Strategy and Tactics of the Enemy

TwoBits wrote:So we're now entering fully into the thug/SC portion of the game. Time to start discussing what we have available. Anyone have an active Pretender (Pangaea's Gorgon, Arco's Titan, what else?)? Any summons coming around (sounds like C'tis will have Bane Lords soon)? How can we best trick them out?

How about ways of dealing with the Vets' nasties? We've got the Father of Winters (I'm hoping Horror Marking can make him at least retire from active duty) and T'ien Ch'i's Deva (did someone say fatigue was her weakness?). And of course, we've got Ashdod's various giant commanders. How best to deal with them in all their variety?

Time to step up our teamwork. One of our weaknesses is our actual numbers! The Vets, 6 wise crafty players who likely know each other well (and thus have a much easier time communicating and planning), versus 12+ (including subs) rookies who mostly don't know each other from Adam. We need to work better on communication and coordination. Make use of this forum, but also make use of PMing! Remember, we're not a mere MP game alliance, we are a TEAM!

One of the problems is intercepting these meanies since they are usually kept on the move. But I understand that there are certain phases (magic movement, etc) and/or spells that could intercept them before they move out of a province. Will VOD catch them before they move? Seeking arrows, horrors?

Septimius Severus wrote:One of the problems is intercepting these meanies since they are usually kept on the move. But I understand that there are certain phases (magic movement, etc) and/or spells that could intercept them before they move out of a province. Will VOD catch them before they move? Seeking arrows, horrors?

Yes to all of the above.

I have a Titan pretender with earth and air (good for buffs and cloud trapeze mobile).

I am not sure horrors or most assassin spells will work. Their SCs have decent combat stats, high morale, crowd control (so VotD won't work until they have huge kill numbers) and high MR. Those spells are best against weaker but valuable units - rainbow pretenders, mages, army commanders etc.

I think attacking with suitable mages/thugs/SCs of our own would be a better bet. Not really sure exactly what we need but poison would kill the Deva and as has been pointed out the Father of Winter can't hit a barn door. If his opponents are immune to cold and fire they should last a long time (pretty much any thug can be made immune to those cheaply). Then it's simply a case of doing more damage than his regen can cope with and his stats are not too stellar. He may be immune to most chaff attacks but Thugs should get through 22 defence and 17 protection without too much problem. Plus the hps of both will go down if they stay in our dominion.

Um... I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but you're underestimating that Father of Winter: He's a Cold Power-1 unit operating in a Heat-2 province. Vanheim can and will (see the shrapnel forum) cast Wolven Winter (+5). This FoW casts quickness for an additional +3 to attack, and he's using a flame brand (+4). Next time you see this guy, expect his effective attack to be 22 - he'll hit that barn door, and he'll do it twice per turn.

Raiel wrote:Um... I hate to rain on everyone's parade, but you're underestimating that Father of Winter: He's a Cold Power-1 unit operating in a Heat-2 province. Vanheim can and will (see the shrapnel forum) cast Wolven Winter (+5). This FoW casts quickness for an additional +3 to attack, and he's using a flame brand (+4). Next time you see this guy, expect his effective attack to be 22 - he'll hit that barn door, and he'll do it twice per turn.

I hadn't considered the scales

Still Wolven Winter is a W3 spell. Very hard for him to cast as he doesn't even have W on any of his mages. I doubt any of his allies can cast it easily either as none of them have decent water mages except TC. He might be able to do it but maybe he just means winter in the game is coming and so it gets colder everywhere. If he could do it easily why didn't he do it when he arrived rather than risk meeting something nasty when he was weakened by heat?

Unfortunately your basic point is correct - he is doubtless much tougher than those base stats suggest

That is a good point, however, it may be possible to catch him in such land. If so - I would win fairly handily I imagine. If not - I still have somewhat of an advantage regardless since I wold be gearing for anti-sc and he is anti-army, and I would be immune to both fire and cold. I also have S6 and N1 for some useful buffs.(due to my S6 I can get N2 for personal regeneration, and an S7 astral shield would be nasty.) I could also bring a few mages with me for things like quickness, earth might, etc, since I can cast any spell up to E4, F4, or W3.

Yeah, just for comparison, here's the FoW before his buff cycle:



And after:



Notice he does all that with only 7 fatigue - serious reinvigoration going on.

One reason I'm aiming for Gift of Flight would be to send in Hydras before he can complete his buff cycle (he spent all the first 5 rounds casting).

