On the effective early use of Pretenders in combat

[AhhhFresh]

Originally posted by Bayushi Tasogare:
For my part, as far as a Magical Attack pretender, I have yet to see a better one than the Phoenix. I typically go for a Fire9/Air6 Phoenix, especially if I have sacred troops. In any event, once you have Flame Darts, you're pretty much good to go. Air Shield goes up first round if there are archers, and then you just wade through them. If they get to you, you have nice 'personal range' effects to deal with them like Burning Hands or Shockwave (is that what it's called?) and whatnot.

After getting Flame Darts, you can either continue to get better options, or you can switch to get Flame Shield or more defensive options.

Anyway, my thoughts on Artillery Pretenders.

I really like that combo with Abysia... since they start with Flare... which is pretty rockin' if you actually hit with it (exceedingly rare with their national mages)... but that additional precision you get from the Air on the Phoenix, makes a big difference.

I recommend that anyone who thinks that Fire evocation spells are completely worthless, to give it a go.

And Lava Warriors are pretty psycho with flaming weapons and an air shield from the dual bless...

I have heard it said on these Boards that for purposes of mind duel communion does not raise astral level.

Is that true? I haven't been able to find any Posts one way or the other regarding it... maybe it's my atrocious spelling.

[Pat Wilcox]

For my part, as far as a Magical Attack pretender, I have yet to see a better one than the Phoenix. I typically go for a Fire9/Air6 Phoenix, especially if I have sacred troops. In any event, once you have Flame Darts, you're pretty much good to go. Air Shield goes up first round if there are archers, and then you just wade through them. If they get to you, you have nice 'personal range' effects to deal with them like Burning Hands or Shockwave (is that what it's called?) and whatnot.

After getting Flame Darts, you can either continue to get better options, or you can switch to get Flame Shield or more defensive options.

Anyway, my thoughts on Artillery Pretenders.

Couldn't You do the same thing with the Virtue Pretender? You lose the immortality, but you gain AWE (+6) and many more equipment slots.

PatWx

[Scott Hebert]

While you can do the same with a Virtue, there are a couple of concerns I have.

First is the fact that you have to research quite a bit more to get an area-effect Air spell. Therefore, it's not as much of an early lead.

Second, the bless effect is important. With the Virtue, your bless effect is purely defensive (thogh perhaps the best defensive). The Phoenix grants a powerful offensive bless effect.

Lastly, the Phoenix is immortal. Unless you get the Evo-4 Air area spell, I doubt the Virtue could stop a rush before she died. The Phoenix has the benefit of not being as worried about that, and it gets rid of afflictions naturally.

For these reasons, I feel that the Phoenix is superior to the Virtue, at least in the early game.

Bayushi Tasogare

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:

quote:

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adding 1d6 (closed)

I *really* hope this is true, or as I said there is no defence against Mind Duel.

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Well, in the an astral favour from Saber Cherry thread it is semi-acknowledged that the 1d6 is closed.

Regarding communion, my understanding is that communion granted astral magic counts - but I do not have real data to back this up with statistical analysis.

[ March 31, 2004, 19:27: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

[velk]

Using this comparative chart, we see that with the +3 advantage, the Wyrm has a 16.725% chance of surviving each duel, for a 1-(1-0.1675)^n risk of dying against n duelists. For n=6 that is 66.7%, for n=10 the risk of the Wyrm dying is 84.0%.

I assume you mean the wyrm has a 16.7% chance of *NOT* surviving each duel.

In any case 5 + 1d6 being less than 2 + 1d6 occurs for exactly 5 out of 36 possible cases ( 1 and 6, 1 and 5, 1 and 4, 2 and 6, 2 and 5 ). That's 13.8% not 16.7%.

P.S. are we sure a draw kills both of them ? That seems a rather odd result...

[Peter Ebbesen]

Yes, velk, not surviving but NOT surviving. Glaring typo fixed.

As to your calculations, you are wrong.

5+1d6 being less than 2+1d6 happens for (1 5) (1 6) (2 6) which is 3 instances for a theoretical 8.33% rounded to two digits.

5+1d6 being less than or equal to 2+1d6 happens for (1 4) (1 5) (1 6) (2 5) (2 6) and (3 6) which is 6 instances for a theoretical 16.67% rounded to two digits, which is close enough to the experimenatal 16.725% used.

That a tie kills both contestants has been verified many times. It is just one of those risks concerned with not being stronger than the one rummaging through your mind.

