The Bogarus Problem

[Tifone]

Jazzepi

Maybe I've done something wrong but your build, even with cold 3 (which you didn't state but i took it as implicit) still gives me -37 design points

[cleveland]

Agreed, particularly in LA. I personally wouldn't bother recruiting a single Voi archer until an F3 shows up. But when it did, I'd immediately puke out as many Voi as possible and rant/rave about my devastating ability to rain down fiery death. At worst, it'd force my opponents to develop Arrow Fend, Mist, Staff of Storms, Storm, Darkness, instead of something they'd rather be researching...at the cost of, what, $500 gold? Certainly better spent than on the rest of the crap they've got.

[JimMorrison]

2 communion slaves and Phoenix Power and your F2 mage is already at the F4 needed, seems silly to worry about playing the long odds when you can leverage that very early if you want.

But I forgot, I was going to stay out of this because I'm too inexperienced to know what works. <3

[Endoperez]

cleveland said:
Starets have a 2.5% chance at F3. After recruiting them for 20 turns, you've got a solid 40% chance of landing one...about the same time you're accessing Flaming Arrows. Voi archers are 8g...

Thanks for the math. That's useful in many circumstances, and it also got me to go through some math of my own. Probabilities, exponents, logarithms... Brrr! It's been a while.

[K]

Micah said:
K- Look at my example scales for an awake PoD. Note how they are not in fact remotely close to being bad.

Yeh, the scales are decent but that guy is not an SC. I ran several test games and he died somewhere between turn 4 and 8 when he accidentally hit a province with Calvary.

Maybe on turn 12 or 13 when you have some equipment for him he is decent, but the risks you are taking with that guy are pretty big.

Micah said:
The supposed SC counters you just listed are more straw men as well. A PoD is immune to Vengeance, and every single pretender has 30 morale, so fear is pretty unlikely to bother them much.

Yes, one of the potential SCs can't be affected by one of the potential counters, and all are a little resistant to another.

Crossbowman do perfectly fine if you don't have very high armor or Air Shield. Calvary don't even have a counter since they dump their payload of damage on turn 1 or 2.

In fact, the sheer number of SC counters in the LA are too numerous to mention. Baalz's LA Atlantis guide shows that even base troops have a good chance of killing an SC if you try.

Micah said:
And yes, I am saying that if you start researching on turn 7 like you suggest that having enough research to have construction 4 (360 rp) + teleport (200 rp) + evo 5 (560) for actual useful battle magic as opposed to having your mages sit around casting blink + conj 3 200 for phoenix power is pretty much impossible, since that's 1320 RP. Researching starting on turn 7 you'll only have about 660 RP if all you do is research after your 10th staret researches for a turn. Add a bit for magic scale, still not enough.

OTOH, if you start making starets on turn 1 you'll actually have enough for all of that with some to spare for site searching. 1440 total RP after your 15th Staret researches for a turn. More than twice as much research. TWICE AS MUCH. That's probably got something to do with the resistance you're describing to your exarch spam idea. Sure, its fine if you're desperate, but it starts looking really obsolete right about turn 15 when you're losing out on casting falling fires and soul slays instead of smites.

Actually, I never said Evo5 and Conj3 in addition to those other Paths (and eParchs are the H3s, not the H2 eXarchs).

I also don't think that Falling Fires is a great solution when nations generally have very high amounts of armor, but I get your point (and considering Bogarus's communions potential, deadly magic is actually much closer than you'd expect if you go some other route like Thaum 5 for Leeching Darkness).

But, here's a little test game where I was just tooling around and not planning it out too much, and I have all of those things by turn 21 even after I made dumb mistakes like forgetting to set mages to research or attacking provinces with too little troops because I forgot to check if I had blockers. I'm sure with a little more practice with Bogarus and more aggressive play I could cut it down to 17 turns, search more provinces for sites, and probably conquer an enemy (I have several armies doing nothing for around 9 turns). Considering that I said Turn 17 to 19, I'm actually not far off from my estimate.

[K]

cleveland said:
Starets have a 2.5% chance at F3. After recruiting them for 20 turns, you've got a solid 40% chance of landing one...about the same time you're accessing Flaming Arrows. Voi archers are 8g...

And have Mapmove 1. This means that they generally won't be any good for attacking armies who need to be reinforced, so I don't think an early Flaming Arrows strategy is really a great idea if you intend to use the Voi.

You'd be better off having high production and making indie Woodsman archers who are Mapmove 2, resource cheap, and have a full three more points of Precision.

[cleveland]

Particularly in the LA, flaming short bows aren't really an offensive weapon, they're a deterrent. They say, "I've got 12 volleys of flaming death waiting for you behind my walls. Perhaps you should look elsewhere." And Bogarus needs its neighbors looking elsewhere until ~year 4.

