10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

I'm playing with a 10N pretender in a SP game and was wondering if any other folks have tried similar?

A few countries that can free up extra points seem to be the best for such an attempt. I plan to try some others and play 50 turns just to see what happens.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Well you go with a 10 bless if you want an extra point in the ability you got with the 4 bless. A n10 bless is good for that extra berserk point. Actually the nature bless is the only one I would personally take to 10.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Don't think I'd ever do it, but someone might find the water, fire, or earth path worth taking to 10 as well. That extra point of defense or attack rating might be nice, likewise the extra point of fatigue recovered each turn.

Perhaps more importantly, for fire and earth, is the benefit it gives the pretender as an artillery platform, plus the extra point armor from earth, extra point offense from fire.

Come to think of it, some might consider Air-10 also - extra precision for the pretender, lower fatigue cost for the big combat spells, and better missile protection for the sacreds.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Air 10 is maybe worth it as a blessing, if you primarily want your sacred troops as a buffer in front of your massed missile fire.

also Death 10 is much superior to Death 9, though still not that good IMO, and so might reasonably to taken for a PoD, who wants very high death anyways.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

I'll field test a Fire 10 Moloch next. Those initial firefly shots at that level come in handy. And then there's magma bolts.....

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Death 10 (especially on a PoD) is the only level-10 blessing I'd consider. On sacred troops, Lesser Fear(-1) -> Fear(+0) is a much better improvement than an extra point of ATT, DEF, STR, reinvig, etc. And the PoD also benefits from it (+19 -> +20). Remember enemy troops suffer an extra -1 to their morale check at fear levels 0, +5, +10, +15, etc.

And it also means an extra Ghost per Summon Ghosts ritual http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/cool.gif

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Nature 10 would be useful for Serpent Cult Pythium. The +4 berserk hydras are mini-SCs sans leadership.

I once killed 2 fully decked berserked ice devils with 11 blessed hydras and some other assorted stuff. Lost only 1 hydra besides a bit of fodder. And this was with just a nature 7 blessing, which was perhaps the stupidest blessing ever selected by anybody anywhere. But it was my second MP game and I was a complete newbie at the time.

Come to think of it, I still AM a complete newbie! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Panther that ice devil battle isnt exactly accurate...you had like 30 tritons that caused the ice devils to go berserk(they had hellswords) which prevented them from casting their initial spells. Tritons are good at killing sc's before they get a chance to cast spells.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Ah, your right! I had totally forgotten about that part. It's tough to get old!

I still think my hydras would have done a very good job on your ice devils anyway. Nine attacks per creature with multiple creatures drops the defense down so low that many attacks will always get in.

In fact, the summer lions and vine ogres were doing a very good job all by themselves, and blocking the hydras from even attacking until late in the battle. But the only reason the lions and ogres were doing any good at all is because of the lack of buffs on the devils.

I stand corrected. And I have to remember that strategy...

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Is it by the amount of attacks or the amount of attackers that drops defense down? I thought it is the amount of attackers.

Anyway I wonder how good a n10 bless strat with the hydras would turn out. I believe sc's could take them out without a problem if equipped with any of the poison resist items. But are the serpent cult mages n3 because if so you could have them scripted to charm when you get attacked by sc's.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

It's the number of attacks.

They are only W1N2?1, which is my major gripe with the theme.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Earth-10 on a cyplops is also good, esp. for pythium. Good rein for both communicants and mages, +4 armor that can make the mages Last a quite a bit longer, A pretender that can take lots of punches early on and a truly suberb Enliven statues caster. Just slap on earth boots and he makes 26 statues a turn with the price tag of 20E, or 0,75 gems a piece. (usually 2 gems a piece.) The statues augment pythian mages very well, being mindless lifeless 14 def 22 prot 15 hp size 3 troops that can protect your mages against sc's and armies for quite some time while the said mages deal destruction. As a Last bonus, once you reach alt9, that you are going to want for wish anyway, you can cast army of lead that is a battlefield-wide protection/mr spell that turns even militias (or mages, for that matter) into a stone wall...

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Er - how often does Wish get cast except by Astral Pretenders? A top rank Astral mage is S4. Starshine Skullcap, ring of sorcery, ring of wizardry take that to S7. Replace the ring of sorcery with the Forbidden Light, S8. I guess you could always empower a mage from S4 to S5, and for nations other than Arco, R'lyeh, and Pythium, you have to empower up to S4 and then S5? (And then see your Empowered Wisher get killed by the Horrors the Forbidden Light brings.)

