Can normal army take out Sphinx pretender?

[Gargoyle]

If I have a Black Sorcerer, some Spider Hunters, Hoplites, a Tomb King with some undead, some mechanical men, and some mid lvl magic items (about 100 troops all told), can it take out a lone Sphinx Pretender?

[quantum_mechani]

Depemnds, for one thing, does the sphinx have any extra magic?
Normal troops can take out a spinx (for instance a lot of crossbows might do it), but likely not the army you descibed. It might be possible with your black sorceror casting shatter though.

[Vicious Love]

Well, your hunter spiders, hoplites, mechanical men and undead would be completely and utterly useless, and only marginally useful if enhanced by Weapons of Sharpness. A pretender's MR can be pretty damn difficult to penetrate, so Disintegrate is out of the question. And you haven't got any astral mages to Magic Duel the target.

Mid-level magic items, eh? If that means Smashers, Duskdaggers, Hammers of the Mountains(or whichever hammer is armor-negating) and maybe, maybe Ethereal Crossbows, you might actually stand a chance, provided you've got survivable, high-MR commanders who can bear said arms, and the Sphinx isn't in high friendly dominion. I don't suppose you've got a high-strength astral mage around who can wield two Swords of Swiftness, or a Smasher in each hand? Nothing quite like 2-4 uber-high damage armor-negating attacks per round to bring an immobile colossus down.

[sushiboat]

Given that the Sphinx is an Astral mage, is an autokill scenario anything more than a longshot? The idea is that the Sphinx paralyzes some attackers but cannot kill them, all attackers except the paralyzed retreat, the turn limit passes, and everyone remaining, including the Sphinx, is autokilled.

I guess the simple answer to the original question is no, don't even think about it with the army you described.

[GriffinOfBuerrig]

Yes i see it the same way, with that army you won´t stand a chance. Only if your battle buffs are as good as described above(strenght of giants, weapons of charpness.

mid lvl magic items???? Thats a very very wide expresion, can mean everything!

[Endoperez]

If it is an AI Sphinx, and it doesn't have access to any really good attack spells, you might be able to use the "autokill" tactic sushiboat wrote about.

Also, if it has low Astral skill and you have lots of astral mages you would throw away for possibility of win, you might try to Magic Duel him.

[PDF]

Don't think you can get him this way. With more Machakan mages you can try to script them to Blindness x 4, Retreat and give them Rune Smashers if possible. Eventually the Sphinx will fail a MR roll...
Paralyze could alos work but you won't have many Astral mages with Machaka.

[Endoperez]

The dominion value you start with affects the speed your dominions spreads with. Every 5 temples give you one more point, but IIRC it only helps to stop enemy dominion from invading, not to spread your dominion, or has some other similar limitation. If you took low dominion, your dominion won't go above your borders, but with lots of temples you can have your whole empire under positive dominion.

[Alneyan]

Endoperez said:
Every 5 temples give you one more point, but IIRC it only helps to stop enemy dominion from invading, not to spread your dominion, or has some other similar limitation.

If memory serves, these points will not help Dominion spread at all, but they will raise your maximum Dominion value by Dominion spread. So, if you picked 5 at Pretender creation, and built 25 temples, all your provinces can reach Dominion 10 automatically; only that will make it harder to push your Dominion, since +10 is harder to override than +4.

[sushiboat]

Alneyan said:
If memory serves, these points will not help Dominion spread at all, but they will raise your maximum Dominion value by Dominion spread. So, if you picked 5 at Pretender creation, and built 25 temples, all your provinces can reach Dominion 10 automatically; only that will make it harder to push your Dominion, since +10 is harder to override than +4.

From my memory of Illwinter's description on this forum, your nation will get a certain number of dominion-increasing "plops." A plop has a probability of increasing your dominion in a province or decreasing enemy dominion. If it does not succeed in its own dominion, it moves on to another province. Only failure in enemy dominion kills a plop. Therefore, having your own dominion 10 in provinces doesn't hurt. The plop just moves on to somewhere it has a chance of doing good.