Opinions on Caelum (MA and other)

[Xietor]

Flying infantry is NOT a waste of resources.

1.They have magical weapons, and they are effective against a solo thug taking their provinces.

2. They are great siege units with their flying bonus

3. They are effective when set to attack archers or rearmost enemies or large enemy monsters or flying units.

4. When storming a castle, and set to attack archers, they get into the heart of the besieged armies casters and divert the spell casters so that your better ground troops can get through the gate without suffering devasting barages of spells.

Caelum is fine as is if the Elephant exploit is fixed.

[Endoperez]

Xietor said:
Flying infantry is NOT a waste of resources.

1.They have magical weapons, and they are effective against a solo thug taking their provinces.

2. They are great siege units with their flying bonus

3. They are effective when set to attack archers or rearmost enemies or large enemy monsters or flying units.

4. When storming a castle, and set to attack archers, they get into the heart of the besieged armies casters and divert the spell casters so that your better ground troops can get through the gate without suffering devasting barages of spells.

Caelum is fine as is if the Elephant exploit is fixed.

However, the flying infantry isn't infantry. Caricature: they're an advanced siege engine that can also be used against archers and thugs, although it isn't nearly as efficient.

[Kuritza]

1.They have magical weapons, and they are effective against a solo thug taking their provinces.

Are they? I wonder how many Iceclads will be killed by a properly equipped bane lord. Probably as many as needed - sometimes a simple vine shield works wonders.

3. They are effective when set to attack archers or rearmost enemies or large enemy monsters or flying units.

How come? With so-so combat stats, with no formation bonus, they just attack, suffer losses and rout. May be used as a diversion, and thats it.

Caelum is fine as is if the Elephant exploit is fixed.

Karthage must be destroyed.

[HoneyBadger]

It's not a bad idea, RamsHead. I wasn't thinking that they'd be carrying a large amount of rocks though, just small bags of round pebbles to either release en-masse over a target (sort of a shotgun effect) at great height, or throw. Otherwise, they'd be naked.

Another idea would be to have them just drop chunks of ice, which would be hard enough for impact, from a few hundred feet in the air, and also shatter, causing spray.

Ceramic would work for this, glass would work-both to somewhat greater effect, especially if they were hollow and contained, say, poison caltrops or even ashes mixed with water (to get into the eyes), but ice would be far and away more available and more economical-infact, you could freeze all sorts of nasty things inside balls of ice-gravel would be easy, functioning as buckshot-or poison the ice itself, since sharp objects impacting on targets at great height provide an excellent means of injection, or both.

The ice could come in the form of iceballs, or just icesickles-which should come down straight, pointy end first, or else spin in the air, which is almost as good.

Even pouring water over a target would be effective, I would think, combined with Caelum's lightning spells, or a chilly day.

[Meglobob]

HoneyBadger said:

Another idea would be to have them just drop chunks of ice, which would be hard enough for impact, from a few hundred feet in the air, and also shatter, causing spray.

The ice could come in the form of iceballs, or just icesickles-which should come down straight, pointy end first, or else spin in the air, which is almost as good.

I think you are describing ice strike here, Honey...

[DrPraetorious]

They could carry ice javelins. If they were magic weapons, that'd make their infantry quite fearsome, against opponents who depend on shields.

[HoneyBadger]

Ice strike is magical, Meglobob What I'm talking about would probably be as effective, or more so, cost a hell of a lot less, not require any magical training, gems, or resources that wouldn't be available on any significantly high mountaintop or cold enough environment, and carry with it a good possibility of blindness, poison damage, damage to feet, concussions, etc.

Oh I forgot-you could fill the ice with brightly colored dye, which would make the targets easier to track at height.

That's not even mentioning that Caelum has easy access to magical ice.

[Folket]

To fill the ice with dye would not work. Since you colour the ground as well. So if you miss the enemy army you would continue to bomb that spot on the ground. I guess there could be spoters that walked close to the enemy and throw dye to mark where they are for the flyers.