Mass-produced Reanimating Priests: Exploit?

[thejeff]

The trouble with Rain of Stones is if you do it once you won't kill enough to bother with. If you do it too much you'll kill off the newly soulless mages.

You need something they become immune to. Poison and Cold are the obvious choices.

[Coldshard]

Just put them in a tight group and have another mage cast berserk on them

[Taqwus]

Finally, a use for bog-beast spam...

[JimMorrison]

Taqwus said:
Another excellent use for bog-beast spam...

[Ironhawk]

Rain of Stones / Earthquake, or any other battlefield wide spell of that nature is very difficult to use because it relies on the AI choosing to spend gems. You cant ensure you will get a combat like that if you assume you are restricting yourself to nuetral province attacks to trigger the battle (horrors, GRs, etc).

Knocking mages out works, BUT as I said before, the damage pattern of poison is such that you are almost guaranteed to get multiple afflictions. The optimal way to carry out this tactic would be to kill them all in one blast, using no gems (except for items).

And btw, Soul Vortex doesnt work, either. Its slow, like poison, but beyond that, mages have good MR so they resist it a lot.

Given how often we have all had mages killed off by AI mistakes, it's really surprising how hard it is to kill them off intentionally. If anyone can find a good way to do it, let me know.

[JimMorrison]

Ironhawk said:
Rain of Stones / Earthquake, or any other battlefield wide spell of that nature is very difficult to use because it relies on the AI choosing to spend gems. You cant ensure you will get a combat like that if you assume you are restricting yourself to nuetral province attacks to trigger the battle (horrors, GRs, etc).

Knocking mages out works, BUT as I said before, the damage pattern of poison is such that you are almost guaranteed to get multiple afflictions. The optimal way to carry out this tactic would be to kill them all in one blast, using no gems (except for items).

And btw, Soul Vortex doesnt work, either. Its slow, like poison, but beyond that, mages have good MR so they resist it a lot.

Given how often we have all had mages killed off by AI mistakes, it's really surprising how hard it is to kill them off intentionally. If anyone can find a good way to do it, let me know.

A slow death gives more chances for afflictions, but sudden traumatic death (100% hp loss) guarantees an affliction. Unless you have N4+ bless, in which case, the gradual death is preferable, as the chance per hit goes down dramatically, leaving only the huge hit a decent chance to actually afflict.

Does Fatigue damage give afflictions? You could have every mage cast Breath of Winter, or you could summon some nice undeads with Chill auras.

[MaxWilson]

Well, it's easy to kill them off intentionally. It's just hard to kill them off while leaving the second, soulless form "alive." Restricting yourself to neutral provinces is probably not the way to go here because you put them in danger and lose a lot of time travelling. It's probably better to set them on patrol outside the castle and go for Phantasmal Army or Ghost Riders.

-Max

[NTJedi]

MaxWilson said:
It's just hard to kill them off while leaving the second, soulless form "alive."

-Max

Have the priests stand next to someone/something with a chill aura or poison aura... second soulless form easily lives being cold/poison immune.

Fighting any group of weak independents will work or maybe a human ally will help

[Ironhawk]

JimMorrison said:
A slow death gives more chances for afflictions, but sudden traumatic death (100% hp loss) guarantees an affliction.

It doesnt guarantee one, but it makes it very likely, yes. However, having only one affliction is better than having 2-3 which could possibly cripple your mage's value.

[Ironhawk]

Yeah nuetral province attack spells are the only effective way to go. At the time of the game when this tactic becomes available, there may not even be any indies alive.


You know I was thinking... what if you did something like put all your mages together in a clump up front. In addition, you bring like 30-40 archers and put them behind with orders to Fire Closest. Then had a horror marked mage summon a horror (or an ashen angel). So your mages would get all shot to hell by the arrows. Not sure if that would kill thier second form or not - just one volley, I mean.