I think I did get lucky in some respects. Indeed, Father Illearth (my script was Petrify, Living Earth, Reinvigoration, Attack) was on the defensive in both his fights, and that first round Petrification probably did a lot to screw up opponents' scripting. And anyone facing Caelum's Spenta in the first round would have had their hands full as well.
But then again, he came into the fights with 234 HP, 20 HP regeneration, and luck. He might have been able to survive a Gift of Heaven strike or two, long enough to get off that Petrify. And Claws of Kokytos would just have sent him back into the tournament pool (he might have lost his Blood Slaves though, I'm not sure, but skipping the Reinvigoration might not have mattered much). And in the end, he never had to even use Mage Bane.
Yeah, I kicked around a lot of ideas for the tournament. Plan A was a Blood empowered Garnet-Sorceress casting Infernal Prison (with a Bag of Winds, so the Air Elemental would be the target of any enemy spell). But when I tested it, I realized that it just sent the victim back into the contest, so eventually she would have run out of Slaves, and would almost certainly get squished by the last competitor.
I also thought about an GoRed Ettin armed with Mage Bane, the Hammer of the Mountains, and the Gift of Kurgi, but I had no Ettins in a lab when the tournament was announced.
And I also Blood empowered a Vampire Lord, with the plan to give him a bunch of Blood boosting items and Slaves, place him in the back, and scripted with Life for a Life x 5. But I worried that enemies with high HP, regeneration, and/or luck might be able to shrug it off, and toast him in close combat. I didn't even think about all the Slaves getting toasted by Flame Storm and the like!
And my Gorgon pretender was another option (armed with Mage Bane of course, with flying, and Petrification for crown control).
But Illearth seemed to have the best combination of survivability, crowd control, and offensive capability - with Mage Bane at least. If it had been wished away, I may have gone for one of the other options (probably the Vampire Lord).
TheJeff: Yeah, Pirenna was crazy! Boy, when all my Maenads got wiped by the RoS, and many other units blasted by Neifel Flames and Flame Storm, I thought I would break and retreat in the first round!
And yeah, once both sides got up their buffs, and the gate got clogged with Sea Trolls (I think the same two stupid buffed - but not with an attack bonus - and regenerating Trolls stood in that gateway for 30 or so turns, or so it felt), it was stalemate, until the timer expired. Yeah, I thought I was going to get lucky with the berserk Ice Devil, and I would have too, if he hadn't gotten in the way of your retreating Fire Snakes
If one side uses storm to stop fliers, I don't know what can be done in that kind of situation.
Maybe just use the Maenads to tear down the walls, but only send in the high HP mages and some tough SCs? But then those few SCs just become targets for everything, so I don't know. In the future though, I definitely would have continued using Maenads and such on offense - they just die too easily before they can get buffed.
Re: Mists of Time: Early Era Game [full]
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