Best MA Calvary Unit

[Xietor]

I am starting to like the Knights of Avalon. Their ability to heal afflictions, and their magical attack make them, arguably, the best calvary unit. I am playing Man and they dispatch winter wolves and spring hawks in 1 round of combat.

[MaxWilson]

On paper, it looks to me like that would be vans. Cheap resource-wise, recruitable anywhere, great defense, glamour. Damage is inferior to KoA and they have those annoying javelins that they delay for a turn to throw, but stealth is a really fun ability. I agree that 20 KoAs are likely to kill 20 Vans, but it just takes so long to recruit 20 KoAs with that resource cost that I hesitate to compare than on a one-for-one basis.

-Max

[SelfishGene]

Don't be fooled by the Knights of Avalon. They are strong and flexible, but expensive and fragile against human players wielding powerful Blesses and Magics. In a Dominions 2 game, i bumped heads, completely accidentally, with a massive 9N/9E blessed army of Neifel Giants. These "best cavalry" died without inflicting more than a couple of losses, which was such a catastrophic defeat it left me all but dead by turn 15 and useless for 30 more turns (a game where i came back having lost my capital and having nothing but 2 commanders and a mercenary!)

The Knights are basically "specialist" units, against things like the ethereal summons above. Use them sparingly and carefully.

[MaxWilson]

Well, to be fair, there probably isn't any recruitable unit, sacred or otherwise, that can stand up to N9E9 Niefel Giants without magical support. Those chubby blue guys are hard to top in a pitched battle.

-Max

[Micah]

How do F9 and either B9/D9 Jags stack up against the niefs? Anyone play that matchup?

[MaxWilson]

Micah said:
How do F9 and either B9/D9 Jags stack up against the niefs? Anyone play that matchup?

D9 jags might work okay. I don't know how to calculate afflictions, but the death weapons will probably be pretty negligible against MR 15. 6 F9B9 jags will do about 30 points of damage per round to the giant while they're still in human form, which is significantly greater than the regen rate and good enough that I'd want to test it in the actual game instead of just cranking numbers...

And yes, 26 F9B9 Jag warriors (560 gold) kill 4 Niefel Giants (600 gold) with zero losses. In a Cold-0 dominion, but not bad for a recruitable-anywhere unit. Actually, the first time I ran this I made a mistake and made D9B9 Jag warriors and they did just as well, so maybe any high-damage-output unit would do well. I'm going to take these tests with a grain of salt since there were no other units on the battlefield (which would fatigue the Jags in advance and also prevent them from concentrating exclusively on the giants), but at least a non-spell counter does exist.

-Max

[vfb]

How about a gold-equivalent horde of W9F9 Palankasha? Can you run it though your magic simulator?

[MaxWilson]

It's not a full simulator yet, really no better than working it out on paper, but the gold-equivalent is 3 Palankasha plus change. And yes, counting the Quickening blessing and fire weapons, +4 to attack, etc., it does look like 3 F9W9 Palankasha would inflict about 72 points of damage on a E9N9 Niefel Giant in two rounds, before the cold aura really kicks in. (Well, if he goes berserk the second round it drops to about 63, although I'm not totally sure the Protection is cumulative.) I suppose I was thinking of trying to fight them in a Cold-3 domain. Expected damage for two rounds drops to 44 points in a Cold-2 domain and 36 in a Cold-3, and two rounds of combat is basically all you've got before you're frozen stiff (especially if there are multiple units on both sides, like 4 giant and 12 Palankasha, because the cold aura stacks). But yeah, F9W9 Palankashas look like they could stand up to E9N9 Niefel Giants. I stand corrected. That doesn't make the KoA in any way bad, though, except for the high resource cost.

Edit: Python code attached.

-Max