Beware of Ashdod

[MaxWilson]

Congratulations on your victory! I'm glad to see that Stellar Cascades was as killer as it usually is. Mages rock.

Out of curiousity, were any of his 19 commanders mages and if so what were they casting? (I.e. what did he have researched?) And how many commanders/mages did you have?

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

It was funny AoE, for a couple of days I've been debating about posting exactly the same thing. Against giant classes, the S9 bless becomes even more important - essentially in your case you caused the enemy to miss 235 times. I doubt the E9 was really relevent except possibly for spell casting.

It keeps the Eagle Warriors at low fatigue, which may help a lot vs. chaff (e.g. skelly spam). S9 is nice in mage-heavy battles, which this one apparently was.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Bowfire? That came out of left field I think.

Alright, lets get off the subject of Mictlan and back onto non-nation specific ways to deal with Ashdod.

In my opinion, dealing with Ashdod is simular to the way you would deal with an army of thugs. The less you think of their dudes as national recruitables and more like national summones, the more likely it is that you can devise a strategy against them. However, that's just a mindset, not an actual strategy.

Basically the functional difference is between -doing a little damage over a large area-, or -doing a lot of damage to single target-.

There are different routes to accomplish both things, but certainly each nation does have tools to use against individual (or small groups of) thugs. There are of course, additional hurdles, such as Ashdod's strong armor at the start of the game, Nature bless, mages that can't be easily killed with stray arrows, etc.

And of course in the grand, convoluted, chess-like strategy of Dominions, if anyone suggests an "ultimate answer to Ashdod" for any particular nation, then a skillful player can prepare to meet that, once they know who their neighbors are.

So in honor of that, I will once again state the *only* foolproof solution to Ashdod, that (almost) everyone can access, and that there is no protection from - Stellar Cascades.

Use this knowledge wisely, my children.

[AreaOfEffect]

Originally Posted by MaxWilson

Out of curiousity, were any of his 19 commanders mages and if so what were they casting? (I.e. what did he have researched?) And how many commanders/mages did you have?

He indeed had a lot of mages. 18 out of 19 in fact. 3 Zanummites, 6 Emites, 2 Talmai Elders, and 7 Adons. The Adons where equipped with various magic items, nothing decked out completely and nothing rare or unique. I must admit that the spells seemed low level. Some self buffs, frighten, raise dead, and not much else. He didn't have an H3 so he spent two rounds casting blessing while I spent two rounds beating down his guys.

I should have taken more losses had he prepared his best spells, but I can tell you for sure that all units in range of the astral mages were all pretty much dead in the same round they were targeted with steller cascades. Most other units took half a dozen rounds to kill because they were out of range, that's quite a difference.

[hunt11]

This is a more general strategy, but with Ashod it becomes very important. Don't let them get Forge of the Ancients up. If they do, then they will be making so many SC that they could use them in squads, and still have some to spare.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm. Interesting. How many mages were you using to spam Stellar Cascades? I think this is still on-topic because it affects how scary Ashdod is and what it takes to counter it cost-effectively. He had 70-odd units (call it 10000 gold investment, and almost as much in resources) plus 19 commanders, but most of the commanders seem to have been pretty useless (who builds Emites? who sends Talmai Elders into battle without any evocations?) so perhaps we should eliminate them from the cost equation. In any case, you completely wiped out 10000 gold of cap-only sacreds plus commanders, using 5000 gold of recruitable-anywhere sacreds plus an unknown quantity of mages, some gems, and Evoc-5.

I agree that it's more like fighting summons or thugs than regular units.

This just might be enough to tempt me into MP. I've never really been interested before (time constraints) but maybe I can get someone to play some duels with me. Caelum vs. Ashdod maybe? Mammoths, lightning, and flying raiders/recruitable thugs seem like a promising set of options.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by hunt11

This is a more general strategy, but with Ashod it becomes very important. Don't let them get Forge of the Ancients up. If they do, then they will be making so many SC that they could use them in squads, and still have some to spare.

Yeah. In fact, Zamzummites make pretty fair thugs even *without* items, in a communion'ed squad. [Communion Master, Summon Earthpower, Invulnerability, Soul Vortex, Personal Luck, attack closest] while the slaves do [Communion Slave, Blessing, Body Ethereal, attack closest]. Toss in a Phoenix Pyre or Fire Shield if you have a Crystal Matrix for a Rephaite Sage (and at least 4 slaves).

I don't know if that's cost-effective on a gold basis but it's cheap in gems.

-Max

[AreaOfEffect]

About 17 Nahualli and 7 Lizard Shamans. I wanted to be excessive. I lost to the same army about 80 sacreds and about another 80 slingers 6 turns before. He lost 16 units and some worthless undead spite my thunder strikes and astral spells. That was not a cost effective battle.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

So in honor of that, I will once again state the *only* foolproof solution to Ashdod, that (almost) everyone can access, and that there is no protection from - Stellar Cascades.

Use this knowledge wisely, my children.

Hmmm. Thinking more about this, Stellar Cascades doesn't work well IIRC against an opponent who stay well out of range (back of the battlefield) with his troops on Guard Commander. However, IIRC GftH has Range 100, and it will kill anything but a Tartarian or a Pretender in one shot. Therefore, I propose an augmentation of the previous approach: Stellar Cascades + Gifts from the Heavens. Plus Eagle Eyes.

Yay for Marverni!

-Max

[JimMorrison]

That's a good point, Gifts from Heaven is 100 range, and isn't very easy to counter. Though, if they do get Air, a Storm would render them pretty ineffectual at range, with a base Prec of -3.

I'll let one of my favorites go here - if you know your enemy is going to script to stay away from a range 25 spell, have your casters start more forward, and do Attack a Turn once or twice behind your line, and then start casting. This should generally get them into range of anything that was placed in the far back of the enemy field.