My mages are idiots!

[Kaljamaha]

Originally posted by PhilD:
To answer your Last question - no. Your Vanir have javelins, and are therefore valid targets for Aim.

One way to ensure that your mages will benefit would be to surround them with the Vanir at the beginning of the battle. Not sure if scripting the Vanir to "fire closest" or "fire something else" will work.

Or, you could use Wind Guide.

Yeah, I'll probably have to switch to that.

But mostly, fighting Hydras with Vanir is just a bad idea, unless you've got a way of protecting them from poison. Vanir are very hard to hit (and your Air blessing makes them almost immune to missiles), but poison will murder them, and their price will start to tell. I'd say it's a perfect case of having to adapt your troop selection to the opposition (I don't know what troops are available to the Midgard theme, but I'd say there probably are some that are better suited, cost-wise, to fighting Hydras).

Yup, I know. I thought I was clever, and had Groups of huskarls in the front on "fire big monsters", so that they would hurt the thing and then tie it up (I deemed them expendable). My Vanir were on the side, with "attack rear". Now, as I said, had the mages killed the hydra, OR had my Vanir attacked the rear (couple of commanders + pricipes) I would have won easily. But alas, neither happened.

Unfortunately my beginning position was quite bad, and I have found neither indie crossbows nor nature 2+ mages in the (about) 15 provinces I have. I do have some Nature 1 Galdermen, so I guess I could forge some snake rings for Vanjarls and have them attack the thing, and cast Shockwave or something. But unless heavily armed and armored, that's like throwing away a perfectly good commander.

But the point of my thread was that my mages botched this one up pretty bad. Somehow I figured they would bLast the hydra as the first order of business. Oh well, I'll try some of those single target spells and see if I have better success.


K.