Re: fire storm
 

thank you everyone for the helpful suggestions!

I am somewhat annoyed that there isn't a spell that offers 100% fire resistance like there is for cold. Also Evo 7 and 5 gems seems a bit cheap for such a devastating spell.

But that may just be the noob in me talking; one of the nice things about this game is that having 24 hours between turns gives me lots of time to come up with (or ask for) with new ideas to try.

And of course maybe i'll just have to try Abyssia in the next game i join.

Re: fire storm
 

If Abysia is your problem, cast Rain, and watch them kill themselves from exhaustion. Not only does Rain destroy the heat of Abysian troops, but during Rain all fire spells have double fatigue, which you should be very interested in (what with the fatigue cost of 500 for Fire Storm, and if you can double that with a low-research W2 spell... ;) )

Re: fire storm
 

yeah, rain is a killer against abysia, as are shock spells. Slow them down as much as you can, takes forever to close into battle

The leaders and mages are expensive, so remote spells like mind hunt etc can be very effective

Re: fire storm
 

Rain doesn't matter at all for casting fire storm for most purposes. Also, the book is mistaken about Warriors of Niefelheim, it is only 50% resist as well, same as the rest of them. Only self-cast spells confer 100% resist.

Re: fire storm
 

okay good information. thanks again (especially Dragar for helping de-noobify me in more ways than one).

Re: fire storm
 

I disagree a bit about the SCs part.
Imo you shouldn't give up armies for SCs. Just like there are army killing tools there are SC killing ones.
Don't build big armies and expect to win though, build forces that are working and expendable (with mage backup of course) and be ready to bring something with completely different attacks to bear when the enemy beats you.
In Late game you can have a gold income of 4000 after upkeep, so you can make 5 800 gp armies, say 2 200 gp mages and 40 10gp troops, combine them at will. They will walk over PD and can pose a threat to SCs even (weapons of sharpness, strength of giants, earth meld for example - though after my experience with low level spells I really wish you could script mages better than merely making 5 suggestions) and as your enemy fills his slots to beat the things he sees he will have to leave some other vulnerabilities open (for example fire resistance or reinvig).
In theory at least, but it depends much on your and your enemies resources, mobility and flexibility (the main problem of armies being that they are not mobile enough).

Re: fire storm
 

The manual lists fire ward (ench4 2w2e I think) as being 100 FR, is this not accurate you are saying?

Re: fire storm
 

It is not. It's 50% just like the others.
This surprised me recently, though I was using mostly troops who were 50% resistant already so it wasn't so bad.

Re: fire storm
 

Don't try and mind hunt aby - they have astral mages and a decent player will send them along with his armies after your first hunt. Other assassination spells should be fine. But similarly, a good player will bring along chaff commanders when they see you trying this strategy.

On the topic of firestorm: with respect, it simply sounds like you were not prepared to be fighting Aby. When going to war with a nation that relies so heavily on fire magic you should expect from the start to be facing fire magic and heat auras on the battle field. While it is not always possible to protect mundane troops from these effects, that is what summons and item forging is for.

After all, while Firestorm is a good spell it is certainly not game winning by any means. If you prepare your army appropriately - say with your FR equipped mages, your own deadly battlefield enchant, and some FR summons (mech men have 100 fr, i think?) - your opponent will very rapidly feel as vulnerable as you do now...

Re: fire storm
 

Spells like Earthquake are actually better cast AFTER the enemy mage casts Firestorm (or whatever), since there's a Def check, and if the enemy mage has 200 fatigue from casting a big spell with barely-sufficient gems he's not going to be passing his Def check, and any Prot he has will get bypassed via critical hit.

-Max