earthquake?

[WraithLord]

Well it's no secret that earthquake can decimate mage squads.
Especially vulnerable are low hp pythium mages.

I'm trying to figure out possible counters to earthquake.
Does eathrealness helps?
high protection (how high)?
etc.

Come, if you may, lore masters of dominions and help this poor pythium pretender defend his mages.

[Saber Cherry]

Earthquake is armor-piercing, so with protection above 15, mages should only rarely die. Thus, Stoneskin should protect a mage and all his communicants, and Ironskin should ensure that none of them even receive afflictions. Personal Regeneration (during Communion) would help with afflictions too. Other similar spells (like Bone Grinding) can be avoided by ethereality (and probably luck), but I can only assume Earthquake is the same. If there's a single Earthquake, Twist Fate should solve the problem.

I just tried to cast Earthquake for the first time in a MP game, and failed (mage killed by fliers before casting) Too bad, it would've been really nice...

[WraithLord]

Saber Cherry said:
Earthquake is armor-piercing, so with protection above 15, mages should only rarely die. Thus, Stoneskin should protect a mage and all his communicants, and Ironskin should ensure that none of them even receive afflictions.

Thanks Saber.
Only problem with that approach is that the communion slaves will only rarely cast spells.
I'm sure this problem existed up to 2.14 version.
Don't know if it was fixed since.

Twist fate sounds like a great counter to a single earthquake( a common scenario in MP).

I wonder if a level 9 earth or astral blessing should also do the trick.

[Saber Cherry]

I was under the impression that communion master spells affected all of the slaves. Has this been changed, or was I mistaken?

Astral 9 would work, but Earth 9 is only useful on units that already have high protection, like Templars and Wardens, IMO. However, communicants are not sacred. Mass Protection should save some units...

Killing the enemy before he casts - with fliers, spells, or longbows of accuracy - is always best, though

[WraithLord]

Saber Cherry said:
I was under the impression that communion master spells affected all of the slaves. Has this been changed, or was I mistaken?

Let me clarify what I meant.
first I rarely use communicants as they tend to die too easily for various reasons (among which is fatigue).
I agree that stone skin would be a good protection for them and for the rare scenarios when I use communicants it would serve well.

I usually deploy squads of "real" mages, mainly theurg acolytes and theurgs.
In this scenario each mages that had cast communion slave tend to ignore his (spells) scripts and altogether stop casting spells.
Not to mention that it takes two turns to get them protected in this way. While it takes one to cast earthquake.

[Saber Cherry]

izaqyos said:
Let me clarify what I meant.
first I rarely use communicants as they tend to die too easily for various reasons (among which is fatigue).
I agree that stone skin would be a good protection for them and for the rare scenarios when I use communicants it would serve well.

I usually deploy squads of "real" mages, mainly theurg acolytes and theurgs.
In this scenario each mages that had cast communion slave tend to ignore his (spells) scripts and altogether stop casting spells.
Not to mention that it takes two turns to get them protected in this way. While it takes one to cast earthquake.

Oh, that's right; I was forgetting the turn to cast Communion Master. Body Ethereal or killing the caster would be your only hopes, then... though casters that are adjacent to melee units (like dragonflies or imps) tend to ignore their script in favor of self-preservation, so a single lifelong-protection scout should be able defend an army from a lone Earthquake caster.