Thunderstrike - what am I missing?

[Foodstamp]

Originally Posted by rdonj

A communion with just 2 masters casting anything that isn't a single, battle-winning spell is not really an ideal situation for a communion at all. If you're trying to spam evos in communion, what you're really looking for is a situation where you can do a reverse communion and buff up the communion slaves instead of the masters. Get aim, storm power, and power of the spheres going on 2a+ mages and you'll see much more interesting results from your spellcasting efforts. Thunderstrike is very effective en masse due to the large secondary aoe, and combines very well with missile fire. But evos are always going to feel underwhelming unless they're really being spammed. Only things like shadowblast can get away with small numbers of casters.

And yes, as soyweiser says the AoE fatigue is a large part of why thunderstrike is good.

The reverse communion here is the best advice for using thunderstrike in your situation. If you do a reverse communion as this guy suggests, only one guy is going to be casting aim, so your other guys are going to get their same amount of casts.

[PriestyMan]

well aim is not a self buff so it doesnt work that way. if you can get a N mage in there to cast eagle eyes that works

[kasnavada]

Yup, aim target a single case at range 5+. Usually mages cast it on themselves but for some reason they also cast it on other troops occasionally .

It got "corrected" in CBM though (fixed range of one), so using a mage and a "commanders with bows" bodyguard result in a much useful outcome.

[thejeff]

If you can pull off a reverse communion then each mage can cast CS,Aim,TStrikex3. They'll fall unconscious after 2 Strikes anyway, so what the AI does when you go off script doesn't really matter. You still get more total Strikes since you have more mages casting.
You could also cast wind Guide instead of each casting Aim.

The hard part is getting Storm up. You need more research and preferably a Staff of Storms. Your Communion Master could cast it after PoTS, or with a extra gem. And it halves precision, so even with Aim your total precision will be less.

[krpeters]

So, falling frost *does* work pretty well against the AI. The 5x area of effect means I can trash his chaff pretty effectively. What other low level spells (7 or less, "low", heh!) have a good area of effect? I've played with magma eruptions in the past which has worked well.

Unfortunately, I see a potential problem in use against human opponents. The range is pretty short, so if my opponnent parks his army in the back with orders for "hold and attack", my mages will twiddle their thumbs and gain fatigue for several turns. Is this a common strategy in MP games? How do you deal with a player who turtles his troops out of your range for several turns?

[Quitti]

Hello, you seem to have the problem of playing against the AI, and trying to base a strategy to work against them, on a forum where 95% of the strategy discussed is relevant to MP against enemies that can do something against you.

Some have said they are entertained by playing against dom3 AI. I doubt that remark.

[krpeters]

I have tried playing multiplayer a few times. The usual result is that several human players gang up on me and crush me. I'm looking for a strategy which will compensate for my opponents' numerical superiority -- and playing against AI hordes seems to be good practice.

[Redeyes]

The biggest difference between AI and humans in troop composition is that humans tend towards fewer, elite, armies, whereas the AI recruits largely at random in massive numbers.

Hence thunderstrike is more effective against the typical human, as it deals more and armor-piercing damage at a better range, than falling frost. Naturally, falling frost might still be the better choice sometime even against humans.


I remember thunderstriking through communions with Bogarus Astrapelagists. At 2 air they can't cast it naturally, but with a 4 slave, 4 master, setup the masters can spam thunderstrikes for the length of a major battle.

[rdonj]

I just want to point out one more thing - you can't really think of effectiveness of cast spells in terms of how much gold the mage casting it cost you to purchase. I.E. 112.5 gold per thunderstrike is a bogus figure. The real cost of using mages in battle is that they aren't spending their time researching better spells instead.

But even if you want to look at it in terms of gold cost of a mage casting spells, one mage makes back 100 gold for each random AI soldier you kill, approximately, generally more because the AI does recruit expensive soldiers too. But anyway, each battle a mage is in he kills more soldiers. It is incredibly easy for any random mage to get more than 50 kills over the course of their lifetime serving on the battlefield, especially against the AI. Once you've made up for their initial purchase cost of the mage after probably as few as 3 battles, then you are just paying for his upkeep cost, which is easily overcome by kills made. You should only lose mages fairly infrequently, and primarily due to stray arrows even then. This is important because the lifetime effectiveness of said mage should quickly outstrip the gold effectiveness of purchased troops who will die a lot more often and force you to keep spending the premium up front cost of the purchase.

[krpeters]

I measure it as gold cost for mages vs. skipping magic altogether and just hiring more troops. Obviously that's a fail for any long term strategy, but I expect to be out of the game long before L9 spells are being tossed around anyway.

So my thunderbolt slinging Theurgs have to convince me they're more valuable than a squad of principes.