Good call on WW: I was thinking it was an air ritual. I wouldn't be shocked to see it happen though.

Yes, to catch that SC, we'll probably need to depend on our CT/Teleport-capable counters.

TC in province 243, turn 21, 130 units left:



2 Celestial masters (a2w2,blah, blah)casting communion master, several geomancers casting communion slave.

Mages cast fire resistance.

Gifts from heaven is spammed.

Troop composition front to back: Footman, Guardsmen, Crossbowmen, Archers, heavy horse, barbarians, more Guardsmen. Most if not all set to hold for two turns.

Some magic duels by a friendly noob nations may be helpful this turn in this province.

Report on Jotun's capital fall

I didn't have much. Two Gyjyas and a Vaetti Hag but little battle magic reserached. My gate guards were Confused repeatedly and largely killed each other. But the battle lasted quite a long time and his gift of flighted raiders were all killed plus the arrow towers of the fortress did quite a lot of damage.

The start:



He has three Vanadrotts and two Vanjarls plus at leat 3 Indie Commanders.

The end position (plus about 10 more in the entrance way):



Spells he used were mostly Gift of Flight and Confusion. No gems were used or seen and they all fatigued out. But I would expect a more careful use of these valuable mages if the fight had been more risky.

Here's a pic of my turn 30 attempted seige of TC's cap. I include it and some tactical info for the benefit of Abyssia, Agartha, Shinuyama, or anyone else currently contending with TC:



TC's mages were centrally placed to buff the PD and surrounding normal units with several rounds of Iron and Wooden Warriors, and a few shots of Quickness.

Several castings of Healing Mists were used as well, perhaps to keep his archers in good shape, heal other rear units, or maybe even heal retreating troops.

The Deva of course flew to rear of my line and diverted the attention of troops set to attack closest.

This must be his tactic when fighting with his pretender. I've seen other battles where he's scattered his forces in small groups all over the map, mainly to act as speed bumps and delays, while his mages (mostly Geomancers?) communion up for big hitting spells like Gifts From Heaven and Magma Eruption (really did lots of damage to the cavalry of Agartha, and even the tough cavalry of Ulm).

TwoBits wrote:This must be his tactic when fighting with his pretender. I've seen other battles where he's scattered his forces in small groups all over the map, mainly to act as speed bumps and delays, while his mages (mostly Geomancers?) communion up for big hitting spells like Gifts From Heaven and Magma Eruption (really did lots of damage to the cavalry of Agartha, and even the tough cavalry of Ulm).

As long as I know the Deva or any other SC's with the same attack orders will be in a battle, I can use some decoy chaff and/or mages in the rear to distract/deal with them while I concentrate on the rest of his forces. Don't know why it didn't occur to me to do it last turn.

TwoBits wrote:This must be his tactic when fighting with his pretender. I've seen other battles where he's scattered his forces in small groups all over the map, mainly to act as speed bumps and delays, while his mages (mostly Geomancers?) communion up for big hitting spells like Gifts From Heaven and Magma Eruption (really did lots of damage to the cavalry of Agartha, and even the tough cavalry of Ulm).

I concur. This is what T'ien Chi used to destroy my army in Sleepy Wolds (209): some defensive buffs on the PD and units with communioned GfH and magma eruption to do the actual killing.

What have you guys come up with in the way of dealing with Vanheim's current tactics, especially with regard to Fog Warriors?

"Perhaps we should take advantage of the break to see if we find out what everyone's up to and doing, maybe some new maps for the map thread, etc. and what strategies we can come up with for dealing with any new vet tactics such as the spells they are reportedly using Fog Warriors, Flaming Arrows, Mass Flight, etc."

Septimius asked this elsewhere. My own thoughts are:

For Flaming Arrow, if you don't have the Air magic for stuff like Arrow Fend, Mist, or Storm, or the ability to use mass Fire Resistance, decoy squads are your best bet. You might need a decoy squad (AKA suicide squad) for every type of potential target (so maybe a suicide squad of archers, or cavalry, etc.), and they need to be robust enough to last at least a few rounds, so your other units can do their thing. Masses of your own archers set to "fire at enemy archers", in the hopes of reducing/routing Marignon's archers, might also work (again though, you'd probably need a separate decoy squad of archers to attract enemy fire if he decided to target your archers).

Mass Flight is a hard one. Storm if you've got it (which you probably don't), otherwise extremely careful scripting/troop-placement is probably the only way to go. Again, decoy squads, and things like bodyguards on key commanders, might be helpful. Now, I can forge Staves of Storms, but again, they're super expensive (like the Air boosters I'd love, but can't afford), and I'd need loads of Air gems (and again, heck, I'd love them for myself, but at least I can cast Storm in battle) to do so.

