VOTD-Still like it

[konming]

Then the bug is with DRN generator. With that kind of luck, your pretender can do nothing in battlefield either, two casts of paralyze and your pretender is gone. Cost: 0 astral pearls.

[konming]

At that rate, you can forget about SCs all together, since thau5 they get soul slay. Oh the horror, two casts kill one SC. I wonder why R'lyeh does not simply roll over any opponents, you know, with the uncounterable, invicinble soul slay.

[Kuritza]

konming said:
At that rate, you can forget about SCs all together, since thau5 they get soul slay. Oh the horror, two casts kill one SC. I wonder why R'lyeh does not simply roll over any opponents, you know, with the uncounterable, invicinble soul slay.

Sigh.... should I really explain such simple things? Or rather, point at them since they are well known...
Soul slay is counterable, your opponent can put decoy commanders and astral mage(s). Its absolutely perfect - it requires considerable research and there are countermeasures against it.

konming said:With that kind of luck, your pretender can do nothing in battlefield either, two casts of paralyze and your pretender is gone. Cost: 0 astral pearls.

For that, his astral mages should be in the same province with my pretender, dont they? I avoided Ermorian mages, intercepting his smaller groups with my God instead.

[konming]

Kuritza said:

Sigh.... should I really explain such simple things? Or rather, point at them since they are well known...
Soul slay is counterable, your opponent can put decoy commanders and astral mage(s). Its absolutely perfect - it requires considerable research and there are countermeasures against it.

For that, his astral mages should be in the same province with my pretender, dont they? I avoided Ermorian mages, intercepting his smaller groups with my God instead.

That defeats the whole "kill all the chaff" purpose, doesn't it? His big group of chaff are most likely accompanied by astral mages. Beside, there is one small horrible spell called teleport. With your luck(or buggy DRN), two mages can teleport in and cast soul slay, and you have one dead pretender. I frankly do not know how astral mages or decoy commanders help with soul slay, did you confuse soul slay with mind hunt? Even worse, teleport is thau3. Soul slay is thau5. Not exactly tons of research...

[Kuritza]

Ah, indeed. Soul slay, not mind hunt.

Now, what you propose now are normal routines, and they all have their countermeasures.

For Soul Slay / paralyze during a big battle you can present bigger targets on the battlefield, mammoths, for example. Mages like targeting them. Placing flying SC in the rearmost position helps, too. By the time he finishes buffing himself, mages are often cold from spamming spells.

For teleport-soul slay combo, I often script my cloud trapezing/teleporting SC for 'retreat' or 'returning' and hire some PD in that province. Thats two astral mages who will soul slay some free PD soldiers and die, unless they are golems.

Big groups of chaff arent necessarily accompanied by astral mages, dont you think? Smaller groups with double-blessed shadow vestals too, surprisingly. And if there is a mage or two after all, there are spells like seeking arrow (or is it guided arrow?).
See? Measures and countermeasures. And I this is what I love this game for: one player can launch plan A, then second player can respond with plan B, etc. But with bugged VotD there's simply no plan B, and thats exactly what I find so upsetting.
Hope my position is easier to understand now.

Tifone said:
This is really starting to remind me the "unbearably dooming useless" Monkey PD thread!!!!!! XD

Hello mr. Troll.

...
Sigh. Cicero once stated that one shouldnt present too much arguments, because it convinces listeners that speaker is uncertain himself. Alas, he forgot to mention what to do when listeners dont listen to your arguments in the first place.
At least I know what happens then. Talkers start mocking original poster without even bothering to prove him wrong. Actually, without reading his posts at all. Whole tread becomes a laughing stock, and soon the whole issue becomes a tabu, just like Bandar Log are now impossible to discuss because there's alwasy some smart face to say 'OMG ITS ALL CUZ OF MONKEY PD!!!!'

Peace. Enjoy your god-mode VotD for all I care.

[chrispedersen]

Quoting cicero doesn't make your arguments more potent.

If you VoTD makes playing SC's untenable - then you should (obviously) stop playing SC's.

*if* you play SC's, and *if* his kill count is high, and *if* your enemy can find him, because you continue to use him against him, and *if* your SC isn't outfitted with MR items, and *if* you haven't developed an VotD honeypot - then yes VotD can be effective.

thats enough ifs that I'm not too worried about it. SC's should have counters.

[thejeff]

Well, from the example given it sounds like he did have his SC outfitted with MR items. Maybe he just got unlucky, but that's apparently not enough to render VotD useless.

Even if you can't kill the SCs with VotD, if you force your enemy to stop using them against you for fear of it, either to hide or to keep his kill count low, then VotD is effective.

And I have no idea what you mean by VotD honeypot. Please explain?

So most of your long list of conditions is irrelevant. Either you stop using SCs or they die. High MR is the only real counter if you want to keep using the SC. So balance depends on how effective MR is against it.

[MaxWilson]

Kuritza said:
See? Measures and countermeasures. And I this is what I love this game for: one player can launch plan A, then second player can respond with plan B, etc. But with bugged VotD there's simply no plan B, and thats exactly what I find so upsetting.

I still don't see what's wrong with putting The Ark on your SC, aside from the obvious fact that there's only one of it. The Ark will kill unlimited numbers of zombies AFAIK, so even if you fail your MR check against VotD it does nothing except maybe make you waste some gems in battle.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

What's wrong, Max, is that obviously if you disagree with Kuritza, you haven't actually read his posts, or you would have already stopped trying to coddle him with reason and logic

Kuritza - I read every damned word, and my comprehension is excellent, thank you. Nothing anyone can say will appease you, because you got extraordinarily unlucky ONCE.

The most change I would think that VoTD needs, is to make it require astral travel by the mage, to actually "lead" the spirits to the offending leader. This way, they risk having their cord cut just as if they performed a Mind Hunt. But again, I don't really think even that is necessary.

[JimMorrison]

Honestly? No, you did not get "outplayed", as you say, you won the war. However, you did get taken off guard. I can list a bunch of things that can cause you a ton of grief in this game if you are not totally prepared for them already.

Should VoTD be moved a little deeper, say level 6 in research? Maybe, maybe not. I'm sure you may have noticed, S+D combo is not exactly common in the game. The spell is cleverly tuned to only be somewhat economical to a very select group of nations. For everyone else, it requires their pretender to cast, or empowerment. Was it his pretender? So, you're mad that his pretender cast a spell that killed your pretender?

The more rabidly you defend your position, the more you make me feel that my original satire of your first post, needn't have been qualified as a joke, and just been left as the honest and biting satire that it is.

Did I mean it lightheartedly though? Yes, I did indeed. And you took the little jab on the chin, and feel into a berserker rage. Is it too late for the icewater?