Countering End-Game Astral
 

Assuming you yourself have, at best, some Astral cobbled together from neutrals, what's the best counter to the ginormous astral communions certain nations can field in the late game?

Sending in armies against Master Enslave communions seems like a waste. Even with Army of Lead, it seems like they'll get enough of your army to mess you up. You can send in an SC and hope that none of them are set to cast Soul Slay/Paralyze (even with very high MR gear, against a large communion, all it takes is a lucky roll.)

Flyers set to "attack rear" and hope for the best seems like it might be the best option.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Rain of stone works nicely against some astral nations.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Konming pretty much has it, you just have to bring in some heavies and nuke the battlefield and expect some losses...a clump of rejected tartarian chassis will soak up a lot of punishment while a BE goes off or you multi-cast rain of stones on your opponents' squishy mages.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

SCs or thugs with high MR could be quite good for stopping a Master Enslave.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Dont air shield, mistform, luck and etherealness all work against rain of stones?

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

And they all take time to get into play, and aren't completely effective against all the ways to foil a Communion.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Smashing the whole battlefield with big damage spells on the first turn or two before big buffs tend to arrive is a recommended tactic.

Also, master enslave is easy resist as I recall (+4). Add in Army of Lead (Earth) and ?Antimagic (Astral) each at +4MR and you should effectively be resisting at +12. Even if your opponent adds in some penetration, you'll lose only a very small chunk of your army. A bigger problem may be your battle mages targeting enslaved troops and catching your own troops rather than the opponent's big concentrations of units.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Army of lead and antimagic don't stack. No pair of buffs which give the same effect stack, in fact (obviously casting army of lead after antimagic will still give you the protection bonus, but no further MR bonus).

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Nuke their armies with overland rituals.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

MR spells won't save regular troops, they are only usefull to protect people already having correct MR, as you can expect an endgame communion master to have full penetration gear (-5 MR) and one or two more penetration from his level if communion is large and ennemy use LoNS.

So just don't use regular troops, if you need chaff use mindless who can't be enslaved (at least if the opponent don't use arcane domination or undead mastery too).

Ideally only send thugs and mages with MR gear (MR gear = not just one amulet, you usually need 2 MR items in addition to an antimagic spell to start to be safe).If you can summon some, golems are of course a very good choice as they are immune to mind spells. As the communion master may cast soul slays or simple enslave with insane bonuses, you should expect your guys to have to resist against 9 or 10 penetration.

But you can exploit the way the spell AI use these one target spells, as your SC with the higher number of hp is the more likely to be targeted. So if you can give 30 MR to your toughest SC, he will protect a full team of thugs with lower hp and MR (it's not 100% sure but work usually).

Once you can have a thug/mages team surviving astral spells, it's rarely hard to win against astral nations (who rarely have as good access to thugs as their opponents, and usually don't have exceptionnal troops). In addition to mass dammage spells etc..., designing your thugs for making battle long + using some fatigue BE to kill the slaves can very well do the job (especially if the opponent use an half-reverse communion with some casting slaves).

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

And if you are fighting underwater against the ryleh, you have even less battlefield spells in your arsenal. And you can count on a heavy dose of VOTD to back up the communions.

Which is why the Ryleh is in my top 3 power aces in the Middle Era. That said, there are ways things that can be done.

I am presently engaged in a fierce underwater fight with the Ryleh in one of my mp games. I tend to try to weaken his armies before the battles.

Earth attacks take out keys mages. There are other tactics.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

I'm a big fan of mass flight, personally.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Communions aren't very mobile. He will have trouble stopping thug/SC raids (3-4 thugs or 1-2 SCs) behind his lines with big communions. He will also have trouble protecting communions against overland rituals and/or assassination/remote attack spells. It just isn't feasible to teleport a 12-man communion around. At best, communions are an anvil but you can still smash the hammer.

-Max

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Assassins would be fun. You imagine a mage with a knife at a couple cms from his throat, cry out loud "COMMUNION... SLAAAVEEE!" ?? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

I'm Assassinating communion members in one game I'm in. He's besieging a castle so not really going anywhere..... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...ies/tongue.gif

When they're scripted for a large army battle it's kind of hilarious how pathetic they are against an assassin. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/redface.gif

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

What about group of flying thugs with high MR? I'm thinking of Iron Angels in here. They have base mr 20, base enc 1, reinvigoration 4, full slots and they fly, and while MA Ulm has some trouble getting a summoner, they're cheap to mass once they have one. For 25 Earth and half-price equipment, you can afford to lose some.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Sorry for a newb question. What is there to fear from end-game Astral battle magic other than Master Enslave?

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Astral Tempest, Unraveling and Soul Drain. They don't really surpass Master Enslave a lot of the time, but they're nasty enough. Mostly the same advice for getting round them applies, I think.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

By the way, has anyone had any success casting both Army of Gold and Army of Lead on the same group of units? I've never tried this, but I always wondered if it was viable, and worth doing.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

HB, I ran a test of this and both spells were cast. Could be worth doing if you want both 50% FR and +4 MR.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

I have destroyed alot of communions with multiple earthquake spamming, alternative to rain of stones. Also, battlefield wide fatigue spells give the communion less casting time and throw your opponents fatigue calculations off. Resulting in the entire communion dieing usually from going over 200 fatigue + available hps.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

But they all affect all units on the battlefield. So are they really that useful, given that you will hurt your units as well?

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Soul Drain won't work on lifeless, so it's great for supporting Ermor's armies of the dead. Astral Tempest won't affect mindless, so again supports use of undead chaff and R'lyeh's slave troops. Unraveling doesn't hurt non-magical units, so most national troops are immune (although you'd better give all your mages as much MR as you can). They're mostly niche uses, which is one of the reasons they don't rank above Master Enslave in most people's minds.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

Arcane Domination would seem very niche, most magical beings tend to be long lived so Decay isn't very effective.

The feeblemind effect could be useful, though. Teleport in, feeblemind a good chunk of his mages, Return, Follow up with ground based army. Especially if he's using communion.


The somewhat earlier Will of the Fates and Doom can both be significant in large battles, nothing like Master Enslave though.
I have never seen more afflictions than my Fog Warriored, Regenerating, Doomed army after a 50+ turn battle.

Re: Countering End-Game Astral
 

I'm in this situation as MA Pangea vs. MA Ermor in late game. Flying lead maenad hordes w/ minotaurs have been my most successful endeavor thus far. Especially because I have
Haunted Forest active.