Happiness in Darkness -An Argatha Ktonian Dead AAR

[JaydedOne]

Well, hey, I'll take your beta copy if you're not using it.

[Boron]

JaydedOne said:
Well, hey, I'll take your beta copy if you're not using it.

I still played smaller SP games .

But a turn for the AAR takes now already at least 30 minutes playtime

[Nerfix]

Ahh, a new chapter. I'm hoping we get to see some of those summons.

[Boron]

"Late winter in the year 2 of the ascension wars"

WAR !!!


http://img47.imageshack.us/img47/1093/2if0.jpg
Fortunately we only border 1 ermor province so far, nontheless the ermorian DOW is annoying. We have basically no forces in this area, and research is not ready for ermor neither (we only have evocation 4 so far).

My idea how to deal with this problem is to defend only the next turns and research thaumaturgy 6 for wither bones and evocation 6 for the other goodies mentioned already in my update for Jurri.

“Early spring in the year 3 of the ascension wars”

http://img153.imageshack.us/img153/7051/3bp4.jpg
A barbarian attack into the heart of our empire .

Here you have your first summon, Nerfix .

Costs 3 deathgems. Not bad, but i won't use them i think and rather wait for other summons. The attack and defense ratings are simply too low for my taste.

http://img245.imageshack.us/img245/9412/5yo1.jpg
At the end of our turn. The barbarians will keep the province 1-2 more turns, x-bows move slow, and there are 70 barbarians, so i need to amass at least 50 x-bows to have a reasonable chance of routing them before getting into melee range.

The conquest of the seas is slowly proceeding though. But our expansion slowed down quite a bit and now our misfortune 3 scale starts taking its toll. Almost every turn at least 1 negative event.

Our gem income per month is ok:
7 firegems
1 airgem
2 watergems
18 earthgems
15 pearls
15 deathgems
3 naturegems

Most of our land provinces have now been searched for fire/earth/astral and death.
With the underwater provinces i wait, i hope to somehow find an indy water mage for voice of tiamat or get very lucky with a necro that i can turn him into an accashic record caster. Theoretically it is possible to get an astral 2 necro because of his 100% and 10% randoms who can both be astral too. But the chance for that is rather low, i am no statistics expert, but my guess would be that the chance is like 1 out of 100 or so.
Maybe i instead empower a necro simply. Since accashic is conjuration with my 50% bonus site it becomes then competetive even costwise with the normally better way to sitesearch via the single path searchspells (that's what i did so far).

[JaydedOne]

Out of curiosity, what utility do you see the cavern wight having? With his low scores in attack and defense, as you pointed out, he doesn't seem like he's much better than most national units and 3 death gems a pop seems a bit much if you're only getting one at a time. I guess his hps make him a nice buffer between your mages and attackers, but is there some use beyond that for him that I'm missing?

[Boron]

JaydedOne said:
Out of curiosity, what utility do you see the cavern wight having? With his low scores in attack and defense, as you pointed out, he doesn't seem like he's much better than most national units and 3 death gems a pop seems a bit much if you're only getting one at a time. I guess his hps make him a nice buffer between your mages and attackers, but is there some use beyond that for him that I'm missing?

First there is a niche use:
He is amphibian and poison resistent, so for conquering the seas if you find no ichtyids he might be rather useful.

Then at level 8 there is the spell hall of dead. There for 30 death gems you get 20 such cavern wights. But if you can cast that spell conjuration 9 is not far, and then the old wights from dom2 are there. There you get 20 wights for 30 gems too. And those have bane blades.
Hm maybe they get a cost decrease in a patch .

As they are they are okay but not outstanding and there are better alternatives with the classical death summons for them. If they would cost 2 gems and 15 gems for the mass summon spell, they would be useful though i think.

Now they already have that amphibian niche, so they have their uses, but only 1 out of 20 games or so.
And their mr is rather good, so they don't get banished easily.

[Endoperez]

I think they are a bit better than that. They have Str 17 and glaives - even with their att of 10, they'll massacre any unshielded heavy infantry, and even against shielded infantry or cavalry they should fare quite well. They are also available in MA, where they'll just massacre e.g. Ulm.

They are tough for non-mindless undead, and have exceptional morale for non-mindless units. If there was an item comparable to Ivy Crown, they would be just plain better than Vine Ogres, and Vine Ogres are good. They also have the excellent mapmove 3 of most undead, and their high magic resistance makes them more resistant against most common undead counters.

They aren't exceptional unit, or even something you'll want to summon in every game, but they are good in few situations (underwater, against heavy armor) and a bit more useful in MA than in LA.