I hate horrors

[Tuidjy]

Have horrors changed this much from Dominions II? I just got my copy
and have not even installed it yet, but in Dominions II, horrors were
only a minor annoyance for a tough pretender in the late game.

I also remember having to protect an empowered Arch Theurg, whom I was
using for forging. I gave him the ring that let him have ten oversized
bodyguards, and a bunch of blood slaves. This gave him at least two
spell casts, and he was a high earth mage... :-)

Quickness, the horror gets close and eats three slaves, and then the four
petrifies always do the trick. Hell, usually the first one did.

Now that I think about it, I remember that on the supercombat tournament
someone fielded an empowered horror, to pathetic results. Should be
in the archive. Ah, memories...

[NTJedi]

Ranger said:
In my current game my pretener God got a horror mark, and has now been killed six times! This god had level 5 magic in 5 areas, 6 gems each for each area, 140 guards, magic items, armor, nothing seems to work. My god is now a complete weakling.

What's truly terrible about the horror marks is that every time the pretender or mage is attacked by a horror then most horrors have an attack which add additional horror_mark levels!! Its those astral claws.
There's no chance of hope or healing those horror marks... even the spell of WISH will not work. There's also nothing special about winning a battle against the horrors. There is no light at the end of the tunnel with horror marks... these things are just black holes of death.

Ranger said:
Watching the horror attacks
The horror teleports right pass the guards, attacks and kills my god outright on the first turn, my god never casts spells, guards are useless. I've only see guards protect against minor horrors.

I agree this is a huge annoyance... and there's not a single creature which can be summoned which arrive with horror marks. If gamers could summon creatures which had horror marks then they would be excellent guards for a pretender!
If the developers add a few ritual summonings which provide creatures with high horror marks then at least the gamer could try protecting its pretender. Hopefully we're given these creatures within a patch to at least have something.

Ranger said:
What will counter Horror Attacks?

Shouldn't the horror mark go away after my god is resurrected?

Unfortunately death doesn't remove horror marks... in fact many horrors have those astral claws which INCREASE the number of horror marks! As I mentioned earlier your pretender, SC or mage enters this black hole of death which has no hope.
As far as countering horror marks... the first step is to avoid being horror marked. Pretenders of large size will be more likely to receive a horror mark on a battlefield..... the same as when casting curse usually the largest creatures are targeted. Countering means either killing the horror very quickly or quickly retreating using a spell like Returning. If you want to try quickly killing these horrors then use weapons which do extra or special damage to magic beings like the moon blade because Horrors are considered magic beings.

Ranger said:
This seems to unbalace the game, once your god gets a horror mark, your god is useless.

Basically it means your pretender has entered this black hole of death... sure precautions and commands can be set to help him stay alive, but his/her overall effectiveness will never return to normal.


We can only hope the developers create a few summoning creatures which arrive with high horror marks to help protect those pretenders or mages with the horror marks.

[Endoperez]

It's true that if your pretender somehow gets a very high horror mark, he could die any turn, including the one in which he is recalled. However, getting a high horror mark is very, very hard. It can happen, of course, e.g. if your pretender has very good regeneration and lots of hitpoints, and can survive dozens of turns against one of the Doom Horrors, while still being hit by the Astral Hook attackss during most of those turns. However, it's a very rare occurence. AFAIK, players can't intentionally cause horror mark that would be strong enough to cause this. As it is, this is one of the few "bad luck, you're screwed" events that have always existed in Dominions.

I agree in that some kind of a counter would be nice, similar to taking Luck and/or Growth to protect you from early plagues. However, personally I don't think this is an important issue.

[Teraswaerto]

Well, a lone pretender against a group of mages (and some chaff probably) hitting him with multiple Astral Geysirs might do it.

[Meglobob]

Astral Geysers deliver 2 levels of horror marking apparently and can be cast by a lvl 2 astral mage, so I should imagine its very easy to give a pretender high level horror marking making a potential god useless.

A potential god should have someway to counter horrors but it should be very difficult to do, carry out.

[Endoperez]

Meglobob said:
Astral Geysers deliver 2 levels of horror marking apparently and can be cast by a lvl 2 astral mage, so I should imagine its very easy to give a pretender high level horror marking making a potential god useless.

A potential god should have someway to counter horrors but it should be very difficult to do, carry out.

Have you tested it? The last time I tested Horror Mark (the spell), it took several mages almost 20 fights (each fight consisting of [5xHorror Mark, Retreat] for every mage) to cause a Doom Horror attack. I never tested Astral Geyser, and I'm afraid I don't have time to do it now.

A mod with the following:

#modname "Test"
#selectspell "Astral Geyser"
#researchlevel 0
#pathlevel 0 1
#fatiguecost 10
#end


and any 5-to-10 province map with e.g. Pythium and Bandar Log, and you controlling both nations, is enough. It doesn't take much time to set the test up, and it's easy to change the mod to test various other things.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by NTJedi

What's truly terrible about the horror marks is that every time the pretender or mage is attacked by a horror then most horrors have an attack which add additional horror_mark levels!! Its those astral claws.
There's no chance of hope or healing those horror marks... even the spell of WISH will not work.

Well, kind of. With enough pearls you can Wish yourself a replacement pretender, Gift of Reason him, and Empower his magic levels up to whatever level. Plus, then you no longer lose hit points and MR and enemy Dominion, unless you prophetize your new "pretender."

Yeah, I know, not very cost-effective. But if MY liege lord got horror-marked badly enough I would overthrow him.

-Max

[normalphil]

I'm with ranger here with thinking that the people responding to this thread haven't quite grasped a part of what he's saying.

I recently ran an EA Abyssia SP game with a F9B6 Moloch, got Malphus on the second turn, and decided to start Devil spamming with soul contracts. The horror marks didn't start showing for a while so I was cheap about it and used regular infantry to guard the contract holders. A few years later, I was getting a fresh horror attack on somebody each month, and started paying attention to them. They with little variation went like this;

Turn 1 (me): Contract-holder either casts Astral Shield or Fire Shield, depending if he's an Anthamat or a Warlock. Size 10 Bodyguard squad travels forward their full movement trying to come to grips with the Horror.

Turn 1 (horror): The Horror flies up to my now uncovered contract-holder and kills him.

Variations were those intances where the horror didn't manage to fully kill the contract-holder on the first turn and killed him on the second turn before the bodyguards could turn around and get to the fight, and that one time where the mage survived long enough for his bodyguards to get back to where the fight was and eventually kill the horror.

When it got annoying I started assigning Devils as bodyguards. That didn't actually work as well as I thought it would... they fly out and attack the horror well enough, but if they don't kill it on the first turn, you're back where you started.


Bodyguards in a Special Attack fight where the oponnent flies have a glaring weakness (although you probably weren't going to even be a speedbump to that Vastness anyway...). I can't really think of a way to fix it beyond positioning your gaurds so that they're a full movement behind the commander. But that's easy to screw up.

[Baalz]

Bodygaurds I've found work the best against horrors are ones that fly and have magic weapons. Devils may have a hard time killing the horror on the first turn, but (Mictlan) fire blessed Eagle warriors do a knock up job. I imagine spring hawks, for instance, would do equally well.

But yes, in general bodyguarding against horrors is a bit difficult.

[Teraswaerto]

I don't think it's a problem that a basic human (or something similar) will practically always die to a horror attack. You can avoid getting marked, and once marked the attacks are rare.

Just accept that the commander will die when the horror comes. It's not like Soul Contracts need to be made any better.