Any counter to Fires from Afar?

[tibbs]

Is there any magic item that can protect a commander from the Fires From Afar spell? I can't cast the protection dome spells.

Would a ring of fire protection work? Maybe an item that gives the caster air shield?

I have a low HP pretender that I don't want to die.

Thanks,
Chris

[Twan]

Any FR item should work. The problem is more protecting troops than leaders against this kind of spells.

[Cor]

how about any dome spell that block other spells.

[Strages Sanctus]

He said he couldn't cast those http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Break your army up if possible. Don't travel with them all in one big group. It costs the enemy more to inflict this kind of remote damage on you.

There is also that blood spell but it is late game that has a chance to send horrors after anyone that uses non blood magic. That is a global enchantment, but so late game it is probably not useful to you (especially since it is blood)

[NTJedi]

The ring of fire will give you fire immunity for your pretender. I suggest shooting back spells at your enemy such as seeking arrow, earth attack, mind hunt, and so on.
OR
If you're strong enough attack this opponent and start swallowing provinces.
If its a powerful human opponent use diplomacy to advise a temporary peace treaty or an alliance against a stronger human opponent.

[Meglobob]

Fires from afar costs 10F gems which means its not really a fantastically good use of resources, its probably abit overpriced, especially in MP. Personally I would be very happy to see a opponent 'wasting' 10F gems a turn or more casting fires from afar.

[Agrajag]

Indeed a nice point to remember is that each fire gem is worth atleast 15 gold (more with stone, and even more since gems are usually more useful than gold), so if someone casts a 10F gems spell, he just blew 150 gold on it, so if he did less than 150 gold worth of damage, he was wasting his money.

[Ironhawk]

Meglobob said:
Fires from afar costs 10F gems which means its not really a fantastically good use of resources, its probably abit overpriced, especially in MP. Personally I would be very happy to see a opponent 'wasting' 10F gems a turn or more casting fires from afar.



Fires from afar is only overpriced if you are using it to try and kill troops. The much better use is to kill commanders, particularly weak commanders - aka researchers. If an enemy player finds your research center and starts blowing up your researchers with this spell you will think its a bargain at 10gems.

[NTJedi]

Meglobob said:
Fires from afar costs 10F gems which means its not really a fantastically good use of resources, its probably abit overpriced, especially in MP. Personally I would be very happy to see a opponent 'wasting' 10F gems a turn or more casting fires from afar.



I completely agree, but if the original poster is experiencing this issue my suggestions should help.

[KissBlade]

Ironhawk said:

Meglobob said:
Fires from afar costs 10F gems which means its not really a fantastically good use of resources, its probably abit overpriced, especially in MP. Personally I would be very happy to see a opponent 'wasting' 10F gems a turn or more casting fires from afar.



Fires from afar is only overpriced if you are using it to try and kill troops. The much better use is to kill commanders, particularly weak commanders - aka researchers. If an enemy player finds your research center and starts blowing up your researchers with this spell you will think its a bargain at 10gems.



*points*

[Meglobob]

Ironhawk said:

Meglobob said:
Fires from afar costs 10F gems which means its not really a fantastically good use of resources, its probably abit overpriced, especially in MP. Personally I would be very happy to see a opponent 'wasting' 10F gems a turn or more casting fires from afar.



Fires from afar is only overpriced if you are using it to try and kill troops. The much better use is to kill commanders, particularly weak commanders - aka researchers. If an enemy player finds your research center and starts blowing up your researchers with this spell you will think its a bargain at 10gems.



Oh yea...this had not occurred to me, I normally use seeking arrow, cheers now I will use both.

Any other artillary spells like this you could chuck at a research centre?

[Valandil]

lets leaf through my grimoire here...

Wind ride: chance of commander being teleported to the caster, unequaled obesity negates (and other stuff).
Leprosy: diseases stuff
Flames from the sky: kills armies.
Murdering winter: see above
Mind hunt: mind burn or soul slay attack, if enemy has an astral mage you'll probably be feebleminded.
Dreams of Ry'leh- dreamlands national: the caster fights a duel with the target in the void-- half combat values, mr.
Flying monkeys: attack of monkeys (!!!)
Earth Attack: a commander is attacked by an elemental
Manifestation: chance of an ashen angel assasination
Send Tupilak- Frozen Sea national: commander attacked by a tupilak.
Ghost riders (duh), phantasmal attack, send horror/lesserhorror, call of the winds, call of the wilds, all attack province directly.
probably others too.

