fire blessing lvl 9 : armorpiercing 8 ap fire weapons ? anti-vq strat discussing

[Stormbinder]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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Originally posted by Boron:
how do the spells mistform , air shield and mirror image help the surviveability of the vq against mass x-bows with flaming arrows ?

Mistform won't help, sinnce flaming arrows are magical. Mirror image will reduce the hits untl the VQ herself gets hit.

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...and damaged. Otherwise MI will remain in place.

[Boron]

ok so new try :

lets assume the vq has a lucky coin shield . at least with pythium , one of my 4 favourite vq nations this is easy to achieve .

Shield benefit against missile weapons: It's based on the shield's defense stat. It works like: 2d6oe > (2d6oe + shield defense) if I remember correctly

... and then ...

A unit's defense does not matter when being attacked by an arrow. The attack roll on the projectile is 10+2d6, while the victim's roll is 10+shield defense modifier+2d6. A tower shield for example has a defense modifier of 4.

i don't understand for what the first part is so i only take second part (marked bold) into account :

again against marignon because they seem to be the nation for which flaming arrows especially was designed for . machaka are natural flaming arrow user too but their archers are weaker than the mari x-bows ( no ap on basic missile attack ).

so here we go :
a lucky coin has def 3 , that is +3 .
so hitting odds : 30.165% of the missiles hit .

the highest def shield is shield of the accursed with def 7 .
there hitting odds would be only :10.802%

now various questions to that :
when and how do come air shield + luck in account in that calculations ?

hm remembering my poor knowlegde from school mathematics the sequence shouldn't matter .

so with def 3 through shield already 70% of the missiles are canceled . 30% hit . this is halved through luck . 15% hit . an vq has most likely 2-3 air magic . so the air shield strength is 20 or 30 % according to liga's manual addenda .
so final hit probabilities :
air 2 : 12 %
air 3 : 10,5%

not taken into account that some arrows will furthermore fail the precision throw .

you said to find out damage full protection value is taken into account . so final results again :

avg. damage by 10 ap normal x-bow attack on prot
30 :
0.570

avg. damage by 8 ap fire bless x-bow attack on prot 30 :
0.321
.

the standard ap attack of the x-bow has slightly higher avg. damage . but isn't considered magic .
so etheralness should cancel 75% more of the hits . so hittings odds are : 3% with air 2 airshield , 2,625% with air 3 shield .

so now 100 x-bows with flaming arrows should do the following avg. damage to a vq according to my model :
on air 2 airshield :
3% hits with standard ap attack :
3x0,57 damage = 1,71 damage
12% hits with fire bless ap attack :
so 12x0,321 damage = 3,852 damage .

so modest 5,562 avg. damage .

this is almost healed by the regeneration of the vq itself already .


so add 3 F3 grand masters hitting the vq with holy pyre :
holy pyre does (7+2)x3 ap damage .

that are 27 ap damage against 15 protection :
12.07 avg. damage .

so plz correct any flaws in my small model.
but holy pyre seems powerful so could it be possible that the vq in the battles you have in mind was killed mainly by holy pyre or wither bones and not by x-bows with flaming arrows themselves graeme dice ?

from my statistical knowlegde i know that outliers are very rare in such dice models .
so 5,562 avg. damage means that a range of something like 0-15 avg. damage then will cover 99+% of the cases and the needed ~30-40 damage to kill a vq would be very rare .

from my expierience so far the greatest early game danger for a vq lies in caelum storm guards catching her unbuffed on the first turn of combat . early - mid game a great danger for a non lightning immune vq are the otherwise quite modest storm hawks .

because a robe of invulnerability is extremely expensive a vq has to rely on casting invulnerability . so the first 1-2 combat rounds are crucial for the vq .
if you have boots of quickness than without worrying you can put cast invulnerability on number 1 of the buff list .
still if you are the attacker which will more often be the case first combat round goes to your opponent .
so when fighting against caelum because of swarming 10-15 storm guard will kill your vq almost always .
you can put a black steel full plate on her but the plate has a high encumberance of 5 .
iirc this is doubled for spell casting purposes .
so +50 fatigue for 5 buffs .
at the moment i prefer as cheap vq armor a copper plate because of 100% lightning immunity .

