Battlefield spell + retreating?

[K]

In case anyone is still interested, a combat using MoD + Retreat can be ended (and won) by killing all the phantasmal units.

Attached games are in this thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...b=5&o=&fpart=1

[Jazzepi]

K said:
In case anyone is still interested, a combat using MoD + Retreat can be ended (and won) by killing all the phantasmal units.

Attached games are in this thread:
http://www.shrapnelcommunity.com/thr...b=5&o=&fpart=1

Way to construct a ridiculously obvious straw man.

Nobody cast a BE that does damage, which is where 99% of the real abuse of MoD comes from, and the army fighting off the MoD cast a bunch of zero encumbrance, life draining flyers with magical attacks, via false horror.

I can't think of anything else that would nearly close to that effective. If you have regular flyers, they're going to get fatigued flying all over the place. *If* they can even fly through storms. If you don't have flyers in the army, then you can't zip around the map fast enough to kill the MoD phantasms.

I mean, really, K. I think you can do better. This is just embarrassing.

Jazzepi

[Endoperez]

Err....

He came up with a tactic to stop MoD. It isn't easy, but it can be done.

How is "I can do the impossible, in certain cases" embarrassing? Even if it isn't perfect, it's better than what most people here thought possible.

[K]

Jazzepi said:

Way to construct a ridiculously obvious straw man.

Nobody cast a BE that does damage, which is where 99% of the real abuse of MoD comes from, and the army fighting off the MoD cast a bunch of zero encumbrance, life draining flyers with magical attacks, via false horror.

I can't think of anything else that would nearly close to that effective. If you have regular flyers, they're going to get fatigued flying all over the place. *If* they can even fly through storms. If you don't have flyers in the army, then you can't zip around the map fast enough to kill the MoD phantasms.

I mean, really, K. I think you can do better. This is just embarrassing.

Jazzepi

I'm actually really surprised that this is what you take from these test games.

It's a proof that MoD is not bugged (spell can end before turn 75), and it's a proof of concept that MoD can be beaten with a small army and a handful of mages who aren't doing anything particularly special (it uses base units and base mages and no special equipment, as well as similar research levels).

It also means that if someone is casting a damaging BE, he would be killing half his own Phantasmal units each turn and actually making it even easier to counter.

In a very real way, it turns MoD from "godmode" to "something the runs the clock on very small armies, much like Quagmire or spamming summons."

This is just my very first attempt, and it shows that:
-A few all-unit spells like Rain of Stones can end it (and you can toss in a round 1 Army of Gold to protect all your units).
-A few battlefield-damaging spells can end it relatively quickly (your army doesn't even need to be immune since the phantasmal units are losing half thier number each time a BE spell's effect goes off, and some undefined number for being magical creatures without magical leadership, so it's a very few turns of exposure for your army).
-Many small squads of archers can end the spell, which is a tactic available on turn 1 of the game.
-A reasonably-sized and organized army can end the spell.
-Small Squads of flyers or fast units can end it, which means everything from summoning dragonflies or air elementals to setting up small squads of black hawks or even calvary.

That's not even counting exotic tactics like fast/flying thugs with void eyes or mundane tactics like having a decent amount of mages with good ranged spells researched.

[Tifone]

So you suggest to make MoD+Battlefield spell+Vortex of Returning legit and accepted in MP games? Just to understand

[K]

Tifone said:
So you suggest to make MoD+Battlefield spell+Vortex of Returning legit and accepted in MP games? Just to understand

People can play any way they like. Some people play with mod nations or modded spells, and some people mod out (or make expensive) the gem-producing items, powerful globals, or certain nations.

That's their play style.

I'm just saying that "balance" arguments to forbid or nerf MoD don't seem very valid from where I'm standing. I ran just one test game and beat MoD, the ran another with less favorable circumstances just to make sure it wasn't a fluke. It's not like I tried a dozen things and this was the only one that worked. It was just the easiest to set up in terms of troops and research levels.

But, considering people's feelings on this issue I could probably show them a hundred saved games where MoD is a mere roadbump to different tactics and they'd still call me a cheater and refuse to play with me.

Peace out.

