How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

I was having quite a bit of trouble taking down a pesky pretender. He was a wyrm with some pretty good stats. Repeated attempts to kill him always failed. I had a lot of gems, I decided on a different tactic. I wished my prophet (my pretender was immobile) up to some pretty insane levels, gave him 400 ancient ones and an ethereal crossbow with orders to attack rearmost (he had a precision over 40, he should have hit!) He never fires. I script shadow blasts--a few turns into the battle he drops one into my troops, never fires one at the pretender. I tried a few other spells, same effect. I was about to try sending him in alone (the wyrm never had more than a few units and my guy was tougher) when I got a dominion kill.

Other than dominion, how in the world should I take down a pest like this? He was powerful, regenerating, good MR, poison immune and a good spellcaster with a full load of gems. I simply couldn't do anything to him, in time my forces would rout.

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

hellfire sword on someone who can last a few rounds mono e mono. flying shoes. script to attack large enemy monsters. (this is also how I took out an eat of the dead) if his magic resistance is too high, send in some cronie hold the banner of the northern star (or whatever its called) that lowers everyone's MR.

also if you have him fire at large monsters, he has a better chance of targeting the wyrm. make sure he is in range. (place him towards the front, maybe with a silver hauberk on to keep him from getting arrow'd)

you can work on getting rid of the spellcaster aspect of him by using a bow of beotulf instead of the ethereal crossbow.

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

does he have astral magic? some really cheap astral mages throwing around magic duel could work too.

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

this could be a typo - but you said the orders were to 'attack rearmost' which would mean that he would never fire his weapon, but instead attempt to get in melee range.

A lot of spells have a range too short to be used - I don't know if that was the problem with the Shadow Blast.

One pretty nice (unresistable) spell is 'Gifts from Heaven', if you have the mages to cast it. It has poor precision, so don't expect to hit first time, but if it hits it does 150 damage. A few hits later the Wyrm is dead.

One approach that may work is to try to overload the target with fatigue. Stellar Cascades is an Astral spell which creates fatigue (I'm sure there are others too) which is easy to spam (assuming you have Astral mages)

BTW, even if your guy fired, if may not have had any effect, since the Ethereal Crossbow involves a MR check, depending of course on how strong his MR is.

It really depends on what nation you are playing, what strategy to adopt.

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

Well, if the Wyrm is only taking a few troops with him at any time then the most cost efficient way to kill him would be to surround that army and force them to rout by killing those few men. Then the Wyrm would die in retreat w/o you ever having to fight it.

After that, there are plenty of spells which will kill an SC. One example is Soul Slay. Even if the Wyrms MR is good, enough massed soul slays will eventually get through. There are plenty of other spells in that category: Frozen Heart, Charm, Blindness, etc. Or if you want a way that doesnt check MR, you could use Gifts from Heaven, Incinerate, or even Farstrike or Star Fires (if you had enough of them). Additionally, casting Curse on a dangerous enemy SC is always good. If you wanted to use equipment you could always go with a Heart Finder sword, or equip a commander with an Eye Shield and send him to go get eaten. Additionally there are plenty of artifact weapons which would settle this dispute pretty quickly.

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

Horror Mark him and wait?

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

Wyrms don't have many item slots... Surely it's possible to design an SC that'll splatter him,especially if his dominion is not so high

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

I thought it meant to attack the rearmost enemies but didn't specify melee. The wyrm was always in back, I figured it would either get him or his prophet. (I got the prophet in ordinary combat anyway.) That could explain why he never fired.

I didn't realize spells had range limits. I thought the only issue was accuracy and my precision was enough to take care of that.

My prophet could have cast anything. Looking at the really high damage spells, though, they would incur so much fatigue I would only get one off.

I didn't have much in the way of mages. My ancient ones had been rolling over everything else, I had recruited for research, not spellcasting.

I should have seen an arrow, though. I had no other shooters.

I was thinking in general, I won this one with dominion but I was wondering how to do it next time.

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

If your has a higher magic skill than is required to cast the spell, the fatigue cost is reduced (by 50% per level, I think). Powerful mages can keep on casting spells for a very long time, especially if they have good reinvigoration.

Re: How to take down this pesky pretender?
 

Nope, "attack" always means melee. I think the tooltip explicitly says so, too. I think that ranged units fire when they are set on hold, too, but you should either give him the "Fire" / "Fire and flee" command or no command at all. I ususally use no special combat command unless there is a good reason to do so and the AI makes the best choice there is by itself.