Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

OK, I tried this again, with painfully middling results. What am I doing wrong?

MA Pythium, six Theurgs (1A1W2S), first 2 scripted to cast communion master and 4x thunderstrike, the next 4 scripted to cast communion slave, 4x hold.

Net cost: 900 gold for 8 thunderstrikes, which is a bit pricey, 112.5 gold each. But if thunderstrike is such a great spell, that should be worth it, right?

Result: One half are moderately effective -- killing three enemy troops and injuring another half dozen. One quarter just miss. And one quarter hit my troops, gee, thanks!

If I'm netting 50 points of damage from this, I'm lucky. I just don't see how the 900 gold spent on these mages is a better deal than having an additional 90 troops on the battlefield. This is in the early game, of course, as always I'm trying to kill AI hordes. It seems I'm just using the wrong tool for the job; Thunderstrike appears to be more of an assassination tool for powerful units/thugs/SCs than a weapon to clear chaff off the board. Am I mistaken?

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

My opinion : thunderstrike is not "designed" to be cast by a communion. It is designed to be cast by a solo mage. Or 15 "solo" mages, resulting in 45 thunderstrikes.

Storm staff + summon air power means that every air 2 mage will cast 2 / 3 of them. If you don't have some number of at least A2 mage it's not worth it, since at most it's going to kill 2 - 3 units and the AOE damage will be insignificant, and therefore wasted.

What I would do with Theurgs at the very beginning : cast something like mind burn 5 times. 12+ armor negating damage with 20 fatigue and 100 precision means that basically every mage you bring will kill one indy or an human troop per cast if magic resistance fails (which is most of the time against indy troops). Resulting, in your case, in about 15-20 kills for the five first turns of combat, maybe more ?

I don't know astral spells well enough to suggest more useful possibilities, which must exist.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

The first thing you must be aware is that playing agains the AI is a very different game than playing agains human players and tactics that are good against humans may be useless against the AI and vice-versa.

In the Thunderstrike case it is a good tactic against human players because humans rarely recruit chaff units (low hp, low protection, low price units) as they are completely useless mid-late game, so humans tend to have smaller/higher quality armies than the AI, that recruits lots of chaff. Against the AI the small number of units that Thunderstrike kills is pratically irrelevant, while against humans those same losses could cause a rout and win for you the battle.

For fighting AI hordes you must look at spells/tactics that do a small amount of damage to a large number of units, as the typical AI army will have a large number of low hp units.

In early game you should look at spells like Shockwave, however you must find a way to protect better your mages that will be closer to the enemy units... there are several ways in how to do that, either with buffs or itens... i like to use vine shields for close-in protection as they also help significantly against arrows, even giving 2 vine shields to more costly units...

Mid-game you should look at spells like Blade Wind and late-game your spells should decimate AI hordes easily as the AI simply cannot compete with humans late game in the use of the combat spells available...

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

I think Thunderstrike benefits greatly from casters with the natural levels for it. All those extra levels of air magic add a point of precision, which is invaluable. A4 or A5 Eagle Kings, for example, start with 16 and 17 precision, respectively, and with how quickly they build up stars, you quickly have a bunch of 20+ precision thunderstrike spammers.

Your Theurgs, meanwhile, start with a rather meager 11, and even your more experienced one will only be hitting 14 or 15 :(

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

did you try aim?

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

Aim is so easy to forget. Especially considering the not-so-directly explained mechanic where any precision over 10 counts as "double". So 11 precision is "actually" 12 precision.

So if you take ((listed precision in unit screen + precision modifier from attack/spell) - 5) * 2, you get the real precision being used. The range it can go without deviation is precision/2 - 2, so putting it all together:

range without deviation = (unit precision + weapon/spell precision) - 7
max degree of deviation when over range = (distance to target * 0.625) / (unit precision + weapon/spell precision)

Of course, this is quick math so I may have made a mistake.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

Also, one of the main attractions of thunderstrike is the high fatigue aoe. Blast some thunderstrikes on cavalry, and your normal troops hit them easily, high chance of a crit. And away they go.

