Re: I hate horrors
Horror marking is designed to be a balance for the otherwise horribly powerful supercombatant strategy. It won't instakill an enemy, but it allows a chance that the horror will get them before the SC can overrun an empire. Horror marks are not that common; they'll sometimes show up from bad luck (ai scripting, or magic sites) but this is very rare. Mainly they're because of items (controllable by the player, items that horror mark are clearly labelled as such in the manual) or because of an anti-SC strategy from a human player.
Because horror marks are designed to counter big, expensive, powerful SCs they cannot be removed easily (plus, it's thematic that they can't) and the horrors have to be tough enough to challenge SCs.
I don't think it can be considered 'unbalanced'. Horror marks are not very dangerous unless you rely on one or two powerful units, and as I said, they are supposed to be a counter for this.
As for fighting horrors... it partly depends on what your god is. If it's a puny human mage then you can't expect to beat much in melee. As for magic, remember that you can only cast 1 spell per turn. Having lots of magic in lots of areas won't help unless you have spells scripted that will kill the horror.
Anyway, I've not had to challenge a major SC yet... The doom horrors are extraordinarily powerful and I doubt you can reliably beat them. As for normal horrors, here's my thoughts on the subject:
1: I'm not sure, but it's possible that horror attacks may be tied to scales. Does anyone know if magic/drain or luck/unluck affect this?
2: Horrors bypass most defences. Many of their attacks are AN or AP, they have many attacks with good Att so high def won't help. They have magic attacks so ethereality is useless. Equip your pretender with this in mind. If he's just an archmage though, then melee equipment won't help.
3: Horrors always attack horror-marked individuals first. Bodyguards will only stop this if they are horror marked (unlikely) or if they completely surround the pretender. I believe that horror attacks count as assasination attempts so you are limited to 5 bodyguards.
4: Sorry, wish-for-blood-slaves, but I believe that horrors have at least some attacks that are not negated by magic resistance. Life drain comes to mind. However, MR is very important against some of their tougher attacks
5: Your mage does get to cast a spell. The defender acts first. If he is not casting it means that he cannot cast whatever spell you have scripted first for him
6: Armours, weapons and so on will only work against a horror, which is designed to be able to challenge large monsters with a complete selection of items, if they are very well chosen and if your base pretender is tough enough to stand a chance. If he's a big demigod with full slots then you can probably equip him to kill horrors if you are careful, although I can't give specific advice.
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