Glamour post 3.08

[atul]

Hm, when I ran a quick test with a screen of statues and 50 indy archers, the glamour did get dispelled on quite many vans. However, after that you're left with a problem how to kill low-resource-cost high-defence high-protection cavalry. Which is not easy.

But evocation spells at least seem to work better against Vans nowadays.

[AreWeInsaneYet]

banishment is almost USELESS against shadow vestals, no matter what priest you are, H1 or H3.

I did a test run just now, using 8 C'tis priest king(who has much better precision--10 to 7--than agartha priests) scripted to 5x banishment banish 27 shadow vestals led by one ermor priest(NO ASPOSTACY, that is), and the result is pretty ridiculous: the first wave of banishment go before bless killed 6 vestals, and that's pretty much about it. yes, the second and third wave killed only 1 of 21 left, leave me 20 experienced vestals and 8 good fried lizard holy meats.

[Sombre]

Did you give the priests any meatshields?

[AreWeInsaneYet]

No. I just want to see exactly how well priests will do against vestals (e.g. how good is 8 banishment against normal vestals, how good is 8 against blessed one), as I already knew from my own experience that an army(read:20 to 40) of these shady girls in real battle is just unstoppable without mage's intervention.

High Priests and Banishment are there for LA Ermor' undead chaff, they are no match for few elite shock troop. Just imagine that: would you spam banishment against a Wraith Lord?

[LoloMo]

Going back to the Vans pre and post 3.08, I did not notice any difference. Massed archers still had no significant effect in any battle. I played C'tis versus Helheim in the Unlucky MP game, and fought helheim before and after 3.08. I rushed research Shadow Blast which worked. I remember that there also wasnt much difference in shadow blast effectiveness also pre and post 3.08 patch.

[Sombre]

Well in fairness the vestals would get hit by more banishments in a battle, since they wouldn't walk right over to the mages and kill them all - there would be some chaff in the way.

If you were testing whether poison slingers were a viable counter to heavy Arco infantry, you wouldn't just put 20 slingers against 20 heavy infantry, would you?

From the sounds of it, I don't think priests would work as a counter though.

[LoloMo]

I'm playing blessed shadow vestals in two MP games. I'm not worried about banishment at all. On the other hand, I'm scared of flaming arrows. Very scared =)

[Baalz]

Honestly, seems like the bigger change with regards to the vans is that glamor no longer protects against *spells*. Perhaps a few scepters of authority might work well now if your screen can hold them for a few turns? Generally, there are not going to be a whole lot of vans, so spells that effect just one target might work out well. Also, has anybody yet seen the vans go up against crossbows (or arbalests) in 3.08? Seems like that would work significantly better than short bows.

[Saxon]

Baalz has a good point. They have a ton of advantages, they are great units. That versitility should not be underrated. The nation is balanced by the fact they have a weak end game, but in every 4X game, the beginning is the most important part. The rush is a very valid strategy and if well managed, will give you a great start over your oppenents.

The only other person who has spoken specifically about single player reports that they do not have the "Heim vs human player" effect, so perhaps my experience is not typical. Still, given that humans have a tough time stopping them, I don't see why the AI would do any better.

[Sombre]

The AI is simply not a challenge for me unless I handicap myself, but speaking from a SP standpoint, Vans are still too good. A better balanced game reduces the problems caused by how random the AI is, so resulting in slightly better SP gaming overall. This applies to all units which are miles better than anything else you could build - they just aren't desirable in the vanilla game.