Agema was looking for an obvious troop tactic. 8g archers + flaming arrows seemed obvious to me.

edit

[Kuritza]

I dont really understand the fuss about 2.5% chance for F3 starets. F2 is enough to cast flaming arrows as long as you have phoenix power and an extra gem, afaik.

[Micah]

Yes, K, a naked PoD has issues with cav, and archers as well. You also get scouting reports for a reason. Pick a prov without either on turn 2 and make an enchanted shield, alchemizing for the 5th pearl. Turn 3 you should hopefully have another province you can take that's adjacent to your cap...doesn't matter which one, since your PoD flies. Have your PoD kill the indies and your starting scout bring the shield over and give it to your Prince. He's now pretty much able to solo any indie province between the arrow blocking and the increased defense to stand up to a cavalry charge until the fear kicks in. Avoid the cav altogether if you want, there plenty of other stuff for your flying pretender to pick from. And this is just using national resources, you can do better if you trade.

If by "a little resistant" you mean "completely immune to" then yes, you're right about fear assassins. Fear doesn't work on morale-30 units, end of story.

There are a nuber of effective SC counters, it's true, but if you're letting troops that can kill your SC get into combat with your SC you're not using it very well. Flight is your friend.

And no, you didn't say anything about evo-5, but you did say "powerful magic" so I figured falling fires or something of that level was what you had in mind, since teleporting in mages to spam mind burn, rage and bonds of fire is pretty laughable. Maybe Flaming Arrows, which is level 4 instead of 5, but still, my point is that you're losing over half of your research by going with early priests. You'll have to forgive the naming confusion on my part.

And sure, you might be able to have all that by turn 17, but I bet I can have it quicker than that with an awake pretender and still have a highly mobile raider on top of a well-developed nation.

[K]

Micah said:
Yes, K, a naked PoD has issues with cav, and archers as well. You also get scouting reports for a reason. Pick a prov without either on turn 2 and make an enchanted shield, alchemizing for the 5th pearl. Turn 3 you should hopefully have another province you can take that's adjacent to your cap...doesn't matter which one, since your PoD flies. Have your PoD kill the indies and your starting scout bring the shield over and give it to your Prince. He's now pretty much able to solo any indie province between the arrow blocking and the increased defense to stand up to a cavalry charge until the fear kicks in. Avoid the cav altogether if you want, there plenty of other stuff for your flying pretender to pick from. And this is just using national resources, you can do better if you trade.

And that's no more interesting or effective than setting up smite armies to do the same. The effect of "more provinces" is the exact same, you just don't have to pay hundreds of design points for it.

Micah said:
If by "a little resistant" you mean "completely immune to" then yes, you're right about fear assassins. Fear doesn't work on morale-30 units, end of story.

I'm not quite sure what you are talking about because I've seen Pretenders route. If you route during an assassination, you die.

Micah said:
There are a number of effective SC counters, it's true, but if you're letting troops that can kill your SC get into combat with your SC you're not using it very well. Flight is your friend.

So you are saying that you'll avoid combat with this SC god.... then why even have it? It is still vulnerable to teleport ambushes and other enemy magic, so it just looks like a liability from my standpoint.

Micah said:
And no, you didn't say anything about evo-5, but you did say "powerful magic" so I figured falling fires or something of that level was what you had in mind, since teleporting in mages to spam mind burn, rage and bonds of fire is pretty laughable. Maybe Flaming Arrows, which is level 4 instead of 5, but still, my point is that you're losing over half of your research by going with early priests. You'll have to forgive the naming confusion on my part.

I think you must be joking with me because I can't imagine you do not know about Thaum 5 which in total gives you Gateway, Teleports, Communions, Soul Slay, Confusion, Leeching Darkness and a host of other spells that can seriously alter a war or battlefield. Being able to move armies from your castles straight to a war zone is a great power, but if powerful battlemagic is only a Communion and some equipment away, that's just icing on the cake.

Micah said:And sure, you might be able to have all that by turn 17, but I bet I can have it quicker than that with an awake pretender and still have a highly mobile raider on top of a well-developed nation.

Your "well developed nation" is going to get twice as many afflicted old mages every winter because you went G1 instead of G3 (1/3 instead of 1/6 by my tests), and who knows how much income you'll have lost from not having provinces grow as fast (and how much you'll lose once you start blood hunting).

But it is a good thing you have a flying raider. With your Misfortune, you'll need it to put down the barbarian and knight invasions that crop up even in an Order 3.

Whatever. I've made my point. I'll let this go.