Is Ghost Riders too powerful ?

[apoger]

>AND MOST IMPORTANTLY THIS SPELL DOESN'T EVEN WORK.

Hordes from Hell does work.


>most of the spells you mentioned cannot target any province on the map... unlike ghost riders.

My comparisons are to 9th level spell power, not as specific effects such as "can be targeted on any province". By the same token can I state that Ghost Riders is inferior to Arcane Nexus becuase it creates zero gems? Of course not! This is simply a poor argument.


>Even flames from the sky will only kill a percentage... where ghost riders will destroy armies. Enemy armies will still be standing with five or seven casts of the spells you listed.


Large armies will shrug off Ghost Riders, when on the other hand FFTS gets more powerful as the target gets larger. Ghost Riders is better versus smaller targets and FFTS is better versus larger targets. They are different tools for different times, and both are very potent tools. Dismissing FFTS because it only does a percentage of damage is sheer ignorance.


>my point is nothing destroys armies faster for the cost...


Something has to be the best, and frankly when all things are considered it's debatable. As above FFTS is often a better choice. If I summon a Doom Horror with a Wish, it costs more, but I keep it, and as such can use it over and over again, potentially becoming more efficient than Ghost Riders. Army of the Dead leaves me with the province and an army... so if the battle doesn't require a wraith, wouldn't Army of the Dead be a better idea?


>and any level_4 death mage can do it. (unlike other spells at or below the level)

and level_4 earth mages (with Construction-9) can make Iron Dragons... which can take out small armies and don't leave after the battle.


Again, Ghost Riders is great, but insisting that it is somehow totally superior to everything else is silly. There are plenty of potent spells.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by apoger:
Utterdark - The whole worlds income reduced by 90%!

Don't forget that any non-undead armies will have a pretty hard time even hitting your troops with attack and precision around 3.

[NTJedi]

Apoger... yes there is plenty of potent spells.

The iron dragon spell takes 25 earth gems. (5 times the cost)

Flames from Afar has the possibility of doing more damage... but only if the province is JAMMED with at least 250 units and its a powerful fire mage.

MY POINT... is that for the cost and mage level it is way too powerful.

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by apoger:
Utterdark - The whole worlds income reduced by 90%!

Don't forget that any non-undead armies will have a pretty hard time even hitting your troops with attack and precision around 3.

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Utterdark... this is a global enchantment where first you know the spell can be casted successfully without failing because others are in place. Also if you use all those death gems for the ghost rider spell instead of casting this global enchantment... HOW MUCH damage would be done... LOTS !

[ January 07, 2004, 21:35: Message edited by: NTJedi ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by NTJedi:
So how many blood mages will you have wasting their time hunting for these blood slaves!

About 10 blood 1 mages with sanguine dousng rods, at a lab, along with two tribal kings with full complements of slaves. For mictlan that's a total cost of 1090 gold. The upkeep will be less than 70 gold per turn IMCAC.

And how many are able to sacrifice the income/resources/supplies from the 10K population province.

A 10K pop province provides an income of around 40-50. With 100 troops patrolling you don't lose much of that income either.

Plus those imps in NO WAY do as much damage as the ghost riders. Do some tests and you'll see... not to mention check the stats of those little imps.

Sure the imps don't do as much damage. They also aren't a level 9 spell, and haven't had ten's of turns of research applied to get to them. They also stick around afterwards and can be grouped to continually take low defense provinces turn after turn.

[Taqwus]

NTJedi --
Repeating your claims doesn't make them any less wrong.
And Fires From Afar is indeed quite deadly; unlike Ghost Riders, it can even kill mages busily researching inside a fortress, at a FAR earlier stage in the game. It may even have a bias to hit commanders; I've seen a very early cast send out nine bolts, of which perhaps six or seven ignored the patrolling units and instead killed researchers. Neat trick.
You also don't seem to grasp the value of keeping units. Would you play Pythium with just Gladiators? They're remarkably cheap if you ignore the fact that they leave after fighting one battle.

[Kristoffer O]

Strange, I have always felt that Ghost Riders was a rather weak lvl 9 spell, thus the low cost.

Send Horror can be more devastating, especially with some previous horrormarks.

Ghost rider are just undead horses. They get banished like that. Fortunately they come with a wraith.

[apoger]

>The iron dragon spell takes 25 earth gems. (5 times the cost)

Yes, but can be used more than once, hence you can't judge it the same way as a one shot spell like Ghost Riders.


>Flames from Afar has the possibility of doing more damage... but only if the province is JAMMED with at least 250 units and its a powerful fire mage.

A> Armies of 250+ are common in multiplayer by the time FFTS is available.

B> The benefit of FFTS goes beyond the troops. It allows you to knock out commanders/mages with those troops, which is very hard to do otherwise.


>MY POINT... is that for the cost and mage level it is way too powerful.


My point is that it shares a position of greatness along side of other incredible spells.

I understand that you used the spell to abuse the computer AI. There are plenty of ways to do that. Try using it in a real multiplayer game. You'll find that by the time players are tossing about Ghost Riders, there are already dozens of other potent and pressing things that also have to be delt with. Ghost Riders is one of those things, but is far from THE thing to worry about.

[NTJedi]

Of course I see the value of keeping units... this spell is a perfect example!

With ghost riders NONE of my units or commanders are in danger plus the enemy is guaranteed to lose lots of units and/or army for a small price. (with the rare exception that frost/fire dome is in place)

Do you have any idea of how strong of an army is required to survive an attack from these guys. Even an army of 15 trolls with 10 archers would still take big losses... especially if they retreat because of the wraith lord.


AGAIN the cost of the spell compared with the power is way too good.

[NTJedi]

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
Send Horror can be more devastating, especially with some previous horrormarks.


[/QB]

This spell doesn't work... so I can't compare the two. A mage also needs both astral and blood magic to cast the spell. Looking forward to the patch tho.

Ghost rider are just undead horses. They get banished like that. Fortunately they come with a wraith.

Yes ghost riders can be banished but they are very fast and are quickly able to do damage in battle. Most provinces way in the back don't have a priest or two just sitting around. And unless that priest has at least 25 units in front of him... that priest is dead and the province is lost.


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by Apoger
Yes, but can be used more than once, hence you can't judge it the same way as a one shot spell like Ghost Riders.

Apoger... casting ghost riders 5 times will easily do more damage then the lifespan of one iron dragon unless you're storming a castle.
An Iron dragon also requires a commander which would be at risk of dying when going into battle.

[ January 07, 2004, 22:07: Message edited by: NTJedi ]