Mictlan, Cross Breeding and Luck

[DLC]

you need a crown of command

[Bowlingballhead]

Dear Moodgiesanta:

Welcome to the agony of Burden of Time, one of the few spells I think should be removed from the game. Unless you're Ermor or Desert Tombs C'tis (I guess Carrion Woods might be okay, too. Then again, Pangaea does heal.) it rips the snot out of you, and does it so fast that if you can't destroy the enchantment in short order you're just... lost. Wounds compound upon wounds and your units crumble to dust in a matter of a few turns. It's gruesome!

Jotunheim probably paid dearly for being stupid enough to cast that spell, but with Ermor tromping through your backyard it didn't make much difference to you.

I really, really hate that spell. Any spell that all by itself can leave an opponent helpless and beaten I have grave reservations about.

Of course, in a multiplayer game, you've just got to be ready to dispell it if you're playing against an undead-user. But if you guess wrong and haven't researched enchantment yet, or don't have the astral...

[PvK]

Fiends and Devils get hurt only rarely, when you have 10 or more of them, especially combined with numbers of Eagle Warriors and/or Imps. Once they get over a certain number (somewhere over ten), they change from mage-killers to army-annihilators. 25 devils led by a Devil commander from HfH, is quite awesome.

For demon/devil leaders, other options also include high priests (who can pitch in with battlefield spells), a few cheap Mictlan Priests leading 5 each, and/or with items, or undead commanders (a nice cheap option to lead a large force).

PvK

Well most of the time you don't have the ability to field too many armies with 20+ Devil/FoD. I'd prefer to have 3 or 4 Armies hammering away from different directions and each having the ability to null enemy mages than one (or 2) Big ugly armies that can be shut down by a Storm.

Just a personal preference but this is from a MP aspect. The AI rarely uses storms or storm items to their full effect.

[PvK]

Ya, I'm against the AI, haven't had much storm problems, and since I have a Soul Contract, I happen to have such an army, and when lead by a Devil, they can fly and attack any province within 3 hops every turn. My Mictlani infantry is mostly elite, unafflicted, and rarely has to do much serious fighting against enemies who aren't about to be routed by devils.

I imagine competetive human opponents would find ways to deal with the tactic, at least if they got to me before I got a huge devil production going. Such as, storm follwed by lots of banishing and anti-demon magic.

PvK

[moodgiesanta]

Originally posted by Vger:
Hi,

The Heliophagus makes a pretty good SC with decent equipment. I haven't played a blood nation yet, but I've piddled with blood magic and called one up, once.


Ciao,
V'ger gone

Indeed, the Heliophagi are great. I managed to summon three before my country died out completely. One was just a wonderful commander, but one, aside from being a kick *** commander with good magic, also could summon a fiend every turn cost-free, and the other could summon two Bone fiends things with no cost every turn. I dunno about the fourth, but I assume he is equally awesome. It was the only way I survived, with no blood slaves due to having no people.

Bowlingballhead, yes, Burden of time is broken, in my opinion. It costs far too little for the extreme effects it has. It absolutely kills me, and not being an astral mage or interested in enchantment, I'm utterly screwed. So I have a couple choices:
1. Go out of my way at creation to take four astral and research dispel AND somehow get ahold through alchemy (at tremendous cost) enough astral pearls to dispel it. Which utterly sucks.
2. Take three on the growth scale, and mass produce cheap human units to replace my ever-dying legions.

I haven't played a nation that uses mostly elite troops yet, but I'd imagine things would be doubly worse if I didn't field an army of expendable cross-breeds as fodder for my equally expendable horde of sling-using warriors, but rather a crack team of elites that are hard to replace. I mean, that seems VERY broken to me. Heck, it deserves its own thread.
Someone asked this:

With the improves crossbreeding, how many commanders are usually leading one of your main armys ? because just a few breeds usually come with MANY lesser breeds you must have several commanders. Or are you using a experienced leader with 2+ exp levels ? Because i cant figure out how to lead those bloody breeds, they allways seem to end up guarding my capital..
ty

I dunno about other countries, but I pumped out Tribal Kings en masse with Mictlan. They're only 40 gold and minimal resources and command 50 soldiers right off, so there is no reason not to just hire one every turn you need one don't hire something else. With several forts (which so far has been my strategy, not that it has done all that well . . .) you can pump out serious quantities of them.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by moodgiesanta:
Bowlingballhead, yes, Burden of time is broken, in my opinion. It costs far too little for the extreme effects it has. It absolutely kills me, and not being an astral mage or interested in enchantment, I'm utterly screwed. So I have a couple choices:

If you ignore enchantment research, then quite frankly, you're almost asking to get bLasted by various enchantments. That's the point of the dispel spell.

1. Go out of my way at creation to take four astral and research dispel AND somehow get ahold through alchemy (at tremendous cost) enough astral pearls to dispel it. Which utterly sucks.

Dispel is enchantment 5, astral 3, not astral 4. Enchantment 4 can be reached in 10 turns from a start with no research points whatsoever. Enchantment 5 is only about 3 more turns after that. For a nation with enough research to get to Heliophagi enchantment 5 is about a three or four turn effort at the very most.

From the rest of your thread, I assume you were playing Mictlan. That means that you already have an astral 2 mage, who only needs a starshine skullcap to cast dispel whenever necessary.

A list of the nations that have at least an astral two mage, and thus have a fairly easy time to cast dispel.

Abysia, Atlantis, Pythium, Arcoscephale, Broken Empire Ermor, Marignon, R'Lyeh, Jotunheim (Utgard), Mictlan. That's 9 out of the 17 nations that can get rid of it fairly easily.