Why no love for Caelum?

Boron said:

but that are the "only" exeptions . AND call of the wilds is AIR magic too so this is not such a good argument imho .

so stormbinder is still true :
harpies/black hawks win against a single seraph wow .
now if the seraph only takes with him 5 caelum troops on guard commander though i think he wins again against EVERY pd of about 20 and even some black hawks mixed in or something similiar don't beat him .

what makes this almost unique is that caelum can do this early midgame ( turn 20-30 ) to 5-10 of your provinces .

arryn your attack strat won't work .

you as any other nation can effectively attack 2-3 provinces , caelum can attack 5-10 low protected with the seraphs combo storm mentioned and attack 1-2 with their main army ( e.g. several high seraphs , staff of storms etc . , mammuts + archers , later air queens and lots of good other choices ) .

so you almost can't win in the late earlygame or in midgame against a good caelum player .

you can't castle your whole mainland earlygame and if you do you waste too much resources for this .
even if you castle it doesn't really help the caelumplayer just has to turn taxes to 200% and economically bleed you out .

furthermore caelum has stealth preachers + flying scouts .
so they always know where your anti raid army/armies is/are and can attack all the other provinces .
losing 1-2 seraphs is no big loss too .

so caelum can do 2 things better than ANY other nation from turn ~15-40 :

- prepare battles of encirclement and annihilation
- raid large

Anyone who can build a blood economy and cast Bind Fiends can raise an army of flying stealthy things that can not only raid as well as Caelum, but are rock solid in battle (and cost NO gold or maintenance). Both BF Ulm and Abysia can put together the same sort of raiding/surrounding conquest strategy in the same time-frame that you're talking about for Caelum. Probably Mictlan can as well, though I'm less clear what they'd use to lead the sneaky flying armies (Abysia uses Demondbred and BF Ulm uses Vampire Counts).

Dusk Elders are sneaky, ethereal and can beat most PD by spamming Raise Skeletons/Raise Dead. Give them boots of flying and they too can be super raiders. Again, no gold and no upkeep.

I don't think Caelum has any claim to uniqueness in this area.

What's more, the ability to raid behind the "front line" is very nice, but it's no way to conquer and hold territory permanently. If your opponent has a solid army, you are going to have to beat it at some point or he will take all that territory back very quickly.

Mark

[Boron]

Mark the Merciful said:

Anyone who can build a blood economy and cast Bind Fiends can raise an army of flying stealthy things that can not only raid as well as Caelum, but are rock solid in battle (and cost NO gold or maintenance). Both BF Ulm and Abysia can put together the same sort of raiding/surrounding conquest strategy in the same time-frame that you're talking about for Caelum. Probably Mictlan can as well, though I'm less clear what they'd use to lead the sneaky flying armies (Abysia uses Demondbred and BF Ulm uses Vampire Counts).

Dusk Elders are sneaky, ethereal and can beat most PD by spamming Raise Skeletons/Raise Dead. Give them boots of flying and they too can be super raiders. Again, no gold and no upkeep.

I don't think Caelum has any claim to uniqueness in this area.

What's more, the ability to raid behind the "front line" is very nice, but it's no way to conquer and hold territory permanently. If your opponent has a solid army, you are going to have to beat it at some point or he will take all that territory back very quickly.

Mark

nice attempt .
and who leads the fiends of darkness and is stealthy ?
there is no item to make a leader stealthy .
mictlan + abysia don't have stealthy leaders who can fly .
furthermore the mictlan scout has 0 ldrship
the abysian slayer has 0 stealth too .

of course abysia has flying armies with the demonbred .
but they are not stealthy

that is true of course for caelum too but they have stealthy flying scouts + stealthy preachers so this is a big advantage .

the main difference between abysia + caelum :
caelums mages are not capitol only .

furthermore summoning fiends with blood earlygame is time consuming : only 1 per mage summonable .
so your research suffers and you can only use your capitolonly mages for that as abysia .

