Drain Life

[Graeme Dice]

Bummer_Duck said:
Hmmm...so you need a large army in every province to protect a couple mages that can probably only deal with 1 or 2 GR's. Or am I missing something?

A large army can deal with a dozen ghost riders, as dealing with them is no different than dealing with any Ermorian army.

If you aren't on the offensive, and you haven't set yourself up for a strong defense, then there isn't much you can do. You lost by allowing your opponent the luxury of not having to respond to your attacks.

[Bummer_Duck]

Graeme Dice said:
A large army can deal with a dozen ghost riders, as dealing with them is no different than dealing with any Ermorian army.

Sure it is. You can raid with ghost riders, then take the province with a scout. The size army you need to defend against this is a bit larger than most nations can afford for all their uncastled provinces. So, if you really wanted to try using the more expensive better def forts, your screwed.

If you aren't on the offensive, and you haven't set yourself up for a strong defense, then there isn't much you can do. You lost by allowing your opponent the luxury of not having to respond to your attacks.

Errr...define strong defense! 1 GR can eliminate +25 PD or more. Which is truly absurd IMO, for how expensive 25 PD costs (325 gold?). That far out weighs the what, 5 gem cost? Someone was equating 6 gems to be equal to 100 gold cost...

Let's not even talk about the costs associated with parking defense armies all over the place for the sole purpose of defending against this type of attack.

I am now firmly entrenched in the "Nerf the GR" camp. I could be talked over to the "Buff the other non-death distant summoning/attack" camp. After playing around with CoW/CoW, I'm not impressed. Even 2 castings will lose to a semi-high PD.

As it stands it looks like from now on I will always make sure I have access to death mages, and always select spamable castles types.

[Graeme Dice]

Bummer_Duck said:
Sure it is. You can raid with ghost riders, then take the province with a scout. The size army you need to defend against this is a bit larger than most nations can afford for all their uncastled provinces.

I'm not talking about defense. I'm talking about offense. If you have many armies rampaging through your opponent's territory, then he has to use ghost riders on those armies, or else lose the territory. If he uses scouts to take your provinces, then you can just move any kind of random chaff into the province to take it back.

So, if you really wanted to try using the more expensive better def forts, your screwed.

The 450 gold forts are not that much more expensive, and all others take too long to construct to be worthwhile even if no remote summoning spells were ever used.

Errr...define strong defense! 1 GR can eliminate +25 PD or more. Which is truly absurd IMO, for how expensive 25 PD costs (325 gold?).

Province defense increasing in cost as it does should be a clue that you shouldn't bother buying any more than 1 point to see what your opponent uses for armies, or 10 points if you want to keep scouts from getting too deep into your teritory. A strong defense means that you spend gold on putting castles in the provinces where you have temples and laboratories so that you actually have a chance of defending your territory.

Let's not even talk about the costs associated with parking defense armies all over the place for the sole purpose of defending against this type of attack.

Then _don't_ park your armies all over the place! Why do you have armies in the first place if you aren't using them against someone?

I am now firmly entrenched in the "Nerf the GR" camp.

It's a level 9 spell, so it had better be powerful or what was the point of researching all the way to level 9?

As it stands it looks like from now on I will always make sure I have access to death mages, and always select spamable castles types.

Well, if you want to just grab a small amount of territory, and don't want to use diplomacy, then playing defensively will do nothing but delay your defeat to somebody with four or five times the resources you have. Many people complain that XX spell caused them to lose, when they actually lost because they didn't have a sufficiently strong strategic position. The spells just kept the game from turning into a war of attrition that lasts for hundreds of turns.

[Bummer_Duck]

Graeme Dice said:
It's a level 9 spell, so it had better be powerful or what was the point of researching all the way to level 9?

Tartanians? Or is that of no use? :-) As I said in a previous post, GR should be moved to another disipline.

[Bummer_Duck]

I made a simple test. 2 groups consisting of 12 Royal Marignon Guard, and 1 admiral. One group gets attacked by 1 GR, the other by a Phantasmal Army. Can you guess the results?

GR group - Nearly wiped out (2 RMG left)
Phantasmal Army group - No losses

Cost of GR - 5 death gems
Cost of PA - 8 air gems

I can understand the perspective that you had to reach lvl 9 to cast this spell. Fine, don't nerf it, but the gem cost should be increased. After this test, I'd say at least 10 gems per casting would be more in line with reality. I say that with a grain of salt, as the comparison in this test turned out to be 650 gold in troops + maint vs 5 death gems + 1 mage turn.

Flame away...

[Saber Cherry]

Bummer_Duck said:
I say that with a grain of salt, as the comparison in this test turned out to be 650 gold in troops + maint vs 5 death gems + 1 mage turn.

Plus several turns of resources in a castle (while many GRs can be sent from a single lab in a single turn).

Considering that they don't stick around, I think they're worth at least 15.


...any army big enough to defend against that sort of attack would be a great target for FFtS / MW, so using conventional armies defensively is moot at level 9 research, anyway, isn't it?

[Saber Cherry]

Verjigorm said:
Unfortunately, the Wraith Lord gets a Bane Blade, so he still has a chance to kill your precious, exensive Abomination.

According to the unit database, the Wraith Lord you get from Ghost Riders is the mounted one (#182) with Broad Sword, Lance, and Helmet. He has no magic and is not as good as the conjured, horseless one (181, whose death-3 gives him fear+3) and nowhere near as good as Emmitu (#183).

Emmitu with a horror helmet and other junk is quite awesome. I had one with heroic quickness +2XX% once, empowered him with water for Quickness, and he was killing scores of units every turn. I think he's the best national hero.

[Bummer_Duck]

Saber Cherry said:
...any army big enough to defend against that sort of attack would be a great target for FFtS / MW, so using conventional armies defensively is moot at level 9 research, anyway, isn't it?

<shrug> I dunno. I'm still new here. I still have faith that armies are good for something. Either way it's beside the point I may, or may not, be making. The point is that it is not balanced compared to those spells of the same power magnitude. In addition, having Well of Misery, Mound fiend, GR and Tartarian Gate in the same disipline seems a bit to much like a 1 stop shop.

From what I can determine, FFtS / MW are much more limiting since they cost many more gems and not all races can get unlimited, fairly cheap mages that can cast those 2 spells. In the 2 games I have played, I have seen about 4 castings total of FFtS / MW, and probably 40 GR castings. FFtS / MW only kills half of the army, GR usually gets all units... From my perspective, that means it's broke. Perhaps once I play 10 more games I'll agree with you, but not today.

[Scott Hebert]

I tend to agree with you, Duck. One of the 'issues' I have with Dominions II is the fact that everything seems to devolve to summoned commanders (especially Undead ones) doing stuff.

I could extend this to Sorcery in general, but Death in particular seems to have too many 'bennies'.

[Turin]

yeah access to mass ghostriders and flames from the sky is the eqivalent of an atomic bomb. Once you have them noone can attack you without losing tons of troops to mass castings of ghostriders.

The only counter to them are high def thughs with etherealness, lifedrain and regeneration(wraithlords, airqueens) , or large vineogre/archer/priest armys. The latter gets easily detroyed by flames from the sky, so it´s really hard to take your castles if you have access to those two spells.