Sadly, if you already can hit and instakill the enemy troops, the high fatigue does little.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

A communion with just 2 masters casting anything that isn't a single, battle-winning spell is not really an ideal situation for a communion at all. If you're trying to spam evos in communion, what you're really looking for is a situation where you can do a reverse communion and buff up the communion slaves instead of the masters. Get aim, storm power, and power of the spheres going on 2a+ mages and you'll see much more interesting results from your spellcasting efforts. Thunderstrike is very effective en masse due to the large secondary aoe, and combines very well with missile fire. But evos are always going to feel underwhelming unless they're really being spammed. Only things like shadowblast can get away with small numbers of casters.

And yes, as soyweiser says the AoE fatigue is a large part of why thunderstrike is good.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

OK, so I am using the wrong tool for the job, that's what I thought. Falling frost looks promising; I'm going to give MA Atlantis a spin and see if I can make that work. What I really liked about Thunderstrike was the range -- I could park my mages way back out of arrow range. For Falling Frost I'm going to have to park the mages right up front, ouch.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

Remember, the AI is an idiot. If I take a turn to cast aim, I get that fewer attacks. Once the script runs out, the mages will be casing Body Ethereal, Luck, etc.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

The reverse communion here is the best advice for using thunderstrike in your situation. If you do a reverse communion as this guy suggests, only one guy is going to be casting aim, so your other guys are going to get their same amount of casts.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

well aim is not a self buff so it doesnt work that way. if you can get a N mage in there to cast eagle eyes that works

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

Yup, aim target a single case at range 5+. Usually mages cast it on themselves but for some reason they also cast it on other troops occasionally :confused:.

It got "corrected" in CBM though (fixed range of one), so using a mage and a "commanders with bows" bodyguard result in a much useful outcome.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

If you can pull off a reverse communion then each mage can cast CS,Aim,TStrikex3. They'll fall unconscious after 2 Strikes anyway, so what the AI does when you go off script doesn't really matter. You still get more total Strikes since you have more mages casting.
You could also cast wind Guide instead of each casting Aim.

The hard part is getting Storm up. You need more research and preferably a Staff of Storms. Your Communion Master could cast it after PoTS, or with a extra gem. And it halves precision, so even with Aim your total precision will be less.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

So, falling frost *does* work pretty well against the AI. The 5x area of effect means I can trash his chaff pretty effectively. What other low level spells (7 or less, "low", heh!) have a good area of effect? I've played with magma eruptions in the past which has worked well.

Unfortunately, I see a potential problem in use against human opponents. The range is pretty short, so if my opponnent parks his army in the back with orders for "hold and attack", my mages will twiddle their thumbs and gain fatigue for several turns. Is this a common strategy in MP games? How do you deal with a player who turtles his troops out of your range for several turns?

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

Hello, you seem to have the problem of playing against the AI, and trying to base a strategy to work against them, on a forum where 95% of the strategy discussed is relevant to MP against enemies that can do something against you.

Some have said they are entertained by playing against dom3 AI. I doubt that remark.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

I have tried playing multiplayer a few times. The usual result is that several human players gang up on me and crush me. I'm looking for a strategy which will compensate for my opponents' numerical superiority -- and playing against AI hordes seems to be good practice.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

The biggest difference between AI and humans in troop composition is that humans tend towards fewer, elite, armies, whereas the AI recruits largely at random in massive numbers.

Hence thunderstrike is more effective against the typical human, as it deals more and armor-piercing damage at a better range, than falling frost. Naturally, falling frost might still be the better choice sometime even against humans.


I remember thunderstriking through communions with Bogarus Astrapelagists. At 2 air they can't cast it naturally, but with a 4 slave, 4 master, setup the masters can spam thunderstrikes for the length of a major battle.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

I just want to point out one more thing - you can't really think of effectiveness of cast spells in terms of how much gold the mage casting it cost you to purchase. I.E. 112.5 gold per thunderstrike is a bogus figure. The real cost of using mages in battle is that they aren't spending their time researching better spells instead.