so abysia has to spend a demonbred per flying army + use blood for this

caelum has only to spend a cheap mage who is not capitol only .

so who can do this easier earlygame ?


abysia can field midgame 2 or 3 scary devil flying armies but only 2 or 3 .

caelum can midgame attack every low protected province with stormbinders mentioned combo .


sure the 1 mage attack doesn't hold the territory . but that is not his purpose .
as long as that forces your opponent to keep significant amounts of garrison/countertroops at home it is a big success already .
furthermore you just need to tax every this way captured province to 200%.

repeat that a few times and your enemy is economically broken
prevents recruiting , taxing and bloodhunting .
so only the gemincome is left

and the knowlegde that caelum can do this forces caelums neighbors to madcastle + keep significant defense forces at home .


the only other races which can do similiar things are the ones with spies so ulm + marignon + tien chi with the unrest command .

the caelum way to do this is though better because as long as you build up your mageforce you can use them for research/forging .

[WraithLord]

A single attacking seraph is vulnerable to magical counter attacks. seeking arrows, assinations spells, call of the winds etc.
of course not all the counters are trivial or accessible to all nations.

Also player's shouldn't count on PD to hold their territories.

[Cainehill]

Kel said:

Given there ability to cut off retreat with flyers, they will do a lot more damage with rout than they will suffer from it.
- Kel

Which many Caelum players have complained about, because the flyers land in the path of the routing units, which causes them to attack the flyers, which in Caelum's case often causes high casualties, sometimes high enough to cause Caelum to rout before the non-flying defenders escape the field of battle, allowing the 'losers' to win and continue to own the province.

[Boron]

izaqyos said:
A single attacking seraph is vulnerable to magical counter attacks. seeking arrows, assinations spells, call of the winds etc.
of course not all the counters are trivial or accessible to all nations.

Also player's shouldn't count on PD to hold their territories.

seeking arrow is A3 so not easy to reach with most nations . i think man Last of tuatha and caelum mages are the only ones who can cast it without lucky random picks or a +1air item .
call of the winds is 5 air gems needed so this is a "success" too i would say if you waste 1 turn magetime +5 airgems

furthermore the call of the winds hawks can be easily countered i think by assigning the seraph 5 bodyguards .


while caelums own pd is very bad they have at least always the chance to luckily kill a lowprotection sc ( mainly vq ) or kill luckily 1-2 mages in their initial defense attack so they aren't so bad all in all

[Kel]

izaqyos said:
A single attacking seraph is vulnerable to magical counter attacks. seeking arrows, assinations spells, call of the winds etc.
of course not all the counters are trivial or accessible to all nations.

You are going to spend 10-25 gems to stop a 100 gold seraph ? Which side are you arguing ?

- Kel

[Cohen]

The true problem is that Caelum get province raider (as Vanheim and Man thuata, but they don't fly, but are stelthy) with only gold!

Even more Caelum and Vanheim have them non capitol only.

Even more Caelum has his mages costing far low than everyone else (and pythium too has good mages for 150 gold, but they cannot compete with 175 gold Arch Seraph).

Boron already told about Abysya, or Mictlan, even if you can give to a scout/assassin a Sceptre of Leadership or such (well I once tried with a marignonite spy, to lead some Sidhe troops recruitable by the Glowing Hill site), and Flying Boots, you always require gem income, and proper mage to forge the item.

Caelum doesn't need that.
However the real problem IMO are:

False Horror, to review
Pricing of Mages, to raise.
Make at least Arch Seraph capitol only.

Seraphs are still good but if their price will go at least at 150 I believe they could be fine.
Arch Seraph should be 270 or 300, considering too their paths are from the best ones (Air at least, and water 2 means quickness and clams and boots of quickness).

Ps: Quantum, Ryleh PD could kill even an SC with some luck, I got in a game some Banelords killed by Ryleh PD because they get paralized, but the Illith need some luck to paralize the Banelords. Even if the Banelord wins, but get paralized for some turns, he risks afflictions.

