Tactics: Countering Summoned Horrors

[Baalz]

PD won't help you, abandon that strategy. You've got two choices if he's dropping horrors with regularity.

1) recruit a bunch of indie commanders, and I do mean a bunch. Script them all to retreat from the back row. Every turn have one of them move to each of your provinces. If they're in one which is attacked by horrors they'll run away. If they move onto an empty province that a horror just cleared they'll recapture it for you. Assuming he's also using scouts to capture provinces cleared by horrors use assassination spells to kill his scouts (seeking arrows should work for Vanheim). Note: this is a kind of miserable micro intensive half measure solution when you're up against a wall and can't do something better. It'll keep him from making huge gains on you, but you'll still be losing temples, PD, unrest, etc. If you've got the chance to prepare for this you'll want to do something better.

2) Something better: Realizing that PD won't help you at all, figure any province with no extra support is essentially empty of defenders so park somebody who can kill a horror (with the aid of PD) in each province. This isn't as hard as it sounds. For Vanheim specifically orb lighting should do a good job on horrors, but there's lots of spells which work decently (you don't need a 100% success rate, just a pretty good chance). If you've got a little blood economy leech works good to. Frozen heart & incinerate are good choices if you have access to them. Besides mages, there are a couple items you can stick on cheap indie commanders which work pretty well. The best (though not cheap) is the rod of the phoenix...a good choice say if you've got the Forge of the Ancients and the Eternal Pyre up. Surprisingly, moon blades work fairly well for the price against horrors if you're backed by PD as the horror tends to jump in the middle of the PD where it's defense is overwhelmed and the moonblade does so much damage it generally kills it in one hit if your commander gets a chance to swing (happens fairly regularly with the horror jumping around). Depending on what items/forgers you've got available plenty of items will work decently, but of course the point is to get the cheapest ones you can and try to get one shot kill weapons if you're using melee because you don't generally get too many swings. Note: it's also a decent idea to give a couple bodyguards to your dudes because they guy dropping horrors on you also has access to disease demons. With a couple bodyguards though your moonblade (or whatever) should make short work of those guys as well.

[Sombre]

I think if they're forcing you to build mini thugs or mage squads to stand around minding your provinces, their tactic has already worked very well.

[Baalz]

Well, that sounds like a bit of a defeatist attitude Sombre. Yes, its not cheap to put a mage or a magic item in each province but you're talking about trying to counter a strong aspect of a strong nation that the player has cultivated and researched up to in the late game. He's forged boosters, forged sanguine rods, built up a blood economy, and is spending scores of blood slaves every round. You could also say that your opponent is forcing you to put amulets of MR and lead shields on all your thugs, or script arrow fend in all major battles, or keep squads around patrolling for spies, or putting domes up over your best provinces, or etc. etc. etc. If you've got the foresight to plan ahead and forge them all with dwarven hammers you could forge 33 moonblades for 99 pearls (about the cost of 1 summoned & extravagantly outfitted SC and hardly ruinous at that stage of the game). Mix in some cheap mages and you can cover a fairly large empire well enough that it gets wasteful to cast horrors. With your alternative being that you rapidly lose every province which doesn't have a fort or large army I'd say its a good plan to start doing if you see Mictlan using such a tactic on your neighbor.

[Sombre]

It's not defeatist. I'm not saying you can't counter it and you might as well give up, just that if they force you into an expensive counter the send horror tactic pays off. If they continue it heavily and your counter works well against it, then they start to burn resources. It's just a matter of which is more costly in the long run; the attack or the counter. If they're roughly equal though, it's always better to be on the attack rather than the counter, because you are actively controlling how the game progresses, not reacting.

And yes, I would say that you 'force' people to use arrow fend, amulets of mr etc. Any counter that you have to use or suffer seriously is one you're being forced into. Of course if you correctly predict their attack and have the counter ready and your counter is cheaper and easier than their attack, or they continue trying their attack despite it not working, you have the advantage. With the advantage the next move is an attack of your own which they will hopefully fail to counter, counter too slowly, or overcounter when you're actually going to switch tactics.