Need help - I am screwing up (again)

[baboune]

Ok, here is the situation, I am playing Tien Chi in a MP game. We are still in the early game (something like turn 16~). I (stupidly) decided to attack my neighbors because we each fought a battle in a province, and I ended up killing his army. I managed to grab 1 province, and advanced to the other two he had. In each there is a castle. so I went in with two army Groups, captured the two provinces.

Now here comse my problem. The neighbor is C'Tis and he is using a Saurolich with 20 Protection and an enchanted Trident. The Saurolich by himself managed to defeat all my armies, something like 50 Heavy infantries, 20 light infantries, 20 militias, 20 Archers, etc., numerous mages and heroes and in the process killed my pretender.

I tried to script spells based on Fire, but the Saurolich almost always attacks with 1-2 Swamp guards, so I end up casting all my scripted spells on the stupid units that he uses as decoy. And then the available mages after casting all scripted spells start casting things like Decay or somethign that has no effect.

I am trying to equip one of my leaders with a lot of magic items to increase his protection and give him a Fire sword. Maybe that will help.

What should I do? Or what can I do?

[Vynd]

The first thing to understand is that the Saurolich is Immortal. This makes him very difficult to deal with when he is fighting inside of his own dominion. For one thing, he will never rout. This is why the decoy strategy your opponent is using works. (A commander without Immortality sent in with just a few decoy units would run away as soon as those decoys were killed.)

An Immortal unit that is killed within its own dominion reappears in that nation's capital at the beginning of the next turn. So even if you can figure out a way to kill the Saurolich, that may not help you very much.

OK, so enough with the bad news. The good news is that the Saurolich only get these benefits while he is within his own dominion. So you don't have to worry so much about him coming outside of his dominion to get you, and if you can push your own dominion into C'Tis's territory then he won't even be able to use the Saurolich to defend that.

As for how to kill it, I think you were on the right track with the idea of using mages. It sounds like you just needed more of them, so you could kill his decoys and still have plenty of spells left to hit the Saurolich. The Saurolich is susceptible to fire so I can see why you were trying that. But if his Protection is really high you might want to try Lightning Bolts instead. If you are playing Spring and Autumn Tien Chi, building Masters of the Dead and scripting them to cast Dust to Dust a lot should work wonders.

I wouldn't recommend trying to equip one of your normal leaders. They don't have enough hit points to survive for more than a round or two of battle against the Saurolich, and I doubt that would be enough time to kill it. A summoned commander with good stats like a Bane Lord could probably do it, but I doubt you can get those right now. On the other hand, the Celestial Soliders available to some themes of Tien Chi are pretty decent. A group of those might be able to take out the Saurolich without horrendous losses.

[Gandalf Parker]

A standard (and kindof game-themed answer) is that against an enemy pretender, use temples and priests. Against the power-base scales of an enemy nation (cold/heat/death), use temples and priests. And against an immportal pretender DEFINETLY use temples and priests (and prophet and maybe even your pretender). Do NOT allow him to push his dominion into areas he wants to attack.

Also, consider a salted-earth policy. If you feel that you might lose those new provinces then tax/plunder/slave-hunt the wealth out of them. Particularly castles. If the unrest goes higher than 100 then no units can be built there. Milking it for what its worth and him taking a castle that he cant rebuild his spent units at can give you a chance to return shoving him inside that worthless castle for a long seige he wont be able to shake. Turns a castle into a big mousetrap (you might want to destroy labs and temples on the way out)

[baboune]

very interesting.

will do.

[Soapyfrog]

From what I have seen, this saurolich also has a champion's trident, and a defence stat of 23, but is not otherwise equipped.

I think the defence stat is the biggest problem... 20 protection is really not all THAT much.

I would suggest concentration on fire-based spells that ignore MR. A mass of crossbows might do the trick too, esp. with flaming arrows cast.

To bring him to final death, I agree with gandalf, you have to push your dominion and that means temples and priests... hwoever avoid building temples in non-castled provicnes since they are pretty trivial to destroy.