EA Abysia vs. Bogus&C.

[Gurthang]

Hi, I am in the early stages of a campaign as EA Abysia and I am planning to attack Bogus & C. with an army of about 40 armored infantry + 30 salamanders. Do you think the odds are good enough, or do I risk a massacre? :eek:

Are salamanders good enough to penetrate those thugs' armor/enchantments?

My worry is that salamanders would be commanded by 2 separate mages, both of them unarmored albeit strongly escorted. Do you think there is a risk that the archer + dark knight slay my mages before the bulk of my army reaches the fray? I suppose that my salamanders would rout without leaders with magic command abilities, is that right?

All help and suggestions appreciated! :)

[sansanjuan]

Hellbind heart spam. The blood Mages need to be surrounded by bodyguards (slaves may do), you can try control-u iirc to insert bogus/friends into a similar battle from a prior turn (or recreate). Look up units numbers from edi's db.
ssj

[JonBrave]

you can try control-u iirc to insert bogus/friends into a similar battle from a prior turn (or recreate).
ssj

@ssj, would you care to go through this one, please?

[sansanjuan]

Will try to post a "how to" sequence later this week. I'm not an expert but my post might prompt the people who *really* know what they are doing to post. It's also possible to mod a map with the staged battle ready to roll. That allows one to equip the commander whereas shift-u usually inserts them "naked" (can't recall if Bogus comes dressed to party)
ssj

[militarist]

If you have hellbind heart researched - take your sabbath - as many mages as you can and hellbind all the team. I did it not once.
They are worthy to have on your side. Killing them is a waste of opportunity.

If you don't have it reserched - research. Don't rush.

[JonBrave]

@ssj
First you said it's "Control-U", which is what I tried, now you say it's "Shift-U".... :)

To be honest, I haven't a clue where you are or what you're trying to achieve. Are we talking about the Battleground Editor, which I've never gone through?

[sansanjuan]

Sorry for the confusion. I often post from work which relies on memory... Not a good idea because I forget that I have a bad memory. ;)

I'm just saying there are at least 2.5 ways to simulate pending battle encounters. One is trivial, one more involved. Unsure of the battleground editor but it sounds intriguing. Will try to post a step by step on how to do the quick and dirty simulations and the limitations of that method.
ssj

[JonBrave]

I doubtless don't know even the trivial one :)

The Battleground Editor is just one of the "Game Tools" off the Main Menu. I'm sure you'll have seen it, and it's probably only a terrain editor... yep, just dared to have a look, that won't be what you mean.

If there's an easy way to set up test battles where you can import "yours" & "theirs" from what's happening, that would be lovely.... :)

[sansanjuan]

ok.. here is the quick and dirty one.

Let's say Pan is invading with masses of cockatrices, maenads and unfrozen warriors (cleverly placed next to troops without cold resitance). They just took my pd 1 province.

-Does not look good for the pd...

[sansanjuan]

Now I happen to have 118 knight ready to meet the ladies and their escorts. How do I test then encounter?

Click on a square in front of the cockatrices and hit "shift-u" and and screen appears asking "what unit?". The easiest thing to do is to use Edi's DB (see his signiture) or other resource and find the units ID. In this case you can see knight as unit 22. After entering 22 (unit id) a second box appears asking how many. I have 118.


Links
Edi DB (old but still very useful) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=40445

(Debug mod, there are others) http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=36453

[sansanjuan]

ahh.. now that's better. Note the knights will be against EVERYONE on the map and will certainly trash my PD... that's ok. but what about the Pan hoard?

Also note other units inserted will join the knights (from what I've seen)

[sansanjuan]

The suspense was killing you... Knights prevail against spit ball throwing cockatrices and berzerking nekked women!

Was very close. A few less knight and the battle likely would tip the other way.

Note this is VERY limited in use. Other methods..
1. Debug Mod (snippets shown)
2. Map editing

Hope that helps. With the other methods you can wish for: thugs, equip them, and have them operate under your bless (use your real starting pretender).
ssj

[Fantomen]

In the case of bogus I believe that calling thieir IDs in this manner would produce them without equipment, so not that useful. You'd have to do it the other way around, attack the bogus province with a scout and insert the abysian troops instead.

Edit: They would also not get their special scripts to attack commanders.

[sansanjuan]

Thanks Fant.
It was late last night and I completely forgot to address the OP (and I'm cringing reading all my typos).

Any vets that want to walk through a bogus map mod scenario feel free. I have an example I could show but would rather not embarrass myself...

Bogus story
In my current game bogus parachuted on top of 50 blessed jags. Ended up wih his ring "precious" and few losses. Then, 2 turns later bogus/crew hit that same group again and the same commander ended up with another "precious". I was pretty lucky both times his "target mages" units failed to hit.

One could probably start an entire thread on bogus stories. I have others. I have heard of games when bogus ends up on a player's cap early. That's pretty much a game over event. It would make an interesting contest to construct a single prov map with bogus on top of the human players cap and seeing who could take the Bogus team down in the fewest turns (without using the pretender in battle).

ssj