Countering Master Enslave...

[Atreidi]

MaxWilson said:

You're going to have to do SOMETHING in response to Master Enslave, and if using immune armies and casting counterspells doesn't work for you I'm not sure what you were looking for. Proactively killing off enemy mages before they can cast is ALWAYS the best defense against any spell. You've dismissed the notion of using armies that aren't vulnerable to Master Enslave, and aren't happy with the idea of counterspells, so what does that leave?

-Max

True that.

[MaxWilson]

thejeff said:
Well, in the classic Master Enslave contest, he who goes second has some serious issues to contend with.

First, the defender can cast AntiMagic/Army of Lead to protect both his troops and your former troops, greatly weakening the effect of your Master Enslave.

Second, since his new troops are among your remaining troops (and mages) many of your mages will be attacked or in hand-to-hand and thus less likely to cast what was ordered.

The situation I see counter-Enslaves being useful in is when other counters won't work, e.g. you're Ulm and your troops have low MR even after Antimagic. I don't expect hand-to-hand interference to be a big problem unless you were caught by surprise, in which case you're not using Master Enslave as a counter-tactic anyway. (You may be using it anyway but your forces will be set up differently.) I agree that you're going to have a hard time dealing with counter-countermeasures like Master Enslave + Army of Lead.

But I don't have a good understanding of the endgame anyway.

-Max

[Coldshard]

MaxWilson said:
You're going to have to do SOMETHING in response to Master Enslave...

I agree... but then, doesnt everyone?

MaxWilson said:
...if using immune armies and casting counterspells doesn't work for you I'm not sure what you were looking for.

Counterspells? The only spells mentioned either rely on a preemptive strike or are can be too late to do much..

MaxWilson said:Proactively killing off enemy mages before they can cast is ALWAYS the best defense against any spell.

Which is why I dont like that answer, actually

MaxWilson said:You've dismissed the notion of using armies that aren't vulnerable to Master Enslave, and aren't happy with the idea of counterspells, so what does that leave?

I didnt dismiss the notion of armies that are invulnerable to the spell.. I just pointed out that such armies arent always easy to come by and typically have their own doom spell (such as undead mastery).

The counterspells, assuming we are talking about preemptive strike spells and antimagic/army of lead, are either a ubiquitous answer to the problem (kills the mages before they even get into combat) or potentially too late to matter. Were there other counterspells mentioned?

MaxWilson said:
Edit:Mage commanders will usually not be Master Enslaved, by the way. Most mages have MR 15-17, so they'll be resisting at 19-21 which is something like a 3-5% failure rate.

-Max

3-5% assuming no extra levels in the appropriate path and no penetration items (although the opposing mage might have enough astral path to get a bonus as well). A ring of wizardry and sorcery along with a rune smasher and maybe even a crystal shield arent all that hard, a few communion buddies can top it off nicely.. I actually had a game recently where I cast master enslave with a total penetration of +10. Get lucky and enslave the enemy enslaver, grab a few of their communion buddies so that if they do manage to pull off one it has a lesser chance of success (especially after your newly larger army just got antimagic/army of lead), and possibly even have their own former troops kill them (or force the AI to decide casting some other spell is better at the moment, like astral shield ).

It gets more complicated when magic items on the defenders are taken into account though. They might have defensive items to help (such as antimagic amulet) but that typically means that they are missing offensive items to power their own spells.

It is an incredibly potent option. It isnt that I am discounting all options for countering it, I am merely saying that it is so potent that if you are unable to do the proactive measures then an opponent making the most of this option could force you to change your entire playing strategy... just from the 'threat' of it being cast. That is power!

[MaxWilson]

Coldshard said:
I didnt dismiss the notion of armies that are invulnerable to the spell.. I just pointed out that such armies arent always easy to come by and typically have their own doom spell (such as undead mastery).

The counterspells, assuming we are talking about preemptive strike spells and antimagic/army of lead, are either a ubiquitous answer to the problem (kills the mages before they even get into combat) or potentially too late to matter. Were there other counterspells mentioned?

What do you mean by "too late to matter"? Are you talking about defender advantage, i.e. Master Enslave on round 1 before the attacker can cast any counterspells? That issue is not unique to Master Enslave. Fog Warriors + Rain of Stones x4 works the same way. Otherwise, Antimagic is a counterspell. It boosts the total resistance roll to +8. Against +10 penetration that's still not going to save your normal troops, but high-MR troops (13-ish) aren't all that uncommon in Dominions. "Counterspell" in this sense means "mitigator," not "nullifier."

-Max

[Twan]

My opinion remain that the defender advantage is far too big in late game, and the late game would be far more interesting with another initiative system, with a casting duration of several rounds for endgame spells, or simply without any instant offensive spell affecting the whole battlefield.

Now as Max said master enslave is nothing special, it's just one of the spells of this problematic category. Rain of stones and bone grinding (combined with fog warriors or high hp mages) are worse for me, as some nations can easily cast them 3 or 4 times in round one (if you can cast it 4 times bone grinding is the nastier spell against human nations, as it kills even the mages who had an armor to survive rains of stones). Undead mastery and arcane domination are more niche, but being lower level can be cast with better penetration bonus (and considering late game troops often include some feebleminded tartarians, undead mastery may give excellent returns for its price).

ps : red text hurts my eyes

[Ironhawk]

Originally, I was opposed to your view, Twan. But I think I am begining to agree. I'm in a very late game now and I expect to be Enslaved / Stoned so I will know soon if it is trully possible to resist them in a meaningful way. However the posts in this thread have me worried...

[Baalz]

*shrug* Very late game has nuclear weapons and as the analogy suggests warfare is very different than before. If your opponent has access to significantly more nuclear weapons than you do...well you're gonna have a very hard time winning using traditional armies. Properly leveraged Tartarian Gate trumps master enslave/rain of stones/etc. Chain wishing, arcane nexus, army of lead....the very late game has a couple flavors of nuclear weapons which can trump each other depending on the situation. If you don't intend to stockpile nukes and shift how you play, you darn well better plan on winning before others do.

[Xietor]

Rocky, the GOR Gargoyle whistles innocently.

[cleveland]

Suggested Solution: Randomize the casting order in the magic phase.

The root of the problem is that the casting order is completely predictable.

Randomize the casting order like monthly rituals (why should the defender have any "first-move" advantage for magic...its MAGIC for godsakes) and the problem (along with several other gamey phenomena) is solved.

[DonCorazon]

I agree with Twan, having been the beneficiary of the first cast in an enslave situation and seeing it totally reverse what should have been an even battle.

The current situation tends to lead to standoffs where hordes are unwilling to press the attack. There are certainly ways to deal with that but I think the game would be more interesting with Cleveland’s proposed randomizer so you should always be willing to attack knowing that you have just as good of odds as being the beneficiary of initiative as the victim of it.