Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[lch]

Ah, it seems that if the poor victim can't kill off those that haunt his dreams in time he just NEVER wakes up. So what?

[Salamander8]

Kind of a side question, but related to VotD. I know your guards don't help against this spell, but do say, Dai Oni's wolf pals appear for this spell?

[Loren]

GrobRIM said:
If I may, I think the whole problem is the 50 turn limit.

I guess this limit has been set up to make sure that all battles eventually end, so battle resolution cannot lock-up turn resolution; and I can think of many more-or-less theoretical situations where a battle might not end in a reasonable number of turns, like two SC's fighting heads up, each one with a life drain attack; or a skelly-spamming high-reinvig necromancer against a good banishing priest.

But maybe the 50-turn limit should be made more flexible; for example, once turn 50 is reached, give another 5-turn grace period, after which the battle is ended, unless at least one unit has been killed, in which case we reset the countdown to another 5 turns; or, instead of counting the number of units killed, take into account the net amount between units killed and units created.

This proposition should take care of the "SC against horde of chaff" situation raised by Kuritza.

I also agree that I don't like the turn limit. I understand that something is necessary to avoid infinite battles but I see other fixes:

1) After reaching the turn limit compare the total hp of real units (not anything that was summoned for the battle and won't persist afterwards) for the last 5 turns vs the 5 turns before that. So long as the current number is lower than the previous one the battle continues.

2) Retreat from an infinite battle should not be deadly unless there is no other way to resolve the situation:
2a) The defender keeps the province no matter what.
2b) Assassins and other such stealth units go back into stealth.
2c) It should be an orderly retreat instead of a rout. All units should remain with their leaders and go back to a single randomly-chosen province. Even units like mercenaries should do this.
This leaves only one truly deadly situation: Attackers who teleported in and can't go into stealth.

[Kuritza]

I do read everything, could you please stop insinuating that I don't? "High" is a subjective number, 20 is not "high", more like 25+ and this should cancel MR-based remote attacks (almost) all the time.

No I can't because if you do read what I say, you ignore it. Lets see. 18 MR base, +3 mr rainbow armor, +4 antimagic amulet. Thats 25 already; also he was in a friendly domain. Is that HIGH to you?
Also, about counters. Paralyze alone takes care of SCs, its got an enormous penetration so even if units fail to kill an SC, said SC wont do anything during a battle. SCs dont dominate Dominions 3 as they used to in Dom2 anymore.
What I object against is taking care of an SC anywhere on a map with a low-research spell by exploiting an autorout by generating a 'no-retreat is possible combat' and multitudes of rout-immune troops, its CHEAP. You keep pointing out that everything should have a counter. So, 25+ MR is not a counter, astral mage (as with mind hunt) is not a counter, being invulnerable to these zombies is not a counter. If thats not a glitch, I dont know what is.

[lch]

Kuritza said:
No I can't because if you do read what I say, you ignore it. Lets see. 18 MR base, +3 mr rainbow armor, +4 antimagic amulet. Thats 25 already; also he was in a friendly domain. Is that HIGH to you?

Being a good fellow reader of all your posts I'm fairly sure that this is the first time that you posted any actual numbers. Give it a rest, will you? So, I'm not that good at statistics, but not counting any other kind of bonus, I think that your enemy beat you at a 81% chance (or better) of resisting said spell. Good for him. Especially since he caught you "off-guard", wielding an uneffective Frost Brand against cold immune troops.

Kuritza said:
You keep pointing out that everything should have a counter.

I keep pointing out that this spell is ineffective under certain situations, yes. It won't work against undeads, it won't be a danger if your pretender doesn't waltz through the enemy lines and kills hundreds. I think that it might not work against glamor or even stealthy units, not sure.
If you employ a SC-type pretender then usually you should be aware that he is going to go down at one point or the other. I for one would not like if there weren't any early-game counters against those - yes, even with low-tech research.
The turn limit is a necessary evil that we have to live with and raising the bar doesn't help against reaching it eventually. Alternatives to what happens after the turn limit are open to discussion and pro's and con' have to get weighted. Most suggestions here would help to make SC types even stronger and cement them as unbeatable foes in game.