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

well the Fire 10 Moloch is doing well. I've been using him in combat and in joint ops with salamanders (priests) and warlocks.

The sacred lava warriors are carving through enemy ranks like butter. Thats the troops that haven't already fled...

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Now ask yourself, does it work that much better than a Fire 9 Moloch to justify the cost? These 56 design points could buy you a better castle, an extra click on the good side of a scale, an extra candle or 2, a special dominion effect like Desert Sun.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Oh you are absolutely correct. It is not the most EFFICIENT use of design points.

BUT I wanted to pursue this path to research the FUN factor of having a totally overpowered pretender on the field and what the differences might be between the different paths. See what the bless effects were like.

So you are right. This is not the best way to go. I would even argue that having a 9 anything pretender is not a good idea or worth it.

But it is kinda fun...

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

For me, the way you listed is pretty much exactly how it gets cast and is fairly normal in the late game when I play arco (I haven't played a lot of late game rlyeh/atlantis but I assume they would empower with clam generated astral). If you are lucky, you can also sometimes trade for or even hunt up a robe of the magi instead of empowering though empowering is more common.

Otoh, I rarely, if ever, take astral on a pretender (of course I don't play Ermor, either).

- Kel

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/smile.gif

The most fun you can get with a level 10 blessing is equipping a Prince of Death with an Horror Helmet, a Stymphalian Wings armor and the Aegis. That's a grand total of Fear(+35). Even ultra-elite troops won't stay for long on the battlefield when this one starts scattering them around http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Plus the Sceptre of Unholy Regency, that's +3, plus the Book of Profane Secrets, or whatever, that's +7, if I'm not mistaken, plus... any other misc items that cause fear?

Update: Also, would the Armor of Virtue make him more frightful than the Stymphalian Wings? Death 10 blessing on an undead unit, how much is that?

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

I've taken Astral on the pretender several times now, on purpose despite knowing "Never put astral on your pretender". http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif I'll often put it on an immortal (liches and phoenix) since it isn't as much of a liability there.

I've also been asked, "What is Astral doing on your Ghost King???" http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif On a large map (one of the Cradle Versions), I figured my GK could easily avoid astral assassins, and would otherwise only be in danger if the home castle was endangered (scripting the recall spell).

Pretty fun, and successful - forged the Forbidden Light, and will soon be casting my very first Wishes, if the game goes on long enough (most players have gone AI, and Norfleet's abandoned Caelum have been trampling some other players).

Really made a difference for a nation that otherwise doesn't get astral - Vanheim's Helheim theme.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

What units are used as astral assassins?

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

No, and neither would a Shroud. A pretender can't get his own blessings back from these items.

Fear(+5). You can also get a cheap Fear(+21) on a Mound Fiend if you give him a Shroud and an Horror Helmet.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

I did a series of tests using maximum harsh scales to get maximum blessings. I was able to get all 4's plus a 9 or a couple 9's even. My final judgement was that it could be a viable strategy for the right person. Various nations have immunities (or even preference) for some harsh scales so that only about half of the scales were really affecting them. If you took really low dominion and cheap castles you might even manage to keep your main armies outside of the affect of your scales entirely. For a nation with really good sacred units it could be quite a power punch. Unfortunately it took more careful managment than I can do.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Ermor under Ashen Empire or Soul Gate can pretty much be hammered on the harsh scales. I'd usually take turmoil, sloth, death and misfortune 3. The misfortune 3 sounds like a good idea (ie, you'll get more corpses through random events) but it's not that great because I find you get an awful lot of emigrations instead. That's ok though, as they'll be dying eventually.

I'm still pretty new to the game but I'm finding Ermor's Ashen Empire to be incredibly overpowered (at very difficult AI) using harsh scales, a 9 death magic Prince of Death and a 9 starting dominion.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Jim, the AI is well known to be unable to handle undead hordes such as Ashen Empire Ermor's. If you're playing SP, you really should eliminate it from your roster, either for you or even for the other AIs.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

I found this out the hard way, never having played Serpent Cult Pythium before my game mentioned above. I had to have a thistle mace with nearly every mage I owned in order to cast charm. One thing I did like is the W1 with those guys for the quickness.

