Subtleties of global spells

[En Forcer]

I'm in a SP game playing MAN and here around turn 190 it's just me and Pangea (with the water folks floundering around uselessly).

We've gotten into a war of casting global spells. I dispell his as fast as I can but then I get one up and it gets replaced or knocked off the list.

I understand there is only room for 5 at one time (which is way too little in my opinion) but my question is that sometimes I see the same spell for both of us up at the same time, and other times, he just replaces my spell.

Do I need to have more gems invested in the spell to make it harder to replace or keep it from being knocked down (once over 5) or what?

I would appreciate any insights you guys have into global spells. This is getting really frustrating!

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Have you tried spending something like 200+ extra gems? There's probably a hard limit on how much the AI will spend itself, so maybe going for absurdly high numbers will make your own GEs undispellable.

[fahdiz]

Yes, if you want it to stick, pack it full of extra gems.

Your other option is to Go Kill Him. If you smoke all of his mages, reduce his dominion, etc. he will have a harder time focusing on those tasty globals.

[En Forcer]

Okay so maybe if I pack 300 gems into a spell it stays at the top and is not replaced?

Is the listing order of the spells determined by the amount of power invested in them?

So my mother oak spell at 100 gems is replaced if he casts it at 125 -or- if it is in slot 5 and he casts some other global spell at 101 gems or more?

thinking out loud here....

[Gateway103]

Regarding the issue of dispelling, here is an excerpt from the thread, "What determines whose Global spell sticks?" located here,
http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...4;t=001593;p=2

Originally posted by Kristoffer O:
There is an openended six side die added to the gem input of every global and dispelling attempt.

In your example, then, this means that it is possible to dispel/replace your 100 gems Mother Oak with less than 100 gem used. This also means that spending more than 100 gems to dispel the Mother Oak isn't fool-proof, but simply more likely (than say 50/50) to succeed.

-Gateway103

[ February 26, 2004, 04:36: Message edited by: Gateway103 ]

[En Forcer]

Okay, thanks for the info. The 6-sided die thing
explains some of the goofy behavior I have been seeing.

Any idea what determines the ranking of the global spells?

[moodgiesanta]

I dunno. But I wish there was a way to adjust, at the beginning of the game, how many enchantments were allowed, for games with 17 players to have more and 2 to have fewer. It's nearly endgame a lot before global enchanments stack up in some of my smaller games.

[ceremony]

Originally posted by En Forcer:
sometimes I see the same spell for both of us up at the same time

Is this certain? Because if so, it is a bug for sure.