vengeance of the dead, how it works with 1000+ ?

Omnirizon · #1 March 26th, 2008, 08:58 AM

Quote:

vfb said:
IMO Vengeance of the Dead is buggy too, for including undead kills in its dead count. It's the souls of the dead you slew coming back to haunt you. So when you double up, where the heck did those extra undead come from?

Its the same mechanics as reincarnation. If reincarnation is true, than how does the population of the world increase? The person living now is only the soul of someone who lived before. They don't die and create a soul of their present life in addition to their last one. So as population increases, where are all the extra souls coming from?

vfb · #2 March 26th, 2008, 09:32 AM

Quote:

Omnirizon said:

Quote:

vfb said:
IMO Vengeance of the Dead is buggy too, for including undead kills in its dead count. It's the souls of the dead you slew coming back to haunt you. So when you double up, where the heck did those extra undead come from?

Its the same mechanics as reincarnation. If reincarnation is true, than how does the population of the world increase? The person living now is only the soul of someone who lived before. They don't die and create a soul of their present life in addition to their last one. So as population increases, where are all the extra souls coming from?

Well, obviously reincarnation as you have interpreted it is logically inconsistent: If "the person living now is only the soul of someone who lived before" and "the population of the world increases" are mutually exclusive, and we know "the population of the world increases" to be true, then "the person living now is only the soul of someone who lived before" is false. In conclusion, Bandar must take death scales.

To get back to the point, there's no need for Vengeance to be inconsistent like this. If undead kills aren't counted towards the kill count for the raised souls in Vengeance, then everything will be fine.

kasnavada · #3 March 26th, 2008, 09:58 AM

Errr...

The people killed in the dreamed caused by the spell shouldn't be counted, that's true even from a logical point of view. Think of it : the guy that got killed now has two, three or more soul ! It's completely illogical !

triqui · #4 March 26th, 2008, 10:20 AM

Quote:

kasnavada said:
Errr...

The people killed in the dreamed caused by the spell shouldn't be counted, that's true even from a logical point of view. Think of it : the guy that got killed now has two, three or more soul ! It's completely illogical !

That might work as a partial solution (at least it avoid the cummulative aspect, and allow you to retire the character for a while, until you have access to better equipment, like more MR). However, it still makes VotD the most powerful anti-character overland spell, when you compare the resarch cost and gem cost. It is much better than mind hunt for example.

kasnavada · #5 March 26th, 2008, 10:50 AM

I do not agree with that. VotD won't ever be able to kill a researcher in a province, while mind hunt can. It is however more powerful than mind hunt when the targetted person has killed many people.

triqui · #6 March 26th, 2008, 01:13 PM

but it is not that hard to put a couple lizard shamans in your research provinces to counter mind hunt (if you dont have astral yourself). What can you do to stop VotD kill your pretender in turn 15?

thejeff · #7 March 26th, 2008, 01:23 PM

I agree it is currently abusive, since it's cumulative and kills the target on timeout.

If either of those were fixed, a decent SC pretender should be able to survive hordes of lousy undead chaff indefinitely.
It should rarely work on a pretender with an Antimagic amulet even now.

kasnavada · #8 March 26th, 2008, 01:24 PM

Taking a non-SC pretender makes it pretty much immune.

I'm not arguing that the spell is not powerful enough or anything, nor defending it. In fact, after having read the entire other post you necroed, I quite agree that something is flawed by design in that spell. Thematically speaking : the dead shouldn't be able to avenge themselves with more than 1 soul, and maybe not more than once. Furthermore, there is no real counter apart from hoping that MR will resist the spell (which is not a counter at all), and it is really quite cheap... Another idea would be to put rituals "behind" movement in initiative order, or give a chance for ritual targetting moving units to fail (50% chance ? or more for fast movement / units ?). But that might change the gameplay too much.

Foodstamp · #9 March 26th, 2008, 01:54 PM

Quote:

Omnirizon said:

Quote:

vfb said:
IMO Vengeance of the Dead is buggy too, for including undead kills in its dead count. It's the souls of the dead you slew coming back to haunt you. So when you double up, where the heck did those extra undead come from?

Its the same mechanics as reincarnation. If reincarnation is true, than how does the population of the world increase? The person living now is only the soul of someone who lived before. They don't die and create a soul of their present life in addition to their last one. So as population increases, where are all the extra souls coming from?

New souls right? Do the "mechanics" of reincarnation say anything about brand new souls entering the mix?

kasnavada · #10 March 26th, 2008, 01:57 PM

There might also be, just to give numbers, a total of 1 billion souls in many places, with "only" 1 million "alive". Leaving place for extension.