MP game - "Pantheons" Started

[The Panther]

False horrors are unbalanced because it makes 90+% of the national troops worthless much too early in the game. Even my power-blessed heart companions with very high morale are worthless against false horrors. My chariots and elephants, were I to build any, would be even more hopeless because trample fails miserably against ethereal troops. My many priests refuse to cast sermon of courage because of some problem about the horrors that I have yet to understand.

Ulm has pretty much no counter to the horrors either until he gets mechanical men, which occurs significantly later than Caelum gets horrors. The smiths cast bladewinds and magna bolts on their own troops when the horrors arrive.

There has been many a post on the forum on this very subject. You can argue against this all you want, but that does not make it any less true. That is one of the reasons that Caelum is frequently Banned in many a new game.

It looks like my turn will work now. Staling twice in the Last 4 turns is rough, but at least it means I have some extra gold now. Also I now have the research to counter the horrors if it happens again. But it is too little and too late for the good guys, I am afraid.

[Lex]

Well, i'm pretty sure Flames from Afar would be quite painful to 20+ Seraphs. But in combat, I've never seen anything beat a large group of Seraphs. Maybe an army of Devils or other summons would work well. A lone SC wouldn't have a chance against the 200+ False Horrors, but a group of them would eventually push their way to the Seraphs, who would be asleep from exhaustion after so many turns.

Its also useful to know that Seraphs can't seige a fortification in a million years. Even a group of 20 Seraphs would need a half dozen turns sometimes. So building castles is a good defence against Caelum, since it means the worst they can do is cause unrest and disrupt income for a turn.

Also, is everybody forgetting that anything etheral can fly through a storm? That means etheral SCs or Ghosts or Vampires can attack Seraphs directly on the first turn. If you have more then Caelum has Seraphs, you'll win. In mid to late game, any player with a blood economy should have no problem attacking Caelum. And you don't need to attack Caelum's armies, obviously you attack Caelum's empire and force his armies into a defence posture.

Its just really expensive (or impossible) to defeat massive amounts of False Horrors with your "normal" units. And defeating it early game is almost impossible, which is why False Horror is level 6 research. But obviously it pays off to do the research and raid all you unsuspecting opponents before they can summon an army to stop you. That's simply a good strategy.

Anyways, I'm gonna stop telling you guys how to kick my ***, and get back to playing

[alexti]

Same goes for Ice/Arch Devils, Elemental King/Queens and even simple Bane Lords. You just can't use national troops alone except in the very beginning. Add to them some fliers or mages with area damage spells and a SC or 2 and they become very decent force. So the main problem with seraphs is not defeat them, but to catch them. They're more similar to call of winds/call of wild in this sense. But of course, when you caught out unprepared, those seraphs with their false horrors can be nasty.

Though in this game with known sides and starting locations, Caelum's seraph-fest was as easily predictable as early Ulm's power rush and the early assault on Mictlan.

[alexti]

Lex said:
Well, i'm pretty sure Flames from Afar would be quite painful to 20+ Seraphs.

That's why you'd better move in small Groups of 1-2 seraphs

Lex said:
But in combat, I've never seen anything beat a large group of Seraphs.

You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though For now.

[Boron]

Lex said:

Its also useful to know that Seraphs can't seige a fortification in a million years. Even a group of 20 Seraphs would need a half dozen turns sometimes. So building castles is a good defence against Caelum, since it means the worst they can do is cause unrest and disrupt income for a turn.

Also, is everybody forgetting that anything etheral can fly through a storm? That means etheral SCs or Ghosts or Vampires can attack Seraphs directly on the first turn. If you have more then Caelum has Seraphs, you'll win. In mid to late game, any player with a blood economy should have no problem attacking Caelum. And you don't need to attack Caelum's armies, obviously you attack Caelum's empire and force his armies into a defence posture.

Are you sure about vampires etc. flying during a storm ?!?
Afaik it doesn't work .

