Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[alexti]

Graeme Dice said:

You'd have been far better off casting drain life.

Or you could make 1 or 2 cast relief and some others - animate something. Those doom horrors would be doomed

[Soapyfrog]

Graeme Dice said:
Which is why you use multiple types of elemental magic. It can't resist all three types at once.

So multiple elemental mages of each type casting multiple spells. Thats a lot of casters. Not to mention the fact that there is really no margin for error, and your mages better not decide to target something other than the doom horror.

Skeletons should be able to kill it actually, since it won't regain any life from them.

How the heck will the kill it? Fatigue?

A bane lord with quickness will have attack/defense of 17/17. With a moon blade, that's 19/20, which isn't far off from the doom horror.

Doom horror has attack 23 and defence 25. 19/20 is not great by comparison.

Put a lucky pendant on them both to make it even. With a strangth of 19 and moon blade damage of 11, the bane lord will do 60 damage on a successful hit. Two such hits will be enough to kill the doom horror.

60 damage? Isn't it 2x 11+1d6 oe, +19 st, -25 for prot = 35?

So 35 damage averge per hit IF YOU HIT because you are att 19 trying to hit def 25, oh and btw you will have to make your own MR check at -2 in order to avoid simply damaging yourself.

EDIT: I stand corrected on this, the str is doubled to, resulting in average 54 damage per hit. Two hits will kill the doom horror.

You'd have been far better off casting drain life.

Tried it, didnt work. I had 8 sauromancers casting drain life at a doom horror and it did squat. Zero damage. Oh well.

I've heard petrify being good, since it paralyzes you even if you make your save... petrify could imobilize it for long enough to kill it. Casters that can cast petrify are hard to come by for most nations though.

[Soapyfrog]

And on the subject of undead, I cast 4 undead hordes and a bunch of raise dead at the start of the battle and the doom horrors ignored them and went right after my casters.

Not that skeletons would be able to HIT the doom horror, and even if they did they would probably just die from the blood vengeance.

[Graeme Dice]

Soapyfrog said:
And on the subject of undead, I cast 4 undead hordes and a bunch of raise dead at the start of the battle and the doom horrors ignored them and went right after my casters.

Look at the numbers on undead horde, and compare it to raise skeletons and animate dead. The only reason to cast undead horde is if you have a pretender with very high level death magic. Three castings of raise skeletons gives more troops than a single casting of undead horde. Two castings of animate dead gives more troops than a single casting of undead horde.

Not that skeletons would be able to HIT the doom horror, and even if they did they would probably just die from the blood vengeance.

Sure, but you have an infinite supply of them from the combination of drain life and raise skeletons. After all, the AI casts drain life as soon as its fatigue nears 100.

[Graeme Dice]

Soapyfrog said:
Thats a lot of casters.

Sure, but you'll have a lot by the time you start to see doom horrors around turn 60 or 70.

Not to mention the fact that there is really no margin for error, and your mages better not decide to target something other than the doom horror.

Mages target the units with the largest amount of hitpoints, so unless there's a pretender or abominations there, the doom horrors will be the primary target.

How the heck will the kill it? Fatigue?

Run it out of turns in the battle so that it retreats, but doesn't have anywhere to retreat to as you've cut off those provinces with ghost riders or other similar spells or stealth attacks.

Doom horror has attack 23 and defence 25. 19/20 is not great by comparison.

It's close enough that the bane lords will be probably able to bring doom horrors down for a smaller cost in resources.

60 damage? Isn't it 2x 11+1d6 oe, +19 st, -25 for prot = 35?

No, it's: (2*(11+19)+2d6oe) - (25+2d6oe)

I see that you corrected this later.

Bonus damage multipliers apply to both strength and weapon damage.

IF YOU HIT because you are att 19 trying to hit def 25,

It will hit 10% of the time assuming that there are only two units on the battlefield.

oh and btw you will have to make your own MR check at -2 in order to avoid simply damaging yourself.

