Some joy with Mictlan

[PvK]

Ah, I have been playing Ulm, so I didn't realize others needed to get to Construction 4 before getting hammers. I still sense potential from the devil contract - one just needs to overcome a few hurdles. Ulm (multiple forge bonuses) and Mictlan (cheap blood priests) both have some nice advantages for this, each unique and not entirely breachable by pretender design, though you can of course solve part of the difficulties with pretender magic. Which is all as it should be. It's good it's not easy to make a devil generation factory.

PvK

[Bowlingballhead]

Re: Soul Contracts

I've been playing around with building them on the cheap recently, so I can answer these questions.

Yes, the contract goes to the lab when made, and can be slapped onto any commander at all - who then gets a Horror Mark (bwa!) and becomes a devil factory. Obviously, if you can get this going with decent forging bonuses, you can produce an immense army of devils for really cheap. It's not that easy a circumstance to set up, but if you're playing a strategy you can fit it into (construction-heavy, say, with some access to blood magic) it's definitely worth your attention.

All you have to do then is find either a demon or somebody with necromantic leadership (WHY demons count as undead I have no idea) to guide your gigantic army into battle! Yay, demons!

[PvK]

Seemed like all my Mictlani commanders were able to lead the devils around, but maybe I wasn't paying enough attention.

How often do horror marks generate a spontaneous horror attack?

Is there a good way to protect against those?

PvK

[Truper]

Horror Marks don't, so far as I know, generate spontaneous Horror attacks. But if a Horror gets called/sent, you can guess where it will head 1st

[ January 10, 2004, 03:41: Message edited by: Truper ]

[apoger]

>How often do horror marks generate a spontaneous horror attack?

During battle I have only seen it when using the spell Hellpower.

As an "assassination" type attack between turns, the horrors strike pretty rarely. I'd bet it's somewhere around a 5% chance for each marked character.

[Bowlingballhead]

Yeah. They will show up spontaneously as between-turn events, and attack a specific horror-marked character. Generally lesser horrors, but it doesn't matter much. No matter who you are, you're history. You've got to be a real monster to survive a horror attack. You've got to be really tough to survive one round of a horror attack.

[PvK]

When the horror attacks, is it an assassination against the one target and his bodyguards, or against the whole province?

If against the province, and there is a castle with some patrollers and some defenders, who gets attacked?

I was wrong about Mictlani units being able to all lead devils - it's only those with blood who can lead the devils, presumably because the blood gives them some undead leadership.

PvK

P.S./edit: Er, actually, it looks like the devils require magical unit leadership, not undead leadership.

[ January 10, 2004, 07:10: Message edited by: PvK ]