Any counter to Fires from Afar?

[Meglobob]

Ironhawk said:

Fires from afar is only overpriced if you are using it to try and kill troops. The much better use is to kill commanders, particularly weak commanders - aka researchers. If an enemy player finds your research center and starts blowing up your researchers with this spell you will think its a bargain at 10gems.

Oh yea...this had not occurred to me, I normally use seeking arrow, cheers now I will use both.

Any other artillary spells like this you could chuck at a research centre?

[Valandil]

lets leaf through my grimoire here...

Wind ride: chance of commander being teleported to the caster, unequaled obesity negates (and other stuff).
Leprosy: diseases stuff
Flames from the sky: kills armies.
Murdering winter: see above
Mind hunt: mind burn or soul slay attack, if enemy has an astral mage you'll probably be feebleminded.
Dreams of Ry'leh- dreamlands national: the caster fights a duel with the target in the void-- half combat values, mr.
Flying monkeys: attack of monkeys (!!!)
Earth Attack: a commander is attacked by an elemental
Manifestation: chance of an ashen angel assasination
Send Tupilak- Frozen Sea national: commander attacked by a tupilak.
Ghost riders (duh), phantasmal attack, send horror/lesserhorror, call of the winds, call of the wilds, all attack province directly.
probably others too.

[Tyrant]

Fires from afar is indeed a bad deal. I chucked at you only because my scouting report said "23 units, mostly ubas" and i thought maybe i could knock off a few 9 hp researchers. But- 2 shots no kills. The easiest counter to it is some crud troops for padding.

[Teraswaerto]

I don't think crud troops help. Decoy commmanders help against assassination spells but not against spells that target all troops, and having more troops just means that more will be hit, right?

[Saxon]

Flying monkeys avoid the mages if I recall, so it is mostly useful for disrupting army movement just before big battles. It can be nice if they hit a cheap commander who has high leadership and lots of troops. The troops stay behind while the rest move, making your defense easier.

Wind Ride has been disapointing for me. I presume if I actually get anyone, there will be a battle in the province I cast if from?

[Endoperez]

Yes, there will be a battle with Wind Ride. Some nations, like MA Man, Can have a Wind Rider and a Charmer squad in the same province.

[Meglobob]

Saxon said:
Flying monkeys avoid the mages if I recall, so it is mostly useful for disrupting army movement just before big battles. It can be nice if they hit a cheap commander who has high leadership and lots of troops. The troops stay behind while the rest move, making your defense easier.

Wind Ride has been disapointing for me. I presume if I actually get anyone, there will be a battle in the province I cast if from?

I used flying monkeys and guess who they targeted? Yes thats right a mage...

[Twan]

IIRC in 300mp, you casted flying monkeys on a province where there were my prophet (h3), several astrologer/mystics (s3 something1 or s1 +2/3 ?) and an arco priestess (n1h2). The monkeys targeted the priestess so it seems the highest level spellcasters, holy included, are avoided but they attack the weakest caster if no other commander available.

But you have found something more efficient to divide my troops the same turn (I still wonder how my prophet has stayed with 120 footmen to fight a lone black hawk in the first turn of our war, when 7 other commanders in the same province and with the same order moved, it looks like a very strange result of the new cross-moves system).

[Edi]

Teraswaerto said:
I don't think crud troops help. Decoy commmanders help against assassination spells but not against spells that target all troops, and having more troops just means that more will be hit, right?

That depends on what you're padding against. Against Fires from Afar, it's very effective, because that spell has a limited number of effects. Against Murdering Winter or FftS it's just more meat for the barbecue because they target a percentage of units in target province rather than a fixed number.

I have some fond memories of one of my two Dom2 MP games when I found Thufir's main research/hoarding center and dropped 4xFFTS and 10xFires from Afar plus some seeking arrows and a few earth attacks on it. He was not amused. As to how I got the gems, having Eternal Pyre cast at base fire gem income 40 and going for 30 turns gave me more than enough to go around...

Edi

[Meglobob]

Twan said:
IIRC in 300mp, you casted flying monkeys on a province where there were my prophet (h3), several astrologer/mystics (s3 something1 or s1 +2/3 ?) and an arco priestess (n1h2). The monkeys targeted the priestess so it seems the highest level spellcasters, holy included, are avoided but they attack the weakest caster if no other commander available.

But you have found something more efficient to divide my troops the same turn (I still wonder how my prophet has stayed with 120 footmen to fight a lone black hawk in the first turn of our war, when 7 other commanders in the same province and with the same order moved, it looks like a very strange result of the new cross-moves system).

Cheers for letting me know Twan, I thought the spell bugged. Not cast it since. I assumed because you had such a large army, you would have had a mundane army commander.