Your fortification hint is not very helpful .... .
First some nations like ulm play usually with a high admin fort so madcastling is not an option .
Second severe madcastling is so expensive that you fall behind in research or other important areas .
Third you don't need to really siege the castles just as you said taxing to 200% is enough .
On other provinces than the capitol you can normally keep anyways a small seiging force to put unrest >100 . Often there are no mages .

The false horror is too powerful but mainly because of the problem with the fear aura as Stormbinder / Arryn suppose .

2 or 3 seraphs with a few archers can't be beaten even by a small garrison + pd .
You would need to have everywhere mages or SCs but thats impossible for a long time .

Level 6 research is earlygame , at about turn 10-12 at least you have it researched and it gives you good SC buff magic as well .

Especially in a teamgame where you get probably gold from other players you can very quickly build 2-3 new castles and spam hordes of seraphs .
No enemy expect pan cw and ermor can beat that in early - midgame reliable and not too costintensive .

[Boron]

alexti said:

That's why you'd better move in small Groups of 1-2 seraphs

You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though For now.

Yeah an SC of the right kind . But that is only 1 or 2 seraph armies .

It is just brutal he can strike at will on all weaker defended provinces . If you split your forces to avoid that then another teammember like jotunheim comes with a SC army and defeats one garrison after the other .
In a normal game you could probably deal with caelum better but in our teamgame we should have forbidden it imo .

[The Panther]

False horrors may be level 6, but it is in the school that Caelum usually researchs first. And Caelum researches faster than any other race, except possibly for GE Arco and Ermor.

It dawned on me that I could have gone GE Arco and gotten the flying elephants. This would have completely eliminated the Caelum raid strategy against me (but not anyone else). But GE would have been far worse against my nearest neighbor Pythium than standard Arco.

Also, with our team having no air races, there was no way to get a staff of storms, which is another possible counter.

As far as the flying SC thing and the army of devils, that takes easily more than 3 times longer to achieve than Caelum merely researching up to level 6 in its preferred path.

Still, the bottom line is that we are getting badly beat, almost primarily due to one single unbalanced spell. Without that, Pickles and I may have eliminated both Mictlan and Pythium by now.

Of course, this does not take anything away from the fact that the Team B playing well and using their inherent advantages to the fullest. They surely are.

I wonder if it is too early to call for a rematch???

[Boron]

The Panther said:
I wonder if it is too early to call for a rematch???

It is still a bit too early but i think in 5-10 turns it is time to call for a rematch . We could play with the same map / nations but with changed nation allocations to teams . This way Team B could show if they can do as well with our nations against us .

[Lex]

Boron said:

Are you sure about vampires etc. flying during a storm ?!?
Afaik it doesn't work .

Vampires are etheral. False Horrors are etheral. False Horrors can fly in a storm. Therefor Vampires can fly in a storm. It also makes sense that if you're etheral, a little wind won't stop you from flying around.

Boron said:
Especially in a teamgame where you get probably gold from other players you can very quickly build 2-3 new castles and spam hordes of seraphs .
No enemy expect pan cw and ermor can beat that in early - midgame reliable and not too costintensive .

for the record, I've had a surplus of gold all game. I've been giving it out whenever its needed. Remember that no one has attacked me, with the exception of a single scout who took one of my undefended provinces TWICE. So I've just been sitting on high income provinces and enjoying the quiet life with Pangaea while an early raiding army of 12 seraphs split up and had some fun down south.

Edit: i actually had more then 12 seraphs to start with.. i lost a whole raiding party to machaka's Black Hunters and I've since been avoiding him

[alexti]

Boron said:

Yeah an SC of the right kind . But that is only 1 or 2 seraph armies .

Yeah, but the Caelum player won't be happy to lose even one 20-40 seraph army per turn. And the right kind of SC can cloud trapeze/teleport, so it will completely prevent Caelum from using massive seraph armies. They can still raid by lone seraphs though. But on another hand, killing that lone seraphs with remote spell only costs 3-5 gems, so it's more or less equal exchange.