What's wrong with this battle?

[magnate]

Graeme Dice said:

It's -1 per 20 fatigue, so your Nataraja had an attack of less than 20 versus a defense of more than 25. That kind of attack/defense disadvantage is extremely hard to hit through. I wouldn't have expected very many hits given only two rounds of combat.

No, but more than the IDs hitting me! (effective att 25 vs effective def ~38)

This is how faulty information and rumours get started. Nobody has said anything that even suggests that there's evidence that astral weapon doesn't effect Ice Devils, and you're already posting it like it's a fact.

Er, remind me who was the first person to suggest that AW didn't affect IDs? All I did was repeat Cainehill's theory. I assumed that nobody would take it as fact, since his suggestion was a few posts up in the same thread. If I had posted it in a different thread, I would have been more careful to note that it was merely a suggestion. It is probably wrong though - he did hit Cimejes for ~25 damage one time, so I guess it works.

They aren't. Arch devils are certainly better given that they can cast phoenix pyre.

It's by no means certain, as Saber Cherry has illustrated. Given that they come at 5/7 the cost an entire research level earlier, they're pretty near untouchable in a cost-benefit analysis.

My main problem, as Tien Chi, was no access to decent thugs or summonable SCs of any sort (apart from the paths on my pretender). You can eventually summon elemental royalty once you've managed to forge enough path boosters (elemental staff, air hat and bag, water bracelet, fire helmet and skull), but you're likely to be beaten to the punch there. With almost no access to death or blood you can't have wraiths or vampires. So it really calls for a totally different strategy, of troops backed up by mages with plenty of carefully used battle spells, but I just didn't get it right. In the army setup screen it looked like my mages were carefully protected inside a big square of high morale troops, but in the actual battle they were side by side so the mages got killed before they could do their work.

CC

[Manuk]

Theres a simple explanation. blood thorn got nerfed in the mod. it does 0 damage and strenght is not added. so is useless in combat.

[PDF]

Well, if your idea is to have some ID-killer Natty, I think you need her to have more attack punch (at least one weapon with high att and damage), and some sort of regen as well as reinvig would be nice too. If you play vanilla Dom2 a life-drain weapon is nearly a must also.

I don't think *any* lone creature can kill well-equipped IDs if equipped with an Armor of Virtue, you'll always be hit before finishing one.

As for your battle, maybe there's a Life drain bug, but what I think occured is that you made some hits - but without much damage done-, and then a lucky hit from an ID sent you away. Nothing unusual...

[shovah]

but if he can curse them, all of his attacks+quickness should be able to give them a few afflictions

[magnate]

PDF said:
Well, if your idea is to have some ID-killer Natty, I think you need her to have more attack punch (at least one weapon with high att and damage), and some sort of regen as well as reinvig would be nice too. If you play vanilla Dom2 a life-drain weapon is nearly a must also.

I don't think *any* lone creature can kill well-equipped IDs if equipped with an Armor of Virtue, you'll always be hit before finishing one.

True. I replaced the AoV with rainbow armour as soon as I got a random nature on a Celestial Master (my 26th - took quite a while).

I don't get why ppl think you need more damage when each hit does 25+ with AW. Anyway, leaving aside the weapons, I'd be interested to see what people would change on a nat:

rainbow armour (the displacement armour is twice the enc and gives no reinvig)
starshine skullcap (means the astral buffs give less fatigue, and there are no hats with reinvig)
flying boots (essential for strat mvmt - was going to go Anteus or Calius for combat)
burning pearl (essential vs. Abysia, though Krupp's bracers would have been nice)


CC

[shovah]

the reason people said you need more damage is because it means by the time you do hit it wil be more than 25 dmg.

[Alneyan]

Amon Hotep could be nice in the Helmet department. It also is expensive. Very much so. Still, you might find some use for 50% fire resistance, 30 natural protection and Awe +5. Besides, it looks good. Crown of the Ivy King might be another option, and a much more reasonable one; it would give your Pretender some regeneration.

In the upscale department for armours, there is always the Robe of the Magi. It would work out much better than your current Rainbow Armour, but it is, of course, much more expensive (and finding the right mage could be troublesome, if you haven't been blood hunting).

The Stone Bird could help you with attacking, though I suspect its "lessen defence of the target" effect happens after your main weapons. That one aside, a Crystal Heart/Elixir of Life comes to mind, if you are concerned about your Pretender biting the dust; I know I like too much Immortality, the Armour of Virtue and things of the like. Well, live and let live and all that...

[OG_Gleep]

Theres better buffs then cold resistance, my point was that he was only using part of his script with those paths.

[Ygorl]

I'm still working on how the ice devils were managing to hit the Nataraja... Let's see... A defense of 43, taken down to 38 by fatigue (10:1 ratio... Right? It's 20:1 for protection?). Now, each ice devil has four attacks per round (two with the dagger, two with the tail). That means the last attack of the round will be an attack rating of 22 versus a defense of 31. How unlikely is that to hit? Consulting Zooko's experiment, that's about 5%... So, pretty unlikely that you got hit, even for no damage, in a given round. Two rounds in a row, even more unlikely (considerably less than one percent). Could it have happened, though? Sure. Try this: make a little test map. Give one side the two ice devils, equipped as they were, and the other side a nataraja appropriately equipped. Add the spells to the appropriate nations, so they can cast them in the battle. Re-run the fight a few times. See how it goes. I'm guessing most of them you would get hit much less often.

I do have a vague recollection that the healing/reinvigorating effects of a life drain weapon are independent of whether it actually does any damage. Not sure, though, and an uninspired search of the forum revealed nothing. If you do run the tests, let me know how it goes!