Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[Kuritza]

1) Please do read the post and comments. His mr was high, I equipped him for it, but you are 100% likely to fail one roll eventually.
2) He was unkillable for this stupid chaff. Otherwise, he was just a very strong combatant. You can still kill him with thugs if you catch him (eye of the void to take care of his main protection, mirror image), paralyze him and swarm with F9W9 shadow vestals (its MA ermor for a reason) - same lvl4 thaumaturgy research btw, shoot him with massed nether bolts etc.
3) For a soul slay to work on him, he should end up on the same battlefield with a soulslaying mage. I used my god to finish off small parties and to harass to avoid it, successfully.
4) I had no astral caelum mages, but I could counter mind hunt with indies - lizard shamans and sorceresses, I had both.
5) Yes, it was MA Ermor, so what? Lvl4 spell killing SCs on overland map is still stupid.
6) Preventing SC God from killing too many units? Is it a joke?

[jutetrea]

I vote for GP's solution, sounds good. I also agree anyone who survives 75 turns of an assasination attack should be the winner.

[lch]

Kuritza said:
1) Please do read the post and comments. His mr was high, I equipped him for it, but you are 100% likely to fail one roll eventually.

I do read everything, could you please stop insinuating that I don't? "High" is a subjective number, 20 is not "high", more like 25+ and this should cancel MR-based remote attacks (almost) all the time. Your enemy would more likely waste more than a dozen turns trying to have one successful cast which still would not be a guaranteed kill in any case.

Kuritza said:
2) He was unkillable for this stupid chaff.

Just as that chaff was not possible for him to kill in that time. The turn limit is a necessary evil which I use to great advantage. You don't have to be in a position to beat an enemy army, you just have to have units that can't be taken down in that time, causing the enemy to route. Then you need to make sure that there is no province around them to retreat to, and you kill off the entire enemy army.

Kuritza said:
6) Preventing SC God from killing too many units? Is it a joke?

Do I look like I'm joking? I have used exactly that to keep the bodycount for my pretender down in a game of mine. A pretender is important, contrary to an expendable SC, I don't want it high in the HoF with lots of kills. It seems like you didn't know what you're up against and now you're just bitter. Vengeance of the Dead is a good anti-HoF spell which will get to you in time, since even if you had defeated all those enemies you'd have doubled your bodycount by that and would then have to face double that next time.

[Kuritza]

I do read everything, could you please stop insinuating that I don't? "High" is a subjective number, 20 is not "high", more like 25+ and this should cancel MR-based remote attacks (almost) all the time.

No I can't because if you do read what I say, you ignore it. Lets see. 18 MR base, +3 mr rainbow armor, +4 antimagic amulet. Thats 25 already; also he was in a friendly domain. Is that HIGH to you?
Also, about counters. Paralyze alone takes care of SCs, its got an enormous penetration so even if units fail to kill an SC, said SC wont do anything during a battle. SCs dont dominate Dominions 3 as they used to in Dom2 anymore.
What I object against is taking care of an SC anywhere on a map with a low-research spell by exploiting an autorout by generating a 'no-retreat is possible combat' and multitudes of rout-immune troops, its CHEAP. You keep pointing out that everything should have a counter. So, 25+ MR is not a counter, astral mage (as with mind hunt) is not a counter, being invulnerable to these zombies is not a counter. If thats not a glitch, I dont know what is.

[GrobRIM]

If I may, I think the whole problem is the 50 turn limit.

I guess this limit has been set up to make sure that all battles eventually end, so battle resolution cannot lock-up turn resolution; and I can think of many more-or-less theoretical situations where a battle might not end in a reasonable number of turns, like two SC's fighting heads up, each one with a life drain attack; or a skelly-spamming high-reinvig necromancer against a good banishing priest.

But maybe the 50-turn limit should be made more flexible; for example, once turn 50 is reached, give another 5-turn grace period, after which the battle is ended, unless at least one unit has been killed, in which case we reset the countdown to another 5 turns; or, instead of counting the number of units killed, take into account the net amount between units killed and units created.

This proposition should take care of the "SC against horde of chaff" situation raised by Kuritza.

[Cor2]

I have to agree with Kuritza here. Very crappy. I like GP's solution.

[Tuidjy]

The problem is not that there is a 50 turn limit, but that the defender loses
when the limit is reached.

[Taqwus]

GrobRIM said:
But maybe the 50-turn limit should be made more flexible; for example, once turn 50 is reached, give another 5-turn grace period, after which the battle is ended, unless at least one unit has been killed, in which case we reset the countdown to another 5 turns; or, instead of counting the number of units killed, take into account the net amount between units killed and units created.

Non-summons units, perhaps. If you just kill battlefield summons, the battle may be at a stalemate (ex. two skellispammers facing off...). If you're killing the -original- components of the armies, those numbers can't increase during battle.

[thejeff]

The problem is not the limit, or even that the defender loses, the problem is that these attackers don't respect the auto-rout limit.

If they did, then they would auto-rout properly and flee, before the target auto-routs himself, and well before the auto-kill kicks in.

Now, changing that, which seems buggy, or at least unintended, to me, might weaken Vengeance too much. It's always seemed more useful against battle mages who are vulnerable without there meat shields than against true SCs any way.

[Loren]

GrobRIM said:
If I may, I think the whole problem is the 50 turn limit.

I guess this limit has been set up to make sure that all battles eventually end, so battle resolution cannot lock-up turn resolution; and I can think of many more-or-less theoretical situations where a battle might not end in a reasonable number of turns, like two SC's fighting heads up, each one with a life drain attack; or a skelly-spamming high-reinvig necromancer against a good banishing priest.

But maybe the 50-turn limit should be made more flexible; for example, once turn 50 is reached, give another 5-turn grace period, after which the battle is ended, unless at least one unit has been killed, in which case we reset the countdown to another 5 turns; or, instead of counting the number of units killed, take into account the net amount between units killed and units created.

This proposition should take care of the "SC against horde of chaff" situation raised by Kuritza.

I also agree that I don't like the turn limit. I understand that something is necessary to avoid infinite battles but I see other fixes:

1) After reaching the turn limit compare the total hp of real units (not anything that was summoned for the battle and won't persist afterwards) for the last 5 turns vs the 5 turns before that. So long as the current number is lower than the previous one the battle continues.

2) Retreat from an infinite battle should not be deadly unless there is no other way to resolve the situation:
2a) The defender keeps the province no matter what.
2b) Assassins and other such stealth units go back into stealth.
2c) It should be an orderly retreat instead of a rout. All units should remain with their leaders and go back to a single randomly-chosen province. Even units like mercenaries should do this.
This leaves only one truly deadly situation: Attackers who teleported in and can't go into stealth.