Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running

[Hrum]

Turn 31 is up. I think you guys all noticed this already.

Originally Posted by endomorphious

Ugh Kailasa keep your dang monkeys on your side of the map. One of the little buggers burnt down a lab.

Dude, sorry about that. I didn't think they liked your swampy lizard lands, but I guess monkeys can pop up anywhere. They are cheeky little buggers aren't they? I recommend keeping them out of your labs if you can manage it, but that's probably easier said than done.

Originally Posted by endomorphious

need some advice. I will have researched alteration 6 the end of this turn and can finally start planning on using darkness/skellispam in my expansion. What should I focus on now?

I agree with Doo about the thug summons (banes and whatnot). You may need to kit them out a bit, but I think it'll be worth it (not sure they're amphibious natively). Vine shields w/ fire/shadow brands are always nice too. If you can't forge these I can make fire brands for you (they're better than frost brands against a guy that has either some resistances or high prot - fire brands are AP, frost brands aren't so even if the splash isn't helping much at least someone gets hit with a damaging AP attack).

I have some other thoughts on stuff you might want to do as well. Basically, it sounds like you really went full bore for the darkness thing, which may or may not be super useful against Atlantis (would've worked great against Niefelheim, but there isn't much left of him). The reason it may only be partially useful against Atlantis is (and I hadn't really looked at Atlantis before or I would've mentioned this earlier):

Atlantis has troops that have darkvision natively! And yes, in scouting reports watching the fights between Atlantis and Niefel I've seen him using troop mixes including these guys a fair bit:

-Deep Ones / #Deep One Spearmen (Dv 100; Fire & Cold Resist 50%)
-Atlantian Spearmen (DV 50)
-Shambler of the Deep / #Warrior of the Deep (DV 100; Fre & Cold Resist 50%)

#(These dudes have scary basalt spears, which defeat etherealness.)

I guess it's pretty dark down in the deeps and the Atlantian troops have adapted to that. So, using darkness on Atlantis won't be as overwhelming as it would be against many other nations. I think it'll still be somewhat useful, as I bet the AI mixes in some guys who don't have awesome DV with most of his armies, but in an MP game against a human Atlantis opponent you'd probably be facing nothing but DV100 guys as soon as he saw that you were sending undead at him (apparently those Deep One Spearmen are highly prized Atlantian chaff in general because they're cheap / low resource, and can be cranked out like mad). They ain't none of 'em poison resistant though...


So, other than darkness what do you have? I looked at the EA C'Tis mages on the wiki and it looks like you've got your share of:

-D
-more D
-N
-some S
-some W

Bearing your paths in mind, I looked over the list of spells and it looks like you've got all of the following available to you at a not terribly high research level (I tried not to look above research 5 in any school).

I know you may not have some of those at high enough levels that you can cast all the spells below right out of the box, but for some of these spells it may be worth forging a path booster and sending a path boosted mage out to the front lines. Nature boosters (thistle mace) and water boosters (Water Bracelet, Robe of the Sea) are relatively cheap / easy to make.


Rituals - prep for combat by summoning dudes:
conj2 d2 summon shades (5d gems 4x shades) [amph]
conj3 d2 revive bane (8d gems - commander) [no amph - needs gear?]
conj4 d3 summon shade beasts (20d gems 15x shade beasts) [pr amph]
conj5 d4 revive bane lord (12d gems - commander) [no amph - needs gear?]
ench5 d3 pale riders (10d gems 20x skel horsemen) [pr amph]


Buff your dudes:
evo2 w2 rain (1w gem) [OK, not a buff per se, but nice to have on land if enemy has F mages]
alt3 s1 **body ethereal (*do this to your bane/bane lord thugs)
alt5 n2 wooden warriors (do this to your undead chaff)

*For some reason I thought the banes were ethereal, but the wiki suggests not. Seems I was misremembering - maybe people tend to make them ethereal so often I just thought they were natively..? In any case, why not make the banes/bane lords ethereal if you can swing it? Great against some opponents, not so much against others...
**Ethereal may actually be less useful against Atlantis. Some of his troops have basalt spears that are magic / defeat the ethereal effect.


Kill enemy dudes w/ poison & death kaboom (supposedly only 1 of these doesn't work underwater):
alt1 n1 eagle eyes (improve mages' precision before firing evos)
evo4 n2 breath of the dragon (NUW)
evo5 n3 poison cloud
evo5 d2 shadow blast (1d gem)
ench5 n3w1 foul vapors (1n gem - whole BF)


Sleepify / Scare remaining enemy dudes:
evo3 n2 sleep cloud (the manual doesn't say NUW, so this might work for water fighting)
thau3 n2 panic
thau4 d3 terror


Bonus underwater combat spell (for Conj6 w3):
Shark Attack (3w gems)

Here's a useful thread on underwater fighting:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43042

The great thing about using poison & death magic along with undead is that your undead are immune. No worries about collateral damage. Fear spam same. I think the same is true of sleep effects / fatigue effects as well (undead don't get fatigued and don't sleep?).

Is any of that useful at all?

Originally Posted by Doo

If you need you can ask Hrum if you can create a path through his lands so you can participate. Or research and gear up to try going underwater.

C'Tis has 2 AI neighbors he can make war with to his north (the dwindling Niefelheim, incl his northern capital, and Atlantis who is heavily on land at this point). C'Tis shouldn't need a path through me to expand (he would to go after Abysia, but seems a bad idea to leave a scary submerged enemy who is now on land on your door step while going off to fight on the far removed eastern continent).

