Caelum Battlefield Magic Broken

[Ironhawk]

I've been playing around with Caelum for a few days now and I have come to the conclusion that thier use of air magic in combat just doesnt work. The once-feared battlefield magic of Caelum is now broken! Issues that are causing it to break are the following:

1) Air spells strike few targets
2) Quickness no longer effects spellcasting
3) Dom3 produces larger armies (more targets)

These things together mean that an air mage just cannot kill enough troops in a battle to make him worth his own cost! Couple this already poor situation with the fact that its even harder to produce mages in dom3 (caelum in particular cost 1500gp for its cheapest fort+lab) and you are left with the conclusion that Caelum just cant fight on the battlefield.

Now - Everyone is probably chomping at the bit to say "but they can still cast Wrathful Skies!!@#$". And that is true, but that is a specialty attack that requires tons of gold and gems in order to do correctly. Battlefield magic, the kind that makes your armies really feared, should be easy to deploy, reliable, and powerful. As it stands, Caelum has none of the above...

[KissBlade]

Heh, play ME TC, then go back to Caelum. You'll not find caelum battlemagic so bad ...

[Ironhawk]

Comparing this to another nation is irrelevant? Caelum's battlemagic still wont work, regardless of whatever problems any other nation still might have. Except perhaps that its more important here because Caelum's troops are garbage. Without thier battlefield magic, how can they possibly compete?

[alexti]

Caelum still has their raiding ability which was always their greatest strength.

[Sheap]

Well, I agree with Ironhawk to some extent. In dom2 the high-precision, few-target spells were better because armies were smaller. Now in dom3 the low-precision, many-target spells are better. And Caelum suffers more from quickness because they had water magic on all their mages. Of course, they are not the only ones that are hurt by that, lots of nations have water mages.

I'm not sure I agree that an air mage is no longer worth his own cost, though. After all mages are supposed to live a long time and fight in many battles, especially Caelum mages which are so hard to catch if they rout. And they still kill almost as many troops as they did before since they should still be limited by fatigue rather than # of rounds, most of the time. Their magic is just less dominant and develops a little more slowly in battle.

[KissBlade]

Ironhawk said:
Comparing this to another nation is irrelevant? Caelum's battlemagic still wont work, regardless of whatever problems any other nation still might have. Except perhaps that its more important here because Caelum's troops are garbage. Without thier battlefield magic, how can they possibly compete?



Haha I was just having a quip at your posts expense. I haven't payed Caelum to a significant enough degree yet to judge.

[Meglobob]

I don't agree, air magic still rocks, I have effectively destroyed Ermor with 20 or so A2 mages. Give each a air gem, bang 20 thunderstrikes, then 4 lightning bolts each, for 80 lightning bolts then retreat. Gather the lot again, rinse repeat.

For added fun put cloud trapzing in the mix... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Ironhawk]

alexti said:
Caelum still has their raiding ability which was always their greatest strength.



Caelums greatest strength was, and still is, its magic (tho that magic power is sorely weakened now). Ability to raid is average at best. The best nations for raiding are Pan (centaurs + satyrs) or Van (Vans), no question.

[Ironhawk]

Meglobob said:
I don't agree, air magic still rocks, I have effectively destroyed Ermor with 20 or so A2 mages.



Basically you have proven my point: In order to get any bang for the buck out of air mages you need to bring a ridiculous amount of them to a battle.

[Endoperez]

Ironhawk said:

Meglobob said:
I don't agree, air magic still rocks, I have effectively destroyed Ermor with 20 or so A2 mages.



Basically you have proven my point: In order to get any bang for the buck out of air mages you need to bring a ridiculous amount of them to a battle.



That 20 Air mages with gems is enough doesn't mean that fewer wouldn't be.

[Maltrease]

I find Caelums air magic very powerful. Thunderstrike is an immensely powerful spell.

The strike and retreat is also very useful to wearing down large armies. [nice idea on the gems meglobob].

I often script Eagle kings to Mistform (great for surviving arrow fire and normal chaff attacks), Aim, Thunder x3, retreat. With a little archer cover they will usually escape before getting killed.

