Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

Kuritza · #1 August 7th, 2007, 08:44 AM

Just had my preneder God killed with vengeance of the dead. Over 400 undead in an 'assassination'-type combat couldnt even break through his mirror image, yet he died because of turns limit.
Yes, they cannot retreat, they fight till the end even after the 'special monsters are routed' message and defender gets wiped automatically. Even though he didnt lose a single HP, he had no fatique etc.
Tell me its 'working as intended', for God's sake.

Xietor · #2 August 7th, 2007, 08:52 AM

I agree that if turn limit is reached, should not result in death. Or cap the number of troops at 100.

lch · #3 August 7th, 2007, 10:48 AM

Capping the number of units would not only be unthematic (hey, this guy killed thousands, but only a hundred of them bothered to show up), it would make the spell totally useless, too.

Sombre · #4 August 7th, 2007, 11:15 AM

The way it currently works is pretty cheap though, when it kills a SC via turn limit.

lch · #5 August 7th, 2007, 11:26 AM

It requires a MR check to kick off in the first place, and you're only up against undead chaff. So in case your commander fails to beat both, I wouldn't call him a SC anyway.

Kuritza · #6 August 7th, 2007, 11:46 AM

Even with MR 20+ you are going to fail the check eventually, spell costs just 3 astral gems. As for 'kill them all', he WOULD kill them all were it not the turn limit. Did you even bother reading the post? He killed about half of them without even being scratched, he WAS an SC. But because of the turns limit, he was auto-killed. Can I say 'it calls for a fix'?

PvK · #7 August 7th, 2007, 05:36 PM

Since it Vengeance Of The Dead a magical nightmare attack, I'm not sure the realism argument holds - maybe if the victim doesn't kill the hordes in time, the dream ends with them carrying him away to Hades. Or not.

On principle I agree I'd prefer it if a time limit resulted in a draw and not an attacker win.

As far as balance goes, I think VOTD is a nicely thematic anti-SC spell. Similarly, I personally think the game is more interesting when not dominated by SC's.

Ideally, I think I'd prefer to see time limits resulting in a draw, and VOTD being more interesting, such as including the slain units more like they were in life, for example with different types of undead based on who was killed, slain mages retaining some of their magic, some slain warriors as armed soulless or longdead, slain elephants as undead elephants, etc, but also not multiplied by killing souls during VOTD - it doesn't make sense to me that killing a returning soul (or mindless living unit) would cause it to appear twice in the next VOTD attack.

lch · #8 August 7th, 2007, 05:53 PM

Quote:

PvK said:
but also not multiplied by killing souls during VOTD - it doesn't make sense to me that killing a returning soul (or mindless living unit) would cause it to appear twice in the next VOTD attack.

Yup, I have to agree that I don't think that this is thematic in any way. Killing VOTD undeads should not count towards the ghosts that haunt you in your dreams, because there won't be another spirit to haunt you after you killed its body the second time, at least it's not understandable why it should.

Tuidjy · #9 August 7th, 2007, 09:02 PM

It would be great if the vengeful souls reflected the slain enemies, but I am
afraid that no such information is kept at this time. After all, every single
troop(!) has a kill counter, it would be unthinkable to remember the type of
enemies killed.

And yes, the kills during the nightmare should not count, but I am pretty sure
that the counter is incremented during the 'die' method, and it may be too
much bother to fix that. After all there are plenty of other examples where the
enemy lacks a soul and still increments the counter.

And because it is impossible to prevent the doubling of enemies until the
target fails to kill them within the time limit and dies, I think that if he
wakes up, he should live.

As for the souls carrying the target to Hades, they wish! They had plenty of
time, and could not manage to subdue him. Empty handed they leave :-)

BigDisAwesome · #10 August 7th, 2007, 09:20 PM

I lost a W9 Blue dragon really early in a MP game because of this spell. He had a 20+ MR but after 2-3 turns of 4 mages spamming it he eventually lost one and couldn't defeat all the ghosts. I was pretty bummed out.