I had heard that SC Pythium was not very good. I think this is mostly correct, but I wish the game could have Lasted long enough to have my 20+ nature-blessed berserked hydras fighting the 50+ devils. Would have been very interesting to see how it went. The devils are not fully immune to the poison.

I may have to test this out if I get some time.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Actually I've was playing it MP (well 2 of us and 15 AI on Orania map) at normal level and we both crushed the AI out of sight. We tried at difficult AI and continued to crush the AI so I took up Caelum instead (my friend made the quantum leap from Ulm to Tien Chi http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif).

Looking through the archive, it seems I've picked another monster as my new favourite race. Dammit....I'll give Machaka a go next then.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

also, the AI's have much greater difficulty w/ high indy str. As such, and perhaps counter-intuitively, crushing the AI's is much easier the harder you think you set it (indy-str-wise, at least).

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Yeah the game we had panther was going quite well and was a lot of fun but the game got bugged because of the damn patch. It made the game so buggy that it actually time warped the game back several turns. Everything was just messed up. It was a shame we had to kill that game =[.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

I think R'lyeh has the only national assassins with astral - I should have said "astral hit squads", which are put together with the sole purpose of getting a chance to cast Astral Duel at enemy astral mages, especially the pretender.

Cheap disposable astral mages, perhaps using communion, aiming to get lucky, as even an S3 has a small chance of killing an S8.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

currently the chance isn't even all that small - I think zen mentioned something like 17% w/ a 5 astral difference...

ie. that's huge.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Anybody ever tried Blood 10? I'd have thought the extra STR would come in handy with large armies, and maybe it would kickstart the blood economy (would you actually get any more slaves per turn than with Blood 9?).

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

You do with the blood oracle. I don't know if having any other pretender chassis gives a similar bonus.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

That is huge. I think I'll put a post on the wishlist thread (I'm sure Gandalf/Endoperez will love me for it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) I don't suppose anyone has ever posted a formula for how magic duel works?

I like the role that Astral plays in the game mechanics - I think of it as the one path that allows you to gain magic superiority. As such, it would seem that the game would be richer and more fun if it were a viable strategy to go with a combat mage pretender, that included strong astral. By combat mage pretender, I don't necessarily mean a human caster as pretender (although making human pretenders more viable would be good as well, but that's a separate issue). Instead I mean that taking strong astral in a pretender shouldn't imply that it's necessary to hide your pretender from all exposure to combat, even (especially?) late game combat.

So, to that end what odds would be appropriate in order to make it viable to take astral on a pretender? With a 5 astral difference I'd guess that a 1% chance of defeat is a very low risk level. If you go with a s9 pretender, appropriately equipped, I'd think it would be expensive enough to get within 5 levels, that a 1% chance of success is far from worth the expenditure. So, probably 1% is overkill, yet the current 17% is underkill.

Whatever the right number is, it seems clear (at least to me) that tightening the standard deviation in the magic duel formula would improve the game. I'd bet that in current MP game play, it's mostly cheap mages boosted by communion that cast magic duel, and that certainly seems wrong.

I'd like to make a concrete proposal, but it's difficult to do that without knowing the formula for resolving magic duels. I imagine one could could set the formula in such a way that supports the most interesting game play by comparing the expected value of various astral hit squads, against mages with various astral levels. In other words, if you know how many hit squads it takes in order to reach a total of 90% chance that one of the squads succeeds, and you can calculate this for squads sent against a 6s mage, a 7s mage, etc, then you can look at a total gold cost for taking out a given level astral mage. At that point you could make a well informed decision on how to set the magic duel formula in order to make a given level of astral a viable choice for a pretender. I'm not sure exactly what that level should be, but I'm inclined to think that 6s+ should be a viable choice.

I certainly don't have enough game knowledge to do the above analysis (even if I knew the magic duel formula), but at least theoretically that would be a nice way to set the standard deviation correctly. Probably it's reasonable to tweak the formula without doing the calculation above, but any way you cut it, I'd like to see that tweak happen.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Many times. 1d6 + skill vs. 1d6 + skill

The highest wins, the lower dies. On a tie, both die.

