Gently Murderous Winter?

[Saxon]

I just cast Murdering Winter, a 50 water gem spell, on an enemy army of 440 estimated. I killed only 7. That is a very bad return for a 50 gem spell. Yes, the heat scale was a positive 1, but I still expected more for such a pricy spell targeted at such a huge army. I couldn’t kill more chaff than that?

Can anyone else share their experiences with this?

[lch]

Saxon said:
Yes, the heat scale was a positive 1

'nuff said. You should have cast Wolven Winter (Alt 4) at least two times before going for the Murderous Winter and the spell would indeed have been Murderous.

[Saxon]

How much does it scale up?

[lch]

7+2*province cold scale AN damage to all units in target province, will kill at most 50% of units

Heat counts as negative, I guess.

[Saxon]

Wow! Yes, some cold scale would have made a big difference, I probably just killed off the diseased and chest wound chaff units.

Good tip on Wolven Winter, shall use when I can. In my given situation, I needed to blunt the attack immediately, as the 440 army and a 370 army were funneling in on my choke point province. I did not have time to Wolven Winter, but I would have saved the gems for something else.

And yes, I still won the battle, but the casualties were appalling. The offensive is on hold, but they suffered more, so over all positive.

[SlipperyJim]

Echo that advice ... Always "soften up" your Murderous Winter targets with a few Wolven Winter castings first. It makes a huge difference.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah. Catching an enemy army in a cold-3 province with Murderous Winter is... well, murderous. I once killed 200/300 men with it once. Blew my mind!

[MaxWilson]

If they were going for your choke point province, you could have cast Wolven Winter on the choke point and then hit them when they were inside of it. Pull your armies back out of the chokepoint when they're about to enter it, cast Wolven Winter; next turn, cast Murderous Winter while moving all your armies back into the chokepoint to intercept the enemy from moving out of the chokepoint. Maybe that's too risky, though, inviting defeat in detail; it also depends upon how much you mind losing all your PD in the chokepoint.

Another thing to do is to combine map-killer spells like Murderous Winter with a pre-casting of Leprosy. Normally you mostly only care about units killed, but if they're diseased the wounds persist. Nice synergy.

-Max

[Ygorl]

It gets expensive, but you can also cast these artillery spells more than once, and the damage accumulates. You can even take out big guys like elemental royalty this way, if you're dedicated enough.

[Shovah32]

Ygorls right there. The best thing is hitting an enemy army(supported by thugs/SCs) with enough artillery to both take out most of his units and thugs aswell as damaging SCs(and maybe giving afflictions).