Defence .....

[Boron]

quickness spell increases defense a bit .

att / def can never be high enough . you need good protection perhaps too when your enemy doesn't use scs but tries to swarm you .

early game f9 bless / x-bows are quite scary for low protection sc's because of their ap . when you fight lots of swarmers ( ermor etc ) some of them will always hit no matter how high your defense is . so you need protection against that too .

in 1on1 fight against scs protection is not so important because they can use AN weapons .
there high att / def Ratings are more important .

against undead scs you should consider regenerating items or you need to kill them quick otherwise they will always replenish their life by lifedrain .

building the perfect sc is hard
you need on the one hand a sc against hordes of common troops and on the other hand an anti-sc sc .

the anti-sc with an weapons might get killed by 100 units because of swarming while the standard sc can kill them easy . but the standard sc though gets killed in 1on1 combat by the anti sc .

[Vicious Love]

Pshaw, protection is overrated. If one out of 20 or so cannon fodder that rush your SC manages to land a hit, a simple ethereal/lucky combo'll disregard said hit 87.5% of the time. Couple that with Mistform, Astral Shield, a halfway decent regeneration rate, or Blood Vengeance, and you're pretty much immune to mere mortals, unless they pack both Emerald Guardesque attack skill and magical/fireblessed weapons.

Update: Getting back on topic, ways of lowering an enemy's defense that spring to mind include:

1. Freeze him. Freezing comes in two flavors, the hardcore variant, which turns targets blue, best achieved via the Numbness spell or "chill" effect, and the vanilla variant, which affects all troops fighting in a Cold-3 province.
Both effects are resistable by cold resistance(If a unit's cold resistance is above 0, it is completely immune to the aforementioned vanilla freeze).
The vanilla freeze is particularly effective against cold-blooded units. I suspect this also holds true of the hardcore freeze, but I've yet to look into it.
Heat-3 has the same effect as Cold-3(Except on fire resistant units, which are immune). Of course, if you've got Heat-3, you're Abysia, which means defense skill shouldn't be a factor for you.

2. Fatigue him. Also increases your chances of ignoring his protection.

3. Entangle/False Fetter/Prison of Fire/etc. him

4. Blind him

5. Paralyze him. If a certain SC's only defense is his defense skill stat, a single casting of petrify will leave him defenseless for at least one full round.

6. Rout him, and outpace him before he flees the field

7. Swarm him

8. If he isn't undead, fight him under cover of Darkness(TM) or, better yet, Utterdarkness(TM)

9. Ideally, have an obscenely high attack skill

[ August 06, 2004, 23:57: Message edited by: Vicious Love ]