Anti-SC Army

[incognito]

I read about them Online, but so far have seen no examples posted. Give your favorite anti-SC army, the SC(s) it works well against, and the anti-anti-SC counter.

Damn, this game is good.

[Gandalf Parker]

Im sure others will answer as you are expecting, multiple shooters with that 999 damage crossbow, slow-down spells while the shooting is happening, thousands of cheap shooters like slingers to boost the chance of routing it.

But, to me the tactic of SuperCombatant (either pretender or summoned creature) loaded with EQ until it can kick everything.. is a tactic of one large army. Meeting it head-to-head with one large army is not the response I tend to think of. My response against any 1-large-army tactic is many-small-armies chopping away at his provinces faster than he can claim them back. I especially like the nations which can field a decent sneak army. Man, Vanheim, Pangaea. Take his province, pay it up on defence, put some units in the queue, sneak on. If you arent those nations then maybe you can make an arrangment with them to let them slip thru your area.

Another tactic I like is stealing his SC from him. Various spells can try to get it to switch sides. If he has it traveling with an army, and you have some decent air magic, use "Wind Ride" or whatever it is to snatch his commanders from his army until you get the SC. Dump them into provinces where you can handle it by itself, maybe with a bunch of spellcasters waiting to cast those "switch side" spells.

[incognito]

Interesting thoughts...

The small armies is just generally a good idea. It's not inconceivable you could undermine your opponents income base causing him to lose troops from failure to pay upkeep. I think the key is going underground after each strike, lest the SC can strike back at you. You can also pop several forces close to each other so that if any force wins, the others have a place to rout to (may depend on order of combats).

For wind ride, that's good against many, but etherealness or Earth 4 (does this have to be natural or can it be items) can stop it. Given how much I see shadow cloaks, this loses some potency. I think this is better for mini-SC's and de-commandering large armies vs specifically SC support armies.

For the options you did *not* mention, do ethereal crossbows really work given starshine skullcaps & anti-magic amulets? Knowing that MR negates, I'd think you need a ton of these things and better hope the SC does not have Pheonix Pyre or something like it... Seems like their is low threshold for success there... The thousands of slingers never occurred to me - interesting idea however...

[Boron]

incognito said:
I read about them Online, but so far have seen no examples posted. Give your favorite anti-SC army, the SC(s) it works well against, and the anti-anti-SC counter.

Damn, this game is good.

yeah it is so deep

cost effectiveness not considered :
death 4 mages ( e.g. demilichs / vampires / wraith lords ) . casting 5 times lifedrain .
guard them with some undead lifeless fodder or better living statues or the like .
if you can add 1-2 mages with the following it is cool :
death 3 fire 1 and nature 1 .
scripted to eagle eye , 4x banefire .

E3S1N1 mages can cast eagle eye + gifts from heaven this way .


if you have a flying and strong death 2 mage ( tartarian / pretender ) you can try the following :
attack , 4x hand of death



my favourite anti sc army : a horde of vampires with vampire lords scripted to either attack , 4x hand of death or empowered to death 4 scripted to 5 times lifedrain


100-200 vampires alone can kill every sc most probably



a classic anti-sc-sc has high strenght + an armor negating weapon like gate cleaver . this way 1 hit is normally already enough : 29+strenght+2d6oe damage
for this again pretenders or tartarians are good because the sc needs to be tough in case he has bad luck and doesn't hit in the first combat round .


a sc can be killed by pretty much though .
2 ghost riders are already very dangerous for 1 fully equipped ice devil e.g. or another high class sc .

ermors + pangeneas troops are quite good sc killers on their own already .

against ae ermor undead horde a fireshield does wonders though . but that is not really common sc buff/equipment .
against pan cw a very high mr is good .
but those sleep vines are really brutal 50-100 pangenean carrion beasts have really good chances killing every sc expect one with 28+ mr perhaps built with unique items .

[Yossar]

Depending on how much they invest into buffing MR, a few mages casting charm/hellbind heart/control the dead/soul slay with a rune smasher and spell focus can be fun. Otherwise I like a bunch of demiliches with a skull staff and boots of quickness with some lifeless chaff in front of them (mechanical men or lifeless undead maybe) spamming drain life. Or enough illithids can eventually paralyze almost anything without ridiculously high MR. And once they're paralyzed you can chop them up with anything if they don't have astral shield/fire shield. If they do you probably need tougher troops or your own mini SCs.

[Lex]

spamming drainlife would be good, except its D4, making it tough to come by.

What about having a 6 casters do quickness and 4 frozen hearts. That's 120 armor negating non-resistable damage per round, with 100 precision. The range is crappy (20 i think), but after the third round, if you haven't routed, the SC should be pretty much dead (which is good, cos with only W1, they'd be close to exhaustion after casting it 4 times in two rounds). the real advantage is that W1 casters are really easy to come by, and almost every race has them (from a random). So it "should" be easier to get a group of W1 casters in midgame then a group of D4 casters.

Edit: if you recruited a sage every turn, by midgame you'd have enough sages with W1 to form an anti-SC group. Give them some undead or lifeless fodder, and you've got an insanely cheap SC killer!

Of course the counter to this would be to send other mini-SC or troops with the main SC. This would absorb some of the frozen hearts, and by the end you might not kill the guy you wanted to, if any... of course its easy to counter this counter: you just get more casters (12 W1 sages on this script can obviously take out twice as many SCs!)

[Yvelina]

Yes, but while drain life cannot be resisted by any means, many, many of the tough guys are immune to cold... and even when they are not, cold immunity is really easy to get.

[quantum_mechani]

Mandragora, carrion beasts, ect. are also a very good counter. Leech works much like drain life but mages to cast it are much easier to come by.

[Lex]

i just tested it.. the frozen hearts, like anything else, can be easily resisted almost all the time with high magic resistance. I had a Wyrm sit there taking 20 frozen hearts per round, and with 26 MR and regeneration, it never lost any health.

ah well.. so much for that idea

[Kel]

While small armies can work, depending on the nations (such as Caelum and stealthy nations) and situation, it is rare that your opponent has one large, well equipped SC and no army of his own. You may go to raid his territories but if you are posing no opposition, he may raid yours just as heavily and possibly even more efficiently if his SC is running rampant and he doesn't worry about stealth troops.

- Kel