A few thoughts on MA Arcoscephale

[Dedas]

How do you deal with terror/frighten/panic spell spam? Elephants have poor morale and low magic resistance. Not a good combination...

[GameExtremist]

Multiple Strategos seem to work wonders their Morale boosting banners are worth (10) though I've got no idea how much the mechanics of that figure work. Another thing you can do is add some Cardaces or hoplites to the unit to boost the avg morale value up. But I tend too avoid that as although the elephants are twice as quick if its a good stand up fight the cardaces and hoplites start to drop like flies causing more morale checks.

But yes the morale and low MR is an inherent weakness. Though not everyone seems to take advantage of this for whatever reason e.g. nation choice, circumstance, experience etc.

[Dedas]

Yes, that is also my impression; most people tend to forget the obvious counters to masses of elephants when they meet them. Some even tried stopping them with hordes of heavy infantry, and that is about the worst thing you can do.

I will start a thread for discussing this so not to disturb yours.

[GameExtremist]

Another thought....say for example you know you are about to face a large enemy army that has a fair number of death mages....hopefully you can scout the army before it gets to you....I don't see why not as Arcoscephale gets the scry ability which allows for accurate intelligence reports inside your dominion. But anyway if the enemy army is free of astral mages you can pretty ,much go to town on them with your A4 mindhunting astrologers. Try and take them down before they hurtesses your precious elephantses.

[Dedas]

Yes the scry ability goes hand in hand with elephants. Two questions though: are there any summonable death mages that are stealthy? And can stealthy units be seen by scry?

[Edi]

Spectral mages are stealthy. They also can't be seen by scrying, I think. But it may be they need to be hiding for that.

[Baalz]

FWIW, I find Mystics to be quite underrated. They're recruitable anywhere and communions of them can rain down falling frost/fire, gifts from heaven, magma eruption, blade wind, astral fires, enslave mind, and cleansing water depending on what the situation merits plus most any buff (legions of steel/strength of giants/weapons of sharpness turn their quite respectable heavy infantry into a major threat). You can also use them to forge slave matrixes for thugs, then buff them with every earth/fire/water/astral buff through a communion (invulnerability, fire shield & breath of winter turns most anybody into a thug, toss in quicken self, personal luck, and ). They make an awesome defensive force while you're building up your research base and a damn effective offensive force when you collect critical mass.