Blood of the First Born

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by Nikelaos

to be fair i think every path has atleast one spell more than capable of taking down SCs or atleast a spell to give you an SC to face off the other in 1 on 1 mortal combat or 2 on 1 if you can gather the gems.

lets make a list

astral - soul slay
water - claws of kokytos
fire - the inferno (what's the real name of the spell again?)
nature - just send some mages behind a few tarrasques to buff them
death - tartarians
earth - same as nature but iron dragons instead of tarrasques
air - actually a little more lacking but has some nice buffs to combine with other paths to take down SC's
Blood - send horrors at the SC, horrors happen to horror mark with their attacks so the strength of the horrormark will get stronger and stronger untill a doom horror wipes him out.

any other ideas, particularly for air?

Astral: Paralyze
Fire: Incinerate
Nature: Charm
Death: Drain Life
Earth: Petrify

-Max

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Astral: Paralyze
Fire: Incinerate
Nature: Charm
Death: Drain Life
Earth: Petrify

-Max

Paralyze is not particularly effective. High prot, hi regen SC's with/without FireShields can ignore being paralyzed.

Now, if combat ended when all units were paralyzed... another story.

Drain life doesn't do sufficient damage - now it is useful as a buff - but as a tactic to kill a big unit - not so much.

I don't remember incinerate. Sooo since Ihaven't seen it used I'm inclined to say it isn't effective = ).

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Paralyze is not particularly effective. High prot, hi regen SC's with/without FireShields can ignore being paralyzed.

Now, if combat ended when all units were paralyzed... another story.

Drain life doesn't do sufficient damage - now it is useful as a buff - but as a tactic to kill a big unit - not so much.

I don't remember incinerate. Sooo since Ihaven't seen it used I'm inclined to say it isn't effective = ).

Incinerate is something like 10 or 15 points of AN Fire damage. There's an item (Phoenix Rod, 25 Fire gems) that lets you cast it. Fire mages frequently choose it to eliminate single units (that lone knight that broke the blockade) because it's Prec 100. I don't know why you haven't seen it used--perhaps the SCs in question were fire resistant?

Just like Frozen Heart, Incinerate and Drain Life obviously require you to deal damage faster than the target heals. This probably means you need 2-3 casters doing 30+ HP per turn (AN). Since they're all Prec 100, they scale well w/ number of casters.

Paralyze against an SC is probably most useful in conjunction with other spells that actually finish off the SC, like the afore-mentioned direct-damage spells, or Mind Burn. As you say, SCs will frequently be able to stand off troops w/ Awe, Fear, high Prot, etc. even while paralyzed.

-Max

P.S. In theory, Paralyze out to do a massive amount of damage to SCs because paralyzation damage turns to real damage if you get re-paralyzed, according to the manual. In practice I haven't observed this w/ Paralyze, although I haven't really been looking for it.

[Poopsi]

I think that for thematic reasons MA and LA Hinnom (or however they are called) should get the "Release Lord of Civilization" spell

[Dragar]

I don't see a need for a new spell, the save or die spells (bone melter, soul slay) are effective against high HP creatures, moreso than against small as they will be more likely to be targeted. There are also very high damage spells like Life for a Life and banefire. Blind effectively nerfs them... there are plenty of options

its only the synergy witha good bless that makes these units particularly scary in the first place, which is at a big cost to the player, especially as N9 isn't particularly flash on a pretender for anything other than global spells - certainly not good for a SC.

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

There are few (no) late game counters for high hit point units, at least none that dont' work equally well against low hit point units.

Well, that's going to be true generally. Direct damage will always be equally effective (or more effective) against low-hp units, and save-or-die doesn't care about hits in the first place.

There's a variety of battle magic that causes large amounts of non-resistible damage already, and it will preferentially target high-hp units thanks to the way the AI works. Save or die spells on the battlefield tend to aim at high-hp units as well.

If you mean there are few strategic spells that will be more effective against giants than humans, I have to agree. I don't see how killing random units in an army is more effective against giants than humans, though. It seems to me that human-size armies, because of their greater numbers, would lose more units than giant armies would.

If an assassin spell preferentially targetted units with higher hits, and the assassin used that handy sword that deals extra damage against units larger than the wielder, that might be interesting.

[vfb]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

There are few (no) late game counters for high hit point units, at least none that dont' work equally well against low hit point units.

Sure, petrify works equally well against a blessed Jaguar Warrior or a Tartarian. It's more likely there are 100 warriors than 100 tarts though. So in that sense petrify (etc.) does not work as well against low HP units, since there will probably be more of them.

[chrispedersen]

"If you mean there are few strategic spells that will be more effective against giants than humans, I have to agree. I don't see how killing random units in an army is more effective against giants than humans, though. It seems to me that human-size armies, because of their greater numbers, would lose more units than giant armies would."

Yes. Being able to kill the same proportions is more effective because the spells I enumerated don't kill ANY. For example armageddon won't kill *any* giants.

So having a spell that will kill some giants.. is a step up.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Yes. Being able to kill the same proportions is more effective because the spells I enumerated don't kill ANY. For example armageddon won't kill *any* giants.

The damage that these spells cause, should simply be upped. I mean, I could have sworn that "Armageddon" describes huge cracks being torn in the earth, and people falling into them. Last I checked, that should kill a giant easily enough.

If the spell describes a small damage, like "Fires From Afar", then it should do that small damage, but things like "Flames from the Sky" describe themselves as "enormous force", and causing "great damage", that should either (have the chance to) kill, or horribly afflict giant sized targets.

[Nikelaos]

big units already have their work cut out via cost and being able to be simultaeniously attacked by 54 burgmeister guards (9 squares sorounding big guy, 6 armed hoburgs per square)

now just put on a few buffs on the hoburgs with you're mages in the same way you would for the giant. iron bane to take down armor, strength of giants to bump up the damage, quickness turning 54 attacks per turn into 108...etc

also each consecutive attack per turn reduces the enemies defence stat, so with 54 unquickened hoburgs attacking at once half of them are likely to be striking a big old SC with no defence or parry skill - free hits anyone.

and that's without quickness, with quickness thats 3/4 of you're hoburg horde having not one but 2 free hits.

offcourse many can die with aoe weapons SCs may use and fire sheild but you'll still get a fair amount of free hits and you can cast some buffs to protect you're tiddlers, there are spells to protect against fire and anything else the SC may throw at you.

in short SMALL IS POWERFUL!!!