Dealing with Mind Hunt

[DonCorazon]

So my noob games started in Nov are getting to the end and now I am getting zapped incessantly with mind hunt. What is the best way to defend - do people always try to bring astral mages with their troops? Do they always protect you? What if you have none?

Should I be zapping people in the games where I do have astral mages? It is pretty annoying to be on the receiving end so I guess I should be dishing it out where I can.

[ano]

I think there're only two options - to raise the MR of your SC's to the values about 20 and to take astral mages with your big armies.

[Zeldor]

DonCorazon:

Taht is one of the reasons why non-astral nations are just doomed in late game. You notice huge balance issues then. And yes, you NEED astral mage in every place you can be hit with mind hunt.

[LDiCesare]

Domes can help too in order to protect your researchers.

[vfb]

A third option is to bring a big amount of vanilla commanders with your important units. Actually, it's a good idea to do this in any case, when possible, to handle assassinations.

And you don't always need an astral mage in every province you can be hit with mind hunt. If you can teleport or trapeze astral mages, and your enemy knows you can do so, then he may be unwilling to risk a feeblemind by trying to Mind Hunt an army that an astral mage may get to before he does.

[ComTrav]

The next obvious question is, does the level of the astral mage matter? In SP I've seen pretty strong Astral Mages "severed" where I didn't think there was any astral at all.

Rustling up some lizards/amazons by the end game isn't too hard. I suspect higher is better if you have them, but if you're not an astral nation you have to make do.

[DonCorazon]

Wow, this is a real bummer. I am getting ripped up in a couple games where I am playing non-astral nations and in one case have had zero luck finding indies with astral. I guess this is one reason to recruit lizard shamans.

I wonder if I should be more aggressive in the early game when playing non-astral.

Ugghh...

[Micah]

decoy commanders are nice too...trading a 30g commander for 2 of your opponent's pearls isn't a horrid deal.

And the strength of the casting mage doesn't matter, supposedly defending mages have a 40% chance per level of catching an attacker, so it doesn't take much...I also can't recall having a mind hunt kill anyone where I have an S mage stationed, so the actual chance might be better.

[Gregstrom]

I am regarding the lack of +MR items on one of those victim armies as a bit of a bonus, it has to be said.