With an AMA, the bane lord will make this check at a MR of 17. Without it will be 13. That's a chance of failure of 10% and 30% respectively.

Tried it, didnt work. I had 8 sauromancers casting drain life at a doom horror and it did squat. Zero damage.

If 40 castings of drain life did not kill the doom horror, and did not kill the sauromancers, then you must have had a rather large number of living troops on the battlefield. That's in the neighbourhood of 560 points of armor negating damage.

[Soapyfrog]

Graeme Dice said:
Three castings of raise skeletons gives more troops than a single casting of undead horde. Two castings of animate dead gives more troops than a single casting of undead horde.

Yes however you dont have the luxury of time since the doom horrors will be eating your casters... actually they will eat them anyway since the skeletons run forward and the horrors fly in behind them and start to dine. Seriously I found this tactic wildly ineffectual.

And its even worse whent he doom horror(s) are not alone.

Sure, but you have an infinite supply of them from the combination of drain life and raise skeletons. After all, the AI casts drain life as soon as its fatigue nears 100.

Did I mention drain life didnt work on the doom horrors?

[Graeme Dice]

Soapyfrog said:
Yes however you dont have the luxury of time since the doom horrors will be eating your casters... actually they will eat them anyway since the skeletons run forward and the horrors fly in behind them and start to dine.

Looks like you got unlucky then, and attack rearmost worked. Most of the time it won't if you have any other troops on the battlefield.

[qutoe]Did I mention drain life didnt work on the doom horrors?

[/quote]

Yes, you did. I didn't give it much weight, since my own tests show that it works very nicely. Take 8 D4 sauromancers, or 8 demiliches. Have them cast raise skeletons on the first turn. Have them cast drain life on all other turns. For me it works with about 4 dead mages in about three combat rounds.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:

Looks like you got unlucky then, and attack rearmost worked. Most of the time it won't if you have any other troops on the battlefield.

[qutoe]Did I mention drain life didnt work on the doom horrors?

Yes, you did. I didn't give it much weight, since my own tests show that it works very nicely. Take 8 D4 sauromancers, or 8 demiliches. Have them cast raise skeletons on the first turn. Have them cast drain life on all other turns. For me it works with about 4 dead mages in about three combat rounds.

[/quote]
8 demiliches cost 200 deathgems so unless you fight in your own dominion this is costy then . But you are right demiliches are very good and they have 18 MR so the blood vengeance is not so horrible . And most important they are extremely useful for defense anyway since their function as drainlife/undeadspam brigade works quite well against almost everything .

In some ways i think the king of the world horror is better because he has 2x lifedrain and 2x astral claw as attack while the doom horror has it only once each and 2 mr - negate attacks .

Graeme what do you think is a better wish then ?
The doom horrors because they are rather cheap ( little equipment ) but still quite impressive ?
Air queens ?
Natarajas ?

[Graeme Dice]

Boron said:
8 demiliches cost 200 deathgems so unless you fight in your own dominion this is costy then.

I picked demiliches because it was easier to run the test with them than with sauromancers, since I didn't have to bother making skull staves.

But you are right demiliches are very good and they have 18 MR so the blood vengeance is not so horrible .

Blood vengeance is not horrible on most mages, since even sauromancers, for example, have a MR of 17. Most mages sit around MR 15.

Graeme what do you think is a better wish then ?
The doom horrors because they are rather cheap ( little equipment ) but still quite impressive ?

The most useful wishes are for power and magic power on your pretender. After that, I'd wish for artifacts that someone else has and you want. At that point, I'd start using my astrals for something else probably.

[Boron]

Graeme Dice said:
The most useful wishes are for power and magic power on your pretender. After that, I'd wish for artifacts that someone else has and you want. At that point, I'd start using my astrals for something else probably.

What's the something else ? SC-wise i still think wishing for SCs is quite good .
100 astral pearls are "only" 50 converted gems so i think wishing is not that bad . I personally like wishing for blood too since you get such a nice output .
I still haven't really figured out in which lategame things i should put in most of my resources to get the best overall return