Beginner's Guide to Shinuyama MA

[thejeff]

Yeah, but you can kill more than one skeleton with a banish.

[MaxWilson]

Which might include his own skeletons. All I'm saying is, if you're always summoning skeletons and he's only summoning skeletons half the time, and his banishes hurt his troops as well as yours, it's not improbable that your skeletons will eventually overwhelm his and kill him. Maybe not every time, but at least 50% of the time.

-Max

[vfb]

I think Lazy_Perfectionist was reporting on what he experienced. If a priest unexpectedly shows up in the province, kills your skellies, steals your talisman, and somehow kills your Mujina too, then the best option is probably to invade the province with a regular army to kill him and get it back.

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

The problem is that a Mujina scripted to 'Cast spells' has little chance to take out a priest, since she'll cast forever, while the priest has less encumberance.

So perhaps if I only scripted Animate Skeleton 5 times, before giving an attack order, I'd avoid that worst case scenario.

It's also a problem not with independents but also Agartha, and other nations where everybody's a mage-priest.

So, its probably best to limit the number of times I animate skellies.

Now entering baseless speculation mode...

An ice sword or pair of 'Main Gauche of Parrying' might do wonders for that fear aura, giving it more chances to work against mundane bodyguards. Or, a 'staff'-like weaon would offer up a decent defense- more than an ice sword.

She actually has decent precision, and by decent I mean completely average. But assassinations tend to take place at short ranges, a Black Bow of Botulf could be rather nice and I might send 'em against a powerful mage even if I didn't expect to win. Though I'm not sure exactly what feeblemind does.

And while its entirely stupid, I want to put Stymphalian wings on a Mujina for a trampling, flying assassin. Unfortunately, size 2 means you'd be the terror of the Hoburgs, and not much else. Still, that is an amusing picture. Filthy hobbits - i mean hoburgs.

Skullface may be worth pursuing if some bodyguards get in the way of animate skeletons workng, though its overkill at 20 death gems.

I see a couple other artifacts of interest. Boots of Stone, and the Barkskin Amulet. Then there's the medallion of vengeance (great for a one-two punch if you can figure out the combat order, and your oppononent has just enough bodyguards), the bottle of living water, and Holger the Head.

The successes with the skull talisman have set me off on a brainstorming spree. I'll have to try these out and let you know whether any are actually any good, especially considering the cost... but a Bakemono Sorcerer should come along able to forge a Dwarven Hammer eventually, at least by the time I can consider some of the items I mentioned.

[MaxWilson]

Feeblemind is evil. You lose all magic paths and take -5 to MR. It's as good as a kill on most mages, plus they still cost maintenance until the owner can kill it off because there's no "disband" command. (Although most of the time the lack of a disband is a distinct ).

-Max

[Kristoffer O]

We at Illwinter are thouroughly socialist and believe in health insurances . If your old granpa becomes old, crippled and addled in his brains he should still get enough public funding to be able to live as comfortably as when he was actively researching for the good of the nation. Imagine how few mages you would get to work for you if your neighbouring nation had a better pension system than you. After all most mages are old to begin with. Brain drain

[MaxWilson]

Well, Grandpa can still die gloriously on the front lines as soon as he hobbles over there.

-Max

[Lazy_Perfectionist]

Here's an expansion strategy I've had some success with on neutral scales. I haven't finetuned it, but its a lot better than my earlier Bakemono dying by the hundreds strategy.

I recruit two O-Bakemono and two Dai Bakemonos (sword only) each turn. At first, remaining gold and resources efforts go to unarmored Bakemono-sho/Archers, with a priority on melee. And an Uba, or Mujina, of course. Later, I may throw in a little armor, or recruit more archers.

The O-Bakemono and Dai Bakemono get mixed in with the melee chaff into one mixed squad. These two units are last to die, and have a nice upward effect on morale. So I end up routing from a lot, lot less battles. They'll also provide some nice killing punch.

Depending on how it goes, I start forming a second squad when I have 10 each of O-Bakemono and Dai Bakemono. I had some success splitting that in half to 5/5 but that depends on your indies.

[Herode]

Originally Posted by dirtywick

Bakemono Shaman ?1 H1 (FWED 100%)- [...]Their main strength is that they can all cast Rust Mist regardless of their paths,

Really ? I can't find any Rust Mist entry in my scripting tables for the shamans

[Trumanator]

I think thats a typo, they'd need more than 1 path to cast it.