Salamander8 said:
Kind of a side question, but related to VotD. I know your guards don't help against this spell, but do say, Dai Oni's wolf pals appear for this spell?

They should, same about undead from the Wraith crown or water elementals from the bottle of water. Anything you summon will help, and these auto-summon at start of battle.

[Kuritza]

So basically, with a MR as high as you can get, you have a 20% chance to die even if you sit in your capitol. Which, in turn, means that all Ermor needs is 15 astral gems or less (12 in my case, 2 attempts per turn for 2 turns). Please tell me how is it fair? Isnt a goddamn paralyze not good enough as a counter?
Did he catch me off guard without an aoe-weapon? Pray tell me, how can MA Caelum make a fire brand early in the game then.
SCs are unbalanced? Really, in a game where 2x bless vans or shadow vestals etc can rush you into oblivion before you even research construction 4? So SCs need a low-level global spell that kills them 1/5 of the time. Makes so much sense to give a reliable and uncounteralbe overland map counter for my counter, its not enough that SCs are very easy to counter on the battlefield for an astral-using nation.

[Jazzepi]

lch said:

Being a good fellow reader of all your posts I'm fairly sure that this is the first time that you posted any actual numbers. Give it a rest, will you? So, I'm not that good at statistics, but not counting any other kind of bonus, I think that your enemy beat you at a 81% chance (or better) of resisting said spell. Good for him. Especially since he caught you "off-guard", wielding an uneffective Frost Brand against cold immune troops.

I'm going to have to agree with Ich on this one. VoTD killed your SC. It sounds like if your SC had a firebrand in hand he would have ripped through the hordes of undead and this conversation wouldn't even be happening right now.

IMHO, you were ill prepared for a well placed attack that had a low 1/5 chance of penetrating your MR, but did. Perhaps it was cast multiple times in the same round, I don't know what kind of message the spell gives if it fizzles. Or maybe it was cast by a mage with lots of spell penetration items, it's not hard to get +5 with construction 4 and a rainbow mage.

In any case, I think the way to look at it is like this.

VoTD has three checks/requirements before it kills the target
1. The victim has to have high enough kills.
2. The victim has to fail an MR roll.
3. The victim has to fail to kill all the undead in 75 turns.

So instead of complaining about the fact that the SC routed and died after 75 turns, I think it's just more interesting to think about it like a third check that VoTD has on it.

Also, friendly dominion doesn't mean anything for MR saves unless it was a prophet or God.

Jazzepi

[Kuritza]

Also, friendly dominion doesn't mean anything for MR saves unless it was a prophet or God.

Sigh... yes, it was my God. I'm still open to suggestions about how to make a non-frost aoe weapon for a MA Caelum early in the game with an SC god.
And while we are at it, how to avoid getting many kills if you rely on your God to survive agains 2x bless shadow vestals and hordes of undead.
Which leaves us with just one condition, namely MR. Which means its just a matter of time when your God dies, you cant do jack about it.

[Jazzepi]

Kuritza said:

Sigh... yes, it was my God. I'm still open to suggestions about how to make a non-frost aoe weapon for a MA Caelum early in the game with an SC god.
And while we are at it, how to avoid getting many kills if you rely on your God to survive agains 2x bless shadow vestals and hordes of undead.
Which leaves us with just one condition, namely MR. Which means its just a matter of time when your God dies, you cant do jack about it.

You trade with people. There isn't always going to be a way to shield your SCs from death, and that's the whole point. They are suppose to die eventually. If he got attacked by 400 ghosts, your SC definitely did his job.

Jazzepi

[Aethyr]

Gandalf Parker said:
Purely on an RPG thematic argument (translation: getting Kristoffer to bug Johan about this)...
it seems to me that if someone is attacked, and outlasts the combat, that should be considered to be a win. If you want a thematic result to the fact that the combat ran into overtime with attackers still on the field, then toss them into a general combat as if they were attacking the province.