Blood?

[Jasper]

Originally posted by Windreaper:
Jasper: Good point, you just don't want to unstealth your scouts. If they happen to get attacked and you lose a scout the whole army retreats, ugh. Never tried it this way so I'm not 100% sure of this, however. OTOH, you could always keep some mock troops with your ID to prevent this from happening.

Stealthy targets don't get hit by spells like Wind Ride, and so you must unstealth your scouts for them to work as chaff. Stealth is a very nice ability for a raiding Super Combatant to have!

You do have to be a bit carefull, for as you allude this scout tactic is vulnerable to teleport attacks (before you leave the scouts), especially if your retreat provinces are simultaneosly cut. Still, this is less of a risk than Wind Ride.

[ January 10, 2004, 05:22: Message edited by: Jasper ]

[Jasper]

My main knock against the Starshine Skullcap and to an extent even Winged Boots is that they aren't strictly neccesary, yet significantly increase the IDs cost. Then again, you can't mass produce IDs as you could in Dom 1, so it makes more sense to stack a few extra items on.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Jasper:
My main knock against the Starshine Skullcap and to an extent even Winged Boots is that they aren't strictly neccesary, yet significantly increase the IDs cost.

In Doms 1 I didn't give skullcaps to every ID I summoned, but I tried my best to give them flying boots. 5 air gems is not a significant increase in cost, I'd even say it's the reverse: if you want to use a mass ID strategy efficiently, you'd better make sure these 30 blood slaves pay for themselves each turn - and that means flying. As I pointed out, a non-flying ID may not seen combat as often as a flying one, to me a lost ID turn is 30 slaves idling for nothing. When I used mass IDs in Doms 1, almost all had flying boots, some had amulets of AM or pendants of luck, a few had wraith swords and/or rings of regeneration, only the picked best had extra stuff like rainbow/elemental armors or starshine skullcaps.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:
In Doms 1 I didn't give skullcaps to every ID I summoned, but I tried my best to give them flying boots. 5 air gems is not a significant increase in cost, I'd even say it's the reverse:

Agreed. The amount of time you spend fighting as a powerful flyer is worth the extra air cost. I always had a really soft spot for Wraith Swords as well and the old amulet of luck is cheap and very effective. It was always hard to know where to stop.

cheers

Keir