Best Province targeting ritual?
 

Any particular Favorites?

I sort of, sometimes, like Imprint Minds, and the only thing ameliorating the 25 gem cost is the availability of Astral Gems.

Dome of Arcane Warding; again, not bad if you keep all your eggs in one basket. Not terribly expensive.

Blight is awesome for wrecking a recalcitrant opponents' bread basket provinces. The pop loss is helpful but its the unrest which is such an annoyance and income reduction. 50+ unrest and you've lost about 90% of income or so it seems.

Call of the Winds is obviously better in most cases than Call of the Wilds. I suppose in some 5-ish PD Provinces the Nature spell would be better. Those birds are pretty easy to break.

Does Baleful Star cause unrest or change a luck scale to misfortune? If so i might like it more.

And the ultimate question; Astral Projection vs. Astral Window? It seems like you get to choose between a) 50% chance of mage becoming feeble minded and b) no risk at all. Now i don't know about the rest of you, but sign ME up for choice A!

[ May 21, 2004, 07:15: Message edited by: SelfishGene ]

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Both. But since everyone already has misfortune anyway, the latter effect is negligible.

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

It also curses a bunch of units.

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Well, if we are going for favourites, it would have to be black death.

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

Melancholia ain't half bad, if your opponent hasn't put a dome up around his favorite provinces. Has to be accompanied by a proper invasion, though.

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

Depends on what the player wants to get done.

Black Death works great at killing population.

For a surprise attack the Ghost Riders is the best deal for most damage per gem. So powerful the people I play multiplayer with have Banned this spell. 5 gems for a wraith lord and large group of pale riders ! KaBang... the other summon attacks don't even come close.

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

Generally, attempting to specifically kill population is a counterproductive exercise in the long run: It's hard to even tell what the population of the province *IS*, unless you have dominion there, and unless you are losing, that province will shortly be yours anyway, so you're just killing your own population: As such, Black Death can be considered to be the tool of either the dead, or the desperate: At the point it's available by in the game, any opponent that is sizeable enough to make you that desperate will not be greatly harmed by it unless you cast it an unreasonable number of times on a large number of provinces....but if you're losing, where are you getting that many death gems to waste just trying to kill population? If you're Ermor, on the other hand, it's certainly more attractive, but you also have so many other uses for death gems than frivolous killing of random population.

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Ghost Riders has basically zero effect on an army holed up in a fort, and will not inflict any real destruction if you have one in the province....which you SHOULD, because otherwise, that province would burn down regularly anyway.

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

Ghost Riders does great as a counter-insurgency measure though, when someone gets a army into your territory and you cant/dont want to guess where its going next turn. Cast it 4 or 5 times on the province with the army...weeeee
I doubt its as effective against SC's but lack the experience to be certain.

[ May 22, 2004, 01:51: Message edited by: Cheezeninja ]

Re: Best Province targeting ritual?
 

Yes, yes it is: I find it highly effective as a point-defense weapon, especially when combined with castles, so that the Ghost Riders...and marauding enemies, aren't inflicting much harm on YOU.