I guess the meta-argument is not that you kill the other if you are stronger, but that you die unless you are stronger.

[velk]

Oops, I think the law of pointing out minor spelling mistakes forcing you to make a spelling mistake yourself also applies to mathematical calculations 8)

I can't think of any other way in which I could get 2 + 6 = 7 8).

One slightly related point to that though, is (while the wyrm isn't the best example) that it is easier to increase the astral on one powerful unit with items than it is to increase the astral on 10 weak units with items.

E.g. 10 starshine skullcaps vs 1 for example. Empowerment has a similar scale of effects.

Not to mention that if you guess wrong about what he has been doing in the Last few turns and he shows up with astral 2 or 3 points higher, that losing 10 astral mages and their equipment would be a pretty crippling loss.

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by velk:

One slightly related point to that though, is (while the wyrm isn't the best example) that it is easier to increase the astral on one powerful unit with items than it is to increase the astral on 10 weak units with items.

E.g. 10 starshine skullcaps vs 1 for example. Empowerment has a similar scale of effects.

I am not arguing against that, and I am certainly not suggesting that people invest heavily in equipment to boost weak astral mages to give them better odds. The Banner of the Northern Star is the only item that really makes sense for that purpose as you need one, and one only.

The one thing I wanted to point out was that 5 astral was too low to be considered safe on your pretender as it was vulnerable to fairly simple anti-astral tactics.

Not to mention that if you guess wrong about what he has been doing in the Last few turns and he shows up with astral 2 or 3 points higher, that losing 10 astral mages and their equipment would be a pretty crippling loss.

It is HIGHLY unusual to gain 2-3 astral points in a few turns except when equipping with astral equipment from scratch - but it can happen. And you could lose anyhow, as no tactic that pits low astral vs. high astral is a guaranteed success.

Worst case, losing 10 low-level astral mages (no equipment, mind you, too expensive: I would rather take twice as many mages along as boost them with expensive astral equipment) costs 900-1800 depending on nation and a number of rounds of leader recruitment depending on the number of castles. Expensive, yes, crippling, no - unless it happens in the very start of the game (where you are unlikely to have 10 astral mages anyhow, unless you play Pythium)

Again, I don't really disagree with you - most any tactic runs a risk of failure - I just find 5 astral on the pretender god to be too damn little.

[ April 01, 2004, 09:42: Message edited by: Peter Ebbesen ]

[AhhhFresh]

Again, I don't really disagree with you - most any tactic runs a risk of failure - I just find 5 astral on the pretender god to be too damn little.

Well, the thing to remember is that Mind Duel is evocation 3... which isn't exactly hard to get or anything... but I don't think many players are racing for that initially. I mean evocation just doesn't seem like a spell line that people are plowing the points into early... but I may be wrong about that.

So you should have time to use your Wrym to smash things good, and then either retire him, or start boosting him up hard.

The only thing I would *really* worry about, would be starting right next to one of the Big 3(Pythium, Arco, R'lyeh) with an Atral 5 Wyrm... especially R'lyeh... since they have astral assasins, they are the most likely to think it's worth it to go for Mind Duel early.

Otherwise, Astral 5 has some risk associated with it, but I wouldn't call it *crippling*... as you will likely have time to protect yourself.

[atul]

Originally posted by Peter Ebbesen:
I have a hard time imagining anybody massing mind dueliests without somebody carrying a Banner of the Northern Star or casting Light of the Northern Star to boost the horde of duelists to astral 2.

Which gives you a 5 to 2 situation.

There's this one thing that's been bugging me for a while concerning mind duel and I don't think I've seen any notions about it during the time I've been following this board.

Namely, you can boost your magic level by using one gem. So, if you give a mind duelist one astral pearl and he/she/it uses it, does it raise the effective level of duelist by one? This would give attackers a slight edge were they equipped with gems (in situation quoted those 2 levelers would be 3 etc).

On a completely different subject, does anyone know the answer to following. As dom2 has introduced a distinction between undead and demon, but has most of its spells identical to dom1, how do some of these spells work?

Say I have a Moloch pretender. Is it correct to suppose he is immune to such spells that target only undead but not specifically demons, like Dust to Dust, Wither Bones, Maggots and like? If so, is the same demon vulnerable to spells like Vengeance of the Dead? As in dom1 Moloch was undead you didn't have to worry about killing too many opponents, now when playing with him I'm a bit cautious for the possibility of VotD. I wonder whether there is any reason to worry.