Call of the winds is a great easy to research spell to use early game. Often times 2 calls will take out the PD and if you are scouting you can even take out an enemy site searching mage.

You can easily reach Evo4 at the end of the 6th or 7th turn (with a sage pretender) and still expand using archers (normal indies). Then 2 Eagle kings and an archer force can take on almost any tougher indy province your archers couldn't do.

Another great Evo4 spell is Huricane. Which despite what the manual says will target any province (not just coastal). The in-game description does not say anything about "coastal" so I don't know if its a game bug or manual error.

5 Huricanes on an enemy capital (125 unrest, 15% population death), followed by 2 a turn will pretty much shut them out of their troops and a big chunk of income.

It is true that air magic is much weaker then it was in Dom2, perhaps for Man or other less mobile nations it is not worth using.

[Ironhawk]

Thunderstrike is powerful... agaisnt 3 units. Which is all you can hit with AoE 1. And with 50 fatigue you wont be casting it that much.

Hurricane is a good spell and I will likely use it - but it has nothing to do with battlefield magic.

You make some good points, but none of it addresses the fact that air magic is weak in dom3. And particularly so for Caelum since it relies on it so heavily and its troops are on average worse than normal (supposedly a trade off for flying).

[Maltrease]

It also sends a shockwave to the surounding squares.. which can do 1-10 AN to each unit within them.

[Graeme Dice]

Maltrease said:
It also sends a shockwave to the surounding squares.. which can do 1-10 AN to each unit within them.



That's fatigue damage, not physical damage.

[alexti]

Ironhawk said:

alexti said:
Caelum still has their raiding ability which was always their greatest strength.



Caelums greatest strength was, and still is, its magic (tho that magic power is sorely weakened now). Ability to raid is average at best. The best nations for raiding are Pan (centaurs + satyrs) or Van (Vans), no question.


I very much disagree. Ability to destroy enemy's economy (gold and gem) was always the critical point in any but very short game. Pans and Vans have stronger raiders but they just don't have sufficient mobility and number of raiding parties. While Caelum can easily field 15-20 raiding parties, other nations are still in single digits. True, in Dom2 Caelum also had stronger magic, but it wasn't their magic that was winning the games. I still remember losing the agme vs Caelum even though my armies were ruling the battlefields. I've defeated Caelumian opponent several times (and it must have hurted, he was losing air queens and ice devils in those battles), but eventuall he has worn me out with his raids, got better gold and gem income and pretty much decided the game.

[Mind Elemental]

Have some sympathy for Man. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif Crones are capital only, and Mothers can't do much in battle besides Eagle Eyes, Swarm, Poison/Sleep Cloud, and berserking. Oh, and lightning bolts, but 1 guy/turn is not going to make much difference.

[BigJMoney]

Ironhawk said:
Comparing this to another nation is irrelevant? Caelum's battlemagic still wont work, regardless of whatever problems any other nation still might have. Except perhaps that its more important here because Caelum's troops are garbage.



What in the world? M.A. Cold-3 Caelum has the heaviest infantry troops in the game, PLUS they can fly! They don't need anything else. If I remember correctly, they also have that same troop choice without wings, but the benefit of being sacred. What's not to love?

=$= Big J Money =$=

[PvK]

Having recently had one of my EA Vanheim armies smashed by an independent province with three A2 mages in it, and having played Caelum, I am hardly sympathetic. Boo hoo, only A2 flying mages... only Lightning Bolts... No double-speed casting like in Dom 2... waaa! geez...

[Meglobob]

Ironhawk said:

Meglobob said:
I don't agree, air magic still rocks, I have effectively destroyed Ermor with 20 or so A2 mages.



Basically you have proven my point: In order to get any bang for the buck out of air mages you need to bring a ridiculous amount of them to a battle.



20 A2 mages in Dom3 is not a ridiculous amount, now the 300+ mages I gathered in 1 game, was a ridiculous amount. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

You have more money in Dom3, so the slight toning down of mages is more than made up for the effect you can afford more of them on the battlefield.

My only problem with it, is the increased mircro-management required to mange a large mage army.

