Turbocharged AI vs Humanities Last Hope - Running

[Mauxe]

Abysia has some type of powerful magic at its ddisposal.
I was attacked in two provinces by them.. one in the heart of my territories and the other was my Northern Vanguard - both impossible to reach without some form of teleportation (for them).

The supply is much appreciated and I have sent gems as payment

[endomorphious]

need some advice. I will have researched alteration 6 the end of this turn and can finally start planning on using darkness/skellispam in my expansion. What should I focus on now? Conjuration? I could definitely use the extra deathgems. I need to build up my mages I think. Their my biggest strength from what I can see. I could push on up in. Hmmm. Must. Plan. Sooner.

Ugh Kailasa keep your dang monkeys on your side of the map. One of the little buggers burnt down a lab.

[Doo]

New turn up...

I'd save the death gems and just site search on foot. If your short on death gems, they cost 3 per province to search and you have access to 4D mages I'd say send one or two mages out on foot. You might also turn up some other sites, such as water sites for Frost Brands or extra nature for Vine Shields.

If your going the darkness route, I'd try and maximise it, thus go Conj to get Banes as thugs to back up the Skeli-chaff in the dark. Any tougher undead in the dark are going to add bang to your buck.

[endomorphious]

Yeah what few provinces I have have been manually searched by my pretender. Kailasa is doing well against neifel, but I'm fast running out of directions to try and expand into except for the water. I plan on researching Alt up to 7 or 8 for destruction spam along with the skellispam then move on to const 6 for water bracelets and gear to move into the water.

Overall asessment of performance is: poor.

[Doo]

If you need you can ask Hrum if you can create a path through his lands so you can participate. Or research and gear up to try going underwater.

Whatever you do will be good, it forces an AI to respond and invest against you rather than elsewhere. I have great Air access so I can forge you some good items to get your mages underwater. We are allies so there is no need to make any payment in return.

Your Darkness spam tactic will be good, make sure the caster has greater than 4D or it costs 400 fatigue and I suppose instant death. Kit your armies with some quality undead and in the dark they will do well.

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Doo

Your Darkness spam tactic will be good, make sure the caster has greater than 4D or it costs 400 fatigue and I suppose instant death.

No it doesn't. A mage casting a spell never goes above 200 fatigue hmiself. Effectively it thus does not matter if you cast a spell that causes 400 fatigue with a mage that is just able to cast it, or with a mage that has one higher than the required path; the difference starts to show after you have a mage that is at least 2 levels higher than what the spell requires. Thus, if you have both a D4 and D5 mage in a combat, it makes sense to cast Darkness with the D4 mage, and let the D5 mage do all the other cool spells

[Doo]

If a mage has 200 fatigue they die don't they? So its still insta-death for a poor D4-5 mage? Or do they just collapse?

I could test this....

[Thanatus del Dragos]

I think Tien Chi is going to fall, and fall fairly fast. Three of their forts are now being seiged by the Irish Alliance (Firbolg Federation?).

[Hrum]

Turn 31 is up. I think you guys all noticed this already.

Originally Posted by endomorphious

Ugh Kailasa keep your dang monkeys on your side of the map. One of the little buggers burnt down a lab.

Dude, sorry about that. I didn't think they liked your swampy lizard lands, but I guess monkeys can pop up anywhere. They are cheeky little buggers aren't they? I recommend keeping them out of your labs if you can manage it, but that's probably easier said than done.

Originally Posted by endomorphious

need some advice. I will have researched alteration 6 the end of this turn and can finally start planning on using darkness/skellispam in my expansion. What should I focus on now?

I agree with Doo about the thug summons (banes and whatnot). You may need to kit them out a bit, but I think it'll be worth it (not sure they're amphibious natively). Vine shields w/ fire/shadow brands are always nice too. If you can't forge these I can make fire brands for you (they're better than frost brands against a guy that has either some resistances or high prot - fire brands are AP, frost brands aren't so even if the splash isn't helping much at least someone gets hit with a damaging AP attack).

I have some other thoughts on stuff you might want to do as well. Basically, it sounds like you really went full bore for the darkness thing, which may or may not be super useful against Atlantis (would've worked great against Niefelheim, but there isn't much left of him). The reason it may only be partially useful against Atlantis is (and I hadn't really looked at Atlantis before or I would've mentioned this earlier):

Atlantis has troops that have darkvision natively! And yes, in scouting reports watching the fights between Atlantis and Niefel I've seen him using troop mixes including these guys a fair bit:

-Deep Ones / #Deep One Spearmen (Dv 100; Fire & Cold Resist 50%)
-Atlantian Spearmen (DV 50)
-Shambler of the Deep / #Warrior of the Deep (DV 100; Fre & Cold Resist 50%)

#(These dudes have scary basalt spears, which defeat etherealness.)

