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

[Foodstamp]

Duh, he has about a month of playing the game under his belt. Maybe when he has two months, he will equip an amulet of antimagic.

[kasnavada]

Why I am wasting time here... That point about the anti-magic amulet has already been countered in the 10 pages of this thread and the other one.

[Foodstamp]

I am too lazy to look through all these tears, but I guarantee I can show you several posts explaining to you two how to counter the spell.

The game should not be "I don't want to counter this spell so nerf it please."

The beauty of this game is the complexity, the counters, the counters to those counters etc. I would think a fan of the Dune series would appreciate such a system of complexity.

[Tuidjy]

I have killed enemy SCs with Vengeance of the Dead very, very early. I was
playing a rainbow bless with MA Ermor, and I think I had it before the end
of the first year. I attacked a province with neutral dominion with a
bunch of mage/priests, set them to preach for the turn and retreat in combat.

The enemy Pretender came, and routed the priests, but on that turn the dominion
was 3 for me. I cast a few VoD. The pretender, a Virtue, failed her second MR
check, and died. Note that it was not because of the bug, but because of her
encumberance and her 100+ kills. But still, there was no way she was going to
kill them all in 75 turns. And even if she had some form of quickness and
reinvigoration, next time, there would have been 200+.

[OmikronWarrior]

Vengeance of the Dead is definitely a better spell than mind hutn, but it does have its limits.

1) A nation needs access to a combined Death and Astral Mage (3S,2D) to cast the spell. Not a lot of those floating around.
2) It requires an MR check. Pretenders have a base MR of 18, meaning assumming no other modifiers the spell will only work 8% of the time. The use of Penetration boosters is obvious, but so is the equiping of MR boosters. Finally, dominion will alter MR.
3) If the MR fails, the avenging dead still have to kill the unit. IF the unit is an SC, chances are he or she will be equiped to deal with masses of low level troops. Obviously, the spell become more powerful with each casting, but this combined with the MR check is enough to balance the cost of the spell.

Personally, I think its almost better suited for picking off evocation mages than SC's. But as players have mentioned SC's rarely need any further help than what they've already got.

[triqui]

OmikronWarrior said:
Vengeance of the Dead is definitely a better spell than mind hutn, but it does have its limits.

1) A nation needs access to a combined Death and Astral Mage (3S,2D) to cast the spell. Not a lot of those floating around.

Utgarde, LA ryleh, and MA ermor comes to mind. And honestly i dont think this is a good argument. Mist of Deception, in it's buggy state, it is completelly overpowered and exploitable. Even if there are fewer A6 casters than there are S3D2 ones.

2) It requires an MR check. Pretenders have a base MR of 18, meaning assumming no other modifiers the spell will only work 8% of the time. The use of Penetration boosters is obvious, but so is the equiping of MR boosters. Finally, dominion will alter MR.

If you read the original post i linked, MR is not as good as it reads vs this spell, and being easily spammable, it is not a guarantee of nothing. Beyond that, It is Thau4. Antimagic items are Cons4. Not that easy of a counter, plus several nations do not have astral or earth2 easily achieavable.

3) If the MR fails, the avenging dead still have to kill the unit. IF the unit is an SC, chances are he or she will be equiped to deal with masses of low level troops. Obviously, the spell become more powerful with each casting, but this combined with the MR check is enough to balance the cost of the spell.

Actually, they don't need to kill the SC at all. THey only need to hang around dying in masses until turn 75 bell sounds.

I dont see it as help needed for SC. I see it as a bug problem, and a bug exploit. Same bug than Mist of Deception for that matter: mindless units without a leader *should* crumble. This zombies should not be mindless, or should need a freddy krugger type. Either way, they should rout in turn 50 as every other single attacker does.

[thejeff]

Simplest solution to VotD would be to add leaders for it. Maybe 1/20 or so, so that it's not too easy to just kill the leader to win. Make them as indistinguishable as possible so it's hard to target them. Same size, also mindless, etc.

Then, they'll rout at turn 50 and the chaff will start to disintegrate.

[lch]

Ohhhhhh! Another Vengeance of the Dead thread! When I thought everything that could be said about it has already been done so.

The easy fix to the whole dilemma would be: The devs hack the spell so that the kills from the VotD assassination attempt does not count towards the units kill count.

[Karlem]

It's funny Foodstamp. I think opposite to you about the fact that inmortal units really die to this spells is a good thing not a bad one : Everything should be killable. But not because they reach a 75 turn limit.

[Foodstamp]

I'm pretty sure you are aware that amulet of antimagic is construction 4, and this spell is thaumaturgy 4, so in order of your brilliant suggestion be able to be used the nation
1) need astral
2) need to rush to construction 4 as soon as the other nation rush to thau 4
3) need to have better and faster research than the VotD caster, which might be impossible depending on the nations compared research mages
4) even if you run as much as the other guy does, you need 1 turn to craft the item and 1 turn to equip it, and only 1 turn to cast VotD, so it still beats you
5) it is reported that the out of combat spells reduce the MR (see the link). Being it a WAD or bug, it is there.
6) penetration items also are available.
7) it cost 3 damn gems, it is easily spamable for the right nations
8)the original poster in the original thread that i linked you at the starting of this post had MR 25.
9) did i say i did not have an amulet of mr?

Really, this is the best argument you have? You have equal chance of getting to magic resistance items as your enemy has to cast the spell. On top of that, for him to spam it, he needs multiple mages that can cast it. Not many nations can pull that off. The scenario you list step by step above is not unbiased in the least bit. It is infinitely easier to forge an amulet than it is to spam vengeance of the dead.

So while you try to point out how impossible it is for you to counter this spell, I would argue that it is more difficult to get the spell going. And you are trying to tell me that your SC failed his MR against all attempts with an amulet of antimagic you had equipped. I am calling shenanigans here, you did not mention an amulet until I did, and if you are being honest about having one, then that is some pretty terrible luck and will not likely happen to you in future games.

To the MR 25 comment. I have used this spell in quite a few games, as I love to play R'lyeh. And to hit an MR that high would be close to impossible without penetration items. For every time I have had the spell work on a powerful target, I have had it fail numerous times. Sometimes when people get butthurt over game mechanices, they have a tendency to remember the event a little different than it actually happened. I am guessing in your case an Amulet was added in retrospect, and in the other guy's case, the ratio of success/failure is probably a bit skewed.

Or maybe you are right. You guys have found the end-all-be-all I win spell in this game. Many people will read this thread and from here until the game is patched to fix this heinous spell, it will be the focal point of every strategy conceived from this point onward.