[Meglobob]

Mind Elemental said:
Have some sympathy for Man. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/tongue.gif Crones are capital only, and Mothers can't do much in battle besides Eagle Eyes, Swarm, Poison/Sleep Cloud, and berserking. Oh, and lightning bolts, but 1 guy/turn is not going to make much difference.



Recruiting those crones, will give you a N5 crone and a A4 crone, eventually. When you consider what magic items/spells that gives you access too, its very powerful. Good job they are capital only.

[Maltrease]

Graeme Dice said:

Maltrease said:
It also sends a shockwave to the surounding squares.. which can do 1-10 AN to each unit within them.



That's fatigue damage, not physical damage.



I know that is what the manual says, but I am pretty sure it is doing real damage. It isn't hitting every surrounding square but almost always more then targeted square.

The in game description says "Even if it misses, the shock wave is powerful enough to severely stun and damage anyone nearby."

[Meglobob]

Maltrease said:

Graeme Dice said:

Maltrease said:
It also sends a shockwave to the surounding squares.. which can do 1-10 AN to each unit within them.



That's fatigue damage, not physical damage.



I know that is what the manual says, but I am pretty sure it is doing real damage. It isn't hitting every surrounding square but almost always more then targeted square.

The in game description says "Even if it misses, the shock wave is powerful enough to severely stun and damage anyone nearby."



Yep, I think its doing physical damage as well, units go 'pop' anyway, with a slight crackle. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Maltrease]

Caelums troops are really not that bad. Cheap mobile archers make early expansion easy (without using mages) and later they become great shields to protect your mages and help destroy cheap massed troops. It is true that many nations with cheap troops can build an equivalent cost army that will defeat an army of Eagle Kings, Seraphs and Caelum troops. However with Caelum’s mobility the goal is to never fight a battle like that.

Instead you split your army up into 5 parts and take five provinces for every one of yours they take. If they split their army into 2 or 3 pieces to counter this then you attack one of their split up divisions with all 5 of your mini armies (using your superior mobility) and eliminate it. Your Eagle kings can get off 3-4 good thunder strikes per battle… if that is enough to destroy most of the enemy forces you win. Five eagle kings x4 thunder strikes will kill about 80-100 normal troops. So 2000 gold of elite capital mages could kill 800 gold worth of chaff or 1000’s of gold if they are using premium units.

If they are heading to your capital with their giant army then just start taking all of their land... possibly even occupying their capital. Your mountain fortress has 750 defense and 750 supply so you have lots of time before they can storm it. And here is the real key... at any time you can cast call of winds to bring in 21 hawks for defense. You can easily cast this 5 or more times in one turn. So let them hack away at your walls for 4-5 turns, then bring 100 new defenders and let them see your walls being repaired (or let them damage it 10 a round so they have no idea they are not making “real” progress).

During the 5 (or more) turns they are futilely sieging your fortress you have conquered 20 of their provinces (possibly their capital) crippling their income and increasing yours. With hawks and eventually a few supply items (nature 1 is easy with indies) you can hold out forever.

Caelum is fun! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

[Cainehill]

Sheap said:
After all mages are supposed to live a long time and fight in many battles, especially Caelum mages which are so hard to catch if they rout.



Except that the new morale system is broken even worse than Dom2's, as your mages _won't_ rout when all the troops have. Instead they mostly stand there casting spells until the enemy troops get to them and start attacking.

And of course, most mages under melee attack, die before they can run.

[Endoperez]

Cainehill said:
Except that the new morale system is broken even worse than Dom2's, as your mages _won't_ rout when all the troops have. Instead they mostly stand there casting spells until the enemy troops get to them and start attacking.

And of course, most mages under melee attack, die before they can run.



If that's true, it's a bug.

Once an army has taken 50% casualties, every squad (and commander, I think) will make a morale roll every round.

Once an army has taken 75% casualties, it will automatically rout.

It MIGHT be that routed units aren't counted as casualties, and that normal Caelumians (50%) fail their roll and rout, but the mages stay in because more than a fourth managed to run away. Can anyone confirm this?

