Vengeance of the dead, what the hell

[Aethyr]

Ooops, I guess I have not mastered the "quote" function yet. GP's suggestion still seems to be the best resolution to this issue.

Chalk me up as another one who thinks it's perfect the way it is.
The spell can be quite a powerful tool but has so many conditions that have to be fulfilled for it to be used that i'd consider it a lot weaker overall than earth attack for example.
MR negates
It needs a SC with many kills to work, and an SC that can not dispose of arbitrarily large armies of chaff (no king of elemental fire will ever be afraid of VotD)
Casting several times can produce a lot of kills but here comes MR into plaz again. If you have a 10% or so chance to succeed having to succeed five times doesn't make the spell that cheap anymore.
There aren't many recruitable or summonable caster that can cast this spell.
Target must sleep. (many of the best SCs are undead)
You can shield against it with 100% effectiveness in a provice if you get a decent chaff-killer. Sure, they're not too easy to get but how many provinces besides your home province do you need permanently protected anyway?
If you manage to get all the conditions right the spell can be very damaging, but so can be many others.
A tactic isn't too powerful if you get hit once and loose because of it. If it's truly too powerful youd get hit by it all the time because everyone would be using it exclusively.
Removing the turn limit or making the defender survive on a draw would render the spell totally useless. Nothing worth killing with the spell would ever die to it. Any thug or SC hardy enough to rack up a few hundred kills will never be killed by the chaff, so overwhelming him and getting him auto-killed after turn 50 is the real point of using the spell.

[Edi]

Kuritza said:
So basically, with a MR as high as you can get, you have a 20% chance to die even if you sit in your capitol. Which, in turn, means that all Ermor needs is 15 astral gems or less (12 in my case, 2 attempts per turn for 2 turns). Please tell me how is it fair? Isnt a goddamn paralyze not good enough as a counter?
Did he catch me off guard without an aoe-weapon? Pray tell me, how can MA Caelum make a fire brand early in the game then.
SCs are unbalanced? Really, in a game where 2x bless vans or shadow vestals etc can rush you into oblivion before you even research construction 4? So SCs need a low-level global spell that kills them 1/5 of the time. Makes so much sense to give a reliable and uncounteralbe overland map counter for my counter, its not enough that SCs are very easy to counter on the battlefield for an astral-using nation.

So, if you have a SC pretender with hundreds of kills and you know there's a spell like VotD around and you do not have the effective counters to it yet, WHY is your god sitting still in the capital waiting for the axe to fall?

The enemy must be able to pinpoint the location of the god before he can nail it with VotD and if you move your god around, instead of a single VotD, he needs to blanket your whole damned territory or at the very least several provinces with the spell and that gets expensive gem and mage-turn wise very fast.

To be blunt, I read the whole thread through and all I'm getting from your post is a sense of outrage that your god got killed because you
a) failed to take certain possibilities into account
b) lacked the equipment that would have made the difference because you had not traded for it yet at that point
c) knew you were getting hammered with a potentially lethal overland spell and SAT STILL, waiting for the axe to fall.

Let's see, sympathy meter reading...yep, big, round zero.

The turn limit is necessary, though some increase might do good and the default resolution of exceeding the limit is up for discussion. The default resolution for VotD and possibly also for attacks spawned by Looming Hell are easily explained by the target of the attack running out of mental resources to resist if the turn limit is reached.

[Kuritza]

Let's see, sympathy meter reading...yep, big, round zero.

