Caelum questions, both themes.

[Endoperez]

A strategy I learned in my first Caelum mp game: those scouts can conquer any province wihtout provincial defence. I must have taken almost ten provinces in two turns, losing two scouts and a seraphine when some provinces had few defenders... Then I took the rest, got his castle, his sites, slaughtered his sages and did other small things like that. It was fun!
If you do this, your enemy will surely buy some PD. Then you make some raiding parties and kill his PD, which would have slaughtered a scout but can't stand versus 20 Spire Horners! After that, he doesn' know what to do!
And you want to have many fortresses, as between scouts, High Seraphs and Seraphines you just have too many places to produce commanders. Thanks for the Mausoleum hint, Gandalf! Imight actually use them again if that works...

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Chazar:
- As for RotR: I agree that Caelum should have a theme where blessing might be of more use. After all, they are angel-like beings anyway, so an entirely divine-based theme woulde be cool. And there's a lot to trade of: the cool mages, making mammoths unique to the captial, etc. But maybe I just dont know enough about the other nations.

I got the feeling that RotR was meant to give caelum a tainted, evil touch, but I think they are not evil enough...

I don't think they're supposed to be necessarily evil as much as they are desperate and rebellious.

[Tuna-Fish]

Originally posted by Chazar:
I have not really understood "storm" so far: How do I get into storms except from casting the battlefield spell storm?

I mean, sometimes there's snow (and I think i've seen rain) on the battlefield, but I always thought that this is a mere graphical nicety without effect. Did I miss something here? How do I make a weatherforecast then?

- A question about the drain-scale: What is the big deal? I loose one research-point per mage, it increases MR by a half-point (what does a half-point mean by the way?). I'm not aware of the increased fatigue, but I recall that I've read somewhere something about that....

If one of your (or his/hers/its) commanders carries a staff of storms, there will be a storm.
Storm has 5 effects:
1. it halves all precision scores (air magic bonus is given afterwards, as is the bonuses given by eagle eyes and wind guide)
2. of all fired (ordinary) missiles, 50% are discarded on flight.
3. fire magic is harded to cast
4. normal flight is not possible.
5. Casting of storm power is allowed (very easy air spell that gives +1 in air magic for duration of battle)

There are better strategies, though, and you might not like it if your enemy gets few Staves of Storms for himself.

And how exactly would enemy having staff of storms hurt? I really can't figure out why.

Originally posted by Tuna-Fish:
If one of your (or his/hers/its) commanders carries a staff of storms, there will be a storm.
Storm has 5 effects:
1. it halves all precision scores (air magic bonus is given afterwards, as is the bonuses given by eagle eyes and wind guide)
2. of all fired (ordinary) missiles, 50% are discarded on flight.
3. fire magic is harded to cast

Harder to cast = Double Fatigue

4. normal flight is not possible.
5. Casting of storm power is allowed (very easy air spell that gives +1 in air magic for duration of battle)
And how exactly would enemy having staff of storms hurt? I really can't figure out why.

It could hurt if you had very little forces that could fight in a storm and primarily archers (Caelum archers are just as bad in storms as the rest).

Wrathful Skies + Storm is always bad unless you have Thunder Ward.

Certain summoned monsters and items give increased power during a storm.

If you don't plan on being a storm and any one of those things is counter to what your army is composed of, it can be bad for you if they have a storm.

[Chazar]

• Thanks for the advice on storms!
  Is it generally speaking a necessity to go for construction with Caelum early on? So far I always did, but not that extensive, alteration/evocation are useful. But then again, these owl-quills might make it up again then, as I dont have too many mages around in battle in the beginning anyway...
  

• Originally posted by Norfleet:
  If using a Nataraja SC, be warned that the Nataraja is not immune to the effects of your cold-3 dominion and will suffer large fatigue penalties when fighting in it, unless given a cold resistance item.

  Ahem, I agreed with you there before, but then considering again, a high seraph can forge a "Ring of Frost" already on the second turn (provided that you dont use the Raptor theme). So the only drawback here is the lost misc-item slot, or did I miss something else? (I'm thinking about trading the blue dragon against a virtue pretender, among other changes...)

• Posted by fahdiz: I don't think they're supposed to be necessarily evil as much as they are desperate and rebellious.

  Well, yes, but death/earth magic and no seraphines looks not that nice to me. I would just like to have a fallen-angel theme for caelum, but I'm not sure if it adds well to the other nations.
  
  The raptor theme is just not appealing to me, but maybe shifting it more into rebellious-religious fanatics by adding more sacred troops would be real tempting choice as well, as we said here before...

[ March 04, 2004, 22:57: Message edited by: Chazar ]

[fahdiz]

Originally posted by Chazar:

quote:

---

Posted by fahdiz: I don't think they're supposed to be necessarily evil as much as they are desperate and rebellious.

Well, yes, but death/earth magic and no seraphines looks not that nice to me. I would just like to have a fallen-angel theme for caelum, but I'm not sure if it adds well to the other nations.

The raptor theme is just not appealing to me, but maybe shifting it more into rebellious-religious fanatics by adding more sacred troops would be real tempting choice as well, as we said here before...

---

Well, I didn't say they were nice, just not necessarily evil. "Desperately fanatic" and "embittered by being squeezed out of Caelian society for centuries" is definitely more how I saw it from reading the flavor text.

I'm becoming more and more fond of the sacred Raven Guard/sacred Wingless idea for Return of the Raptors. But I would be interested to see the opinions of the experts of the list - do you think such a change would present balance problems, or do you think there is a place for a "new RotR"? And do these changes even sound good or appropriate to you?

[ March 04, 2004, 23:11: Message edited by: fahdiz ]

If I had to do what I say (Which is of course the hardest way to do it I'd more than likely make RotR a complete overhaul.

Change the Preference to Cold 1 or None (Depending on the points).

Remove Wingless, Remove Mammoths, Remove Spire Horn Warriors (Replaced with Raptors), Make Raven Guard Sacred. New unit Gryphon. Move one Air to Random on the Harab Elder and give him Holy 3. Starting Spell = Blight.

That would play much differently. With the removal of Cold preference but keeping the units Cold Resistance, you could take Cold if you wish; but you lose the 'free points' and makes you play quite a bit differently.

Those are just some things I was thinking for my own modifications; but hardly a general consensus.