Sphinx Killin Tips

[Cheezeninja]

Ok, here's the rundown, after downloading the absolutely wonderful middle-earth map from www.ascenciongames.com i couldnt resist the urge to do a little roleplaying as Sauron, dark lord of middle earth So after starting a game as Soul Gate Ermor (yes, yes, you all hate me) i have proceeded to carve myself a dark empire out of the eastern portion of the map with no great difficulty, but much dark laughter, pillaging, and fun. No great difficulty until i ran into pithium's hometown in angmar and the sphinx sitting inside of it. on 3 seperate occasions i have not managed to take their castle simply because the sphinx casts astral shield and im not able to kill it before time elapses (or so i assume... with the 500 odd units in the armies i send and multitudes of str 2 unholy priests it would take forever for me to actually watch it that far) This has resulted in the loss of some choice commanders due to inability to run away when time elapses because they are paralyzed. How do i kill that damn sphinx?

[Yossar]

What's his MR and Astral level? Soul slay, disintegrate, or Magic duel could all work. Otherwise just bring a lot high damage lifeless or high MR troops and some mages with high precision, high damage single target spells.

[Cheezeninja]

Off the top of my head i believe his MR is 24 and astral level is 9. And i've been attacking with all the byproducts of casting Tartarian Gate 4 times a turn. The commanders i've lost have generally been a titan of some sort with stymphian wings, a ring o regen, and some other stuff on them.

[ April 21, 2004, 05:13: Message edited by: Cheezeninja ]

[Graeme Dice]

You need some kind of armor negating weapons or spells. You can also just build temples surrounding him, and wait for his dominion to be overrun.

[Vynd]

The Last time I tried to fight a Sphinx, it cast Astral Shield and Soul Vortex and killed pretty much my entire army. The description for that Pretender says that its all but impossible to kill, and I'm inclined to agree. So I'm with Graeme, smoke the bugger out.

[Firebreath]

I think that you may want to look at the problem slightly more philosophically...

Do you need to kill the sphinx?

In the long run, you need him to 'dissapear', so that you can win. However, he can't move anywhere. He can't even attack you or try to break the siege. All he can do is sit there.

Do you need the castle?

Unless you're playing the default theme, you can't do build anything with ermorian castles.

Do you need the province?

The pop would be nice, lots of corpses if you can get your dominion along.

The real question you want to ask yourself is this though: will taking the province strenghten you or weaken you? Are the gems, income and corpses worth the exorbitant cost (including the cost of not expanding while you're building a strong enough army) you have to pay to capture it all?

So let him sit there happily. Have a few skeletons guard his closet, while you go and amuse yourself elsewhere. Use your army to capture worthwhile provinces on open ground, where they will be most effective. Eventually (no rush though), you may want to build 1, or maybe even 2 temples in the vicinity. He'll go away eventually. Most problems do.

[ April 21, 2004, 16:20: Message edited by: Firebreath ]

[Cheezeninja]

You are of course correct, I dont NEED to kill him, it would just be oh so satisfying. He is actually located in a chokepoint of sorts but it would be easy for me to just take the province and never try to assault the castle. But i am trying to be the dark lord of middle earth and all..and it just doesnt seem Dark Lordlike to tiptoe around a province instead of crushing it mercilessly beneath my boot. Plus the province is Angmar...and etimmu can't very well be my witch king of Angmar if i dont even control Angmar.

Its not a question of winning the game, that would be pretty easy from the position im in, its just a question of killing this damn sphinx in battle. 30 protection, 24 Mr, 9 astral, and 1200 hp is hard to take down.

[Kelan]

A while back, I thought I was going to have similar results storming a castle with a Sphinx inside. I also did not wait for the dominion to lower, so was faced with a 1300+ hp Sphinx at the time.

Much to my surprise, once my vine ogres broke inside the castle and surrounded it, they easily beat it down within 10-15 rounds or so (could have been more, but they seemed to be doing 100+ damage per round).

I am not sure whether Astral Shield was up, but I would assume so. I see vine ogres are mindless. Does that make them immune to the paralyzing effect of Astral Shield? Perhaps I was just lucky, but I seem to recall the vine ogres killed it alone without any debuffing at all .

[Taqwus]

Sending somebody in with a Black Bow of Botulf + Eye of Aiming + Wind Guide/Aim should help, as would sending a flyer to thwap the Sphinx with the Staff of Kurgi. Both cause Feeblemind, which neutralizes the spellcasting and if memory serves gives a penalty to MR.

[tinkthank]

OT: I tried that link you gave to the map but cant get it to work. A ME map sounds good to me.