Boron said:
nice attempt .
and who leads the fiends of darkness and is stealthy ?
there is no item to make a leader stealthy .

There's the - Black Heart? - blood item that turns a leader into an assassin.

mictlan + abysia don't have stealthy leaders who can fly .
furthermore the mictlan scout has 0 ldrship
the abysian slayer has 0 stealth too .

of course abysia has flying armies with the demonbred .
but they are not stealthy

I don't know Abysia so well, and was under the impression that Demonbred was stealthy. But I speak from experience when it comes to BF Ulm, who can launch massive stealth raids using Vampire Counts leading Fiends in the air, and Rangers on the ground.

that is true of course for caelum too but they have stealthy flying scouts + stealthy preachers so this is a big advantage .

the main difference between abysia + caelum :
caelums mages are not capitol only .

furthermore summoning fiends with blood earlygame is time consuming : only 1 per mage summonable .
so your research suffers and you can only use your capitolonly mages for that as abysia .

so abysia has to spend a demonbred per flying army + use blood for this

caelum has only to spend a cheap mage who is not capitol only .

so who can do this easier earlygame ?

abysia can field midgame 2 or 3 scary devil flying armies but only 2 or 3 .

caelum can midgame attack every low protected province with stormbinders mentioned combo .

sure the 1 mage attack doesn't hold the territory . but that is not his purpose .
as long as that forces your opponent to keep significant amounts of garrison/countertroops at home it is a big success already .
furthermore you just need to tax every this way captured province to 200%.

repeat that a few times and your enemy is economically broken
prevents recruiting , taxing and bloodhunting .
so only the gemincome is left

Only if the victim sits there and passively accepts that sort of attack. As Arryn pointed out, he will - or should - be hitting back in ways that suit HIS strengths, not playing to Caelum's

and the knowlegde that caelum can do this forces caelums neighbors to madcastle + keep significant defense forces at home .

You're stating theory as though it's happening in real games. In practice I don't see this happening, and would see it as precisely the wrong reaction to the Caelum threat.

the only other races which can do similiar things are the ones with spies so ulm + marignon + tien chi with the unrest command .

Apart from the ones that I mentioned and you ignored

BF Ulm
Ermor (Dusk ELders & raise skeletons)

The Caelum player also has to worry about defending his own territory if he wants to be able to afford to maintain all these Seraphs. More to the point he needs a strategy that's a bit more complex than relying on a single tactic for defeating PD. It's not that I don't think it sounds strong; it's just that it isn't the whole story, and anyway doesn't seem to me to be grounded in much real MP experience.

[WraithLord]

Kel said:

You are going to spend 10-25 gems to stop a 100 gold seraph ? Which side are you arguing ?

- Kel

COW gems are not wasted. the summoned raptors stay and can be of further use.

[Pickles]

Quoting Mark the merciful

There's the - Black Heart? - blood item that turns a leader into an assassin.

It turns a stealthy leader into an assassin

You're stating theory as though it's happening in real games. In practice I don't see this happening, and would see it as precisely the wrong reaction to the Caelum threat.

well put - a tendency of the pregame analyser as opposed to the experienced player

"Ermor (Dusk Elders & raise skeletons)"

Ctis empoisoners D1

Any flying or stealthy wizard who can spam stuff.
Or someone with spammer items - infernal protection maybe or bottle of water not sure how strong these are in practice.
Given boots this is quite a choice

It's not that I don't think it sounds strong; it's just that it isn't the whole story, and anyway doesn't seem to me to be grounded in much real MP experience.

Money on PD is a dubious investment anyway IMO as it gets knocked over too easily - just in routine battles. I might have already mentioned that I am reluctant to spend on anything other than field forces though.
Still I lack much MP experience particularly against good military players in even fights. People who make you think rather than just choosing power strat #3 or whatever.

Pickles