Some combat spells are never used?

[ExitJudas]

it seems to me that some combat spells, especially close combat damage spells are almost never used, because if a mage gets in close combat he is dead anyway.

is this a trend or does it change maybe late game? It seems there are a lot of these spells that are never really used for that exact reason.

[llamabeast]

This is largely true, but occasionally the close combat ones are invaluable. e.g. the puny touch ones may sometimes enable a mage to kill an assassin. The larger AOE ones can come into play if enemy troops manage to sneak round your front line to attack your mages - sometimes one of your mages may take the initiative and fry the lot of them.

They are hard to script though - it's very rare to successfully use them deliberately. I suppose you could have an SC who's got high fire or air magic or something, and script him to attack/attack/Flame Eruption/Flame Eruption/Flame Eruption. Could be quite effective.

[ExitJudas]

good idea llama. does anyone here have experience with scripting close combat spells or at least some good stories of how the "spell you never saw used before" saved the battle?

[Dedas]

I use them alot. The Agartha Oracle is for instance a good close combat mage, just give him protective equipment. The thing to remember though is the fatigue issue that comes with most armor. Why? Because critical hits can be a real killer in close combat even for the most protected mage. There are shields and armor suited for the job though.

[ExitJudas]

do you have a scripting example?

[jutetrea]

There was a past thread that evolved into the best ways to use the caelum seraphs(?) as SCs. Couple buffs, attack once, let rip with the short range ligthtning spell.

If you search creatively you might find it, no idea what the thread name was. It had quite a few good ideas on touch spells (or short range)

[Ironhawk]

I dont have a script but I have seen Flame Eruption scripted against me. My enemy put some fire mages at the front of his army and placed them just right so that they blew away my whole front line just as they were about to slaughter them. That'll teach me to use the same formation twice!

Also, I have occassionally scripted close range spells during siege defenses. Its one of the only times you know with some degree of assurance that you can put a mage on the front line and he wont be killed immediately. The only problem is that there is a decent chance he will hit your own troops guarding the gate. Orb Lightning works like a charm in that situation tho!

[Dedas]

I always speed up my early expansion when playing Agartha using the Risen Oracle pretender (and sometimes also regular oracles) scripting the low level spell (alteration 1) "fists of iron". With high strength and high earth magic you can obliterate loads of enemies in one sweep. Can be very useful for taking out those pesky independent heavy cavalry units for instance. Though you have to take up the initial charge with some chaff first.

A rule of thumb when scripting for close combat is to learn how battlefield movement works. Great help here is the combat grid (activated by pressing "g") and the manual. Another thing is to use scouts to observe your enemies scripting (especially human) in combat. Some players never change their scripts and that is something you can use against them. It is a gamble of course, but then again, so is everything in this game.

[ExitJudas]

so Q's: if both sides start furthest forward. how many grids will be between the fronts? is it 2 AP per move? meaning Light infantry with 10 ap move 5 grids? does attacker move first? how many AP for casting a spell?

[Sensori]

ExitJudas said:
does attacker move first? how many AP for casting a spell?

Not sure about the rest, but here's an answer to two! Defender moves first and casting a spell ends the mage's "turn" even if he had full APs.