Quote:
Jack Simth said:
You can also communiun priests with the Slave/Crystal matrices - if you split an 80-priest squad between the two, even using little H2 indy priests, you are talking about 40 effectively H6 priests. Using those nifty H4 priests some nations own, it does even better. Add a staff of storms and a bunch of lightning-immune lifeless chaff (e.g., mechanical men) to gaurd the priests; you then have penetration 2 vs. undead/deamons that does a fair chunk of damage to a rather wide area. A few banishments from the priests and the vamps will likely rout en masse (those that don't perish; after that, the only targets for the banishment is your undead commanders, so they are gone soon after), the storm demons will also fall rather quickly to the same thing (especially as they can't reach the priests due the mechanical men gaurds). The priests also help with the dominion war (which, by the way, if you are winning as a pre-requisite to the strat, makes much of the strat icing, no?) so they will be on hand anyway. After that all that is left are some anti-SC SC's (or anti-SC thugs) to deal with your SC's.
Other possibilities are heavy use of anti-commander stuff (assasins and assasination spells, to strand your vamp army), taking your capital to neutralize the immortality, other raids (you did say you were commiting your pretender, prophet and most your forces to a border dispute on dominion at a specific location, to push your dominion into opposing territory; that pretty much means your opponent can arrange to raid pretty much at will; sure, you can do the same thing with your vampires and vampire lords - but then you can't drag the air queen SC and storm demons along to deal with the vamp counters) to burn your temples and cut your dominion elsewhere. Likewise, stealth priests (anyone can find druids, a few nations have stealth priests)
Don't get me wrong - the vamp horde is a good strategy; but like any strat, especially those relying on a particular unit / commander type, there are different counters available to most nations. Dominions is a surprisingly balanced game.
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yeah you are right dominions is really well balanced
your priest idea is nice
hm i thought it works only against undeads but you are right banisment works against DEMONS TOO
with h6 priests ........ they have probably a good chance to come through the rather high mr of demons / vamps .
if you add a w9 blessing for quickness to your priests this is probably horrible
i personally like to castle . so your raiding is far less effective . so i can defend against weak raiders with ghost riders and against stronger with some reserve scs hopefully .
one second thing :
do you forge a ring of fire resistence and a ring of cold resistence for all your priests ?
otherwise i still have left the 2 options murdering winter / flames from the sky .
crystal matrix + slave matrix require both SE .
this is a rather uncommon combo so it is not so easy to massproduce them unless you have forge up .
AND both are misc items .
so either you don't defend against flames from the sky / murdering winter at all or you can only forge 1 cheap resistence ring and for the other resistence you would need to take a more expensive solution like a ryme hauberk .
all in all this is relative expensive .
for 3 priests + equipment you could build a quite good sc too .
finally another strenghtening lategame for my strat :
i use no vampire lords as leaders for my vampires but tartarians or banelords .
so at turn 100-120 i will probably generate 200 new vampires each turn and it is always increasing .
because clamhoarding + vampire summoning increases exponentially .
from turn 20-40 you summon e.g. 1 vampire lord / turn + produce 1 clam .
turn 40-70 you increase it to 2 / turn .
then you start with wishing and increase it to 3 then 4 then 5 etc. per turn and it goes always quicker .
so if we really really continue playing until turn 150-200 i can start to even sacrifice my vampires by using them out of my dominion since i don't need to care anymore because i produce so much new each turn from allysummon in my capitol .
the only "allysummon" which comes close to this are devils from soul contracts .
all in all the nonunique (like devils from 1 archdevil) allysummons are rather limited :
ghosts from wraith lord
draconians from draconian leader
wolves from werewolves / bf ulm wolfherd
vampires from vampire lords
imps from fallen angels
sprites from fairy queens
similiar maenads from pans
devils from soul contract
the vampires + devils are the strongest ones .
if you look at the RoI the vampire lord has probably the highest in the game .
quite good unequipped immortal anti-sc unit .
and the vampires themselves are really good too .
so if i do it correct i always have much huger forces then you .
furthermore if i force you to build priests / mass wither bones squads etc. etc. this is even better because these troops are so highly specialized that i can beat them very cost effective with other things .
especially your 2 ideas with the priests or the undead mastery are good but after i saw it the first time i can quickly make a special antiforce against this .
i think vampire lords with vampires are TOO ALLROUND .
they are good against almost everything and if you need to defend they are really great too .