Caelum Battlefield Magic Broken

Ironhawk · #1 December 2nd, 2006, 07:25 PM

I've been playing around with Caelum for a few days now and I have come to the conclusion that thier use of air magic in combat just doesnt work. The once-feared battlefield magic of Caelum is now broken! Issues that are causing it to break are the following:

1) Air spells strike few targets
2) Quickness no longer effects spellcasting
3) Dom3 produces larger armies (more targets)

These things together mean that an air mage just cannot kill enough troops in a battle to make him worth his own cost! Couple this already poor situation with the fact that its even harder to produce mages in dom3 (caelum in particular cost 1500gp for its cheapest fort+lab) and you are left with the conclusion that Caelum just cant fight on the battlefield.

Now - Everyone is probably chomping at the bit to say "but they can still cast Wrathful Skies!!@#$". And that is true, but that is a specialty attack that requires tons of gold and gems in order to do correctly. Battlefield magic, the kind that makes your armies really feared, should be easy to deploy, reliable, and powerful. As it stands, Caelum has none of the above...

KissBlade · #2 December 2nd, 2006, 07:31 PM

Heh, play ME TC, then go back to Caelum. You'll not find caelum battlemagic so bad ...

Ironhawk · #3 December 2nd, 2006, 07:34 PM

Comparing this to another nation is irrelevant? Caelum's battlemagic still wont work, regardless of whatever problems any other nation still might have. Except perhaps that its more important here because Caelum's troops are garbage. Without thier battlefield magic, how can they possibly compete?

alexti · #4 December 2nd, 2006, 07:38 PM

Caelum still has their raiding ability which was always their greatest strength.

Ironhawk · #5 December 2nd, 2006, 08:40 PM

Quote:

alexti said:
Caelum still has their raiding ability which was always their greatest strength.

Caelums greatest strength was, and still is, its magic (tho that magic power is sorely weakened now). Ability to raid is average at best. The best nations for raiding are Pan (centaurs + satyrs) or Van (Vans), no question.

alexti · #6 December 2nd, 2006, 09:34 PM

Quote:

Ironhawk said:

Quote:

alexti said:
Caelum still has their raiding ability which was always their greatest strength.

Caelums greatest strength was, and still is, its magic (tho that magic power is sorely weakened now). Ability to raid is average at best. The best nations for raiding are Pan (centaurs + satyrs) or Van (Vans), no question.

I very much disagree. Ability to destroy enemy's economy (gold and gem) was always the critical point in any but very short game. Pans and Vans have stronger raiders but they just don't have sufficient mobility and number of raiding parties. While Caelum can easily field 15-20 raiding parties, other nations are still in single digits. True, in Dom2 Caelum also had stronger magic, but it wasn't their magic that was winning the games. I still remember losing the agme vs Caelum even though my armies were ruling the battlefields. I've defeated Caelumian opponent several times (and it must have hurted, he was losing air queens and ice devils in those battles), but eventuall he has worn me out with his raids, got better gold and gem income and pretty much decided the game.

KissBlade · #7 December 2nd, 2006, 07:42 PM

Quote:

Ironhawk said:
Comparing this to another nation is irrelevant? Caelum's battlemagic still wont work, regardless of whatever problems any other nation still might have. Except perhaps that its more important here because Caelum's troops are garbage. Without thier battlefield magic, how can they possibly compete?

Haha I was just having a quip at your posts expense. I haven't payed Caelum to a significant enough degree yet to judge.

Meglobob · #8 December 2nd, 2006, 08:14 PM

I don't agree, air magic still rocks, I have effectively destroyed Ermor with 20 or so A2 mages. Give each a air gem, bang 20 thunderstrikes, then 4 lightning bolts each, for 80 lightning bolts then retreat. Gather the lot again, rinse repeat.

For added fun put cloud trapzing in the mix...

Ironhawk · #9 December 2nd, 2006, 08:41 PM

Quote:

Meglobob said:
I don't agree, air magic still rocks, I have effectively destroyed Ermor with 20 or so A2 mages.

Basically you have proven my point: In order to get any bang for the buck out of air mages you need to bring a ridiculous amount of them to a battle.

Maltrease · #10 December 2nd, 2006, 09:08 PM

I find Caelums air magic very powerful. Thunderstrike is an immensely powerful spell.

The strike and retreat is also very useful to wearing down large armies. [nice idea on the gems meglobob].

I often script Eagle kings to Mistform (great for surviving arrow fire and normal chaff attacks), Aim, Thunder x3, retreat. With a little archer cover they will usually escape before getting killed.

Call of the winds is a great easy to research spell to use early game. Often times 2 calls will take out the PD and if you are scouting you can even take out an enemy site searching mage.

You can easily reach Evo4 at the end of the 6th or 7th turn (with a sage pretender) and still expand using archers (normal indies). Then 2 Eagle kings and an archer force can take on almost any tougher indy province your archers couldn't do.

Another great Evo4 spell is Huricane. Which despite what the manual says will target any province (not just coastal). The in-game description does not say anything about "coastal" so I don't know if its a game bug or manual error.

5 Huricanes on an enemy capital (125 unrest, 15% population death), followed by 2 a turn will pretty much shut them out of their troops and a big chunk of income.

It is true that air magic is much weaker then it was in Dom2, perhaps for Man or other less mobile nations it is not worth using.