[Norfleet]

Originally posted by archaeolept:
along w/ saying that the "paralyse bug" hurt him more than it hurt others (this while he was playing SG ermor and r'lyeh )

Meh. The Paralyze bug is gone now, and I will be among the first to dance with joy for its loss. Yet I continue to play SG Ermor, and R'lyeh.

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
Let's take a look at the two Ermorian themes then. From Dom 1 to Dom 2 their amount of available design points dropped by 50. They also gained more survivability for their troops as banish was reduced in effectiveness. Every other nation, on the other hand, has half as much gold to use.

Banish seems rather effective to me. Seeing as they've upgraded the accuracy of all ranged weapons, including banish, in the new 2.11 patch, banish works much better.

Even so, that's all I had besides summoned troops, since the upkeep was approaching 1000 gold per turn, and even the world map doesn't give you much more than that in income.

That's all you NEED. Why would you need hordes of rabble? They're the wrong tools for the job.

If you don't have any death mages, you're going to have a hard time creating one with death 2 or 3.

You can easily get a death-1 random in many nations: That allows you to dark knowledge for gems, and you will surely wind up with a larger pile of death gems than Ermor will, because you have practically no use for them. So why NOT create some items and summons to get you some death-2+ mages? Gotta use all those death gems SOMEHOW. If you simply neglect the fact that you can find death gem sites in your territory, then you are simply willfully squandering your available natural resources.

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I've overrun PD 10 with Arouse Hunger, Imprint Souls, Hordes from Hell....PD is simply unable to cope. If you can't beat it with just one casting, use two or three.

So you just happen to have a few hundred nature gems sitting around to cast multiple calls of the wilds every turn?

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Call of Wild is able to easily crunch through weak PD nations with one cast. Furthermore, the wolves stick around if they win, and the werewolf you get can summon more wolves. The entire mass is also stealthy, so you can hit the target, then skulk off and try to burn neighboring temples as well. Furthermore, since the entire mess *DOES* stick around, Call of the Wild can cut off lines even when the target province contains a fort: Ghost Riders and Phantasmal Attack cannot, and are more or less totally useless against a fortified province.

Imprint souls is 25 astral pearls, so it's a once every two or three turns deal.

This from the man who argues Astral Pearls are free after turn 20? It almost sounds like you don't believe that astrals are actually free....because they're not. You are right that this is a once every two or three turns deal....but timing is everything. Simply casting it willy-nilly is a useless waste. Timing, timing, timing.

Arouse hunger has nowhere near the offensive potential of ghost riders. 10 ghouls isn't quite the same potency of a force as 33 longdead horsemen and a wraith lord.

No, but it isn't a level 9 spell, either, and number of ghouls increases with the power of the death mage.

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A single fort, even the lowly 0-point watchtower, can ward off an infinite number of Ghost Riders.

So what, people are supposed to ignore their national troops and build pure summoned armies just so that they can have a low cost fortress?

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That is definitely a perfectly valid strategy favored by several nations. There's also your wizard's tower. I used to think that the wizard's tower was immensely overpriced pointwise, but now I see that it's actually a very attractive option if you wish to continue to use your national troops AND have a quickly deployable fortress of low cost.

And that's one of the serious balance problems. Your conventional troops should never become useless, and should always remain the most important part of your army. As it stands right now, the game just degenerates into who can build the better SC faster.

Bombers, tanks, infantry. The order of usage is very important to a successful blitzkrieg, and neglecting any of these makes a far less successful blitz attack. Your national troops are not obsolete, you are merely using them for the wrong purpose.

Most nations don't even have death 2 mages, so it's hardly a bargain to spend 60 gems to get a single mage capable of casting death 4 spells.

Why not? Do you have something better to do with death gems, when all you can do is cast death-1, or even no, death spells at all? I suppose you could trade them to an ally who CAN, but that simply means you have somebody else to cast them for you. Otherwise, what else would you do with them? Alchemizing them into something else is not exactly the most economical deal either, particularly if with only a small initial outlay, you can afford to begin fielding your own death mages....quite possibly to the great surprise of an opponent who does not expect you to have any, let alone an entire cadre of mound kings, liches, and spectres.

[ April 11, 2004, 19:04: Message edited by: Norfleet ]