MP game - "Pantheons" Started

[Lex]

well.. false horror is the best use of a Seraph. but you should know that Caelum's false horrors where pretty useless against Machaka's Black Hunters, and anything with really high moral will have no trouble against a group of FH.

one or two SCs with flying would also put a stop to Caelum's seraphs. so would any decent group of flying units in general. (as long as there's no storm.. and so far Caelum's been raiding nonstop without any Staff of Storms, making them very very vulnerable to flying units. luckily no one has summoned any)

false horror isn't unbalanced, it just requires deliberate effort to counter (which is why its so effective, since its such a pain to commit resources to counter a particular tactic early in the game), but i would have imagined that in a team game, someone would have focused entirely on countering Caelum, just like the others focus on defeating their nearest opponent.

In this case I'm surprised Pangaea hasn't attacked Caelum yet (since he's the closest). Obviously I'm ready and waiting, but still, you can't just ignore me!

[Pickles]

Yeah I agree with lex that I have not yet got enough information on false horrors though it is unquestionably strong. It is the combination with flying that makes it so horrific. Mind you the fact that my 750 gps of spider plus a couple of leaders plus 25 PD could defeat 550 gp of seraph plus 6 troops is only what you hope would happen. I am not sure whether anything would counter the full mass of Caelum's seraph forces - must be over a dozen & could be 20 plus by now. I have not seen this though so who knows?
As to countering Caelum. As well as not being sure how to Caelum can choose to engage whoever it wishes & will avoid its counter pretty easily - provided it is not next door as our earlly power house Ulm was next to a good counter to it in Jotun.

The graphs are depressing though. I think our main weakness has been lack of communication. I never seem to get round to it & noone picked up on the email thing.

Anyway onwards & downwards!

Pickles

[Boron]

This turn works now

So ONWARD MY MINIONS to victory ( trying to bolster myself )

[The Panther]

False horrors are unbalanced because it makes 90+% of the national troops worthless much too early in the game. Even my power-blessed heart companions with very high morale are worthless against false horrors. My chariots and elephants, were I to build any, would be even more hopeless because trample fails miserably against ethereal troops. My many priests refuse to cast sermon of courage because of some problem about the horrors that I have yet to understand.

Ulm has pretty much no counter to the horrors either until he gets mechanical men, which occurs significantly later than Caelum gets horrors. The smiths cast bladewinds and magna bolts on their own troops when the horrors arrive.

There has been many a post on the forum on this very subject. You can argue against this all you want, but that does not make it any less true. That is one of the reasons that Caelum is frequently Banned in many a new game.

It looks like my turn will work now. Staling twice in the Last 4 turns is rough, but at least it means I have some extra gold now. Also I now have the research to counter the horrors if it happens again. But it is too little and too late for the good guys, I am afraid.

[alexti]

Same goes for Ice/Arch Devils, Elemental King/Queens and even simple Bane Lords. You just can't use national troops alone except in the very beginning. Add to them some fliers or mages with area damage spells and a SC or 2 and they become very decent force. So the main problem with seraphs is not defeat them, but to catch them. They're more similar to call of winds/call of wild in this sense. But of course, when you caught out unprepared, those seraphs with their false horrors can be nasty.

Though in this game with known sides and starting locations, Caelum's seraph-fest was as easily predictable as early Ulm's power rush and the early assault on Mictlan.

[Lex]

Well, i'm pretty sure Flames from Afar would be quite painful to 20+ Seraphs. But in combat, I've never seen anything beat a large group of Seraphs. Maybe an army of Devils or other summons would work well. A lone SC wouldn't have a chance against the 200+ False Horrors, but a group of them would eventually push their way to the Seraphs, who would be asleep from exhaustion after so many turns.

Its also useful to know that Seraphs can't seige a fortification in a million years. Even a group of 20 Seraphs would need a half dozen turns sometimes. So building castles is a good defence against Caelum, since it means the worst they can do is cause unrest and disrupt income for a turn.

Also, is everybody forgetting that anything etheral can fly through a storm? That means etheral SCs or Ghosts or Vampires can attack Seraphs directly on the first turn. If you have more then Caelum has Seraphs, you'll win. In mid to late game, any player with a blood economy should have no problem attacking Caelum. And you don't need to attack Caelum's armies, obviously you attack Caelum's empire and force his armies into a defence posture.

Its just really expensive (or impossible) to defeat massive amounts of False Horrors with your "normal" units. And defeating it early game is almost impossible, which is why False Horror is level 6 research. But obviously it pays off to do the research and raid all you unsuspecting opponents before they can summon an army to stop you. That's simply a good strategy.

Anyways, I'm gonna stop telling you guys how to kick my ***, and get back to playing

[alexti]

Lex said:
Well, i'm pretty sure Flames from Afar would be quite painful to 20+ Seraphs.

That's why you'd better move in small Groups of 1-2 seraphs

Lex said:
But in combat, I've never seen anything beat a large group of Seraphs.

You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though For now.

[Boron]

alexti said:

That's why you'd better move in small Groups of 1-2 seraphs

You can beat the large group of Seraphs with just one SC of the right kind. I won't tell what is the right kind though For now.

Yeah an SC of the right kind . But that is only 1 or 2 seraph armies .

It is just brutal he can strike at will on all weaker defended provinces . If you split your forces to avoid that then another teammember like jotunheim comes with a SC army and defeats one garrison after the other .
In a normal game you could probably deal with caelum better but in our teamgame we should have forbidden it imo .

[alexti]

Boron said:

Yeah an SC of the right kind . But that is only 1 or 2 seraph armies .

Yeah, but the Caelum player won't be happy to lose even one 20-40 seraph army per turn. And the right kind of SC can cloud trapeze/teleport, so it will completely prevent Caelum from using massive seraph armies. They can still raid by lone seraphs though. But on another hand, killing that lone seraphs with remote spell only costs 3-5 gems, so it's more or less equal exchange.

[Lex]

alexti said:
Yeah, but the Caelum player won't be happy to lose even one 20-40 seraph army per turn. And the right kind of SC can cloud trapeze/teleport, so it will completely prevent Caelum from using massive seraph armies. They can still raid by lone seraphs though. But on another hand, killing that lone seraphs with remote spell only costs 3-5 gems, so it's more or less equal exchange.

You Flames from Afar my capital, then jump in with some SCs that slaughter my Seraphs, move to the three neighbouring castles before I can recruit enough mammoths to take my castle back, and then one by one, you hunt down my remaining Seraph raiding parties. You could kill me in 10 turns.

Edit: granted you'd need Gate Cleavers at least to seige in one turn. and you'd have to hope that I haven't modified my strategy beyond False Horrors. But Caelum's defeat, had it been planned for, is at least in theory a real possibility.