National troops and mages vs SC and High Magics

[Endoperez]

What summons? Ethereal beasts, like seasonal spirits or Ether monsters? Or masses of undead critters? Or any other summons with lor protection?

Cast Blade Wind a few times.

If he has low-mr critters, don't bother with Soul Slay and like. Go staright for Control or Opposition! Or if those aren't magical creatures (and even if they are) Charm should work just okay.

Also, you can use some nice magic items to give out awesome amounts of damage. As an example, Banefire is a wonderful spell that dishes out lots of armor-negating damage. Give Sceptre of Corruption (blood-4?, artifact) to someone with Bots of Quickness, and an Eye of Aiming if he nees it. Give him some bodyguards that have a chance against lesser horrors so that he stays up for a few more turns. Go Killing Them. You need some distraction for a while, so recruit cheap indies. put them before your real troops. And remember that fatique is the greatest enemy of SCs! After they have slaugheter your militia (if no life-draining) or soulless(if they have life-draining) they have collected some fatique, and now your elites can go to kill him. Remember, even as his fatique goes up he has been the targeted by most your mages and other comanders... Including those using items for Banefire, and those having Bow of Botulf, Cyclop's Bane (what's the real name of that bow?), Rod of the Phoenix, whatever. I haven't really tried it out in action, but I have killed few SC's in my MP-games. I didn't bother putting militia to the front, as my elites were more than a match for those Ulmite black pates... And Fall Bears met Blade Wind.

This might have become somewhat longish... Well, I started writing it as my 0.02?. I think it's about 0.07? ATM. Many of my favourite tricks I have never had the possibility to try out in multi.

[ April 25, 2004, 12:12: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

[Cohen]

I'm not asking how to deal with them, how to use Y to counter X.

I'm saying, as you told ... Fall Bear and SC ... and all the Ulmish infantry? Disappeared?

And what did you told about? Magic items, spells and so on ...

Militia ... swordfodder.
Elite ... to intervene only when enemy is fatigued?

What battle is this???
From militia to elite troops should be the BULK of the battle, not magic items, or SC or summons nor mages. Instead they're.

I prefer xbow to counter knights, light cav to make knights wasting lance, militia to fatigue enemy heavy inf, archers to take down light infantry and so on ...
This is strategy & tactics ...
We add some mages casting some spells and so on ...

I'd add a morale malus if there'sn't at least one commander leading the squad in battle ... so fighting commanders are valued too ... if national troops are enhanced and used.

Add new scales like Military, or Backsmithing ...
something like you can have a pre move in the battle or to improve little you common soldier equipment ... something similar to add strenght to troops ...

Drain/Magic scale can affect magic or summoned units too ... they tend to fade away if there'isnt't enough Magic or their full strenght is at Dominion 10 ... and they become weaker the less the Dominion is ...

And so on


PS: For fatigue ... well, relief spell, summon earthpower, renvigoration, earth blessing, girdle of might, amulet of resilience and so on ... so it'sn't such a burden ... oh damn ... a VQ or an Undead SC doesn't suffer from fatigue at all (in combat).

[Endoperez]

I thought you were worried about the fact that national troops and mages became worthless in the endgame. I got that victory with Caelum. I also had access to some SCs, but I thought that this more "basic" army would be better in this case. I posted it as an example of what a normal army with national mages can do.

My frontline consisted of Living Statues, and they were even slower than I had expected. My Mammoths got stuck behind them instead of going for a trampling trip. It seems that (even) more "basic" frontline would have been better. But as I said I was Caelum, I didn't have Temple Guards to hold the frontline and my Iceclads had better things to do... In my games, my weak Caelians have many uses. Flying in melee to get killed by Ulmians is not one of them. Mages are one of the strengths of Caelum. Why would I have to not use them? There are better nations for playing with strong melee armies. Ulm, Steel theme of Pangaea, Jotunheim for those fond of elite armies, Abysia has heavy infantry although their mages are a major power for them.