But even if you want to look at it in terms of gold cost of a mage casting spells, one mage makes back 100 gold for each random AI soldier you kill, approximately, generally more because the AI does recruit expensive soldiers too. But anyway, each battle a mage is in he kills more soldiers. It is incredibly easy for any random mage to get more than 50 kills over the course of their lifetime serving on the battlefield, especially against the AI. Once you've made up for their initial purchase cost of the mage after probably as few as 3 battles, then you are just paying for his upkeep cost, which is easily overcome by kills made. You should only lose mages fairly infrequently, and primarily due to stray arrows even then. This is important because the lifetime effectiveness of said mage should quickly outstrip the gold effectiveness of purchased troops who will die a lot more often and force you to keep spending the premium up front cost of the purchase.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

I measure it as gold cost for mages vs. skipping magic altogether and just hiring more troops. Obviously that's a fail for any long term strategy, but I expect to be out of the game long before L9 spells are being tossed around anyway.

So my thunderbolt slinging Theurgs have to convince me they're more valuable than a squad of principes.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

So the argument of paying more up front but earning your money back and more in kills over time doesn't work for you, I take it :P If your mage is killing 100g of enemy units per battle, then it doesn't take long at all for the mage to earn its cost back. And upkeep is cheaper to pay for than the cost of hiring new units all the time. Mages allow you to spend less money on continually hiring new units to do the killing by doing the killing of a decent number of troops every turn, with little risk to the mage.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

If you want to run a communion of thunderstrikers, try this set up:

8 Pythium Theurges: com master, thunderstrike x4
Any random A2 mage: Wind Guide, spells
16+ communicants (auto communion-slave casters)

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

Pardon the stupid question: what is aim?

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

They're talking about the level 1 Alteration spell, Aim. It improves a few units' precision.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

Even in the case of battles alone that doesn't work very well. A squad of principes suffers from significant attrition in basically every battle, mages hidden at the back don't. Granted, neither do small scale hydra squads and such (unless it is a battle you lose), but the mage is basically worth principes and their replacements for as long as the mage survives. When you look at the sort of kill counts these mages get, in troop cost alone they usually pay for themselves.

On a side note, there is also the matter of being able to turn mages into much more temporary thugs that will suffer attrition at higher rates, but be more more dangerous while they last. Mistform and a series of Shock Waves can do a lot of damage to an enemy army.

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

So let me post a strategy I found fairly effective, and maybe this will help explain why I consider other strategies comparitively ineffective.

MA Tien Chi
80xImperial Crossbowmen -- 1000 gold
8xImperial Geomancer -- 640 gold
1 astral pearl - eq 50? 100 gold?
20 PD - 210 gold

So depending on how you add it up, this is equivalent to 2000 gold, or a 200 troop army.

First 6x geomancers scripted to: Communion Slave, hold, 3xGift of Heaven
Geomancer #7 scripted to: Communion Master, Summon Earth Power, 3xhold
Geomancer #8 scripted to: Communion Master, Power of the Spheres, 3xhold (he has the 1 pearl)

The result? 54 meteors plowing into the enemy ranks -- the bigger the opposing force, the more effective, but I imagine this would also do a reasonable job against elite forces, thugs, and SCs. Meanwhile, the crossbowmen supply additional damage to cause routing, and hold up reasonably well in melee combat.

What other combinations can obliterate 100 or so enemy troops of an opposing force before they have a chance to reach your troops, using only 640 gold worth of mages, only one gem, and without causing significant collateral damage?

Re: Thunderstrike - what am I missing?
 

If you don't mind a little collateral damage, I had an Eagle King go from 0 kills to 240-odd kills and catapult to the top of the HoF by a single casting of Wrathful Skies :)