Suicide Casters...

[deccan]

alexti said:
Mistform would help.

Would mistform really help? Wouldn't RoS do magical damage? Even so, given the low hp of Caelian mages, wouldn't the damage of RoS break the mistform?

alexti said:
I wonder if it's the absolute strength of enemy or relative to your armies is taken into account.

Yeah, I wonder that too. I hate it that the system only decides whether to spend gems in battle only on an absolute yes-or-no basis, instead of evaluating on a scripted-spell case-by-case basis, i.e. this spell costs 5 gems to cast, don't cast it because the enemy is too weak, this spell only costs 1 gem, so let's cast it anyway etc.

In a recent game playing AE Ermor, I was badly mauled in some battles because the massed priests of my enemy weren't enough to trigger the gem-use-allowed trigger. If my mages had spent the gems on Mass Flight / Darkness the way they were meant to, I would have won the battle with no losses, but instead lost several hundred undead.

[Taqwus]

AE Ermor with Mass Flight? Ouch, that sounds like a good excuse for a Staff of Storms...

Protection/Barkskin and Breath of Winter are both nasty in their potential for own-goaling, the lack of a gem requirement, and the relative ease of casting. Never bring a druid with an Abysian army... Soul Vortex might also be dangerous, but for whatever reason (perhaps rarely mixing decent death casters with the living?) I haven't had as much of a problem with that one.

/me idly wonders if the Abysian AI would use "gifts" of barkskin amulets...

[alexti]

deccan said:

Would mistform really help? Wouldn't RoS do magical damage? Even so, given the low hp of Caelian mages, wouldn't the damage of RoS break the mistform?

It works decently, you may lose few mages, but most of them will survive. RoS occacionally breaks mistform, but not too often.

[Chazar]

Hmm, I wish the Combat AI would just simulate the spell to evaluate its usefulness and then cast it with different random numbers or try another spell depending on the simulation...

I will give Mistform a try, for I have nothing else at hand right now, except for a lack of gems, for the non-stealthy gem carrier died in a rain of stones...


@Turms: I am not sure whether that Last scripted spell made all that difference. It might have casted RoS just the next turn. Anyway, it has been my pleasure to amuse you ,but I am not sure I can put up much resistance to you anymore, for the losses where quite bad. We will soon see...