Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

You can definitely triple up on rain of toads to instakill an enemy's unit production, severely hurt gold productions, and slam them with misfortune (which may cause further economic chaos). That's what, 12 blood slaves for all that? Granted, you need three people who can cast it, which makes for a fairly short list of armies outside of Mictlan and Lanka (Sauro, maybe?), but if that doesn't make the good list of offensive rituals I don't know what does. The 3 chances to disease enemy units is just added frosting. Rating: As good as it gets.

As far as attack spells go, to continue with the blood theme Infernal Disease is a bargain - 5 blood slaves kills almost any commander that's heavily protected, and even the exceptionally tough almost always still end up diseased. Rating: Good.

Send Horror in its various forms really needs to be cast multiple times on the same enemy army to pay off, but 2-3 of them can usually rout an enemy army even without getting lucky and shredding a commander, and they can also jack up an enemy pretender with horror marks. I'd say they are not as efficient as the preceding two, though, since they may not end up inflicting that many casualties before routing the enemy, and don't work well in offensive siege warfare. Rating: OK - not a great spell most times, but sometimes exceptionally useful in counter sieging when you've cut off all escape routes but can't defeat the sieging force.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Yes they are, this is one of those 'killer' tactics, pulled it off playing EA T'ien Ch'i. Hit my enemies capital with raging hearts, hurricane, blight and locust swarms in 1 month. I then did the same next month and every other month after. He could not recruit any more troops, mages. So my armies just went in and moped is nation up. The war was won at the beginning.

Hurricane btw seems to work on any province, not just coastal ones.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

One of the best offensive rituals is Raging Hearts. Lots of unrest, just two castings will put a province over 100 unrest -> no more recruiting.

Especially useful against an enemy with capital only troops or mages.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

I had a fair amount of success with the Beckoning in my last game, but it's a very situational spell. In my case, AI Vanheim had a couple of fortresses in forest provinces that it was using to build an army. So I had a couple of enchantresses with Treelord Staves, Rings of Sorcery, and Spell Foci who just pounded away with Beckoning every turn. POOF: No more army buildup.

For commander-killing spells, my favorites are: Infernal Disease, Earth Attack, Wind Ride, and Winged Monkeys. For some reason, Winged Monkeys doesn't seem to work very often, but it's still fun. I mean, c'mon! Winged Monkeys?! Who doesn't like Winged Monkeys! http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Yea, when I read this spell in the manual it made me chuckle.

An Oz style raid still makes me smile.

I cast it alot in SP for a laugh, its well funny. Its a shame its not more useful...

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Well, I often use these kind of spells, and as everybody said : they are really efficient and usefull.

But I ask myself for some preferences here, as ragging hearts, etc.
Yes, they cause lot of unrest, but you can easily counter that with a good patrolling tactic : fast and/ or flying troops, rings of warning, watcher, and so.
Tactic I have developped with my blood slaves-hungry EA Abyssians ;o)

So, I prefer the fire-familly spells (from afar and from the sky), or balefull star (cursed the troops!) or leprosis (disease troops), or direct leader attacks (earth attack, infernal disease, or annoying but not deadly seeking arrow).
Everything which directly kill, curse, hurt the enemy.

Well, I confess, I'm a bit direct. Well, brutal. Ok, I prefer USSR-"2 days heavy artillery barrage before huge human waves offensive"-style than stealthy commandos behind enemy lines ...
;o)

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Yes, but ... there's still a cost to your target. Patrolling kills people while it lowers unrest. That's a permanent hit to the income & resources for that province.

Also, there's the opportunity cost of patrolling. How many people patrol their capital provinces just for the heck of it? That patrolling army cost either gold (if regular troops) or gems & mage-turns (if summoned troops) to create. Either way, that's gold and/or magical resources that your opponent isn't using to smite you.

Screwing with your opponent is always worth doing in Dominions. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Very interesting stuff!

Makes getting "dome" spells (or at least one over your capitol) up and running a wise move. That, and buying a bunch of militia-type cannon fodder to hang out in your research center in case someone drops Fires from Afar or the like on it.

On that note, what happens if you cast an "anonymous" attack ritual against a province with a trap-dome spell, like Dome of Flaming Death (I love that name!) or Frost Dome, your caster gets nailed?

Are you still anonymous (they get a message like, "some unknown jerk tried to send a Hurricane our way, but our dome fried him!"? Or does your enemy then find out who was trying to hurt him ("some jerk from CAELUM tried to send a Hurricane our way, but our dome fried him!")?

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

It essentially tells you that some bonehead tried something he shouldn't have and got his backside burned for his trouble.

Edi

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

But not which particular bonehead, correct? That's good to know.

I'm in a game right now where one of my "allies" needs a bit of a slap-down (can't have him thinking he's the 'senior partner' in our relationship now, can we?). Of course it wouldn't do for him to know that I'd delivered the slap if I got caught. It's even better that there's a much more likely suspect in the game for him to consider for carrying out such an attack, he he he... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif