Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[llamabeast]

Incidentally I think a couple of points made in this thread are not quite right.

Firstly the 81% avoidance isn't right as I understand it. Assuming the enemy mage has zero penetration nad your guy has MR 25, I think the chance of the spell getting through is less than 1% (see the +15 entry in the DRN table at the start of the manual - if my memory serves correctly in only actually goes up to +14 so the chance is off-the-scale small and you were very unlucky).

Secondly moving around can't help you with 'dodging' since rituals happen before movement. So if your enemy can see you with scouts (not too hard) he has a 100% chance of getting the right province.

[lch]

llamabeast said:
Firstly the 81% avoidance isn't right as I understand it.

Yeah, I can't count.

[Saint_Dude]

Several points:

1) MR is not as effective vs. remote map spells as one would predict. I have done extensive testing with Mind Hunt and have come to the conclusion that MR is effectively 2 less vs. remote spells compared to battle field spells (i.e MR 25 acts like MR 23).

2) VOTD can kill immortal pretenders in their home prov. Immortals that die in friendly dominion due to the 75 turn autoroute rule do not reappear in their capital the following turn. I have lost a Risen Oracle (with 750 kills) in friendly dominion to this spell.

3) No matter how awesome your SC, there will be a number of undead which can not be defeated in the turn limit. I have had a lot of SCs with over 1000 kills. There is no way (that I know of) to take out that many undead in 75 turns. And even if you could, the next go around you would be facing 2000 undead. The end result is inevitable.

4) If the only true counter to the spell is to run away and hide in a remote part of the map, then the SC is effectively killed as soon as he finds himself targeted. He certainly isn't going to be hanging around on the front lines doing any good.

[Valandil]

Equally many points:

1) I hadn't noticed this. Is it possible that your testing failed to account for another factor that was present in all remote cases, but not all battlefield ones?
(dominion, astral magic, enchantments?) I'm not questioning your metheods, of course, just trying to verify results.

2) This is weird, and probably unintended. I had also noticed weirdness with immortality and the turn limit.

3) Of course correct, but I think this highlights an important fact: Any SC (or unit, for that matter) can be brought down by expenditure of a given number of resources. In the case of VOTD the resources expended are mage-time, gems. The SC killed by VOTD must then be more valuable than the sum of the values of the mages, the gems expended, and the values of the units he killed before the Vengeance kills him. In many cases, vengeance of the dead is not actually a cost-effective solution (eg. a MR 23 W9 Dragon with no magic items and 100 kills. -not really an SC, I know.)

I believe that killing 1200 undead in 75 turns is very possible. I personally have used (against LE Ermor) an archangel with the forbidden light (and SC equipment), casting fire storm. Actually, anything that scales with the numbeer of opponents (battlefield enchs., mainly) would probably work.

4) As per above, you can also not counter it except with good equipment and high MR, and rely on cost effectiveness and economics. Alternatively, you could teleport/cloud trapeze/one of the five million other movement spells to somewhere totally different, or sue for clemency (ie. diplomacy). Or you could put up a dome of flaming death.


In all honesty, VOTD really isn't any better, even considering its low cost in research and gems, than earth attack, mind hund, manifestation, disease demon (AAH!), etc.

Granted, I'm a pretty awful MP player with almost no experience, so what do I know?

[Saint_Dude]

Valandil -

As for mind hunting and the success of remote magic overcoming MR. . . I have carried out extensive testing of Mind Hunt (and limited testing of VOTD), literally simulating thousands of attacks with mages of different levels equipped with different combinations of penetration boosters vs. targets with MR ranging from 20 to 27 and with either drain or magic scales. All the targets in my simulations were in friendly dominion, but I don't see how that would affect much beyond the MR of pretenders and prophets (and the possible influence of magic scales which were already accounted for). None of the targets had astral paths since I was targeting 50 at a time and they would have just feebleminded my casters.

A a5 mage with +5 penetration casting Mind Hunt (+1 penetration due to level) on a target with 25 MR (in a prov with neutral magic scales), will kill said target approximately 8 or 9 % of the time (as if the calculated difference were -7 instead of -9). When the target has a MR of 21 the Mind Hunt will be successful approximately 25% of the time (as if the difference were -3 instead of -5.

When a target is in a prov with drain scales the target is more resistant to Mind Hunt, and when the target is in a prov with magic scales the target is more susceptible.

Bottom line - Mind Hunt is more effective than Soul Slay, (i.e. it has a higher kill rate).

I assume the observations that I have made with Mind Hunt carry over to VOTD, but cannot be sure at this point due to limited testing.

As for the possibility of killing 1000+ undead in a battle. . . . yes it is possible, but only for an SC that is specifically kitted and scripted to the task. If you are fighting Ermor this may occur by natural happenstance. But if you are not engaged with Ermor or fighting alongside friendly forces when the VOTD hits, it is unlikely that one would have firestorm or like spells scripted. Most battlefield spells that would work against such large numbers of undead would also injure your own troops and have significant gem costs. They are only scripted in specific scenarios.

Ohh, and I am in total agreement with Micah.

[Shovah32]

Just lost a long post due to connection trouble so here is a new one:

Im in agreement with Micah and Sant_Dude. Its too powerful and effective for its cost. If your SC is running from or specifically prepared for VotD it's probably not doing his job or is atleast not doing it as well as it could be.
Its not an expensive or high research spell and unlike certain other assasination spells its not hard to cast so dosn't require the time of a very powerful mage in many cases.
With its cost, path requirements and the seeming penetration bonus for overland spells it dosn't seemunlikely that you could get one penetration per turn.
If you managed 1 penetration per turn on, say, a 250 kill SC(after his first decent battle) then in its 4th battle against the undead, assuming it won the previous battles(a difficult task), it would be in battle with 2000 undead - a number near impossible to kill without being specifically prepared for that many undead.
Of course, after winning that battle(a feat that would probably require very high level magic making him more of a mage than an SC) he would have to face 4000 undead, if that many can evil fit on the enemies side of the battlefield.

[RedWurm]

It's not an easy issue. While VotD is less than ideal in some ways - undead adding to the unit count, death by turn limit - it is designed to be an anti-SC spell, and a nicely ironic one at that. if the turn limit had no negative effect, there would be yet another defense against it in the form of very good armour.

er... so I agree with all three of Tuidjy's positions. VotD in its current form has to be overpowered in some situations to be effective in the rest. the default resolution, likewise, is not very satisfying, but 'you wake up and find it was all a dream' is not an improvement.

the questions I'm having trouble resolving are whether VotD does what it's supposed to do. are the special cases we're discussing broken or not according to its intention? should there be a more powerful version where the enemies pose more of a direct threat, rather than victory by exploit? these are all balance questions, and I'm not good with those. All I know is that while invincible SCs are only nice if you've got one, irony always rocks.

[Velusion]

Buff up the MR of the SC or equip yourself with items that will kill undead quickly. The end.

P.S.
Don't get so attached to your SCs.

[Micah]

Vengeance against a high-kill SC is far and away the most effective ritual to use when presented with such a target. It is effectively a save-or-die situation once the kill counter hits critical mass (around 800 or so should prove too many to kill in 75 rounds for most SCs, even a quickened AE weapon only hits 6 ghosts per round...even with a damage aura on top of that it'll be hard to keep up)

Granted a battlefield-wide spell will work, but if you have to script that to counter Vengeance then you've already lost your SC since all of a sudden he's a support mage and not an SC since you'll have to keep the BE scripted at all times, and this also requires high paths or boosters which take up SC slots. A BE cast to kill the ghosts is not an effective counter for the same reason that hiding in your capital behind 4 domes isn't...your SC might as well be dead, even if they're not actually buried.

It is massively more effective than any other remote spell because spell-sent assassins will get destroyed by any half-decent SC (earth attack, manifestation, etc.) and mind hunt has a variety of counters. The other reason that Vengeance is so annoying is because it will always target the same commander, so you can't recruit decoys.

SCs are pretty damn counterable by the correct tactics without having Vengeance in its more powerful form, and even if the 75 turn death was removed it would still be effective against any thugs that can't last for 75 turns (meaning no fatigue accumulation and a way to regain HP in battle for most of them or they'll get pinged to death) as well as any artillery mages that get a decent kill-count. It would be a niche spell at that point, but still usable when the occasion arose instead of being the go-to for a 0-risk SC kill. Lowering the gem cost to 1 or 2 in return for weakenking it would also be fair.

I guess my thing is that since SCs are on the front lines they're wading into battle turn after turn as it is, and there's plenty of chances to kill them once you're in a fight. (Soul slay, paralyze, life for a life, drain life, spamming an elemental attack they're not resistant to, beating them to death with buffed up troops, teleporting or air trapping a counter-SC in to do righteous battle...there are plenty more)

Even if the spell isn't overpowered on its own I strongly dislike any spell that is hard enough to counter that it might as well not be counterable, as is the case here (I argued against a fully-functional wind ride for the same reason). It doesn't allow an opponent a way to respond to your tactics. Doing something unexpected should be rewarded but everything should have a reasonable counter available for it.

[Velusion]

Micah said:
...mind hunt has a variety of counters.

By variety do you mean having Astral Mages? Not exactly a lot of variety.

Unless you have an SC with just a giganto-huge number of kills equipping him with a charcoal shield or casting fire shield is usually enough eat through enough chaff undead. Unquenched Sword, and the Ark are also artifacts that will do this.

Personally - I think Mind Hunt is much stronger/unbalanced, simply because mind dual/seeking arrow can counter any astral presence. Without astral presence Mind Hunt is evil.

I would agree that there are too many remote leader killer spells (it stagnates the late game) but as compared to say, Mind Hunt, I don't think it is much worse.