Newbie questions, sitesearching + lots more Qs

[krpeters]

Originally Posted by thejeff

This I wasn't sure of, so I tested it.
A commander will not stay behind his own bodyguards. With "Stay behind troops", he and his bodyguards closed to behind the rearmost other troops and when they broke and ran, moved to the front line.

Keep in mind this can be really tricky when employing elephants and other tramplers. I like to put all my elephants on the south side and my troops/commanders to the north so that fleeing elephants don't trample my commanders. But this doesn't work if commanders with "stay behind" decide to stay behind the elephants.

This is particularly funny when an elephant in retreat is behind your lines -- and all your commanders rush to catch him and get squished

[statttis]

Originally Posted by binarysolo

16) Elemental royalty - say if they're in the Hall of Fame, I still can't reanimate them into a mummy, right? To get them back I'd need to resummon them. If they are cursed/horrormarked (or have their paths empowered) do these effects last, or do they start fresh after each resummon, and I'd assume anybody else summoning them would get the same unit, complete with all debilitations/empowerments.

Elemental Royalty and other unique summons cannot get into the hall of fame. Same with pretenders.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by statttis

Elemental Royalty and other unique summons cannot get into the hall of fame. Same with pretenders.

This is incorrect.

Pretenders and Unique summons (which covers the Elemental Royalty) can all enter the Hall of Fame, it is just that they can not gain Heroic Abilities (which is the where the difference is compared to other HoF entries)

This is easily checked by looking at the awake Pretender SC's that make the HoF in the first few turns of a game.

[statttis]

My mistake

Of course they can enter the hall of fame, they just don't get anything out of it.

[thejeff]

10) My understanding is that they reduce dominion towards 0. Your dominion or an enemy's.

11) If the caster is scripted to cast a particular spell and can't find a valid target, they will cast another spell. If they can't find a target for any spell, like a low level priest with everyone blessed and no undead in range, they'll default to "Stay behind troops"
Post ninja edit: I normally wouldn't argue with lch, but I'm pretty sure about this. In practice this only shows up with H1 priests or with mages in the very early game when little is researched.

12) I believe domes work against anything targeting the province.
Including your own spells. Teleports, site searches, etc.

14) Twist fate works against (most?) magical attacks. Magic Duel may be an exception, there may be others.

15) Bodyguards are ignored for troops to stay behind.
Post ninja edit: I'll have to check this.

[lch]

Originally Posted by thejeff

11) If the caster is scripted to cast a particular spell and can't find a valid target, they will cast another spell. If they can't find a target for any spell, like a low level priest with everyone blessed and no undead in range, they'll default to "Stay behind troops"
Post ninja edit: I normally wouldn't argue with lch, but I'm pretty sure about this. In practice this only shows up with H1 priests or with mages in the very early game when little is researched.

We are not in disagreement, we're saying the same. I'm just talking mostly about mages, who will always find some stupid self-buff or useless spell to cast, in case their scripted spell has range issues and thus no targets.

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by lch

....who will always find some stupid self-buff or useless spell to cast....

The classic here of course is the way S1 mages start casting Blink if there are no other spells researched that they can cast

[lch]

I was thinking of a single squad instead of multiple ones, but that's interesting to know. Do two such "stay behind troops" commanders with their own bodyguards cancel each others advancement out, though? That's what I'd expect.

[thejeff]

As near as I can tell, any commanders and their bodyguards do not count as troops to stay behind.

2 squads both advanced.
In another case, where one commander was a caster (prophet), he and his guards stayed behind while he cast. The other commander charged in with his troops.

[binarysolo]

Yeah, the "Stay Behind" thing is driving me crazy in CBM 1.6 EA Arco, when I'm fielding large quantities of Engineers (yay for non-cap leader, finally!) and SCs and dunno how to protect them since they all just crazily charge the front lines. I could give them some crossbows and summoning trinkets but that's annoying to micro (and I have... er, *had* a ton of engineers).