Some Fire Magic Questions

[tinkthank]

Has anyone ever had experience with the level9 Evocation Spell Flames from Afar (I forget the name, but the one which costs 20 fire gems to cast and is like Fires from Afar, but supposedly better)? I thought it would be like Fires from Afar, only it would wipe out huge armies. But I have cast it 4 times now on an enemy Jotun army, and have ended up killing only 4 units of about 200. I tried with Fires from Afar (level 3 evocation, I think, and only 10 gems) and did more damage. Is this just bad luck, or is the spell just not so great?

What about Fire Storm? I was expecting something like Wrathful Skies, only fire-like. Used this on the battlefield vs. Jotun troops: Jotun nationals, some disspos spirits and some vampires. Tried it only twice (since it costs quite a bit) I got wiped out both times, and lost two arch devils that way. It seemed I hardly harmed anything with the fire storm at all, and the second time it was up for about 20 turns.
I suppose it is not much like Wrathful Skies in that I need to field a huge troop of fire-immune creatures with it? Due to its large cost, I need lots of gems and a creature with a huge amount of fire skill to cast without going dead from fatigue. How do you use it? Do you use it in conjunction with SCs? But then how do you guard your unconscious caster from oncoming hordes? Or do you not use this at all?

Well thanks for your help

[Verjigorm]

Jotun typically live in cold provinces. I believe this reduces the effectiveness of Flames from the Sky. FFTS, as I understand it, divides a given force in half and attacks only one half of them. Fires from Afar affects 10+ targets, so your mages with more than 3 fire books can get extra targets, but according to the description, it says that the chance of one of your 10+ fireballs hitting an enemy is dependant upon the size of the army (e.g. small armies are harder to hit) while Fires from the Sky hits all of the units in a given camp (e.g. 50%).

Try casting FFTS and FFA against someone other than the jotes--someone with small, low hp, massed units like T'ien Ch'i.

[Boron]

The lvl 9 spell iirc flames from the sky is very good . It wipes out scouts very well and that is the most imortant thing . This balances Clamhoarding because if you have more then 30 clamhoarding scouts in a province they are a nice target for flames from the sky .
If you have e.g. 50 Provinces and 1000 clamhoarders if you divide them equally to the 50 Provinces you still have 20 Scouts per Province = excellent Flames from Sky / Afar Targets . If your enemy conquers some of them you have to concentrate your scouts even more and they get even more vulnerable towards flames .

Thus those 2 Spells Balance Clamhoarding very well . You rarely can have more then 1000 Clams without risking to lose them easily .
1000 Clams = FotA 20 turns up , with some Nations like a lucky Mictlan this is quite possible .

[Saber Cherry]

Yeah, your problem is that the spells (FFTS + FFA) do a finite amount of damage to each target, low enough that normal (10 hp) units sometimes survive. Jotuns will rarely be killed. However, maybe if you cast FFTS 2x in one turn, it would kill Jotuns. I think the damage accumulates. And as Verjigorm said, you ought to do it when they are not in their own dominion.

As for fire storm... I've never used it, but I used Foul Vapors once (as Ermor), and it was up for a similar 20+ turns or so against a force of roughly 400 living units... and I was very disappointed at how few of them died.

[Edi]

Damage from such effects accumulates. It is only reset after everything else happens, as I've had troops gate in, fight a battle and then get hit by a site effect that does damage, finishing them off before they can heal. And we're talking heliophagus level critters here. Using FFTS and FfA on Jotun's is a waste of time, though, they are too tough for it to be effective. Everyone else (except Abysians) suffers badly from it, especially if you hit a hoard province (as I did in the Back to the Fray MP game, managed to wipe out half of Thufir's hoarding in a few turns by hammering up to five FFTS and a dozen FfA spells into a province of his that had troops I didn't want at my doorstep. Turned out his hoarders were in the same place...

As for Boron's numbers, that kind of clamhoarding is just...overboard. I mean, sure, it's nice to have massive amounts of gems and do whatever the hell you want magic wise, but for me at least it quickly takes the fun out of the game. Well, to each his own I guess.

Edi

[Turin]

heh boron talking about balanced hoarding is always funny. If you have 1k clams why can´t you just use your astral income from one turn to put up 25 domes of arcane warding+30? repeat every 30 turns. Put a couple more domes up in random provinces and your opponent will never know where you hid all those scouts.

He could only find out by carpetbombing your entire empire, then bombing all domed provinces repeatedly with single spells to find out the heavily guarded province and then bomb that one exclusively.Of course you could and should have moved your scouts away already by that time.

edit:
just noticed that the probability to cast a successful spell through 25 domes is so infinitely small that you don´t have to move away. Well unless your opponent can cast flames from the skies ~three million times.

[The_Tauren13]

Heh. Thats why I either play maps with less than 100 provinces or modded games where clams are nerfed... its no fun anymore when costs become meaningless. Thats what has ruined Starcraft of late; everyone just plays those lame money maps where you can build 200 photon cannons without even blinking. Same thing when you can chain-cast Wish; its pointless. There are reasons everything costs something and resources, be it gems or money, arent unlimited; thats what makes it a game, not just some kind of pointless click-fest.

[Wendigo]

Turin said:
put up 25 domes of arcane warding+30? repeat every 30 turns.

The chance of a spell going through 30 arcane domes is the same as the chance of going through one: 50%
Domes of the same type do not acumulate effects, different domes do acumulate however (I had once a couple of astral domes on my capitol & was getting blasted with roughly half the spells, instead of the expected 1/4th).

Another small note on what was previously said:
The damage from FFTS is indeed hp based as Cherry said, so it works better vs human sized critters than big ones like Jotuns.
Unlike Murdering winter however, I recall that the damage from FFTS is not affected by the temperature of the province, you will get the same results in cold provinces as in hot ones (easy test: take 100 longdead & blast them in different prov).

[Chazar]

Turin said:just noticed that the probability to cast a successful spell through 25 domes is so infinitely small that you don´t have to move away.

I think that it has been written within this forum that only one dome of each type may try to stop a signle spell. The only benefit of multiple domes of the same type is in the case of those domes that are shattered by a penetrating spell, for then the next spell cast in that same round has still to overcome the backup dome then...

E.g. you might try some cheap fire spells first to break down a couple of forest domes and then cast the costly spells.

BTW, does anyone recall whether the order of spells casted in the same round is predictable like the order of casting in combat is?

[Wendigo]

Chazar said:
BTW, does anyone recall whether the order of spells casted in the same round is predictable like the order of casting in combat is?

I used to think order was fully deterministic, yet one of the devs corrected me some time in the past.