Oh, no problem at all, its mutual. I just love ignorant people.
>> a) failed to take certain possibilities into account
I failed? How come, do you read my mind? I knew this might happen, and I couldnt do anything about it. This is where frustration comes from, no valid coulter in my situation, I was made a sitting duck by game mechanics. Besides, I was kinda caught by surprise by the fact these zombies dont ever rout, I expected mindless undead to dissolve in the end.
>> b) lacked the equipment that would have made the difference because you had not traded for it yet at that point
Abyssia just researched lvl 4 construction. Nobody else could craft it; not all nations go into construction first, you know. I'll receive firebrand next turn, too bad my 25+ MR didnt let me surivive more than one round. See the point? Let me show you: VotD is just a lvl4 research spell which kicks in early, I simply had no way of preparing for it. I had nobody to trade for it with, period.
>> c) knew you were getting hammered with a potentially lethal overland spell and SAT STILL, waiting for the axe to fall.
I knew I am getting hammered with a potentially lethal overland spell still and I SAT STILL IN A FRIENDLY DOMAIN BECAUSE I COULDNT HIDE FROM IT, ITS OVERLAND! THATS THE WHOLE DAMN POINT, YOU CANT HIDE FROM THIS AXE IN MANY CASES.
And the fact the spell is situational doesnt make it less OP in these situations.

Lets see, sympathy meter reading... yes, below the ground.

The default resolution for VotD and possibly also for attacks spawned by Looming Hell are easily explained by anything, as usual with fictional things, and I can come with 2x as much good explainations why attackers should lose, you can even find some good ones in this very thread.

[Aethyr]

Dude, ya gotta relax a bit.

Here's the deal: sometimes, either because of the side you've chosen, or how you've built your God, or how you've equipped your SC, you may not have a counter for certian things. It's called "balance". Get over it and prepare yourselve better next time.

[Kuritza]

I always thought that balance is when you can find a counter for arising threats. Like, equip an SC against F9W9 sacreds, or paralyze enemy SC to let your sacred overwhelm him. When you cannot, its lack thereof.
I'd agree that its my failure to find a countermeasure if there were and AOE lightning weapon, for example. But so far, only a few items are fit for SCs, despite the many choices. Same applies to armors and shields, sadly - mostly because of encumberance. But thats another story.

[Edi]

Kuritza said:
I knew I am getting hammered with a potentially lethal overland spell still and I SAT STILL IN A FRIENDLY DOMAIN BECAUSE I COULDNT HIDE FROM IT, ITS OVERLAND! THATS THE WHOLE DAMN POINT, YOU CANT HIDE FROM THIS AXE IN MANY CASES.

So, moving around, as in not giving the enemy a sitting, guaranteed target he knows where to whack every turn isn't a potential counter? I know magic attacks come before movement, but if you manage to move out once you know you're being targeted, he needs to take the shotgun to targeting. You may not be able to hide 100% effectively, but you can try to dodge and based on what has been said, it seems that you did not try that.

Make a SC god, run the risk of having it pasted by something unexpected in the early game, because SCs actually take some time to develop. You're still screaming about sour grapes related to one game because you ran afoul of that risk.

Get back to me when you have some actual evidence of VotD being as overpowered across the board as you are making it out to be.

[Kuritza]

And then there are spies, ok? I never said my God didnt move after turn 1. Or, for arguments sake, you may be pushed back by initial attack far enough not to have much provinces to hide in. 2x bless rushes do such things to people.
Get back to you with actual evidence... and you will dismiss it again? I just gave you an example of what can happen when your nation doesnt have an access to fire brand and you rely on SC god for repelling the early rushes. Nearly every time there's some 2x bless van, or Ermor, or Mictlan, or all of them. And its fair, but 'SCs should take time to develop', so countering these rushes is not fair.

[thejeff]

Well, if his enemy has scouts out, moving the SC will probably just leave him vulnerable in a different province. Probably one with lower dominion and thus lower mr (since it was his god).

I know I try to blanket my enemies lands with scouts as soon as I can.

For the record, I don't really have an opinion of VotD being overpowered. I do think the Dead not routing when they should ("special monsters are routed" message) is cheesy and quite possibly unintended.

[Kuritza]

>> I don't really have an opinion of VotD being overpowered. I do think the Dead not routing when they should ("special monsters are routed" message) is cheesy and quite possibly unintended.

I couldnt have said it better. I had no problem knowing 400+ units will attack my God, he's a SC after all. Or that my mages wont surivive even 30-40 zombies, its ok. Thats what this spell is for, if you ask me.
Its the autokill thing that freaked me out.