earthquake?

[WraithLord]

Saber Cherry said:
I was under the impression that communion master spells affected all of the slaves. Has this been changed, or was I mistaken?

Let me clarify what I meant.
first I rarely use communicants as they tend to die too easily for various reasons (among which is fatigue).
I agree that stone skin would be a good protection for them and for the rare scenarios when I use communicants it would serve well.

I usually deploy squads of "real" mages, mainly theurg acolytes and theurgs.
In this scenario each mages that had cast communion slave tend to ignore his (spells) scripts and altogether stop casting spells.
Not to mention that it takes two turns to get them protected in this way. While it takes one to cast earthquake.

[Saber Cherry]

izaqyos said:
Let me clarify what I meant.
first I rarely use communicants as they tend to die too easily for various reasons (among which is fatigue).
I agree that stone skin would be a good protection for them and for the rare scenarios when I use communicants it would serve well.

I usually deploy squads of "real" mages, mainly theurg acolytes and theurgs.
In this scenario each mages that had cast communion slave tend to ignore his (spells) scripts and altogether stop casting spells.
Not to mention that it takes two turns to get them protected in this way. While it takes one to cast earthquake.

Oh, that's right; I was forgetting the turn to cast Communion Master. Body Ethereal or killing the caster would be your only hopes, then... though casters that are adjacent to melee units (like dragonflies or imps) tend to ignore their script in favor of self-preservation, so a single lifelong-protection scout should be able defend an army from a lone Earthquake caster.

[WraithLord]

Saber Cherry said:
... though casters that are adjacent to melee units (like dragonflies or imps) tend to ignore their script in favor of self-preservation, so a single lifelong-protection scout should be able defend an army from a lone Earthquake caster.

Good observation. I wonder if this rule also applies to SCs such as VQ.
It appears promising but needs testing and/or evidence from MP.

Consider the following battle.
20 theurg acolytes and theurgs are attacked by a VQ.
the VQ casts EarthquakeX2 and retreats.
Is there a way most of the mages make it alive?

stone skin not available.
twist fate will save only from first quake.

So consider this army is led by an earth Arch theurg who casts comm master, then stone skin.
If the rest of the mages cast twist fate then they make it through the first quake but die in the second (since they didn't cast comm slave).
Else if they cast comm slave they die in the first quake.

It seems then that a life long prot. might save the day.

(I have plenty motivation to check every angle of this issue as in my experience it's a major problem for Pythium in MP.)

[Saber Cherry]

izaqyos said:

Good observation. I wonder if this rule also applies to SCs such as VQ.

In my experience, yes. If you look at the supercombattant roundup, casters who were scripted to cast damage spells stopped casting to deal with little skeletons and other chaff once they got close (I seem to recall that happening a couple times). Unless they have a spell like Fire Blast, Shock Wave, or Immolation, they just start meleeing. However, if the AI determines that an Earthquake can kill all the surrounding units, it may do that instead.

If I recall correctly, Dominions II penalizes casters at close range, like this:

If a caster/ranged unit is adjacent to an enemy, there is a 50% chance that it will be unable to cast/shoot and be forced to do a melee attack. And that's in addition to the AI deciding that melee is a good idea.

[Boron]

I play pythium atm in MP too and my conclusion is that it is not worth to protect theurgs .
Most important is to quickly get good summons with pythium .
Their national stuff sucks in battle .
Theurgs excel in research and forging but not on the battlefield .
Earlygame they are ok with false horror spamming or frozen heart or similiar stuff but in midgame they are outdated once your enemies can defend easy vs. false horrors and can cast rain of stones , earthquakes or similiar spells .

Getting good summons quickly with pythium is not easy though also . The art with pythium is imho to survive until lategame well enough . In lategame pythium is one of the best nations but for a long period of 20-30 turns in midgame they literally suck . If enemies exploit this then you have a hard time with pythium .

Anyone feel free to suggest midgame pythium strats . Hopefully i will learn something new this way because i have no working pythium midgame strats .

