Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

OK, I've played a good amount of SP games, and a handful of MP games, by now, and I've noticed that ritual attack spells (such as Fires from Afar, or Hurricane) seem to be a rare occurrence in both.

It just seems that most of the time, when you're engaged in a serious war with someone, summoning combat units seems to be a more effective (or at least more tangible) use of sparse gem resources, at least at early and mid research levels.

Granted, there are a few attack spells that seem very potent (like dropping Flames from the Sky on the big enemy army, or Black Death on the enemy capitol), but these generally require level 8-9 in the respective research category. It is a rare game that lasts long enough, and is hard fought enough, to truly justify the use of these hard hitting spells (I've never found them "necessary" yet).

So again, what am I missing?

What spells of this type, either to directly attack enemy units, or their population/economy, do people really find useful? Especially, what do you find more useful than summoned units that are able to contribute directly on the battlefield, and for a similar cost in gems?

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

I use Fires from Afar in MP games. Best for cities with a few amount of troops and a high amount of mages. You could kill a good amount of nasty mages with it.

The low rituals are situational usefull and thats how they should work.

Most of the low summon spells are less usefull. I would use them only if i'm in real trouble and need all gems in some kind of creature.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Fun with fire:

Get fire gem income of around 25-30 gems, cast Eternal Pyre (double fire income), wait twenty turns while building up your empire (neighbors all busy fighting each other and don't want to tangle with you just yet). When pesky and much larger neighbor attacks you, find his research/hoarding center and drop 4x Flames from the Sky, 10x Fires from Afar, 6x Earth Attack and some Seeking Arrows on it. On the same turn. Then cock your ear and listen for the screams of outrage...

Edi

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Well I use offensive rituals where needed all the time. Fires from afar, mind hunt, blight, hurricane, rain of toads, send horrors, raging hearts, locust swarms etc...

I have even developed 'killer' strategys around a few of them.

There are two however that need a power boost for Dom3, those are imprint souls and arouse hunger. Neither of which are worth casting anymore, because there is more money in the game and both of those spells struggle to take out PD 10 defense. Indeed I recently tested both, imprint souls failed to take out 75% of indie 5's. Well 3 arouse hungers at the same province failed to take out LA Mictlan PD 10, which isn't the best PD in the world.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

I wouldn't recommend using multiple flames-from-the-sky on the same province in the same turn. A proportion (50% IIRC) of the units in that province is immune to such attacks and these immune units are immune for /all/ such attacks in that turn. So, if the enemy has 20 mages, 10 are vulnerable and your first casting kills 7, then there are only 3 left that the second can target.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

The mages might have so many hitpoints that a singe casting wont kill them, but two or three might.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

The best use for offensive rituals is to drop them on an enemy army the same turn you fight - since they start combat wounded.

If half of his mages start combat wounded, you can drop a battlefield cleaner (fire storm or flame storm, whichever one it is) and his mages will generally die first, even if you've both got warriors of fooheim up.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Hurricane and others that generate lots of unrest seem somewhat popular to use on the enemies capitol.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Yep. Seems to me there are many good ritual attack spells. One doesn't need to use them, and people may forget to use them or not all see how to use them best, but I think they're plenty good in general and there are many interesting things that can be done with them.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Very interesting suggestions, thanks!

Here's another question regarding this topic - are rituals that affect "economics" stackable? For example, if I cast Locust Swarms, Blight, Rain of Toads, and Hurricane at the same time, in the same place, will the target suffer unrest +100 (20 for Locust, 15 for Blight, 40 for Toads, and 25 for Hurricane) and lose 8% of its population (I think 3% for Hurricane, plus 5% for Blight), in addition to the various gold loss and negative scale hits?

Hmm, I remember a while back that someone made an excellent list of summons spells, with their opinion of what spells were good, marginal, and useless. Anyone care to try that with offensive rituals? http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/laugh.gif

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

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Patrolling your capitol and other important places against spies and spells do not need to cost very much, sometimes nothing at all. The reasons are holy troops (low upkeep and sometime low cost as well), effective patrollers (patrol ability, fliers and high AP + high prec units) and of course the "free" spawns. The best patrollers are of course a combination of all these.

I really believe it is worth to patrol your borders, high income provinces and army building sites. The payoff may not come immediately, but in the long run your are at an advantage as your opponents won't have any details on your plans and thus cannot disrupt them very much. And if the enemy don't have any patrolling units himself you really have the upper hand.

Any nasty surprise attacks with stealth armies that the enemy might try to pull off can also be countered with dedicated or dynamic patrolling units. Because province defense on its own won't stand much chance on finding an all stealth 20 army. The main reason to this is that they don't have any minuses on stealth strength in regards to numbers. An example would be the EA Pangaea's Satyr Sneaks.

If you fear that your patrolling units don't really stand a chance against the enemy they might find, just set them to retreat, and they will live to patrol another day. If you have horse archers (very common) they can fire and flee which can cripple a good stealth army some (as they probably have no armour or shields as they are stealthy instead).

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

is there a list of all the anonymous rituals handy?

Hurricane
Fires from Afar
Rain of toads
Leprosy?
Wolven winter
Locust swarms
Raging Hearts
Seeking Arrow
Baleful Star
Blight
Black Death
Phantasmal attack - no flag
Tidal Wave
Volcanic eruption


Unsure:
Flames from the sky?
Murdering winter
Send Horror? no flag
Send lesser horror? no flag
crumble?
Fate of Oedipus?
Ghost riders? no flag correct?
Horror Seed?
Beckoning?
Vengeance of the dead?
Wind ride?
Melancholia?
Infernal Disease
Earth Attack
Carrion Reanimation
Send Tupilak
Angelic Host
Vengeance of the Dead
Mind Hunt
Wish? - via "provinces"?

Identifiable
Imprint souls
Call of the wild
call of winds
Arouse hunger
Horde from hell
Army of the dead

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Call of Winds and Imprint Souls will tell the target who is attacking, since the army created by the spell belongs to the attacker, unlike e.g. Ghost Riders who belong to the nation of Special Monsters.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

There is a lot of information here regarding which spells are anonymous and which are not:

http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/dom3spells.html

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Thanks, edited as far as possible still some unknowns. New spells to dom3?

I expect horde from hell and army of the dead are identifiable as you keep the province if successful, but would like clarification

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Horde from Hell and Army of the Dead are also identifiable. Any spell that allows you to keep the remote summoned army is automatically identifiable.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

jutetrea, this list is a great idea! There are a few rituals missing I think, can you please add these to the list:

Infernal Disease
Earth Attack
Carrion Reanimation
Send Tupilak
Angelic Host
Vengeance of the Dead
Mind Hunt
Wish

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Haha.

Man, who the hell cast that Send Tupilak at me? I can't quite figure it out.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

LA Atlantis is the only nation that has that spell.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Yeah, but I figured it might be nice to get them all on the list. And it would be good to know if the flag appears in any case. Someone might come up with an all-water mod, with multiple instances of identical water nations.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

IS it possible to have more then one dome of a different type in the same province, such as a water one and an air one. And if you can are they cumulative?

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

Yes and yes.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

And Dispel, does that show who dispelled your global?

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

No, its anonymous.

Re: Offensive Rituals vs Summoning?
 

thanks! another question:

Do elemental immunities protect against the effects of the domes?
Wear a fire immunity ring and cast away at that Dome of Flaming Death-protected province? Same with the water one?