tactical issue
 

was playing as maverne. early in the game, i had a good sized army, and was confronted with an enemy to the south. my scouts saw very little, and i tried for the quick kill. i was on their home province in two turns. unfortunately, the armies they had were not visible to my scouts, and they promptly slaughtered me in a battle i outnumbered them in quite heavily.

meanwhile, vanheim was to my west. i stopped expanding at a natural bored so we shared only one adjacent province, using impassable provinces and mountains as a screen. the one province that they could get at, i built a significant army of heavy INF and longbowmen, then jacked up the PD.

unfortunately, they attacked as well, and also slaughtered me.

i guess what i am asking is, how do you counter units with glamor/ethereal with early game units such as maverne has? in many of the battles, we inflicted embarrassingly low losses on the enemy, even tho we were numerous and well arrayed(these were armies that had scored many victories to that point)

how do u hit those darn awe/ethereal/glamor units?

Re: tactical issue
 

Glamour doesn't stand up to arrows and sligstones. Mass those. Then you need to hit through the defense, which is more problematic.

Re: tactical issue
 

thanks. what about ethereal vanheim? how do you sting them?

Re: tactical issue
 

Magic wins games.

And Marveni has some awesome mages.
You could cast Army of Gold/Lead, Will of fates, Weapons of Sharpness, Strengh of Giants, Mass protection on your own troops.
Cast Doom, Swarm, Charm, Rust Mist, Blade Wind (excellent against glamour), Gifts from Heaven on the Enemy.

Don't forget to use Communions with Communion master and slave to make extra ultra powerful mages on the Battlefield. Also your Druids can Teleport to a province to help with defense. One or more of them laden with gems, casting spells can be a nasty surprise to any enemy.

...and the Holy grail is of course to cast Master Enslave. Forge Crystal shields, Star shine skullcaps, Crystal coins and use communions to get a caster up to S8 and watch the opponent's army disintegrate :)

Re: tactical issue
 

Glamour gives Mirror Image, so it should work well against arrows, i'd expect? And those glamorous units can cast Air Shield.

Awe is another thing. Arrows are great against Awe/Fear units.

Re: tactical issue
 

He talks about an early game!

Re: tactical issue
 

Then I would go for Evocation.

1. Star Fires.... not bad for the amount of research
1. Slime.... For the water random Gutators. Pretty good spell.
2. Rust mist.... Nice against Abyssia for example
3. Sleep Cloud.... High fatigue = good chance for critical hit.
4. Blade Wind.... Need summon Earth Power, Communion or Gems. But great spell. Especially against glamor.
5. Stellar cascades.... Awesome spell. No Super combatant will ever bother you again ;).
5. Gifts from heaven.... Giant Comets that do 150 damage each. Need I say more?

Re: tactical issue
 

guys, im talking about turn 10 here. i was no where near any of those spells. well, if i had been really working at it, i might have been near them, but i was woring constuction, was gonna try to mass thugs. a lot of good suggestions, but i think with my magic and my situation(i made it myself, dumb mistake attacking someone cus scouts say they are weak, when most of their best units can't be seen by scouts) i was pretty doomed.

thanks tho. i really gotta get better at magic. i mostly just like to be ulm and go heavy or LA ermor and try to build 10,000 unit armies before everyone kills me. either way, i suck in MP when it gets into late game(and usually before). i find the whole magic system a little confusing, but then again, i never really gave it much effort.

Re: tactical issue
 

At this stage, the cure for glamour is arrows, slings, any kind of range weapon. They ignore and break glamour. Or any AoE magic.

I'm not sure about ethereal Vanheim. They don't have ethereal units or much (any?) Astral in EA.

Re: tactical issue
 

[quote=Olm;793286]IIRC, mirror image breaks as soon as one hit lands on the "right" guy, no matter whether the hit does damage or not. Air shield is checked after a projectile has hit, IIRC.

I think what Edi means is: recruit tons of cheapo slingers/bowmen to remove the mirror images first thing, then send in real troops in to kill the now un-glamoured units.

Easier that way than simply massing infantry, because those have to pass defence before the mirror image check is made and Vans typically have really high defence.

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Ethereal/Mistform is trickier to counter early though.
I'd say go Evoc ASAP for Star Fires, then Gifts From Heaven (you probably want to be able to Communion before really using the latter though). Forget Blade Wind, it doesn't count as a magic attack and as such isn't any better a breaking through than a gaggle of bowmen (and it's nixed by Air Shield anyway).

Another idea could be getting Thaum 1 first for Farstrike: it's more precise than Star Fires, longer ranged, barely costs any fatigue and does quite a bit of damage. I'm not positive it counts as a magic attack however - better check it in SP first.