avg damage of a storm guard against 11 / 19 prot : 2.67 / 0.239

for a iceclad : 3.99 / 0.570

important to notice : even the poorest spire horn warrior has an ice lance ( magic weapon ) and even a 1 higher strength than a storm guard .
so even 30 spire horn warriors with gold 10 / resource 6 costs , the pd main troop is exactly that because of swarming the Last 10 will have a 90+% hit probability .
so they have very high chance to do at least about 10 damage to a ~15 prot vq in the first combat round and 100 + to a 0-5 prot vq .
so even caelum pd of 20 has high odds killing a unequipped vq and caelum fliers can at least disturb vq for 2-3 turns , long enough until heavier troops like mammoths or non flying thugs to finish her arrive .

so a vq should have great problems against caelum until equipped with one of the high protection unique armors or a very hard to forge robe of invulnerability .

final additional thought :
although elsewise not very costeffective too nasty vq thugs will be angelic host or draconians .
lategame iron dragons should do wonders too .
gargoyles should be unable to hit a vq with their poor att of 10 + size 4 . so only 8 can sourround a vq and even the 8th gargolye gets only -7 defense for vq through swarm .

all flying demons should do great against vq .


so vq without robe of invulnerability should do bad against skilled enemies if she needs to attack because they have the first turn and get her with attack fliers orders .

you could take a supporter with the vq carrying a staff of storms . but that supporter won't survive many battles .

so your best deal is to take your own fliers with the vq .
only a few nations shine there though :
caelum , abysia , mictlan
to a lesser extent marignon df , vanheim , bf ulm , jotunheim .

cheapest way and available from start only for caelum ( and valkieries of vanheim but they are expensive + holy ) .
perhaps thats the main reason that norfleet likes caelum afaik

[Boron]

a small additional question :
in general 5 units set on guard help against assasinations .

if i simply send e.g. 50 devils on guard vq if someone would try to assasinate her are still 5 devils chosen to protect her ?

if answer is no than what with this variant :

45 devils on guard commander , second squad with 5 devils on guard commander .

is then the second squad chosen for guard through assasination ?

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Boron:
hm remembering my poor knowlegde from school mathematics the sequence shouldn't matter .

It doesn't.

[quote] so the air shield strength is 20 or 30 % according to liga's manual addenda .

The air shield spell is always 80% effective.

but holy pyre seems powerful so could it be possible that the vq in the battles you have in mind was killed mainly by holy pyre or wither bones and not by x-bows with flaming arrows themselves graeme dice ?

I'm not talking about a vampire queen. I'm talking about niefel giants against longdead archers.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Boron:
if i simply send e.g. 50 devils on guard vq if someone would try to assasinate her are still 5 devils chosen to protect her ?

Of course.

[Boron]

Originally posted by Graeme Dice:

quote:

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but holy pyre seems powerful so could it be possible that the vq in the battles you have in mind was killed mainly by holy pyre or wither bones and not by x-bows with flaming arrows themselves graeme dice ?

I'm not talking about a vampire queen. I'm talking about niefel giants against longdead archers.

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hm a niefel giant is only a unit and has 15 prot . a banefire archer has a natural 10 ap weapon . so you should do 3.99 avg. damage per hit according to saber cherry's statistics too .

there i fully agree .

even if you meant niefel jarls instead of niefel giants they have starting protection of 15 too + no earth / air magic so bringing them up to 25+ protection needed to be quite safe is a difficult task too . you have no access to earth magic via your national magicians + no starting earth income . so you would need your pretender to forge late early game black steel full plates .
given their high encumberance + that you should have more important uses for your pretender than this hard to get niefel jarls higher than 20 protection early-midgame .
with 20 protection according to saber cherry's dice odds you still suffer 2.13 avg damage .

because any x-bow has ap 10 damage any x-bow will be a great threat to niefel jarls early - midgame at least .

niefel jarls should excel at sc 1on1 killers with an-weapons .
but how can you protect them cheap + efficient with your national mages early-midgame ?
if you need your pretender for that would be not so good .


how do you defend midgame against a mictlan vq attack with devil or vampire horde ?