earthquake?
 

Well it's no secret that earthquake can decimate mage squads.
Especially vulnerable are low hp pythium mages.

I'm trying to figure out possible counters to earthquake.
Does eathrealness helps?
high protection (how high)?
etc.

Come, if you may, lore masters of dominions and help this poor pythium pretender defend his mages.

Re: earthquake?
 

Earthquake is armor-piercing, so with protection above 15, mages should only rarely die. Thus, Stoneskin should protect a mage and all his communicants, and Ironskin should ensure that none of them even receive afflictions. Personal Regeneration (during Communion) would help with afflictions too. Other similar spells (like Bone Grinding) can be avoided by ethereality (and probably luck), but I can only assume Earthquake is the same. If there's a single Earthquake, Twist Fate should solve the problem.

I just tried to cast Earthquake for the first time in a MP game, and failed (mage killed by fliers before casting) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Too bad, it would've been really nice...

Re: earthquake?
 

Thanks Saber.
Only problem with that approach is that the communion slaves will only rarely cast spells.
I'm sure this problem existed up to 2.14 version.
Don't know if it was fixed since.

Twist fate sounds like a great counter to a single earthquake( a common scenario in MP).

I wonder if a level 9 earth or astral blessing should also do the trick.

Re: earthquake?
 

I was under the impression that communion master spells affected all of the slaves. Has this been changed, or was I mistaken?

Astral 9 would work, but Earth 9 is only useful on units that already have high protection, like Templars and Wardens, IMO. However, communicants are not sacred. Mass Protection should save some units...

Killing the enemy before he casts - with fliers, spells, or longbows of accuracy - is always best, though http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: earthquake?
 

Let me clarify what I meant.
first I rarely use communicants as they tend to die too easily for various reasons (among which is fatigue).
I agree that stone skin would be a good protection for them and for the rare scenarios when I use communicants it would serve well.

I usually deploy squads of "real" mages, mainly theurg acolytes and theurgs.
In this scenario each mages that had cast communion slave tend to ignore his (spells) scripts and altogether stop casting spells.
Not to mention that it takes two turns to get them protected in this way. While it takes one to cast earthquake.

Re: earthquake?
 

Oh, that's right; I was forgetting the turn to cast Communion Master. Body Ethereal or killing the caster would be your only hopes, then... though casters that are adjacent to melee units (like dragonflies or imps) tend to ignore their script in favor of self-preservation, so a single lifelong-protection scout should be able defend an army from a lone Earthquake caster.

Re: earthquake?
 

Good observation. I wonder if this rule also applies to SCs such as VQ.
It appears promising but needs testing and/or evidence from MP.

Consider the following battle.
20 theurg acolytes and theurgs are attacked by a VQ.
the VQ casts EarthquakeX2 and retreats.
Is there a way most of the mages make it alive?

stone skin not available.
twist fate will save only from first quake.

So consider this army is led by an earth Arch theurg who casts comm master, then stone skin.
If the rest of the mages cast twist fate then they make it through the first quake but die in the second (since they didn't cast comm slave).
Else if they cast comm slave they die in the first quake.

It seems then that a life long prot. might save the day.

(I have plenty motivation to check every angle of this issue as in my experience it's a major problem for Pythium in MP.)

Re: earthquake?
 

In my experience, yes. If you look at the supercombattant roundup, casters who were scripted to cast damage spells stopped casting to deal with little skeletons and other chaff once they got close (I seem to recall that happening a couple times). Unless they have a spell like Fire Blast, Shock Wave, or Immolation, they just start meleeing. However, if the AI determines that an Earthquake can kill all the surrounding units, it may do that instead.

If I recall correctly, Dominions II penalizes casters at close range, like this:

If a caster/ranged unit is adjacent to an enemy, there is a 50% chance that it will be unable to cast/shoot and be forced to do a melee attack. And that's in addition to the AI deciding that melee is a good idea.

Re: earthquake?
 

I play pythium atm in MP too and my conclusion is that it is not worth to protect theurgs .
Most important is to quickly get good summons with pythium .
Their national stuff sucks in battle .
Theurgs excel in research and forging but not on the battlefield http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif .
Earlygame they are ok with false horror spamming or frozen heart or similiar stuff but in midgame they are outdated once your enemies can defend easy vs. false horrors and can cast rain of stones , earthquakes or similiar spells .

Getting good summons quickly with pythium is not easy though also . The art with pythium is imho to survive until lategame well enough . In lategame pythium is one of the best nations but for a long period of 20-30 turns in midgame they literally suck . If enemies exploit this then you have a hard time with pythium .

Anyone feel free to suggest midgame pythium strats . Hopefully i will learn something new this way because i have no working pythium midgame strats http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/rant.gif .

Re: earthquake?
 

I'm not sure that they are outdated.
After all false horrors are great vs. PD, which keeps the theurgs effective for raids (with flying boots).

Also they can cast any number of powerfull astral spells with/out communion.

I do agree that they become less usefull and that keeping them alive becomes a challenge.

I've also experienced this mid game weakness with Pythium.
Truth is, the reason for my original post is that I'm trying to form a successfull mid game pythium strategy.

rain of stones and earthquaked wasting theurgs is one problem I wanted to address.

Another problem is limited access to SCs.
I was thinking that maybe building towards good astral summons (angels, ether) might be a good direction.