Caelum Battlefield Magic Broken

[Maltrease]

Graeme Dice said:

That's fatigue damage, not physical damage.

I know that is what the manual says, but I am pretty sure it is doing real damage. It isn't hitting every surrounding square but almost always more then targeted square.

The in game description says "Even if it misses, the shock wave is powerful enough to severely stun and damage anyone nearby."

[Meglobob]

Maltrease said:

I know that is what the manual says, but I am pretty sure it is doing real damage. It isn't hitting every surrounding square but almost always more then targeted square.

The in game description says "Even if it misses, the shock wave is powerful enough to severely stun and damage anyone nearby."

Yep, I think its doing physical damage as well, units go 'pop' anyway, with a slight crackle.

[Maltrease]

Caelums troops are really not that bad. Cheap mobile archers make early expansion easy (without using mages) and later they become great shields to protect your mages and help destroy cheap massed troops. It is true that many nations with cheap troops can build an equivalent cost army that will defeat an army of Eagle Kings, Seraphs and Caelum troops. However with Caelum’s mobility the goal is to never fight a battle like that.

Instead you split your army up into 5 parts and take five provinces for every one of yours they take. If they split their army into 2 or 3 pieces to counter this then you attack one of their split up divisions with all 5 of your mini armies (using your superior mobility) and eliminate it. Your Eagle kings can get off 3-4 good thunder strikes per battle… if that is enough to destroy most of the enemy forces you win. Five eagle kings x4 thunder strikes will kill about 80-100 normal troops. So 2000 gold of elite capital mages could kill 800 gold worth of chaff or 1000’s of gold if they are using premium units.

If they are heading to your capital with their giant army then just start taking all of their land... possibly even occupying their capital. Your mountain fortress has 750 defense and 750 supply so you have lots of time before they can storm it. And here is the real key... at any time you can cast call of winds to bring in 21 hawks for defense. You can easily cast this 5 or more times in one turn. So let them hack away at your walls for 4-5 turns, then bring 100 new defenders and let them see your walls being repaired (or let them damage it 10 a round so they have no idea they are not making “real” progress).

During the 5 (or more) turns they are futilely sieging your fortress you have conquered 20 of their provinces (possibly their capital) crippling their income and increasing yours. With hawks and eventually a few supply items (nature 1 is easy with indies) you can hold out forever.

Caelum is fun!

[Cainehill]

Sheap said:
After all mages are supposed to live a long time and fight in many battles, especially Caelum mages which are so hard to catch if they rout.

Except that the new morale system is broken even worse than Dom2's, as your mages _won't_ rout when all the troops have. Instead they mostly stand there casting spells until the enemy troops get to them and start attacking.

And of course, most mages under melee attack, die before they can run.

[Endoperez]

Cainehill said:
Except that the new morale system is broken even worse than Dom2's, as your mages _won't_ rout when all the troops have. Instead they mostly stand there casting spells until the enemy troops get to them and start attacking.

And of course, most mages under melee attack, die before they can run.

If that's true, it's a bug.

Once an army has taken 50% casualties, every squad (and commander, I think) will make a morale roll every round.

Once an army has taken 75% casualties, it will automatically rout.

It MIGHT be that routed units aren't counted as casualties, and that normal Caelumians (50%) fail their roll and rout, but the mages stay in because more than a fourth managed to run away. Can anyone confirm this?

[curtadams]

I don't have or see any problems with mages failing to run away, unless they're asleep. I do see a possible bug, not restricted to mages, in that after the army routs, many units will fight on one more turn. They run afterwards.

I mentioned this in another thread but a major hit on mages comes from the morale changes. It's much harder to break squads than in Dom2. In Dom2 it wasn't particularly unusual to see an ordinary army break from just 2 or 3 rounds of not-very-lethal combat. Now I've seen armies of barbarians, who used to be unbelievably chicken, fight almost to to last man. One of the advantages of mages over missle units is that their damage is heavily concentrated in the first few rounds. Back when that frequently broke an army it was a big boost. Now armies only break that fast if you are hurting them so badly it'll be an easy win anyway. The changes are welcome IMO and breaking seems more reasonable than before but it has affected the mages.

In terms of strict bang-for-the-buck twelve shots from 10 or so bowmen will normally do more harm than a comparably priced artillery mage, barring universal heavy armor. That hasn't changed much. What's changed is that the advantages of artillery- concentration of damage early in the battle and lowered supply costs - have been reduced and largely made irrelevant, respectively. Simultaneously, since the overhead costs of research and labs doubled, mages are relatively more expensive even though their official costs weren't changed.

Incidentally, the fact that Caelum needs a big gem expenditure to make their mages fly (so to speak) just backs up that they're not up to snuff. 20 gems is an extraordinary investment in one battle. Even a well-searched large empire can't turn out a supply like that every turn in most games.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

I've seen the whole "armies route and mages stay and get slaughtered" thing several times; and I believe it is because the mages are fatigued to unconsciousness. I checked it the first time because, like Cainehill, I was extremely upset. However, fatigue was waay over the limit, so I just accepted it.

[Meglobob]

Uh-Nu-Buh said:
I've seen the whole "armies route and mages stay and get slaughtered" thing several times; and I believe it is because the mages are fatigued to unconsciousness. I checked it the first time because, like Cainehill, I was extremely upset. However, fatigue was waay over the limit, so I just accepted it.

Yea, the only time mages hang around is due to fatigue. The best one I have seen to date is in a MP, Ermor did master/communion and took a dozen mages too 200 fatigue (death), it was very, very funny.

[Shovah32]

Just to comment on raiding, although caelum is good at raiding imo the single best raiding nation is helheim. Almost all its troops are stealthy due to glamour, it has stealthy commanders who can make great thugs AND, it has flying, sacred units with glamour along with a flying priest to bless them.

[PvK]

Some units not routing the first turn morale breaks is a feature. Routing is a chaotic event - not everyone manages to stage a choreographed retreat at the same time.