Tactics (against communions)

[lwarmonger]

I would have rushed him except we are at opposite sides of the map and only share a small border (three provinces he grabbed that are completely seperate from his empire). He's got a couple of teleport spells/items and Arcane Nexus up, but none of his neighbors are messing with him so now he is coming after me. I can hurt him a bit, but it is primarily unconventional, and I've got to be able to defend myself against his ground attack and hopefully grind out that little bridgehead he secured on my side of the map.

[vfb]

What are his neighbors thinking? AN usually calls for a gankfest!

[hunt11]

I honestly don't know, the game I think he is talking about is Principe a game all about doing what's in your own interests, so the lack of action does seem strange

[Agema]

Surely it's still all in their best interests to flatten the guy with AN up?

It can depend on what magic you have available beyond your basic mages, who as I recall are death/nature with some astral and water. Fog Warriors and Earthquake/Rain of Stones may not be viable, nor big artillery like Murdering Winter or raining fire. If he's got AN up, quite likely he can also cast Army of Gold/Lead, which blunts Earthquake/Rain of Stones a lot.

Skeleton spam might be good - GfH is high fatigue and inaccurate, so it might drain his fatigue lots whilst you don't take much damage. Your undead are immune to cold and poison, so foul vapours to poison his army and Grip of Winter to fatigue them - particularly powerful in a long battle where you're throwing spam - although you'd want to protect any of your mages from posion/cold as well.

As a desperation tactic, you could always create a load of S1 mages and try to kamikaze arcane duel his communioned mages to death.

[Baalz]

I'd like to underline something which was briefly mentioned - battlefield summons can be fabulous counters to communions depending on how the communion is being used. Nothing is more frustrating than having all the good targets out of range but burning out all your communion slaves trying to squish giant ants or dragonflies or longdead. Bonus points if you can use a summon immune to whatever the communion likes to use (fire elementals vs falling fires, etc). Particularly useful is spells which summon units to the edge of the battle field like howl or willow wisp as they'll not only have a good chance of missing the sparsely spaced guys, they'll also have a good chance of inflicting friendly fire damage as their own guys run towards them. Elementals make a pretty good choice vs gifts from heaven because they have several forms so they each have to be hit several times regardless of the damage (I think). Air elementals should work particularly well as the gifts from heaven will cause hideous friendly damage.

[Tifone]

I think the friendly-damage check will prevent in most cases the mages' AI to spam GfH on fliers which came near friendly troops, but I may be wrong I'll test as soon as I find time

[K]

Gifts from Heaven + Communion is a low cost tactic because it only take Evocation 5 and Thaum 1 and it can be brought online before the opposition has any real research.

That being said, it is only really effective against high-cost big units like Neifle giants and elephants.

So here are a number of "counters":

1. Send chaff. The precision is so low that he'll be hitting his own stuff on the front line as much as yours, and if in the early part of the battle he is losing a 15 gold infantry for every 5 gold markata you lose, the battle can be a "win" regardless of who retreats.

2. You are Sauromatia! Hydras can take a GoH hit and all they lose is a head. Toss in some longdead chaff and you can just survive GoH long enough for your archers and mages to do their thing.

3. Straight out-mage them. Load up your mages with Death gems and Shadow Blast until his army is dead. Remember that if someone is sending mages, the best and often only counter is to send as many mages to counter. Feel free to use your own communions.

4. The Fear army. You get Nature and Death and Blood, so that means you have several ways to get Fear units and get Fear spells. Getting a communion to retreat will scatter them to several provinces and effectively turn them back into crap mages. With a little planning, you can destroy them completely by making sure they have no place to retreat to.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by K

That being said, it is only really effective against high-cost big units like Neifle giants and elephants.

I think it can be fairly effective against normal troops as well.
If the enemy army is large enough and/or you are enhancing your precision you don't miss very often.
A GoH cost 50 fatigue and can kill up 9 normal troops. And you don't care about hp, armor, shields, etherealness and air shields.

The much loved Blade Wind can kill up to 40 troops but will often kill less than 10 because of all the things mentioned. And it costs 80 fatigue.

Of course there's better spells against troops, but you've gotta use what you have.

[MaxWilson]

I have never seen Blade Wind kill anything remotely close to 40 troops. Even against Barbarians I'm lucky to kill 10; 2 or 3 heavily damaged is more typical IME, in MA.

-Max

[K]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

I think it can be fairly effective against normal troops as well.
If the enemy army is large enough and/or you are enhancing your precision you don't miss very often.

Having done a fair number of precision tests with this spell, I can tell you that unless you have a fair pile of mages spamming it it doesn't pay off compared to other options.

Try the same experiment with the same number of mages spamming Falling Foo (Falling Fire and/or Falling Frost). Against regular national troops your Foo mages will rack up kills much faster which means less chance of enemy fighters reaching mages.

The rule of dominions is small army < Thug < Large army < SCs, mages and "trick armies" like "demons + Mandaha" or "Marble Warriors + Foul Vapors". By the mid-game, large armies get eaten by mages casting battlefield spells and thug armies are executed gangster-style by spams of spells like Frozen Heart.

That being said, most players vastly prefer to keep mages researching and not fighting in battles, so getting experience in mage on mage action can be hard to get. Send ten mages and half a plan with any army and things get brutal very fast.

Every spell has it's niche. Bladewind isn't even in my top five battle Evocation spells considering how rarely humans field light or no armored troops.