I guess it's pretty dark down in the deeps and the Atlantian troops have adapted to that. So, using darkness on Atlantis won't be as overwhelming as it would be against many other nations. I think it'll still be somewhat useful, as I bet the AI mixes in some guys who don't have awesome DV with most of his armies, but in an MP game against a human Atlantis opponent you'd probably be facing nothing but DV100 guys as soon as he saw that you were sending undead at him (apparently those Deep One Spearmen are highly prized Atlantian chaff in general because they're cheap / low resource, and can be cranked out like mad). They ain't none of 'em poison resistant though...


So, other than darkness what do you have? I looked at the EA C'Tis mages on the wiki and it looks like you've got your share of:

-D
-more D
-N
-some S
-some W

Bearing your paths in mind, I looked over the list of spells and it looks like you've got all of the following available to you at a not terribly high research level (I tried not to look above research 5 in any school).

I know you may not have some of those at high enough levels that you can cast all the spells below right out of the box, but for some of these spells it may be worth forging a path booster and sending a path boosted mage out to the front lines. Nature boosters (thistle mace) and water boosters (Water Bracelet, Robe of the Sea) are relatively cheap / easy to make.


Rituals - prep for combat by summoning dudes:
conj2 d2 summon shades (5d gems 4x shades) [amph]
conj3 d2 revive bane (8d gems - commander) [no amph - needs gear?]
conj4 d3 summon shade beasts (20d gems 15x shade beasts) [pr amph]
conj5 d4 revive bane lord (12d gems - commander) [no amph - needs gear?]
ench5 d3 pale riders (10d gems 20x skel horsemen) [pr amph]


Buff your dudes:
evo2 w2 rain (1w gem) [OK, not a buff per se, but nice to have on land if enemy has F mages]
alt3 s1 **body ethereal (*do this to your bane/bane lord thugs)
alt5 n2 wooden warriors (do this to your undead chaff)

*For some reason I thought the banes were ethereal, but the wiki suggests not. Seems I was misremembering - maybe people tend to make them ethereal so often I just thought they were natively..? In any case, why not make the banes/bane lords ethereal if you can swing it? Great against some opponents, not so much against others...
**Ethereal may actually be less useful against Atlantis. Some of his troops have basalt spears that are magic / defeat the ethereal effect.


Kill enemy dudes w/ poison & death kaboom (supposedly only 1 of these doesn't work underwater):
alt1 n1 eagle eyes (improve mages' precision before firing evos)
evo4 n2 breath of the dragon (NUW)
evo5 n3 poison cloud
evo5 d2 shadow blast (1d gem)
ench5 n3w1 foul vapors (1n gem - whole BF)


Sleepify / Scare remaining enemy dudes:
evo3 n2 sleep cloud (the manual doesn't say NUW, so this might work for water fighting)
thau3 n2 panic
thau4 d3 terror


Bonus underwater combat spell (for Conj6 w3):
Shark Attack (3w gems)

Here's a useful thread on underwater fighting:
http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43042

The great thing about using poison & death magic along with undead is that your undead are immune. No worries about collateral damage. Fear spam same. I think the same is true of sleep effects / fatigue effects as well (undead don't get fatigued and don't sleep?).

Is any of that useful at all?

Originally Posted by Doo

If you need you can ask Hrum if you can create a path through his lands so you can participate. Or research and gear up to try going underwater.

C'Tis has 2 AI neighbors he can make war with to his north (the dwindling Niefelheim, incl his northern capital, and Atlantis who is heavily on land at this point). C'Tis shouldn't need a path through me to expand (he would to go after Abysia, but seems a bad idea to leave a scary submerged enemy who is now on land on your door step while going off to fight on the far removed eastern continent).

Fighting through Atlantis will even give C'Tis access to port provinces that will (ultimately) allow access to the NW and the E continents. The biggest obstacle to hopping to the other continents that way is Atlantis, who will raid mercilessly along the coast once war is begun with him (since he's the one who holds those port provinces). IMO, the solution is to get in the water and put an end to the fishmen.

Sorry for another long $%^&ing post. :P

[Jarkko]

Originally Posted by Doo

If a mage has 200 fatigue they die don't they? So its still insta-death for a poor D4-5 mage? Or do they just collapse?

No, a toon takes damage for each point over 200 points of fatigue. So being at fatigue 200 does no damage.