[Micah]

Alright K, excellent work on running some tests, I'm pleased to see that the bug isn't quite as bad as I thought. That being said, I'm still not overly convinced without Wrathful Skies being cast by the MoD nation. The success of your test seemed predicated on building up a huge amount of summoned units (many with stormflying) that never got whittled down by a BE. Wrathful also only hits 10% of the squares on the battlefield, making it unlikely that it would take out enough phantasms at once to end the battle, as opposed to the 50% figure you give, which only applies to fire storm (and I guess acid storm? I've never seen anyone actually cast it, though). Given that your short test ran for over 25 turns and the longer one until defender auto-rout I think that Wrathful would have had plenty of time to decimate the Lankan army.

Even beside the straight-up power of the spell the problem is that there is very little risk to the user in relation to the payoff. As long as the caster/casters can manage to skitter away from the battlefield with their booster items and their staff of storms after popping 2 spells they've burned something like 8 gems at most (down to 4 if they've got high A paths, 8 will keep even minimally pathed casters under 100 fatigue and ready to flee), plus another 6 for a double cloud trapeze, tops.

Without MoD dropping a damage BE requires the commitment of a blocker unit, which is generally covered in gear, or an army with suitable resists. Either of these represents a commitment of resources that the enemy army can destroy past turn 2 of the battle, bringing some balance back. Just because something is beatable doesn't mean it's balanced. I think this is the crux of a lot of the arguments against the use of the spell, not just the difficulty of overcoming it.

And finally: many of the counters you suggest are damn near useless. Rain of stones? Thanks for wasting gems and stoning your army, 3/4ths of the phantasms will be laughing at you after emerging from their etherealness. Army of gold/fire storm might actually work, but you'll be getting the snot pounded out of you by wrathful every turn now that you added shock vulnerability to your army. You're also burning at least 8 gems to get the combo off, which is the same or more than the MoDers. Archers...well, maybe, but they ran out of arrows in both the tests you have up, and don't do so well in storms.

Air elementals are actually a decent counter, being stormflyers, 100%SR and decent units against regular armies, except for the thing where you have to burn gems to summon them. Again, MoD+Wrathful only takes about 8 gems.

When the *best available* counter to a tactic requires burning more resources than the tactic being countered requires to be used it's generally safe to regard the tactic in question as abusive.

Anyhow, that's my take on the spell. I'm not one to balk at brutal tactics, but I love dominions because 99% of the time there is a reasonable relationship between risk and reward in the tactics available. MoD kind of blows that relationship out of the water.

[JimMorrison]

K said:
In a very real way, it turns MoD from "godmode" to "something the runs the clock on very small armies, much like Quagmire or spamming summons."

Ehhh, Quagmire kills small armies? Good to know..... o.O

I'm not sure anyone intended to actually claim that there was *no* way to counter MoD. However, NOT using a second BE in conjunction with the MoD (usually stated in the exploit rules that people use), kind of invalidates the test IMO. Maybe the second BE would kill some phantasms, but if it takes 25+ turns without significant losses to the other army, then imagine how hard it will be to counter, even if the other BE only kills 10% a turn? I think you'd find that after 5-6 turns, either the army lacks the punch to kill the phantasms, or the spells have caused plenty enough imbalanced damage already.

And not only is your "50% loss to BE" damage for the phantasms laughable, but often clever players would just use Heat From Hell or Grip of Winter anyways, so won't be killing many phantasms. Of course, you would try to tailor that to your opponent, but still, the only thing you've even proven is that -some- types of summons -may- be able to stop the spell -if- they do not get killed by other effects first. Some nations, builds, and playstyles may not include Air or Death, and from there your options for things that will actually have even a remote chance of success, dwindles rapidly.


Apparently, someone has a very different definition of easy than most of the other people present.

[K]

Here is another saved game. It involves a small Abysian army with a few mages(one casting Fire Storm) and a few guys with Rod's of the Phoenix beating a defending MoD + Storm + Wrathful Skys + Grip of Winter + Quagmire. The Abysian army takes a few losses, and I had to make the Seraph Pretender immune to fire because I was afraid he'd get killed on turn one of the combat. It's in a Cold 3 province.