Countering Blade Wind - Early Era

[FAJ]

I am playing Yomi, in early era. What is the best way to counter blade wind, and other mass damage spells like falling fire/frost? My armies are mostly composed of archers with medium to low protection, so the spells can be devastating. How can I combat a mage heavy foe, casting mass damage?

Will setting archers to fire at farthest enemy work, or is sniping their commanders with arrows a pipe dream? is there any way to script a mage to cast magic on enemy commanders?

[dirtywick]

You could try spells that increase protection and/or resistances. There's spells of all those types in the game. Chaff screens would work too, and spreading your armies out so the AOE has a smaller chance of hitting things.

[Zebion]

Yomi has that one National protection spell that increases their armor to 10

[FAJ]

Only works on the Oni .

Also, how useful is flaming arrows? It seems, because my armies consist of almost exclusivly archers, flaming arrows would be pretty effective. A volley of 200 archers with flaming arrows would be more effective than a blade wind, right?

[dirtywick]

Yes, absolutely. 200 Flaming Arrows would be pretty devestating.

[Taqwus]

Flaming arrows are considered magic weapons for the purposes of smacking ethereals IIRC, and the fire damage (separate!) is armor-piercing. It's a nasty spell.

With enough archers, you'll even hit somebody with an Air Shield-80.

'Fire at commanders' was a possible order in the first Dominions game, but was eventually removed -- it's both unrealistic (spotting the commanders over the throngs, during battle, is not necessarily easy unless it's a dragon commanding hoburgs -- and for that, there's 'fire at large monsters') and unbalancing (imagine R'lyeh illithid squads scripted to fire their always-hits range-100 mindblasts specifically at commanders, for instance, or Firbolg snipers with an eye of aiming for PREC-20, boots of quickness and a nasty xbow). Although... 'fire at mages' still exists, for a particular Troll Archer from what I hear.

Otherwise, anything fast -- especially anything that flies or tramples -- can help you get to the mages.

[FAJ]

Also, in the spell description, when the damage is a number: the HP lost, is that [damage - (armor +DRN)]? and if the damage is (damage+), the HP lost is [(damage+DRN) - (armor+DRN)]?

[Boron]

Versus fragile enemy mages Rain of Stones and Earthquake might work. Your Dai Oni can cast both of these spells.
You could also use your Hanyas to also cast Falling Fires.
They could do eagle eyes, phönix power and then 3x falling fires, cast spells.
Or skellispam.

Your archers need only few resources, so you can replace them usually faster then the enemy can replace his casualities.
So you only have to win most battles without losing too many mages, the troop losses you can replace faster than your opponent.