The probabilities are found in this thread:
Magic Duel and other dice roll charts

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

If you are 5 points higher, then you will only die 2.7% of the time. That's about the same as having a MR of 22.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Excellent info and links, Graeme, thanks a bunch! And my apologies for not searching before asking http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

I find this encouraging, at a 2.7% chance with a 5 pt difference, it sounds to me like perhaps the astral combat mage pretender is a viable strategy. I still don't know enough about how magic duels unfold in MP game play to make an informed judgement, but it's quite helpful to know the formula.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

i'm only going w/ the numbers zen mentioned. perhaps Magic Duel as currently implemented isn't working quite right. the numbers given by Saber Cherry were for non open-ended die rolls, for instance...

Frankly, I would suggest keeping your 500 pt Ghost King w/ 3 astral somewhere a long way from anyone else.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

I haven't done the math (yet), but being open ended does not dramatically change the odds. It's certainly possible that this is not implemented the way the post indicates, but it seems unlikely that this is bugged (perhaps the implementation has been changed, or misinformation was propagated along the way). It's easy to test though, and I'll do that later today.

From a game design point of view, I think it's eminently reasonable that a 3s Ghost King is vulnerable because of having chosen astral. The thing I've been questioning is whether a 6s+ pretender is unduely vulnerable to astral hit squads.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

IIRC the value added in Magic Duel is indeed non open-ended 1d6.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Okay, so I field tested a Fire 10 Moloch to see how fun it was for Abysia.

Well, it wasn't as fun as I thought. Basically for the longest time all you have is fire flies and flare. These spells tend to be inaccurate and they are slow! It's a pain to sit through a battle watching all these flares and fire flies getting fired off and occasionally hitting.

snore.

Sure the Molock looks cool, and the anathamant dragon I made a prophet got some tabs on his cloak (no really the sprite changed!) everybody looked really good...and didn't get much done.

The blessing was decent but totally offense oriented. Any kind of real heavy defensive troops would take out lava warriors faster than I could make them. And crossbows really hurt me.

And I got some flagellants for a random event and I mixed them in with the other sacred troops. Bad idea. Poor bastards caught fire from their own allies half way to attacking the enemy. Oh well.

My next episode is field testing an Astral 10 Son of the Son for Arcosephale (Golden Age) to see what happens. The Son of the Son was the most cost effective chassis available that was mobile and could enter combat. He is called RA appropriately enough. I'm on turn 5 and have just gotten star fires. But he is the only guy casting. I don't have any other spell slingers yet. Just Philospers researching and bunches of troops.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

to any newbies out there, hitting the "F" key during battles to fastforward is godsent!!! i spent my first few weeks without it, and at least HALF the time could have been save by speeding up battles..

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

I noticed a while back that Anathemant Dragons who get prophetized get their text descriptions changed to that of a warlock and get a different sprite. A completely different, it's not a dragon or a salamander, or a warlock apprentice or a warlock. I wondered about this.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

So, I've done some testing on magic duel now, and the results were a little bit confusing. I did 2 sets of 20 tests, one with S3 vs S8 and the second set with S7 vs S8

Here's what I've got:
<pre>
S3 wins -- S8 wins
0 20

S7 wins -- S8 wins -- Tie (no deaths) -- Tie (both die)
2 16 1 1
</pre>
If my testing method is truly random (which I am begining to doubt), then the second set of results is surprising, in that S7 should win roughly 1/3rd of the time according to the formula for magic duel.

The one thing I'm uncertain of in doing my testing, is whether or not I am truly getting a random sample by reloading from saved files. Can anyone (ideally a dev http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif) tell me how Illwinter is setting the seed for their random number generator? I'd like to find a testing method where I'm sure that I'm getting a true random sample before doing more tests.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

lol.

i especially like the "Tie (no deaths)" since, as presently understood, that shouldn't be possible http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

i also really suspect the random number generator is quite quirky anyways

but good work thufir. perhaps try a different situation in a different game...

also, if you're using 2.13, it could be that the devs have altered the method...

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Here, many have spent few months without it. Until Illwinter has implemented it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Don't bother with testing Magic Duel in 2.13. The formula is slightly bugged and you may not get accurate results.

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Holy Sh*t ! When will this spell behave like something that can be expected ? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/Sick.gif

Re: 10 Magic Strength Pretenders....
 

Just be patient and wait for the next patch.