How to use Golems?

[Zen]

No Feet slot make that pretty hard. Unless your Starspawns happen to have feet instead of tentacles and/or whatever it is that Starspawn walk with.

[Boron]

Zen said:
No Feet slot make that pretty hard. Unless your Starspawns happen to have feet instead of tentacles and/or whatever it is that Starspawn walk with.

Are you going to change that in your nations mod?

After all illithids are extremely intelligent beings so why shouldn't they be able to forge magic shoes for their feet tentacles?

[Boron]

Just looking more closely at the Golem but the basic attack is very low which seems to make the golem a bit weak imho.
You have 8/8 Base Attack/Defense while the devil has 18/16 Base Attack/Defense and a Bane Lord 14/14.

Herald lance gives +1 to attack, burning pearl +4 and ring of warrior +5.
So you can get a maximum attack value of +10 and get a 18 attack with the herald lance then.

A standard blood thorn,lucky coin,quickness,-1 def armor bane lord has then 19 defence, such a devil 21 defence.

The attack calculator says 18 attack vs. 19 defence there is
a 35,9% chance for hitting and this chance is halfed because of the luck effect.

The Banelord/Devil otoh almost always hits the golem and fatigues him through lifedraining.
Furthermore if you teleport the golem in you are the attacker, hence the first 2 strikes normally go to the defending Bane lord/Devil and they normally fatigue the Golem quite a bit , as a side effect lowering his attack value.
2nd side effect is that the golem can't buff probably.

So in theory the golem should suck vs. even a lousy banelord.
I am curious now and will test this tomorrow

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
The Banelord/Devil otoh almost always hits the golem and fatigues him through lifedraining.

Troops with a base encumbrance of 0 do not get fatigued when hit with a lifedrain weapon. Nor will the lifedrain weapon drain anything from the lifeless golem.

[Boron]

Oversway said:
Boron - I was thinking someone would put jade armor or boots of quickness on a golem. So +3 attack right? But I agree, the 8 base attack & defense is rather problematic.

Yeah i forgot that. Thanks .
I modified the minimap now i start testing various golem builds vs. various banelord builds.

I found out though that Graemes statement is untrue:

Graeme Dice said:

Troops with a base encumbrance of 0 do not get fatigued when hit with a lifedrain weapon. Nor will the lifedrain weapon drain anything from the lifeless golem.

The golem gets encumbered just as any other unit from my test-bloodthorn banelord.


Here first test:
Golem:

Bane Lord:


Golem casts twist fate and astral weapon, gives him 28 fatigue.
Setup 1:
Both attack same province at the same turn.

Battle 1:
Golem wins easy.

Battle 2:
Golem wins, is hit only once, 35 fatigue at end of combat.

Battle 3:
Golem wins easily.

Setup 2:
Banelord has first attack.

Golem also wins the 3-4 testbattles easily, probably thanks to the twist fate.

[Boron]

Test 2:
The banelord has changed, another rather "standard" one:


Setup:
Banelord has the first 2 attacks, golem is unbuffed, scripted to twist fate and astral weapon, then attack closest.

Battle 1:
Golem down to 65 hp,forgot to check fatigue, then banelord dead.

Battle 2:
Golem down to 19 hp and 67 fatigue.

Battle 3:
Golem down to 79 hp and 34 fatigue.

Battle 4:
Golem down to 85 hp and 31 fatigue.

Battle 5:
Golem down to 85 hp and 49 fatigue, wonder how that worked, still full hp but 21 fatigue from hellsword?

Anyway the golem wins vs. this cheap but suboptimal banelord easily even though the banelord has first strike and attacks while buffing !

[Oversway]

Go Golem!

I suppose with the 3x damage it'd usually kill the bane lord on the first (successful) hit.

[Boron]

Test 3:
"Anti-Golem-Banelord"


The golem has also slighty changed, replaced the lucky coin with charcoil shield as suggested by Zen in an earlier post.
Script for golem is now Luck,Astral Weapon,Attack closest.

Test 1: All odds for the Banelord, he gets attacked by the golem, hence the first two strikes go to the banelord, then the golem has to buff.
Let's see if he can kill the golem under these excellent conditions.

Battle 1:
Banelord wins after a few rounds, golem never hits him, Golem down to 43 hp in first round, to 20 hp in 2nd round, to 1 hp in third round, killed in fourth round.
Golem never hits the banelord, he just loses 1 hp to the fireshield from charcoil shield.

Battle 2:
Banelord down to 35 hp.

Battle 3:
Banelord down to 41 hp.

This special Banelord is only useful vs. constructs though with the smasher weapon.

I will try another Banelord now with a AN weapon which will be more widely useable as antiSC-Banelord.

[FrankTrollman]

Rlyeh usually has little difficulty making a staff of elemental power and even less making a ring of wizardry.

It is a major pain in the *** that Earth bonuses are so hard to get. The fact that there isn't an easy equivalent to the Bag of Winds/Water Bracelet in Earth is quite vexing on many levels.

Heck, I'd be happy with some Earth bonus Armor. Or a Shield. Or anything. At all. Right now, short of Unique Artifacts, Earth needs at least 3 picks of another magic type to get its second bonus point (from a Blood Stone bbbe, Ring of wizardry sssss, Staff of Elemental Mastery fffwwww or eeeaaa, or Robe of the Archmagi bbbbaaaa). Every single other magic type gets an easier second bonus. Even Fire (which needs a Death of all things to get the Flaming Skull) can get by on a single random pick coming up the right way to get the second bonus point.

And the uniques aren't a lot better. There are three unique artifacts that grant an Earth bonus, of which one is the same slot as the regular Earth Boots (Anteus' Boots are, however, totally sweet. They just don't aid in the department of Earth Boosting at all). And the other two are themselves basically no good. The Sword of Many Colors is extremely expensive, and requires a 4/1 split. The Book requires a 2/2 split.

If you count Uniques, Earth is the only magic type that can't self-buff itself twice.

Air can boost itself with the Winged Helm and Bag of Winds.
Water can boost itself with the Water Bracelet and the Robe of the Sea.
Death can boost itself with the Skull Face and Staff.
Nature can boost itself twice with the Treelord's Staff all by itself.
Astral can boost itself with the Starshine Skullcap and the Ring of Sorcery.
Blood can boost itself with the Blood Thorn and the Brazen Head.

Even Fire can double self-boost with the help of the Flaming Helmet and the Ruby Eye.

Only Earth has no ability to get its second bonus. And that really hurts groups like Ulm who are supposed to rely upon Earth as their primary sustenence.

---

But that's all irrelevent for the purposes of Rlyeh getting Golems. You only need the second Earth to make one, and the Ring of Wizardry is completely available with Construction 6, and the Golem comes in with Construction 7. So since 23.44% of your Starspawn Mages is going to have at least one earth, the problem is solved before it even happens.

-Frank

[FrankTrollman]

Boron Says: The Banelord/Devil otoh almost always hits the golem and fatigues him through lifedraining.

The Golem is Lifeless. How does the Banelord/Devil fatigue him with Lifedraining?

-Frank