Air vs Nature

[Keir Maxwell]

Just finished trying Van using the All Father with Air9 Death4. Can't say it worked well. I seemed to suffer from as many missile hits on the Van as previously (probably because my Axe/Jav were on "fire") and I missed the extra defense and offence of water9.

On the plus side when I went to war with Pythium all their archers were on target mounted (very sensible) and the air shield helped there. I found the poison cloud of the fleeing hydra hatcheling the worst part of facing Pythium.

I didn't keep playing long enough to make use of the shock resistance and my worry with it is the Van still get hit and lose their mirror image.

I'm still interested in trying both fire9 and blood4 with Van to see how this increases their offence. Might go test it out and see if I can get a blood4/water9 or Blood4/fire9 pretender.

cheers

Keir

[Saber Cherry]

I still want a Water-9 Fire-9. That would be insane, but only Dead Ermor can have one, since there are no water/fire pretenders.

[HJ]

I don't quite grasp the benefits or high Ratings of death blessing effect. To me, unless playing a nation with undead sacred troops, death blessing is probably the worst one. At death 4, your troops get lesser fear -4, which means that they influence one square out of 8 that surround them, and force morale check with +1 bonus for the opponent. Now, unless the sacred unit is completely surrounded, the chance of fear actually influencing the square that contains an enemy unit is pretty slim. And if you're surrounded, it won't matter anyway. Even if there are three sacred units in the square, their chance of actually scaring someone wouldn't be too good. The only thing that might help is that in prolonged battles the fear effect might begin to build up on the enemy units that Last long. Either that or you have to be really lucky with where the aura influence falls every turn.
To add to that, many other paths have much better combat spells than death if you're planning on using your pretender for combat. Summoning a couple of skeletons and dropping from exhaustion doesn't really compare with other things like blade winds and mistform. The only thing I can think of is adding it to the existing fear aura on a pretender, such as LoD or cyclops.
In short, unless your sacred units are already fearful, such as wailing ladies, or you go very high with death so as to get a significant size fear aura, which is hard, I don't see what would the benefit of fear 4 be. But, of course, I'm always open to learn something new.

[ November 28, 2003, 06:18: Message edited by: HJ ]

Try using Eagle Warriors, Valkyries and anything that has a chance of standing up to a fight. A wave of units with fear will break initial units and force back everything but the largest squads, and if you have fliers; then it usually affects commanders, if you pick the right Category that has the reserve pile.

Fear is a good effect to use in mass, for non-undead; but not really any other circumstances.

[HJ]

Again, in theory and without doing extensive tests:
The chance of fear effect aura falling in any of the squares surrounding the unit is 1/8. If you're using masses of troops, this means that a lot of the squares around the unit will be occupied by friendlies, meaning that the fear aura influencing those will be worthless. Of course, if they have an aura spanning 3 or 4 squares, that will start to count for something, but the aura of only one square for death 4 is not worth it, IMHO. Probability of seeing significant effects are not very good, especially when you compare it to the fact that boosting other stats with some other blessing would possibly result in more kills, and hence in at least the same effect, only more certain.

[ November 28, 2003, 07:13: Message edited by: HJ ]

Sometimes all you need is 1 squad to break to completely turn a battle. Or if you use flyers, one commander break and the battle turns your way.

Especially if you are fighting in your own domain or used in tandem with any sort of Panic, Terror type of spells.

In theory it may seem 'weak' but in practice, it is in fact much more useful for certain races. Anything that uses their sacred units for flanking or flying units. Mach, Van, Mic, Marig are prime examples of Death 4 being useful; though it is always better at 6 or 8 .

[ November 28, 2003, 07:29: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by HJ:
At death 4, your troops get lesser fear -4, which means that they influence one square out of 8 that surround them, and force morale check with +1 bonus for the opponent.

If you are right that this is how it works then Death is pretty mislery but are you sure of your explantion whereby -4 fear only hits 1 square around the unit at random? I would have thought it would automatically begin by assigning the fear affect to the square in front of the creature with fear.

Certainly hard to know for sure from practice - I look forward to confirmation on this.

cheers

Keir

[ November 28, 2003, 10:15: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:
I still want a Water-9 Fire-9. That would be insane, but only Dead Ermor can have one, since there are no water/fire pretenders.

I have just been testing a fire9/water9 Vanheim race using the Moloch - any race that gets the Moloch can do this without having a death scale as long as its 1 click or more off center for temp.

Its a good way to play if you find battles normally take to long.

However a caution - this is not a fast race as the sloth3 tends to delay early expansion by a turn and so on down the line. The idea is that you have ultra nasty basic troops as the game goes on. And watch out for your infantries javalins as they can be really annoying to the Van - I'm not so keen on javelins after more testing.

In my experiance super troops and mid range super combatents die rather easily in Dom2. There seem to be a heap of spells to worry about from soul slay to blindness, combustion, curse, the Machaka fever, poison effects of Hydra, and the list goes on. I lost a pile of water9/fire9 blessed Van to the heat effect of the golden Naga after having routed its army earlier tonight and an over the top prophet to a fleeing Hydra Hatchlings poison cloud. There seems to be higher perentage of pesky mages with indies than in Dom1 which is part of the difficulty.

What races other than Van can build Sacred troops at places other than their capital?

What sacred summons are there? Tomb Wyrms are unholy but thats all I can think of right now though I'm sure there other unholy undead ones. Any good sacred blood summons?

cheers

Keir

[ November 28, 2003, 10:13: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[HJ]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:

quote:

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Originally posted by HJ:
At death 4, your troops get lesser fear -4, which means that they influence one square out of 8 that surround them, and force morale check with +1 bonus for the opponent.

If you are right that this is how it works then Death is pretty mislery but are you sure of your explantion whereby -4 fear only hits 1 square around the unit at random? I would have thought it would automatically begin by assigning the fear affect to the square in front of the creature with fear.

Certainly hard to know for sure from practice - I look forward to confirmation on this.

cheers

Keir

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Well, I'm basing my assumptions on the statements made by the devs in the following threads:

Lots of info on fear effect & radius in this thread:
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...4;t=000294;p=2

Also some info on area effects (this time for banners, but it's still applicable):
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=74;t=000214

If I understand correctly, lesser fear -4 which you get from the death 4 blessing results only in 1 square (or maybe 2 squares, it's nt really clear) out of 8 that surround the unit being randomly selected for the effect and enemies, if present in that square, have to make a morale check while having a bonus of +1. That's why I think it's really not much. If units have intrinsic fear, which gives an area of 5, it stacks nicely with the blessing then. But death 4 blessing is IMHO a rather weak effect.

[ November 28, 2003, 11:27: Message edited by: HJ ]

[HJ]

Originally posted by Keir Maxwell:
What sacred summons are there? Tomb Wyrms are unholy but thats all I can think of right now though I'm sure there other unholy undead ones. Any good sacred blood summons?

Ermorian wailing ladies and juggernaut come to mind as sacred summons.