Frost immune Devils?

[Huzurdaddi]

Chazar,

I may not know much about the game but I do know about killing devils

So I should have told you about murdering winter. It just will not get the job done in a cost effective way since you need quite a few castings to kill devils. I have gone so far as to cast Wolven Winter 3 times followed by 2 murdering winter without effect. I figure 3 castings of muredering winter should get the job done but that is a *lot* of gems.

Re: Air Queens.

I honestly do not think that they are "all that" against devils. In test after test I have found that prot is the big killer against devils and air queens just don't get high prot due to their low base defence. Ice Devils OTOH have 15 base prot and can get up to 30 quite easily.

Something like
Shiled of Charcoal Shield, blood thorn, Some prot-15 armor, Flame Helmet, and a pendant of luck on something with a high base prot ( eg: any devil commander, an earth troll king, maybe a wraith lord, the wraith lord does not have that much but the etherial does help ) with smack them around like no tomorrow.

The heat aura is a real killer, be sure to be fire resistant.

An AQ wearing the Amon Hotep will obliterate devils. But you can only have one of those.

A golem wearing artifact armor ( monolith, Asefik's ) can survive a long time against devils but he's only useful as a tank for wrathful since he's a clutz. You could also put armor like that on an AQ with a flame helmet that should give you sufficient prot to tank and crush.

As I said above ghost riders are shocking effective against devils. Heck they are effective against everything except specially made armies or really, really good SC's.

[alexti]

Under the domes (where GR wouldn't work) I prefer undead (like the one that comes from Army of Dead, but it doesn't really matter where it comes from) in the conditions of polar night. Bring enough undead and cast darkness+grip of winter+rain (probably it should be snow ) That makes one longdead roughly equal to one devil (less HP, but better att/def, and longdead are not getting tired), and it's not difficult to bring a mass of undead.

[NTJedi]

Huzurdaddi said:
As I said above ghost riders are shocking effective against devils. Heck they are effective against everything except specially made armies or really, really good SC's.

Yes for 5 death gems this spell is seriously overpowering. For the group I play with we've banned this spell... especially after discovering the computer opponents don't use it since most games have at least 3 computer players. In the game we discovered the computer opponents don't use it was Ermor which maxed out his research and owned at least 40 provinces including his capital of 10 death gems per turn... and after 30 plus turns never casted the spell once. Also another side note... Ermor didn't research any blood magic as his research bar flat-lined sooner then it should my guess is others also don't research blood magic.

[jeffr]

Most mention Staff of Storms as necessary to ground Devils. What do you do if you play a nation that doesn't have access to Air or Water magic (i.e. no clam hoarding)?

So, no Staff of Storms and no Air queens.

[Oversway]

Hopefully by the time they have massed devils, you'll have some sort of air access.. randoms on national mages/summons, or independants, or harbringers, fairy queens, etc.

[jeffr]

Thanks. In case I don't find independents or get a random air pick, fairy queens would do the trick.

[Boron]

jeffr said:
Most mention Staff of Storms as necessary to ground Devils. What do you do if you play a nation that doesn't have access to Air or Water magic (i.e. no clam hoarding)?

So, no Staff of Storms and no Air queens.

If you have no staff of storms vs. devils you have imo very very bad success chances .

It should be similiar vs. FoDs also and other strong fliers .

Devils are just the most economic troop atm in Dominions and they have that good abilities that they can also win vs. Thugs or bad equipped SCs when fielded in bigger quantities .

Because they fly if you use fragile mages , and in this special context a fragile mage is everything expect a tartarian or a SC or a pretender , the devils kill them probably already while buffing .

If you ground the devils with Staff of Storms though national mages which can do either water or airmagic have enough time to deal lots of casualities to the devils and then your Mech Men or other Tanktroops can hold off the devils long enough .
Otherwise the devils would probably kill your mages while your mech men are still unharmed .

[Chazar]

Ok, I found out what helps against >400 Devils supported by ArchDevils, Heliophagous and friends:

Fighting in Cold3, casting Army of Gold, Fog Warriors, Wrathful Skies, Murdering Winter, Warriors of Niefelheim, Storm Warriors, Doom and Weapons of Sharpness a couple of times, as well as bringing along 2 squads of mechanical men and two iron dragons, 3 raw tartarians, 1 healthy and proper equipped tartarian and 2 proper equipped AirQueens and cool WraithLord...

But one thing still puzzles me: Why didnt my army rout as they've done before? In previous battles, the AirQueens did almost nothing, for after their 5 turns of buffing & casting, my whole army routed before they waded into meele. This time every side fought to the very end. Why? Did it matter that I had a single berserked unit in my ranks? Again, scores of blizzard warriors (caelian archers) routed and left the high seraph communion (via crystal slave matrices 8 slaves, 3 serpah crystal masters in Earth, Air & Water, 2 relief druids) without any protection...the devils got dangerously close!), but this time, the whole army remained. In those previous battle non-routing mindless like Siege Golems were present, but no berserked units...

Seems like having a single berseker is vital if this is true. Or am I just obersving some odd chances?

[Boron]

Chazar said:
Seems like having a single berseker is vital if this is true. Or am I just obersving some odd chances?

I think odd chances .

If you have only 1 squad of mech men and as many commanders as you wish your commanders will fight until all mech men are killed.
Commanders can fail their own morale checks though so if you use e.g. stuff like a knight commander thug he may fail his morale checks vs. false horrors and similiar and rout .

Caelian troops have pretty low morale so they rout easily .
Same for most caelian commanders .

Important to know is that only mindless morale 50 units like AE undeads , mech men and iron dragons never rout .
There is no mindless commander though afaik .
Even AQs , Tartarians and similiar have "only" 30 morale so in very rare cases they can rout by failing the commander morale throw though it is really extremely rare .

If enemy works with a lot of fear spells and fear units like false horror spamming , undeads etc. it can occasionally happen though .

[Endoperez]

Maybe you had most of your units scripted to Guard Commander? Units in Guard Commander are not counted as "in the field" when the game checks if there are any non-routing friendly units left (=if the commanders should retreat).