Fighting through Atlantis will even give C'Tis access to port provinces that will (ultimately) allow access to the NW and the E continents. The biggest obstacle to hopping to the other continents that way is Atlantis, who will raid mercilessly along the coast once war is begun with him (since he's the one who holds those port provinces). IMO, the solution is to get in the water and put an end to the fishmen.

Sorry for another long $%^&ing post. :P

[Thanatus del Dragos]

Tien Chi fought off one of my sieging forces. I had 50 troops and he had his God and 250 troops. It was a bad loss, I lost 35 of my troops, but I did take out 115 of his and I have a large reinforcement team coming. I am going to send a stealth unit to the south to see what Atlantis is up too.

[Hrum]

Turn 33 is up.

Originally Posted by Thanatus del Dragos

Tien Chi fought off one of my sieging forces. I had 50 troops and he had his God and 250 troops. It was a bad loss, I lost 35 of my troops, but I did take out 115 of his and I have a large reinforcement team coming. I am going to send a stealth unit to the south to see what Atlantis is up too.

Ouch. That's a rough one. What's TC's pretender like?

Endo, I wasn't thinking about those tough indie provs boxing you in when I posted earlier. Would it make it easier if you had a path through those formerly Niefel provinces in the south?

Also, maybe we should re-visit those tough indie provinces. We've all got higher research now and there might be some options for taking those down. One of them has a dragon leading a bunch of militia, right? I'm going to have to go back through this thread to check about the other one, but maybe you can get us some up to date scouting on those..?

---------
Edit:

Originally Posted by endomorphious

On of the choke points near me has 210+ Ryleh troops...I can't take it but doubt anyone else will be anytime soon :}.

Is this the other tough indie province?

[Thanatus del Dragos]

TC has a Jade Emporer stacked in uber gear, but not super powerful magic paths. Can't remmeber off the top of my head, but I will take him next time.

[endomorphious]

Took province 28, the one with the red dragon, militia, and fairies. What a waste of good meatshields :{ sigh. But, realistically, me being able to charm someone is less likely than Quasimodo trying to score Lady Gaga in a 89 Fiesta.

Will be attacking province 32 next turn. The Southern Toad Tribes are about to become snake food. (I hope) my scripting seemed to do very well against the dragon. The level 4 priest spell word of power(??) hit him several times and then a few soul vortex's and life drains and he went down fairly easily. The only thing was my mage did not cast Darkness as ordered. Very irksome.

I NEEEEED gold. Anyone want to buy some gems for gold? I have spare fire, air, and water. Could scrimp and weasel out some death gems instead of skull mentor. A smattering of nature and earth gems too.

My goal is to march my big god/prophet/mage force up through, 32, 40 (if unowned-can't see it), then siege 55. Mop up left over forces and then focus on Atlantis.

[Doo]

Endomorphious, I will shoot you through some gold this turn.

Bugger on Tien Chi busting the siege. Still I have one and I'm sure Thanatus del Dragos you still have another under siege. I suspect your one will be hit by his god force first.

[Hrum]

Originally Posted by endomorphious

Took province 28, the one with the red dragon, militia, and fairies.

...my scripting seemed to do very well against the dragon. The level 4 priest spell word of power(??) hit him several times and then a few soul vortex's and life drains and he went down fairly easily. The only thing was my mage did not cast Darkness as ordered. Very irksome.

Nice work! I'm only sad my scout wasn't in position to watch.

Word of power is nice. More than one Soul Vortex? Did you have multiple guys cast it and then run into melee? Soul Vortex is typically used as a thug/SC buffing spell rather than as a killing spell (it works for killing chaff, but doesn't necessarily have much effect on big guys w/ high MR).

You had D gems with the Darkness mage I take it? Was it the first spell that mage was casting (ie. was he at zero fatigue when he would've been casting)? Sometimes the Dom3 spellcasting AI just decides it knows better and won't cast a spell. In the case of darkness it might've happened if you had too many troops present that didn't have DV (I don't know this for a fact; just pulling stuff out of a monkey's nether regions - uhh, yeah. Gross.).

But, realistically, me being able to charm someone is less likely than Quasimodo trying to score Lady Gaga in a 89 Fiesta.

LOL! Nice. Seriously, charming and seducing and whatnot is not easy. As I understand it, you need a whole sack of seducers / charmers all decked out in penetration gear (you play the percentages game by sending a bunch of mages and having 'em spam it), and they still won't succeed against anyone with high enough MR. Mid to high teens is the highest you're likely to succeed on.

My goal is to march my big god/prophet/mage force up through, 32, 40 (if unowned-can't see it), then siege 55. Mop up left over forces and then focus on Atlantis.

/Kailasa scout finds vantage high above the next battlefield and settles in with cold rice and a little rat meat...

Sent what gold I could spare your way. If you can spare some water gems I won't refuse 'em (I can't get enough!), but no worries if you got better uses for 'em.

[endomorphious]

Thanks for the gold guys. Big help. those sauromancers are greedy little buggers! About time to send em out working for their gold. Their shall be a tide of risen dead drowning the remnants of Niefels dreams. HAH water gems on the way...I've been stockpiling as Ive not researced Cons 6 yet :{ which I will have to do once i finish Alt 8, in like 3 turns. I'm hoping disintegrate is worth the push that high up.

[Thanatus del Dragos]

I siege and took one fort from him already, that one is no longer under dispute, he has no force near it. I will tke him in the south, I have no fear. I now have storms and thunder at my disposal with Evo 5, I will crush him!

[Thanatus del Dragos]

Storming the castle, they might fight me off, or they might just die, we'll see.