Fog Warriors is tough too. Fancy troop placement wont do a damn here, and likely needs a magical solution. If I understand though, magical damage (so any spell damage, right?) should cancel the effect. So I believe AoE magical attacks are the way to go - that's why Iainuki was trying to research more Evocation magic for Abysia, for stuff like Falling Fires. The hard part versus Skinshifters is, once you remove the Mistform, they still have two more lives. Even so, AoE is probably the way to go.

The combo of Fog Warriors and Mass Flight is probably the killer app, especially on defense - Vanheim can get right in your face the first round, with Mistformed units, and then you're nearly as likely to kill your own units with AoE spells as the enemy. Not sure what to do in that case - have immunity to your own type of magic? Any other ideas on this?

Are you saying that damage spells cancel the fog warriors? If so, then my troubles are over. Any of my mages can cast Magma eruption after Summoning Earthpower.

Fog warriors is just Mistform for everyone I think. So all damage is reduced to 1hp. But if it did 25hp or more (after armour), or was caused by a magic weapon, the mistform is gone.

So it always gives an extra life, even vs a successful soul slay type attack. And sometimes many of course if they do too little damage. Skinshifters regenerate 2hps a round so they really will be tough to take down with conventional forces or spells, especially the area effect spells which do less damage but not just to one. Even if we can cast our own Fog warriors we still can't do a lot of damage to them with regular troops.

I am not sure what we can do. But my best guess is Thugs with brands. Lots of them. Banes, Bane Lords, Shura (for Shin) etc. The Banes have high protection so most skinshifter attacks will do little or no damage. Brands pop the mistform then the aura starts killing the none mistformed guy next round while hopefully the bane pops another then another etc. I assume he is NOT using many evocations? Sure he can start casting banish. But that changes his scripts, plus he lacks the priest leader numbers for it to work. And we can also use anti magic amulets or lead shields (to save astral pearls). Could Ulm pull this off? Banes need D2, Conj3 and in CBM only cost a few gems to cast. Bane Lords D4, Conj5. But if you are going for numbers over quality then Banes should be fine. Even half a dozen or 10 won't break the bank, even if it all goes wrong and they are slaughtered. His forces will fatigue out while Banes never get tired.

Most mages are going to be killed easily by his flying fog warriors and 25 is a lot to pop with a spell (then you have to kill the human form before starting on the werewolf). That's at least 3 good spell hits on the same skinshifter for a single kill Not good odds.

I vaguely remember a bug regarding mistform and poison??? It's possible the area effect of poison/poison cloud either pops it or bypasses it. Not sure about this though.

He does have some weaknesses though. He does not have unlimited leaders. And he has never built the forts to recruit lots of his own leaders. He must have plenty of decent indie mages for his high research, but hopefully less Vanjarls/vanadrotts which cast the serious air buffs. He can only replace 1 Vanadrott & 2 Vanjarls a turn (and the latter will struggle to cast Fog Warriors).

So if we shower him with as many assassination/overland spells we should wear him down. Manifestation (Death 5, Conj 8 ) has a reasonable shot at a Vanadrott. Just make sure there are enough commanders at the target that it doesn't come back to you Earth Attack (Earth 5 Conj 8 ) should be fatal to one as well. Send Horror & Lesser Horror may weaken the armies or at least use up his air gems before the main combats with our armies. He suggested on Shrapnal that seeking arrow killed one of his Vanjarls (??) so maybe that is effective and is certainly cheap and should get rid of any indie commanders that provide cover for his air commanders. Maybe mind hunt, but its hit or miss vs their MR and there is the danger of an Iron Adept being there. Plus we have stacks of other uses for those astral gems and probably the mages too, while Caelum's guys could spam seeking arrow freeing up Pythiums Arch Theugs to teleport down....

He still only has 3 forts. He still doesn't have a big standing army. So he is still vulnerable to raiding. If we can't take on his armies head on lets just swarm him and take as many of his lands as we can. His armies can't be everywhere. And any army that he hasn't committed a Fog warrior casting Vanadrott to is vulnerable to conventional armies.

Jotun was a bad fit against Vanheim in the first year before I had any Thugs and buffs as my armies could not dish out enough damage. But now my Skratti Thugs should do quite well against him if I can field enough. But I have scattered them to raid in to Vanheim and Marignon. Maybe I should gather them and my Titan Pretender and I recond I'd have a good chance vs even a large force of Vanheims Fog Warriors.