[WraithLord]

Boron said:
I play pythium atm in MP too and my conclusion is that it is not worth to protect theurgs .
Most important is to quickly get good summons with pythium .
Their national stuff sucks in battle .
Theurgs excel in research and forging but not on the battlefield .
Earlygame they are ok with false horror spamming or frozen heart or similiar stuff but in midgame they are outdated once your enemies can defend easy vs. false horrors and can cast rain of stones , earthquakes or similiar spells .

I'm not sure that they are outdated.
After all false horrors are great vs. PD, which keeps the theurgs effective for raids (with flying boots).

Also they can cast any number of powerfull astral spells with/out communion.

I do agree that they become less usefull and that keeping them alive becomes a challenge.

Getting good summons quickly with pythium is not easy though also . The art with pythium is imho to survive until lategame well enough . In lategame pythium is one of the best nations but for a long period of 20-30 turns in midgame they literally suck . If enemies exploit this then you have a hard time with pythium .

I've also experienced this mid game weakness with Pythium.
Truth is, the reason for my original post is that I'm trying to form a successfull mid game pythium strategy.

rain of stones and earthquaked wasting theurgs is one problem I wanted to address.

Another problem is limited access to SCs.
I was thinking that maybe building towards good astral summons (angels, ether) might be a good direction.

[Boron]

izaqyos said:
I'm not sure that they are outdated.
After all false horrors are great vs. PD, which keeps the theurgs effective for raids (with flying boots).

Also they can cast any number of powerfull astral spells with/out communion.

I do agree that they become less usefull and that keeping them alive becomes a challenge.

Yeah for raiding but in my current game , now on about turn 65 , so not anymore midgame but lategame my evil enemy decimates my theurgs with ashen angels . I get 5-8 ashen angel attacks per turn and a few ghost rider attacks also .
I can't think of a good strat how to defend them vs. that .
In midgame an abysia player could do lots of assasins with lifelong protections . the imps are good and even with 5 principes as bodyguards it is a tough fight for the theurg .

izaqyos said:
I've also experienced this mid game weakness with Pythium.
Truth is, the reason for my original post is that I'm trying to form a successfull mid game pythium strategy.

rain of stones and earthquaked wasting theurgs is one problem I wanted to address.

Another problem is limited access to SCs.
I was thinking that maybe building towards good astral summons (angels, ether) might be a good direction.

I always play pythium with a strong god , often with VQ cause pythium can afford one imho .
Conjuration 7 is for me normally my first or second research goal for AQs . Then you can summon 1 mound fiend also and he keeps summoning bane lords .
You should get at least 1 AQ with pythium and then a couple of banelords . This solves the SC issue somewhat .

The troop issue is very severe with pythium also imho . National mages can neither do vine ogres nor mech men nor blood stuff .
So during midgame the troop problem is imho most severe because principes die too easy .
I find defending vs. FoDs or Devils on turn 30-50 extremely difficult with pythium .
Single AQ gets killed by the Devils normally .
If you use lots of theurgs + staff of storm instead you have the problem with troops to avoid routing if you want to do wrathful skies also .
Without wrathful skies the devils kill pythium easy , with wrathful skies it is still dificult because your own troops die to it also .

[alexti]

izaqyos said:

I've also experienced this mid game weakness with Pythium.
Truth is, the reason for my original post is that I'm trying to form a successfull mid game pythium strategy.

rain of stones and earthquaked wasting theurgs is one problem I wanted to address.

Another problem is limited access to SCs.
I was thinking that maybe building towards good astral summons (angels, ether) might be a good direction.

A lot depends on whether you attack or defend. If you're defending, the best method I think is to cast fog warriors in the first round. If you're attacking, that's harder, because you're not sure what tactics the opponent will employ. Typically, I will put something like copper plate+ring of fire+ring of frost. That protects reasonably well vs various nasties like RoS, earthquakes, flames from the skies, murdering winters etc... But in the mid game you probably don't have enough gems (9 gems per mage) for all that equipment. I would avoid trying to take any fortresses with Pythium in the mid-game. Just keep attacking everywhere with small squads led by your mages. If enemy tries to take your fortress, you can use fog warriors (and put domes against other things) and script resist lightning for the first round as a precaution.