Epic 2.08 Game

[navrunner]

Norfleet is the winner again.

[Norfleet]

Yeah, them vampire queens are pretty mean, aren't they? You were doing pretty well in the water, but once on land, they're nearly unstoppable.

I'm curious, though: Your expansion seemed consistently sluggish throughout the game: Did Machaka entirely wall you off, even after he went AWOL and had to be botted?

[navrunner]

Yeah, The computer kept me bottled in since I was initially the path of least resistance, PD of 1 along the borders. By the time I took to the water everyone had left. So I concentrated my forces on attacking you.
How do you get the queens so high? Do you empower them in astral then start wishing?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by navrunner:
Yeah, The computer kept me bottled in since I was initially the path of least resistance, PD of 1 along the borders. By the time I took to the water everyone had left. So I concentrated my forces on attacking you.
How do you get the queens so high? Do you empower them in astral then start wishing?

Yup. Empower to Astral 5, wear items to total of +4 Astral to get the 9 astral needed, then start wishing. I'm surprised you weren't able to retain Dominion. Marignon is normally quite good at this. Had you been able to keep dominion in your provinces, combined with your early successes in pushing them back, I wouldn't have been able to safely deploy them. Did you take a low dominion to start? It looks that way.

[Norfleet]

One of the reasons I'm really fond of the VQ chassis is that it has a host of innate abilities plus is immortal, so it's far less likely that my 1000+ gem and 17 turn investment goes down the tubes in a lucky shot.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Norfleet:
[QB]Yup. Empower to Astral 5, wear items to total of +4 Astral to get the 9 astral needed, then start wishing.

I'm surprised that you wouldn't have used that many wishes for something more durable, since vampire queens are very low in hitpoints and are undead, so are extremely vulnerable late game. A single wither bones will kill one. For the number of gems to get a VQ to astral 5 alone you could have wished for 5 or 6 doom horrors.

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:
I'm surprised that you wouldn't have used that many wishes for something more durable, since vampire queens are very low in hitpoints and are undead, so are extremely vulnerable late game. A single wither bones will kill one. For the number of gems to get a VQ to astral 5 alone you could have wished for 5 or 6 doom horrors.

A power-wished Vampire Queen with Gift of Health has maybe 100+ HP. That's no slouch. I favor the vampire queen because it has a huge collection of innate powers: It's innately ethereal, flying, and immortal. With innate etherealness, I don't have to cast Body Ethereal. With innate flying, I don't have to wear a flying item, or cast flight (and have it end up casting flight on my fodder instead of my SC). Since you only get 5 spells, anything that you can get innately is something you don't need to get off an item or a spell. And nothing grants immortality!

With immortality, as long as I stay within my dominion, you can't win, Darth. If you strike me down, I'll just come back and pick up all my stuff. A Doom Horror, while perhaps more potent in base stats, lacks item slots, having only a measly 2-misc. As such, if I were to make such an expensive investment, I'd end up with an SC that has 1 hp, anyway, since I'd have to slap a Ritual of Returning on to protect my investment. Toughness instantly becomes irrelevant as a result. I could use throwaway, basic off-the-grill Doom Horrors, but Last game, Navrunner already demonstrated his ability to cope with those. Besides, Doom Horrors, if I try to mass produce them, have a maddening habit of causing my lab to explode, instantly grinding everything to a halt.

So, given that I'm selecting from immortal units, what's the immortal unit with the most special abilities?

That's right, Vampire Queens. You can't beat Flying+Ethereal on an immortal chassis.