Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[sum1lost]

K said:
I think its very important that SCs can be killed this way. If they couldn't, then the best and only tactic in the game would be to eventually create SCs. Right now you often can't kill an SC even when you have brought your anti-SC tactics into the battle, since even reasonable protections can be brought by the SC player (like a few Fire or Astral or Death or Water mages for the W9F9 Shadow Vestal assault mentioned above).

As it is, SC's are extremely powerful. This keeps them from winning the game on their own, thankfully.

[Tuidjy]

I don't like draws. If an army attacks and cannot conquer, it should flee the
province. If an assassin cannot kill the target in a set time, he should be,
at the very least, made to attack the province during the battle phase. The
army camp was alerted, everyone encircled the commander's tent, let the assassin
try to take them all on. If he wins or manages to flee, more power to him.

Of course, in the nightmare case, i.e. special monsters, the attackers should
just go 'poof'.

[thejeff]

So the arguments are that first, Vengeance isn't really a big deal since it's easily avoidable with mr and a proper SC can kill them all anyway.
And second, that it's an essential counter without which SCs would be unstoppable?

(Ok, it's different people making the arguments, but it was strange to read.)

[Tuidjy]

It is always a big deal when any unit dies due to a bug. A defender dying because
of the time limit is a bug, or at least goes against precendent and common sense.

Once again, I believe that the number of vengeful souls should remain uncapped, and
that the spell should remain relatively low level. But I also think that the
target should survive the experience if he wakes up before shades get him.

[lch]

thejeff said:
So the arguments are that first, Vengeance isn't really a big deal since it's easily avoidable with mr and a proper SC can kill them all anyway. And second, that it's an essential counter without which SCs would be unstoppable?

What it boils down to is that OPs thug was not as awesome and unstoppable as he had hoped it to be and it was brought down by a cunning move of his enemy. Being catched off guard by this surprise element of the game he felt wronged.

[PvK]

Since it Vengeance Of The Dead a magical nightmare attack, I'm not sure the realism argument holds - maybe if the victim doesn't kill the hordes in time, the dream ends with them carrying him away to Hades. Or not.

On principle I agree I'd prefer it if a time limit resulted in a draw and not an attacker win.

As far as balance goes, I think VOTD is a nicely thematic anti-SC spell. Similarly, I personally think the game is more interesting when not dominated by SC's.

Ideally, I think I'd prefer to see time limits resulting in a draw, and VOTD being more interesting, such as including the slain units more like they were in life, for example with different types of undead based on who was killed, slain mages retaining some of their magic, some slain warriors as armed soulless or longdead, slain elephants as undead elephants, etc, but also not multiplied by killing souls during VOTD - it doesn't make sense to me that killing a returning soul (or mindless living unit) would cause it to appear twice in the next VOTD attack.

[lch]

PvK said:
but also not multiplied by killing souls during VOTD - it doesn't make sense to me that killing a returning soul (or mindless living unit) would cause it to appear twice in the next VOTD attack.

Yup, I have to agree that I don't think that this is thematic in any way. Killing VOTD undeads should not count towards the ghosts that haunt you in your dreams, because there won't be another spirit to haunt you after you killed its body the second time, at least it's not understandable why it should.

[Tuidjy]

It would be great if the vengeful souls reflected the slain enemies, but I am
afraid that no such information is kept at this time. After all, every single
troop(!) has a kill counter, it would be unthinkable to remember the type of
enemies killed.

And yes, the kills during the nightmare should not count, but I am pretty sure
that the counter is incremented during the 'die' method, and it may be too
much bother to fix that. After all there are plenty of other examples where the
enemy lacks a soul and still increments the counter.

And because it is impossible to prevent the doubling of enemies until the
target fails to kill them within the time limit and dies, I think that if he
wakes up, he should live.

As for the souls carrying the target to Hades, they wish! They had plenty of
time, and could not manage to subdue him. Empty handed they leave :-)

[BigDisAwesome]

I lost a W9 Blue dragon really early in a MP game because of this spell. He had a 20+ MR but after 2-3 turns of 4 mages spamming it he eventually lost one and couldn't defeat all the ghosts. I was pretty bummed out.

[LoloMo]

How about in a draw, you survive but is feebleminded.