boost of the messenger, and 1 earth gem to cast summon earth power, and as long as hes got <4 spell casting fatigue he's happy to get a no resist paralyze on anything up to and including... well anything.

I haven't seen it mentioned much in the "literature" so I guess that tells me that in practice the earth grip effect isn't overwhelming, but that says to me people aren't using it enough, not that it isn't very strong.

That or I don't know what I'm talking about. But next guy that sends an alone SC against me when I'm not... EA mictlan without any earth or air is in trouble imo.

Re: earth grip
 

There's also the fact that the AI is idiotic, and is likely to decide that something else would be more beneficial.

Re: earth grip
 

Coupled with the fact that SCs usually stay out of range for the first 5 turns... it would be pretty tough to actually AIM an earth grip at someone, you'd more or less have to just get lucky with the ai making good choices. Basically what trumanator just said, but with more words!

Re: earth grip
 

We can't really make an AI that can learn how to make a tasty sandwich, so I wouldn't expect Dominion's to reason its way through the best spell to cast.

I recall having said in a thread past that an idiotic AI and lack of scripting commands is actually a 'feature' to prevent game breaking uses of even basic spells.

This might be a good example of that.

Re: earth grip
 

Um.. no.
Don't get me wrong - earth meld (earth grips better cousin) is one of my favorite spells.

Going from memory,

Missiles etc will not deviate so long as range<Precision/2 -2, with precision over 12 being doubled.

so a net precision of 18 gets you a range of 10.

So, many units, but especially mictlan jag warriors with a happy feet bless are going to have a movement >> 10. Which means they will be able to go from .. out of range to... in your face before you can get the spell off.

Re: earth grip
 

Alright, in some testing, which was a pita, results were pretty good. An e2 earth reader with only boots of the messenger chain cast it vs a cyclops for 15 turns. Then he stopped, I think because my troops on guard commander routed due to the fear aura.

But pretty effective. Although non e2 readers had trouble, fire cast blindness, water would probably cast frozen heart, death cast decay.

Thanks for the reply chris, but you seem to be talking at best crosswise to me. I never proposed using it against jaguar warriors, specifically pointing out alone SCs as a potential target.

Precision calc was: base 10 + 5 eyeofaiming + 5 aim + 5 spell precision = 25, with +15 from doubling precision over 10 = 40, divide by 2 minus 2 = 18. Spell range is only 15 anyway.

Anyhow, I'm not making it out to be unstoppable vs all foes, just very very good for a particular job. And I suspect even if the SC is not alone, as he has high hp he will be targeted anyway. I don't feel like any more testing though.

Re: earth grip
 

Don't bother with decay, use raise skeletons instead, or something similar. Tangle vines is also one such spell that immobilizes the target, as is false fetters should it hit the MR (which it doesn't against proper SC's). This is just one way of countering SCs easily with simple mages.

Re: earth grip
 

The ai spellcasting priorities are sometimes weird. I remember once testing a fight and in order to get the effects I wanted, I had to remove water from the caster and unlearn one or two spells (I think all alteration and maybe some enchantment) before the ai would behave in the way I deemed best. Obviously, you can't unlearn spells or remove paths from your mages in a real game, so that seriously limits the reliability of spell casters beyond the 5th round.
In your test, did you have all spells researched or just enough that earth grip looked like the best spell?

Re: earth grip
 

Hahaha, I can already see another guide.
Earth grip - how to win the game by not researching.
No seriously it is nothing that would unbalance the game even if spammed. Quickness (iirc) or some passive damage coupled with high prot gets an SC through it. Sending in another high hp unit (it doesn't need higher hp than the SC, just high enough, I don't know the formula) to act as decoy.
The main purpose against SC is that it drops defense so you can get some hits with heavy low attack weapons/troops in but you really have to do some awkward tricks for timing (since even assuming that an e2 mage would use it reliably, the fewest "lategame" i.e. mobile and durable mages are e2 only).

Re: earth grip
 

I have had a vampire queen killed by tangle vines. Or was it vine arrow. five N1 mages kept my VQ pinned down for 30 turn while they slowly eat away at her.

Re: earth grip
 

From memory, eye of aiming and aim do not stack. And I believe its doubled over 12, not 10.

In your original post you said it would work against anything...
My point wasn't merely that this won't work against mictlan jag warriors. It also wont work against any reasonably fast units.

For example: flying Scs, cav. It also won't work against critters with a longer range attack spell. Light lightning bolt.
Don't get me wrong - great post, and its good to get people to look at a spell that is often overlooked.

but the claim of anything was a it exagerated.

Re: earth grip
 

Work as in it can't be resisted, not work as an be efficient. I'm 98% sure eye of aiming and aim stack, for your future reference and benefit.

Re: earth grip
 

I can verify that the two stack, at least on the paper doll.