Silent Seas AAR

[BigJMoney]

Ballbarian said:
mmmm... Stacking quickness makes my mouth water almost as much as the new lighting effects.

I thought the point he was making was that they don't stack. From 14 to 21 due to bless means +50%. To then go on to 28 means a total bless effect of only +100%. Had he not cast the bless but only the other spell, it would have gone from 14 straight to 28. The test he was conducting wasn't about stacking quickness, anyway. It was whether the Yavanas were considered Celestial Dancers or not.

=$=

[st.patrik]

true true. Maybe in light of this spell (Celestial Dancers) I should have gone for a fire blessing instead of water... although it takes a while to get up to Ench. 6 or whatever it is to cast Celestial Dancers - plus the fact that the only national mages that can cast it are summons. Probably better early to mid game the way I did it, and better mid to late game with a fire blessing.

[Nerfix]

st.patrik said:
true true. Maybe in light of this spell (Celestial Dancers) I should have gone for a fire blessing instead of water... although it takes a while to get up to Ench. 6 or whatever it is to cast Celestial Dancers - plus the fact that the only national mages that can cast it are summons. Probably better early to mid game the way I did it, and better mid to late game with a fire blessing.

Choices choices.

But that's what we love in this game, right?

[st.patrik]

Turn 65
Success! I dislodged Vanheim's army of more than 300 troops from T'ien Ch'i's fortified city. I lost 11 Yavanas in the process, but their death toll was much higher: 281 warriors and 7 commanders. The walls are already in disrepair, so I am taking advantage of this to storm the city. Soon T'ien Ch'i's last stronghold will be taken. After this he only has two provinces, which will quickly fall, and then it will be down to Vanheim and me.

Devarama is heading south this turn. I have outfitted him a little differently from Balastha, as you can see below:



Since I realised that quickness does not stack past a certain limit, if he is blessed and casts Celestial Music, the boots of speed do not do very much for him. Instead I gave him Birch Boots, which reinvigorate the wearer a little, and provide some poison and cold resistance.

My researchers discovered how to call a global enchantment that will aid in the forging of magical items. Anuprabha (with the aid of some earth boots) has enough familiarity with earth magic to complete the incantation, and will begin immediately, and then I will be able to outfit myself and my commanders with the best equipment that can be made.

Last month I sent 6 Yakshas and Yakshinis who were helping with research towards the front. They will be better used there, in the fight against Vanheim. Half are going to the west, through the pass in the mountains, and will form two army groups, headed by Devasura and Dhritiman respectively. The other half are going to the south, where I will have three groups, headed by Bishen the Siddha, Balastha, and now Devarama. Vanheim will surely fall.

[Folket]

It seems to me that the quickness do not stack at all. Try casting the celestial music first. My guess it that it would give ordinary quickness which will double ap to 28.

[Nerfix]

Birch shoes? Interesting.

[st.patrik]

Folket said:
It seems to me that the quickness do not stack at all. Try casting the celestial music first. My guess it that it would give ordinary quickness which will double ap to 28.

I realised this after my field test of celestial music. The reason I had hoped otherwise is that heroic quickness can get over double your starting AP. However, I guess this is not accomplishable by other means.

This is exactly why I switched out the boots of speed for the birch boots.
also consider the discussion about blessing, where I was exploring the merits of a fire blessing instead of a water blessing, because once you can cast celestial dancers the water blessing becomes somewhat redundant.

so yeah, it doesn't stack

[Nerfix]

Air bless could have been good, very good. Maybe not Air 9. Just Air 4 or 6 to get the Air Shield. Fire, pretty much always useful..hmmm, perhaps I'll try Kailasa with a Naga and 4 Blessings here and there...

[st.patrik]

I thought about air, but I figured I could archer decoy with those Bandar, which mostly worked pretty well, but it would have been easier to just have air shield from bless. If I could get a water9 + fire9 blessing that would be pretty impressive, but difficult to do, especially considering most of the fun summons are astral, and the most powerful national mage in astral magic is the Guru at astral 2. Gettting a water9 + fire9 + astral4 blessing (for example) would be pretty hard, especially considering you want a strong dominion to recruit lots of sacred troops.
Although the one thing I definitely would change in my pretender design if I could go back would be the sloth scale: I took sloth 1, but could easily have gotten away with sloth 3, which would have given me 80 more design points to work with.

[Endoperez]

Nerfix said:
Air bless could have been good, very good. Maybe not Air 9. Just Air 4 or 6 to get the Air Shield. Fire, pretty much always useful..hmmm, perhaps I'll try Kailasa with a Naga and 4 Blessings here and there...

There are no Naga pretenders any more. There is a race of Nagas, and I really hope you didn't expect to see lots of size 6 monstrosities as recruitable creatures...

Water 8 works well, even with Celestial Music (as I take it bestows the form of quickness that increases defense). Water 8 wouldn't be worth it just for the blessing, but Water 6 might. Patala has Water/Astral pretender, with whom it is easy to get both high Water blessing, and enough Astral in a Dormant form to be able to summon the national summon at higher levels of Conjuration. While Water Blessing mightn't be optimal, it can still be very good. It's also an easy answer to any demon problems you might have.