You have told that you dislike the current system where proper SCs can destroy whole armies, and mages and magic are best ways to get rid of them. What would you propose as a way of getting rid of SCs, then?

Big armies? What use would SCs be then? Your army would have to take the first punch and if they routed, your SC would die soon after. SCs woudln't have any role left, as they wouldn't be able to kill armies all alone and they couldn't even change the tide of battle, as the basic armies would decide that, too.
Many physically stronger pretenders would lose much of their interest, as putting them to the front line can get them useless even now when they potentially can kill whole armies.

Also, are you sure you have tried all the mundane ways of killing strong units? X-bows work against units with high protection in general, and Wraith Sword leaves most creatures without shield. Undead frontline distracts him and renders his lifedraining worthless while your x-bows make some new holes through him... And given enough crossbows even if he gets his life back he will eventually die. Also, remember the afflictions! Afflictions and fatique are the two things that will take down any SC. And either one is enough!

[ April 25, 2004, 15:37: Message edited by: Endoperez ]

[Cheezeninja]

I think they simply need to add in a spell or two that dispel's buff's in combat. Maybe someone has already suggested this and its not a good idea for some reason, but a SC usually isn't a SC until they buff themselves up with a few choice spells. So throw in the ability to dispell their buff's... or at least dispel the buff's of a random individual. That way they are forced to take an large army to reduce the chance the SC's buffs are dispelled, and if they take a large army it can be routed.

[Master Shake]

My experience is that SC units are vulnerable to single-target spells like Petrify (a sucessful resist versus petrify mean that SC is paralyzed) or Soul Slay. They CAN be debuffed with things like armor-destroying spells. For SC with very high protection, get some units (e.g. trolls) with very high strength. 25 protection is near invulnerability against 10-strength unit, but not so hot against a 22-strength unit.

Sure, this is not the army-army encounters you are looking for, but that is what I like about the game - there are many different stragtegies and counters. Plus, SC cannot hold territory very well, or pillage, or take castles. Also, drop a couple of your enemies SC (each with half-dozen expensive items) with a couple level 3 astral mages casting soul slay, and he may start thinking about another strategy.

[Kel]

I am not the most experienced player but...I think that SC's definitely do make *most* regular armies obsolete in the late game (though mages for many nations can always be deadly in mass, try a communion based nation like arco/pythium). Eventually, wishing for doom horrors, by all accounts, is going to make your HI pretty meaningless.

What I don't necessarily agree with is that this is a problem. If the game was always dependent on basic troops, I think every game would end with people getting bored and quitting after hundreds of turns of marching HI around the board, with the way the game currently flows.

Additionally, it is clear, by looking at pretenders, that the developers have tried to make pretender SC's a viable option for either the early game or the late game but not both (notice how most good early SC's have limited item slots ?). Not withstanding a couple of SC's VQ that might violate this rule...

I am not sure what maps you are playing on but you might try a larger map. Your armies will always be busy trying to expand and conflicts that you have will occur over more territories than you can cover.

- Kel

[Jondifool]

My take on it is that the core of the problem is not that SC can butcher whole armys , but that they are invulnerble as they do it!
(but I second that summons and no upkeep are part of the problem to - magical upkeep would be nice payed in gems!)

But the core comes down to 2 things.
The open ended dice system, and truly invulnerbilitys in form of 100% resistance. This makes SC limmmitless supirior to normal troops

as a exsample
Lets say that a game had a cap on restances ,say 90% meaning that no matter what 1/10 of damage went trough , and lets say that nomatter what the attack/defense and protecktion/strength differentse that alwas at least 1/10 hits would do damage. And 1/19 that would miss

There would absolut still be a reason to make SC, but they would not be invulnerble, and if balanced right there could be a reason to make the SC that could do the job of hitting thesse numbers and still be affordble to loose!