Sphinx Killin Tips

[The DarkOne]

Thats because a small spelling error, try this and shouldn't have any problems.
http://www.ascensiongames.com/

[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.

[Yossar]

How about mandragoras? They'd get him to 200 fatigue in a round or two and they should be immune to paralyze. 200 fatigue gives a great chance to pierce armor. I'm not sure they'd be able to do enough damage by themselves (but maybe they can) so you might want to back them with some mages amd archers.

Mandragoras are one of my favorite units in the game. Those sleep vines are great.

[LintMan]

Originally posted by 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?

Yes, the middle earth map is pretty cool. The impassable mountain ranges make things interesting, with some good bottlenecks. The downside I found was that some of the home castle provinces were butted up to assorted impassable mountains, which reduces the number of effective neighboring provinces, thus making for less gold and resources than typical in those home provinces.

Also: are you aware that it's possible as of the latest patch to speed up the battle viewing? 'f' makes things move faster, and 'n' skips to the next round. Between those two, you should be able to get to viewing the late battle rounds without too much delay.