Hellbind -- What am I doing wrong?
 

I'm trying one of the Book O' Tactics things in SP ... and it isn't working as well as I think it should.

I'm playing Abyssia and have an air mage source. I've set up a province to "windride" in 1-2 enemy commanders each month. That works fine. I'm providing ~4 Warlocks w/ 5 blood slaves each, plus Penetration items (blood thorn, skull, pearl, the penetration wand) and scripted them to cast "hellbind heart" repeatedly. I script the air mages to spend time buffing so they won't kill my victim before I can snare him. I deploy the blood mages arcoss the line all the way forward.

But it doesn't work. They cast astral sheild or etheral body. They waste time until the scripts run out (3rd or 4th turn) and cast soul slay. I've had mages run forward one turn (attack, hellbind, hellbind) and they still don't do the hellbind.

So, where am I going wrong?

Rylen

Re: Hellbind -- What am I doing wrong?
 

You are probably out of range for the spell - The range is 30, so make sure your mages are at the very front and hold a couple of turns to let your victim advance (or go out and get 'em!).

Re: Hellbind -- What am I doing wrong?
 

Looks like you avoided most of the usual mistakes.
Dont put defense points into the province used.
Move the mages forward.
Give them blood slaves.

Maybe you could change their script to one attack (so they move up) or one buffing (so they wait for the other guy to move up) and then a hellbind.

By the way, only script one or two hellbinds at most. If it doesnt take then you dont want them wasting time and dying. Go ahead and kill the guy.

Oh yeah, your mages WILL decide to ignore the script for very good reasons. Sometimes they suck but mostly they are good reasons. Pause the combat and check the enemy for things like a high magic defense rating. My mages often decided not to bother trying hellbind with enemy high mages or magical summoned creatures.

Re: Hellbind -- What am I doing wrong?
 

I think the AI's reluctance to use "gems" if the target isn't very threatening may also have something to do with it. For instance, if you prepared for what you thought was going to be a big battle by scripting your mages to do heavy-duty casting like Wrathful Skies, but your opponent moved his army away and you end up facing a few province defense instead, the AI will override the Wrathful Skies order, and substitute something else that doesn't require gems. This behavior was implemented to stop what was a standard tactic back in Dom1, which was to Teleport or Trapeze a single mage on top of an enemy army, causing that army to follow its scripts and expend its gems, and thus be crippled when the main attack came during the movement phase.

Bottom line is I don't think the Wind Ride/Hellbind tactic can be made to work at all these days.

Re: Hellbind -- What am I doing wrong?
 

If Truper is right and the AI is avoiding using blood slaves up because the enemy force is too weak, then you could try using a weaker force of your own. If you only have 1 Warlock and a few bodyguards then maybe the AI will consider the enemy commanders enough of a threat to be worth using blood slaves. Of course then there's a greater chance that you lose outright, but them's the breaks.