Can normal army take out Sphinx pretender?

[Gargoyle]

If I have a Black Sorcerer, some Spider Hunters, Hoplites, a Tomb King with some undead, some mechanical men, and some mid lvl magic items (about 100 troops all told), can it take out a lone Sphinx Pretender?

[quantum_mechani]

Depemnds, for one thing, does the sphinx have any extra magic?
Normal troops can take out a spinx (for instance a lot of crossbows might do it), but likely not the army you descibed. It might be possible with your black sorceror casting shatter though.

[Vicious Love]

Well, your hunter spiders, hoplites, mechanical men and undead would be completely and utterly useless, and only marginally useful if enhanced by Weapons of Sharpness. A pretender's MR can be pretty damn difficult to penetrate, so Disintegrate is out of the question. And you haven't got any astral mages to Magic Duel the target.

Mid-level magic items, eh? If that means Smashers, Duskdaggers, Hammers of the Mountains(or whichever hammer is armor-negating) and maybe, maybe Ethereal Crossbows, you might actually stand a chance, provided you've got survivable, high-MR commanders who can bear said arms, and the Sphinx isn't in high friendly dominion. I don't suppose you've got a high-strength astral mage around who can wield two Swords of Swiftness, or a Smasher in each hand? Nothing quite like 2-4 uber-high damage armor-negating attacks per round to bring an immobile colossus down.

[sushiboat]

Given that the Sphinx is an Astral mage, is an autokill scenario anything more than a longshot? The idea is that the Sphinx paralyzes some attackers but cannot kill them, all attackers except the paralyzed retreat, the turn limit passes, and everyone remaining, including the Sphinx, is autokilled.

I guess the simple answer to the original question is no, don't even think about it with the army you described.

[GriffinOfBuerrig]

Yes i see it the same way, with that army you won´t stand a chance. Only if your battle buffs are as good as described above(strenght of giants, weapons of charpness.

mid lvl magic items???? Thats a very very wide expresion, can mean everything!

[Endoperez]

If it is an AI Sphinx, and it doesn't have access to any really good attack spells, you might be able to use the "autokill" tactic sushiboat wrote about.

Also, if it has low Astral skill and you have lots of astral mages you would throw away for possibility of win, you might try to Magic Duel him.

[Gargoyle]

Thanks for all the input. I've played SP a few times now, but this is my first game where I am at or near the top in all the Score Graph categories (except dominion, where I'm just in the middle of the pack). I'm playing Machaka. I've used massed armies, black sorcerers, summoned undead leaders, troll court, Call of the wild, and magic and combat boosting items as my main strategy. I have Fire, Death, Nature and Earth mages of mixed skills.

I've avoided SCs as I have read that the AI doesn't know how to deal with them. I feel if I did concentrate on a SC strategy I would either lose before I made a good one or Win automatically if I got it going. Both these scenarios are not what I desire from the game.

But in this one instance of the Sphinx trapped behind his fortress walls, I must either create some SCs or dwindle its dominion to nothing.

So that leads me to my next question. With Temples and 3 lvl preist all over the place why is my dominion weak? Is there some other dominion boosting method that I am missing?

[PDF]

Don't think you can get him this way. With more Machakan mages you can try to script them to Blindness x 4, Retreat and give them Rune Smashers if possible. Eventually the Sphinx will fail a MR roll...
Paralyze could alos work but you won't have many Astral mages with Machaka.

[Endoperez]

The dominion value you start with affects the speed your dominions spreads with. Every 5 temples give you one more point, but IIRC it only helps to stop enemy dominion from invading, not to spread your dominion, or has some other similar limitation. If you took low dominion, your dominion won't go above your borders, but with lots of temples you can have your whole empire under positive dominion.

[Alneyan]

Hand of Death can be good for your mages, as it deals a lot of damage bypassing armour... but you will need to get your mages at point blank range first, and Death mages will probably cast other spells than that one when under AI control. I don't know for sure how Decay works, but it could be a solution: you have access to Bane Blades, the Decay spell and Banefire, and those deal a lot of damage at the end of a battle (hitting the Sphinx will not be a problem).

The main factor for Dominion spread is the Dominion level you picked when creating your Pretender: the higher it is, the more easily your Dominion will spread. You should aim at having 6 or so for a good spread, and the AI seems to pick Dominion levels around that value too. You can raise Dominion in one province by bringing in your Prophet and your Pretender (who automatically spread Dominion), by building temples in the immediate vicinity, and by setting your priests to preach (they only raise Dominion when preaching). If it still does not work, a few units have the ability to lower enemy Dominion (Sceptics and one Demon Lord, in particular), and the Stone Idol has the same ability, so it might work out... if you can get any of these things, as they aren't particularly easy to reach for Machaka.