[curtadams]

I don't have or see any problems with mages failing to run away, unless they're asleep. I do see a possible bug, not restricted to mages, in that after the army routs, many units will fight on one more turn. They run afterwards.

I mentioned this in another thread but a major hit on mages comes from the morale changes. It's much harder to break squads than in Dom2. In Dom2 it wasn't particularly unusual to see an ordinary army break from just 2 or 3 rounds of not-very-lethal combat. Now I've seen armies of barbarians, who used to be unbelievably chicken, fight almost to to last man. One of the advantages of mages over missle units is that their damage is heavily concentrated in the first few rounds. Back when that frequently broke an army it was a big boost. Now armies only break that fast if you are hurting them so badly it'll be an easy win anyway. The changes are welcome IMO and breaking seems more reasonable than before but it has affected the mages.

In terms of strict bang-for-the-buck twelve shots from 10 or so bowmen will normally do more harm than a comparably priced artillery mage, barring universal heavy armor. That hasn't changed much. What's changed is that the advantages of artillery- concentration of damage early in the battle and lowered supply costs - have been reduced and largely made irrelevant, respectively. Simultaneously, since the overhead costs of research and labs doubled, mages are relatively more expensive even though their official costs weren't changed.

Incidentally, the fact that Caelum needs a big gem expenditure to make their mages fly (so to speak) just backs up that they're not up to snuff. 20 gems is an extraordinary investment in one battle. Even a well-searched large empire can't turn out a supply like that every turn in most games.

[Uh-Nu-Buh]

I've seen the whole "armies route and mages stay and get slaughtered" thing several times; and I believe it is because the mages are fatigued to unconsciousness. I checked it the first time because, like Cainehill, I was extremely upset. However, fatigue was waay over the limit, so I just accepted it.

[Meglobob]

Uh-Nu-Buh said:
I've seen the whole "armies route and mages stay and get slaughtered" thing several times; and I believe it is because the mages are fatigued to unconsciousness. I checked it the first time because, like Cainehill, I was extremely upset. However, fatigue was waay over the limit, so I just accepted it.



Yea, the only time mages hang around is due to fatigue. The best one I have seen to date is in a MP, Ermor did master/communion and took a dozen mages too 200 fatigue (death), it was very, very funny. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/biggrin.gif

[Shovah32]

Just to comment on raiding, although caelum is good at raiding imo the single best raiding nation is helheim. Almost all its troops are stealthy due to glamour, it has stealthy commanders who can make great thugs AND, it has flying, sacred units with glamour along with a flying priest to bless them.

[PvK]

Some units not routing the first turn morale breaks is a feature. Routing is a chaotic event - not everyone manages to stage a choreographed retreat at the same time.

[Ironhawk]

PvK said:
Having recently had one of my EA Vanheim armies smashed by an independent province with three A2 mages in it, and having played Caelum, I am hardly sympathetic. Boo hoo, only A2 flying mages... only Lightning Bolts... No double-speed casting like in Dom 2... waaa! geez...



Uhhh... dunno why you have to use that tone. But if you'd care to read the thread, all the points I've made about air magic in dom3 are still valid. In point of fact, no one is actually seriously arguing me on air magic. They are all pointing instead to the fact that caelum is a "strong raiding nation". If your vans got killed by some lucky LBs that doesnt undo anything of what I've said.

[PvK]

Sorry for the sarcasm, really.

Dryly, then, I'd say the air magic available to Caelum works quite well at enough things to be a strong asset, if not as poweful as it was in (edit: D2). I don't think it can accurately be described as "broken" compared to the abilities of other nations in D3.

[KissBlade]

Some of you really aren't reading what Ironhawk is saying at all about when exactly is Caelum at their weakest. I don't necessarily agree with his points since I think air magic is one of the stronger evocation trees but there is a definite problem with early mid game for most magic reliant nations.

[mivayan]

Since some say freezing mist (W3A1) is very nice in cold3, a smaller area version of that spell that requires A2W1 would be neat.

[Cor]

I agree. They are weaker. I would like to see one more large area air spell added somewhere high in evocation. It would be a Caelum only spell. Something like chail lightning or shimmering feilds...