[Daynarr]

Nagot Gick Fel said:

Cradle looks like a rather large map to me.

I didn't say its small, just smaller then Faerun.
LOL, I placed it as an example of a large map, so there is no need to tell me its large.

Significant loss, yes, but over time. In a single turn the loss amounts to a small fraction of your income - and that's not even including gem income, bar the odd clam. Ditto with old age and afflictions: they will affect only a small percentage of your troops each turn, and most of these afflictions won't have a significant impact on leaders. A limp, one-eyed, battle-fraught sage can still research just as well as an healthy one.

Well, no global spell has much effect in one turn. Over time effect is what they are all about. And this one produces unrest which either forces you to drop taxes or live with high unrest which also produces less gold income. Now, maybe to you at least 10% less income in each province looks like marginal thing if you have no upkeep, but if you want to pay for what you have and buy a mage or two that you lost due to the old age - you will feel it. Best way to see how BoT affects income is to cast it an watch the income graph - all nations will get noticable less amount of gold. A few turns is acceptable, but it mounts up in time. Of course, the real effect on someone depends on what nation he plays and his style of play. Some nations are far more vulnerable to BoT then others (not counting undead nations). E.g. Panganea can live with it far better then Ulm.

BoT doesn't only give afflictions; it kills your weaker troops and commanders instantly. Mages usually suffer from it mostly (low HP) so losing even a 1 or 2 of them per turn is a lot. If you don't consider that to be nothing more then nuisance then you have such large empire and income that you have already won the game (or playing faerun).

Note that I'm talking about BoT's effects in general, not strictly from MP or SP aspect, so that's probably why our opinions differ.

There is a reason why people don't cast it often in MP, and there is an even better reason why it tends to be dispelled in a few turn once it's up. Simply put, people don't like seeing their mages get afflictions and get killed, risk their pretender get a nasty affliction (getting rid of them is never easy if you are not Arco) and see their income drop by at least 10% per turn. And when someone does cast it, people usually pay him a visit with a couple of their armies to see WTH was he thinking.

So BOT is a nuisance, sure, but since it brings no direct benefit to its caster, since it affects other nations as well (I'll always have more enemies than allies), and since its effect on my econ and manpower is only marginal, it comes in the Last tier of my own 'to dispel' list. There are several other GEs I'd want to dispel first.

Well, it's usually on my no. 1 to dispel list (unless something nastier is up, like Utterdark). I try to take out offensive global that can kill my troops on the other side of the world before I try to reduce someone's gem income.
Of course, it does depend on what nation – theme I play.

The caster is usually undead nation (Carrion Woods, Desert Tombs, Ermor), which can even benefit from it by getting more corpses in provinces.

Clams maybe, although I'd bet a clamhoarder will still churn them out faster than he loses them. Fetishes carriers on the other hand, are usually undead leaders who don't really care about BOT.

Depends on whom you use as carrier. You can use undead to carry clams and scouts for fetishes. Depends what you have access to. Undead are always better as carriers of course (no upkeep could be one of the reasons ) but you use what you can. Chances are that most of the guys in MP won't have enough death gem income to use undead as carriers so they will resort to scouts and other cheap means. BTW my favourite carriers are spectres.