Can normal army take out Sphinx pretender?

[Alneyan]

Hand of Death can be good for your mages, as it deals a lot of damage bypassing armour... but you will need to get your mages at point blank range first, and Death mages will probably cast other spells than that one when under AI control. I don't know for sure how Decay works, but it could be a solution: you have access to Bane Blades, the Decay spell and Banefire, and those deal a lot of damage at the end of a battle (hitting the Sphinx will not be a problem).

The main factor for Dominion spread is the Dominion level you picked when creating your Pretender: the higher it is, the more easily your Dominion will spread. You should aim at having 6 or so for a good spread, and the AI seems to pick Dominion levels around that value too. You can raise Dominion in one province by bringing in your Prophet and your Pretender (who automatically spread Dominion), by building temples in the immediate vicinity, and by setting your priests to preach (they only raise Dominion when preaching). If it still does not work, a few units have the ability to lower enemy Dominion (Sceptics and one Demon Lord, in particular), and the Stone Idol has the same ability, so it might work out... if you can get any of these things, as they aren't particularly easy to reach for Machaka.

[Agrajag]

An important thing to remember about plops and max dominion is that since a plop will spread to another province only if the province its in is "full", higher dominion will actually slow the rate at which your dominion spread to other provinces.

[sushiboat]

I think that unconsciousness would affect defense but not protection. However, even with no protection, you still need to deal out a ton of damage -- perhaps 1000 to 2000 hit points. A regular army can't do it.

However, you probably can count on the Sphinx having Astral Shield up. Maybe the double-unconscious autokill scenario could happen more than once in a blue moon.

[Gargoyle]

sushiboat said:
I think that unconsciousness would affect defense but not protection. However, even with no protection, you still need to deal out a ton of damage -- perhaps 1000 to 2000 hit points. A regular army can't do it.

However, you probably can count on the Sphinx having Astral Shield up. Maybe the double-unconscious autokill scenario could happen more than once in a blue moon.

This fellow is more a annoyance than a threat, so I will take the road of just sealing him up in his own tomb until he just fades away.

I learned a lot by asking this question. Necessity is the mother of invention. This game gives you challenges that are difficult to solve, but also many ways you might use to deal with them.

Great game, I've had it only a month now and haven't scratch the surface of all there is in it.

[Alneyan]

The problem with Shatter in this situation is that you need to spend at least one turn to get in melee (with Flying Boots), so you can cast the spell only four times at most, and Earth mages will definitively not default to Shatter. The 50% chance of losing a spell in melee may also affect the script of your mages, but I'm not sure.

Shatter also has harder prerequisites than Hand of Death (especially research), and only works on specific creatures, but deals the same amount of damage as Hand of Death, so you should use Hand of Death in these situations, if possible. There is, incidentally, no attack roll needed to hit with this sort of spell, so the Sphinx being immobile does not really help here.

[Chazar]

Gargoyle said:
This fellow is more a annoyance than a threat, so I will take the road of just sealing him up in his own tomb until he just fades away.

Well, 'loosing' 5 gems per turn probably more than a mere annoyance on smaller/medium sized maps...

sushiboat said:
I think that unconsciousness would affect defense but not protection.

There definitely some passage inside the manual talking about a penetration chance of x% if fatigue is over y, where I believe y to be 80. However, since I am currently moving I wont have my manual available until 3 more weeks, so I cant check myself.

Agrajag siad:
An important thing to remember about plops and max dominion is that since a plop will spread to another province only if the province its in is "full",...

I think that there is always a chance for plops to travel, but the further away from max-dominion the current province is, the less likely is the plop to travel...so you are right that low starting dominion and high max dominion due to temples is a hinderance for dominon spread...

[Gargoyle]

Chazar said:

Well, 'loosing' 5 gems per turn probably more than a mere annoyance on smaller/medium sized maps...

I don't follow you. Why do you think I'm loosing 5 gems a turn just because this Sphinx is holed up in his castle under siege?

[Agrajag]

Gargoyle said:

I don't follow you. Why do you think I'm loosing 5 gems a turn just because this Sphinx is holed up in his castle under siege?

Im guessing he means the 5 gems you will probably get from the magical site in the province, since the Sphinx can only be in the capital, and most capitals have a daily income of 5 gems (from the national sites).

[Endoperez]

From manual: if (2d6oe - fatique/15) < 2, Protection is halved.

[sushiboat]

Chazar said:

There definitely some passage inside the manual talking about a penetration chance of x% if fatigue is over y, where I believe y to be 80. However, since I am currently moving I wont have my manual available until 3 more weeks, so I cant check myself.

Here is a passage from page 15:

A high fatigue also gives attackers a chance to find weaknesses in the exhausted unit's armor, reducing Protection by half for that attack.

There is no special treatment mentioned for unconscious units. So, you're right that Protection can be reduced by fatigue, but it doesn't drop to zero.