[Tyrant]

Fires from afar is indeed a bad deal. I chucked at you only because my scouting report said "23 units, mostly ubas" and i thought maybe i could knock off a few 9 hp researchers. But- 2 shots no kills. The easiest counter to it is some crud troops for padding.

[Teraswaerto]

I don't think crud troops help. Decoy commmanders help against assassination spells but not against spells that target all troops, and having more troops just means that more will be hit, right?

[Saxon]

Flying monkeys avoid the mages if I recall, so it is mostly useful for disrupting army movement just before big battles. It can be nice if they hit a cheap commander who has high leadership and lots of troops. The troops stay behind while the rest move, making your defense easier.

Wind Ride has been disapointing for me. I presume if I actually get anyone, there will be a battle in the province I cast if from?

[Endoperez]

Yes, there will be a battle with Wind Ride. Some nations, like MA Man, Can have a Wind Rider and a Charmer squad in the same province. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

[Meglobob]

Saxon said:
Flying monkeys avoid the mages if I recall, so it is mostly useful for disrupting army movement just before big battles. It can be nice if they hit a cheap commander who has high leadership and lots of troops. The troops stay behind while the rest move, making your defense easier.

Wind Ride has been disapointing for me. I presume if I actually get anyone, there will be a battle in the province I cast if from?



I used flying monkeys and guess who they targeted? Yes thats right a mage... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/mad.gif

[Twan]

IIRC in 300mp, you casted flying monkeys on a province where there were my prophet (h3), several astrologer/mystics (s3 something1 or s1 +2/3 ?) and an arco priestess (n1h2). The monkeys targeted the priestess so it seems the highest level spellcasters, holy included, are avoided but they attack the weakest caster if no other commander available.

But you have found something more efficient to divide my troops the same turn (I still wonder how my prophet has stayed with 120 footmen to fight a lone black hawk in the first turn of our war, when 7 other commanders in the same province and with the same order moved, it looks like a very strange result of the new cross-moves system).

[Edi]

Teraswaerto said:
I don't think crud troops help. Decoy commmanders help against assassination spells but not against spells that target all troops, and having more troops just means that more will be hit, right?


That depends on what you're padding against. Against Fires from Afar, it's very effective, because that spell has a limited number of effects. Against Murdering Winter or FftS it's just more meat for the barbecue because they target a percentage of units in target province rather than a fixed number.

I have some fond memories of one of my two Dom2 MP games when I found Thufir's main research/hoarding center and dropped 4xFFTS and 10xFires from Afar plus some seeking arrows and a few earth attacks on it. He was not amused. As to how I got the gems, having Eternal Pyre cast at base fire gem income 40 and going for 30 turns gave me more than enough to go around...

Edi

[Meglobob]

Twan said:
IIRC in 300mp, you casted flying monkeys on a province where there were my prophet (h3), several astrologer/mystics (s3 something1 or s1 +2/3 ?) and an arco priestess (n1h2). The monkeys targeted the priestess so it seems the highest level spellcasters, holy included, are avoided but they attack the weakest caster if no other commander available.

But you have found something more efficient to divide my troops the same turn (I still wonder how my prophet has stayed with 120 footmen to fight a lone black hawk in the first turn of our war, when 7 other commanders in the same province and with the same order moved, it looks like a very strange result of the new cross-moves system).



Cheers for letting me know Twan, I thought the spell bugged. Not cast it since. I assumed because you had such a large army, you would have had a mundane army commander.

[tibbs]

Just to clarify my research center was hit with two fires from afar in a row. Luckily they are very beefy researchers and all survived the attack.

After that I recruited a ton of crap units to take the hits so they should be relatively safe now.

You really caught me offguard with that attack though and made me rethink some plans I had.

[Valandil]

Flying monkeys definately attacks mages (despite what the description says) but as far as I can tell never actually carries the mage off. They just attack.

[NTJedi]

Valandil said:
Flying monkeys definately attacks mages (despite what the description says) but as far as I can tell never actually carries the mage off. They just attack.



Since they only put the mage asleep... no real damage is done. However the one casting the spell would have wasted gems if its not carrying off a commander.

[Valandil]

hmm. I seem to remeber a direct (and lethal) attack by the monkeys. I'll get back to you...