HINNOM EATS EVERYTHING

[DonCorazon]

Terrifying guide as usual. I always appreciate a glimpse into Baalz's sinister mind. I imagine the stock price of each nation Baalz' writes about shoots up after each guide.

Anyway, I have yet to even look at Hinnom in the game - never enough time for me - but having been the victim of horror spam now numerous times, I can say the description of it here makes it sound like with Hinnom you could just sit back and let the horrors do most of the work.

So I am always looking for better ways to counter Horror spam. To date it seems the best thing to protect your economy is to constantly have small, roving bands always on the move to recapture the spammed provinces before the enemy hidden scouts do.

I have not been the victim of mass horror spam on an SC - but would be curious to here thoughts on countering that as well...

Thanks for the guide.

[Baalz]

Well, as I'm in the middle of one horror spam campaign and gearing up for another maybe nobody should come up with counters?

Oh well. The most effective thing that has been used *against* me is to have a single cheapish mage with a couple bodyguards scripted to something appropriate sprinkled all around. The cost effectiveness of this varies a lot with the nation you're playing, but horrors have no elemental immunity, and even fall to poison so there's quite a few low level spells which will deal enough damage to stop them considering your mage will generally have several turns to blast them from short range. Even something silly like bonds of fire will hold them still for a round, chopping their defense and keeping them from life draining for long enough that the PD can whittle them down.

As to keeping them from eating your SCs...well, I've never seen anybody else do this so I don't know if anybody's come up with a counter yet (nobody's successfully countered me yet). Nothing obvious comes to mind other than keeping a significant number of bodyguards around...which rather defeats the purpose of a SC.

[Reverend Zombie]

I guess I've just been unlucky/unwise, but I've never had a lesser horror successfully beat ANY PD...

What's the upward limit on PD level that you've found a lesser horror can solo?

[chrispedersen]

Nah; Hinnom can do a horror spam, but you're far more likely to be trampled under the treads of his units in the early or mid game.

I think Baalz is right on several points; the most piquant of which is: sure you can summon LoC. But the odds are you won't GET to. And you certainly won't *need* to.

[DonCorazon]

Yeah, I have used LA TC Masters of the Way with frozen heart to cut down on horror spam but it never feels that cost effective even though they are only 100GP. Even worse using Ri with TNN to stop the burninator's minions.

[MaxWilson]

Baalz said:
As to keeping them from eating your SCs...well, I've never seen anybody else do this so I don't know if anybody's come up with a counter yet (nobody's successfully countered me yet). Nothing obvious comes to mind other than keeping a significant number of bodyguards around...which rather defeats the purpose of a SC.

Two things come to mind: 1.) The normal remote-ritual counters like Dome of Air. Not likely to be useful in all cases but will let him hold ground once he's taken it. 2.) In what sense do PD not make good bodyguards? I should think 10 PD, with the SC right in the middle of them, would break up the horror pack enough to significantly increase the number of horrors needed.

-Max

[Baalz]

Oh, I also wanted to respond to a couple people asking me why I didn't even mention a real blessing. Earth or Nature blessings would be the classical blessings to use for giants, and to be sure they're far from worthless. Thing is, how do you leverage them to make them worthwhile for the opportunity cost of chopping your scales back? The Ba'als certainly don't need the help - a blessing would be a mild bonus on top of all the capability you already have. So, for a blessing we're really talking about the Rephaite Warriors and the question is are they, with a blessing, enough better than your other options to justify lesser scales to get a bless. Your other option is pretty much the Dawn Guard who kicks teh Rephaite's butt on a gold for gold basis.

Ignoring upkeep and production you get 3 Dawn Guard for each Rephaite. The Dawn Guard are size 3 with a defense of 16 and a protection of 13, making them the flat out most survivable giant infantry in the game for the cost (they win handily 1:1 vs Jotun Hirdmen). 3 of them have 75 hitpoints compared to the Rephaite's 55 so they've just got all kinds of advantages in staying power over the Rephaite in most situations. On offense, the Rephaite gets one magic attack and one non-magic, both dealing good damage, whereas 3 Dawn Guard get three magic attacks dealing good damage.

So, what bless makes sense to sacrifice any of your scales for?

[Baalz]

MaxWilson said:

Two things come to mind: 1.) The normal remote-ritual counters like Dome of Air. Not likely to be useful in all cases but will let him hold ground once he's taken it. 2.) In what sense do PD not make good bodyguards? I should think 10 PD, with the SC right in the middle of them, would break up the horror pack enough to significantly increase the number of horrors needed.

-Max

Horrors rout the PD in the first couple turns, which routs the SC. Depends on the PD of course...

[Tifone]

@ Reverend Zombie,

as I said, I'm trying the potential of Horrors in my actual SP game using Mictlan.

Maybe it isn't a very worthy example but trying to soften a Marverni army of about 80 mixed units + a "quite well organized" PD sending a lesser horror to the enemy province before my actual army of blessed Jaguar Warriors (they wouldn't have needed that help anyway), with my surprise the lesser horror was able to kill some of them and to rout everybody - so my army had only to fight the few units that were arriving for their reinforcement.

It isn't a great example, Marverni's PD is IMHO quite poor and their army did not have good mages, but as you asked which PD a lesser Horror was able to defeat, well this is one. ^_^

[calmon]

A moderate bless strategy without destroying the scales is taking an imprissoned E9 Cyclop. Go for O3S2F3G3L3M1 and dom 7. Just conquer some surrounding provinces and you've enough resources. Early game isn't significant slower because of sloth and later you don't miss production.