Burden of Time

[Zapmeister]

If I'm a non-astral nation in a game containing Ermor, I can think of 3 ways of responding to the threat of Burden of Time:

1. Kill Ermor before it happens;
2. Resign immediately;
3. Die painfully after it happens.

Any others?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zapmeister:
If I'm a non-astral nation in a game containing Ermor, I can think of 3 ways of responding to the threat of Burden of Time:

1. Kill Ermor before it happens;
2. Resign immediately;
3. Die painfully after it happens.

Any others?

4. Wait for an astral nation to dispel it.
5. Use undead units yourself until it gets dispelled.
6. Cast other global enchantments to push it out.
7. Kill Ermor after it happens.
8. Kill the mage that cast the Burden of Time.
9. Empower a mage to be able to dispel it.
10. Help an astral nation to dispel it by giving them astral pearls.
11. Use cheap units for the meantime instead of any expensive ones you might have.
12. Use independent mages that have astral skill to dispel it.
13. Design your pretender with astral magic.

[ February 03, 2004, 01:08: Message edited by: Graeme Dice ]

[geo981010]

14) Cast it before he does! IIRC your troops don't get the diseases from your own casting, but your provinces do get the unrest.
15) Cast Gift of Health. Still have to worry about the unrest (Fata Morgana is a good counter for that though), but most of the afflictions will be cured eventually. Don't leave expensive artifacts on weak heroes - commanders can just die sometimes and you don't even get a note saying who died so it is pretty annoying.
16) Fill up the global spell list before he gets it cast

edit note: interesting that my three are all different then GDs big list (I renumbered mine since he beat me) - as usual there is more than just a couple of ways to skin a cat in Dom!

[ February 03, 2004, 01:14: Message edited by: geo981010 ]

[PvK]

If it's multi-player, convince/help someone else to cast Dispel, and/or persuade Ermor to not cast it.

Or:

Get someone to Astral-3 (empower/item/hire mercenary) to dispel.

Kill/assassinate the caster of the spell by various means (assassin, magic, steath commandos, non-stealth attack).

Bump the spell off the enchantment list using your own global enchantments (be sure to enjoy your other enchantments while doing so).

Go kill/maim Ermor after they cast it. Use cheap rebuildbale and/or unaging units for a while.

PvK

[Zapmeister]

Hmmm, OK, thanks. In practice, against a strong Ermor (and having no idea who or where the casting mage is) and without relying on help from others, the best suggestions seem to be Gift of Health and using cheap unit.

Maybe I can hang in there after all

[velk]

As a somewhat related question, if you 'kill' an immortal mage in his capital with, say, a seeking arrow, does it dispell the ritual spells he was maintaining ?

[Zapmeister]

as usual there is more than just a couple of ways to skin a cat in Dom!

Well yes but, in fairness, many of the entries in the list of 16 either:

1. Violate my assumption that the victim is a "non-astral nation", by which I meant that the pretender has no astral and the nationals could only get it by random pick, at best; or

2. Rely on someone else solving the problem; or

3. Contradict each other (#6 and #16 can't both work).

Add to that the practical difficulty of wiping out Ermor while suffering BoT, being lucky enough to find independants with astral or knowing where and how to kill the casting mage, and the list of practical options becomes somewhat shorter, I think.

[moodgiesanta]

Sure, there are ways to combat it, but at 70 pearls, it is both too cheap for its effects and too difficult for non-Astral mages to dispel. In my experience, not only Ermor but also Jotunheim and even R'yleh cast it like mad, which ends in every time I dispel it (at absurd cost) it gets cast again right off by the same nation. I think it is a rather overpowered spell. It should be a super-expensive hard to get spell, but it isn't.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by moodgiesanta:
Sure, there are ways to combat it, but at 70 pearls, it is both too cheap for its effects and too difficult for non-Astral mages to dispel.

70 gems is _not_ cheap. That's 7 turns of Ermor's base gem income.

[moodgiesanta]

Considering how it, in a few turns, cripples the armies of all of your enemies, I think 70 gems is very cheap for what it does.