Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?

[TwoBits]

OK, I've played a good amount of SP games, and a handful of MP games, by now, and I've noticed that ritual attack spells (such as Fires from Afar, or Hurricane) seem to be a rare occurrence in both.

It just seems that most of the time, when you're engaged in a serious war with someone, summoning combat units seems to be a more effective (or at least more tangible) use of sparse gem resources, at least at early and mid research levels.

Granted, there are a few attack spells that seem very potent (like dropping Flames from the Sky on the big enemy army, or Black Death on the enemy capitol), but these generally require level 8-9 in the respective research category. It is a rare game that lasts long enough, and is hard fought enough, to truly justify the use of these hard hitting spells (I've never found them "necessary" yet).

So again, what am I missing?

What spells of this type, either to directly attack enemy units, or their population/economy, do people really find useful? Especially, what do you find more useful than summoned units that are able to contribute directly on the battlefield, and for a similar cost in gems?

[calmon]

I use Fires from Afar in MP games. Best for cities with a few amount of troops and a high amount of mages. You could kill a good amount of nasty mages with it.

The low rituals are situational usefull and thats how they should work.

Most of the low summon spells are less usefull. I would use them only if i'm in real trouble and need all gems in some kind of creature.

[Edi]

Fun with fire:

Get fire gem income of around 25-30 gems, cast Eternal Pyre (double fire income), wait twenty turns while building up your empire (neighbors all busy fighting each other and don't want to tangle with you just yet). When pesky and much larger neighbor attacks you, find his research/hoarding center and drop 4x Flames from the Sky, 10x Fires from Afar, 6x Earth Attack and some Seeking Arrows on it. On the same turn. Then cock your ear and listen for the screams of outrage...

Edi

[Meglobob]

Well I use offensive rituals where needed all the time. Fires from afar, mind hunt, blight, hurricane, rain of toads, send horrors, raging hearts, locust swarms etc...

I have even developed 'killer' strategys around a few of them.

There are two however that need a power boost for Dom3, those are imprint souls and arouse hunger. Neither of which are worth casting anymore, because there is more money in the game and both of those spells struggle to take out PD 10 defense. Indeed I recently tested both, imprint souls failed to take out 75% of indie 5's. Well 3 arouse hungers at the same province failed to take out LA Mictlan PD 10, which isn't the best PD in the world.

[Nick_K]

I wouldn't recommend using multiple flames-from-the-sky on the same province in the same turn. A proportion (50% IIRC) of the units in that province is immune to such attacks and these immune units are immune for /all/ such attacks in that turn. So, if the enemy has 20 mages, 10 are vulnerable and your first casting kills 7, then there are only 3 left that the second can target.

[Teraswaerto]

The mages might have so many hitpoints that a singe casting wont kill them, but two or three might.

[DrPraetorious]

The best use for offensive rituals is to drop them on an enemy army the same turn you fight - since they start combat wounded.

If half of his mages start combat wounded, you can drop a battlefield cleaner (fire storm or flame storm, whichever one it is) and his mages will generally die first, even if you've both got warriors of fooheim up.

[mivayan]

TwoBits said:
OK, I've played a good amount of SP games, and a handful of MP games, by now, and I've noticed that ritual attack spells (such as Fires from Afar, or Hurricane) seem to be a rare occurrence in both.

Hurricane and others that generate lots of unrest seem somewhat popular to use on the enemies capitol.

[PvK]

Yep. Seems to me there are many good ritual attack spells. One doesn't need to use them, and people may forget to use them or not all see how to use them best, but I think they're plenty good in general and there are many interesting things that can be done with them.

[TwoBits]

Very interesting suggestions, thanks!

Here's another question regarding this topic - are rituals that affect "economics" stackable? For example, if I cast Locust Swarms, Blight, Rain of Toads, and Hurricane at the same time, in the same place, will the target suffer unrest +100 (20 for Locust, 15 for Blight, 40 for Toads, and 25 for Hurricane) and lose 8% of its population (I think 3% for Hurricane, plus 5% for Blight), in addition to the various gold loss and negative scale hits?

Hmm, I remember a while back that someone made an excellent list of summons spells, with their opinion of what spells were good, marginal, and useless. Anyone care to try that with offensive rituals?