One thing I think we ought to do, if nothing else, is pour money on Ulm.

Right now the biggest point of contention is Joelz's lands, and we are richer than God right now. If we send Joelz a bunch of money he can start building lots of forts and lots of mages/troops. This will, at worst, give us plenty more time to fight vanheim, as it would take a long time to siege bunches of forts, and at best, stop him in his tracks. If we stop vanheim where he is, he pretty much has to concede, because there's no way he can research and develop counters to all of us at once, so he needs continuous expansion. If we can bring the fight to a stalemate - we win.

Also, with vanheim huge focus on armies, why aren't we raiding him more? I've got an army or two raiding him in the south, but we've got all kinds of thugs and such that would do a wonderful job of raiding his provinces. He's got zero PD in the majority of his places. I even took a province by teleporting a random solo mage into it. I'm hurting his income, and boosting mine, by a fair degree. In addition, I'm stealing magic sites from him by taking the land. And when he does decide to counter my raiding armies with a thug - I mind hunt it and it dies, losing him(last time) 20+ gems worth of gear.

Also, with so many of us, how many unrest causing event could we cast on his cap at once? There's no way he could operate effectively with his relatively few forts with us spamming unrest on them.

Good ideas so far.

Decoys, fire fend, bloat Ulm and perhaps Abyssia or other southern noobs with money.

Targeting Marg (I am assuming it is still free of friendly troops) and Van's caps with Rain of Toads and other nastiness is a good way to shut down their production and hurt their economies. Hmm, I am not sure if domes stop these types of spells but most domes can't stop 100% of anything anyway. I can cast 4 castings of Rain of Toads myself per turn if I need to.

Domes can stop all kinds of spells, even site searches. And unfortunately vanheim has easy access to one of the best, air domes, which stop 80% of all spells but bursts when a spell gets through. Marignon has access to astral and fire domes, which don't block things quite as well. Fire domes attack casters who send spells at the province though.

I think there are some more things you could try to deal with vanheim's, but you are off to a good start. There was one suggestion I particularly liked but I would go after it differently. Of course, he could try to adapt but I am not sure he could be 100% successful.

Hm, I think I got Mist Form and Mirror Image/Glamour confused - does magic spell damage not get rid of Mist Form, unless it does 25 points of damage? How much damage does Magma Eruption do?

Not sure what Rdonj is hinting at, but then I'm always slow on the uptake with these kind of riddles Perhaps there's another way to cancel flight other than Storm?

One thing Ulm and maybe even Machaka might look into is Curse of Stones. Do Penetration items improve it's chances? Multiple castings can also work. What sort of MR do Skinshifters have? Why I think that might be good is I believe flying units accrue extra fatigue, right? Might cause those flying foes to poop out from exhaustion before they do too much damage? Just a thought...

Any AoE damage spell will eliminate fog warriors, AFAICT. (I saw it happen a turn ago with Abysia and fireball--unfortunately, fireball is inadequate as AoE damage for dealing with fog warriors .) It will do 1 damage and often cause the skinshifters to go berserk, but AoE spells count as magic damage.

The only way I know of to counter flight is Storm. A plan I doubt I will ever be able to put into action is to use storm and thunderstrike spam with Caelum as a partial counter to fog warriors, with a meat wall of some sort. More likely all I will have time for are raiding thugs. (Sadly, MA Caelum doesn't have EKs.)

My understanding of Magma Eruption is that it does Mundane damage, so it only pops mistform if it would have done 25+ damage... haven't tested it though.

TwoBits wrote:Hm, I think I got Mist Form and Mirror Image/Glamour confused - does magic spell damage not get rid of Mist Form, unless it does 25 points of damage? How much damage does Magma Eruption do?

Not sure what Rdonj is hinting at, but then I'm always slow on the uptake with these kind of riddles Perhaps there's another way to cancel flight other than Storm?

One thing Ulm and maybe even Machaka might look into is Curse of Stones. Do Penetration items improve it's chances? Multiple castings can also work. What sort of MR do Skinshifters have? Why I think that might be good is I believe flying units accrue extra fatigue, right? Might cause those flying foes to poop out from exhaustion before they do too much damage? Just a thought...

Sorry about that, I see these things pop up and I want to help you guys, but I'm afraid that's the best I can do this time around.

Off the top of my head I can think of no other way to cancel flight other than with storm or perpetual storm.