A few random Queries

[Arryn]

Arryn said:
Does Ceremonial Faith's +2 preaching level per priest also apply to Calling God? (Reason I ask is that I'm currently editing Liga's latest manual addenda doc and I'm at that section. )

Another question (and bumping the one quoted above, which hasn't been answered):

Does Ritual of Returning work even if the attack that "wounds" the mage instantly kills him? (Will the spell thus prevent the mage from coming to harm? IOW, does the spell trigger before damage is applied? Or can you get a Returned mage who's mangled, mindwiped, or worst of all, having the spell fail because the mage was outright killed?)

[archaeolept]

I can answer that one. the mage just dies, or if he lives can very well be afflicted.

[Arryn]

Thanks, 'lept!

[Taqwus]

Plundering also makes sense when the population's going to rapidly die off anyway, such as when you're playing a non-Broken Empire Ermor, or Carrion Woods Pangaea. They're doomed anyway, so you might as well get some more money out of 'em.

If your opponent doesn't have highly mobile reaction force, you may in other situations be able to pillage for a little while... although in such a situation it might be better to set taxes to 200% and move on to another target, if you can. OTOH, if it's an especially valuable province to your victim (say, the only high-pop province for a while, or it provided some valuable indy troop that he'd been making heavy use of) you may plunder AND tax to drive up income and lower pop for as long as you can. *shrug*

[Vicious Love]

D'oh! Beaten to the punch by a good several hours.
1. As I mentioned on an SC related thread, Heroic Quickness and regular quickness do indeed stack multiplicatively, for truly mind-boggling results.
However, only regular quickness(The kind cast on the wearer of Boots of Quickness at the start of a battle) confers an attack skill/defense skill bonus, which some consider half the point of the spell.

3. Much, much too case-specific to begin to describe, and often pivots on nuances of timing and battlefield positioning. The line between slaughtering a Caelian raiding party with a single cavalry charge and winding up at point-blank orb lightning range is a fine one, much to my chagrin.
Flanking and counterflanking can be every bit as fickle.
Methinks you've narrowed your focus to cavalry's tactical uses, and forgotten the value of their relatively high strategic move.
Update: Of course, if you ever feel the urge to give a squad the "attack large enemy monsters" order, said squad should either be heavy cavalry, or something that carries Bane Blades. Those lances are spectacular against small Groups of tough creatures.
If you don't think your cavalry will be able to break an enemy squad by charging their rear lines, you could always put them on "hold and attack" orders and hope your archers/mages/infantry demoralize the enemy before your cavalry reach them. At the very least, they'll run down fleeing foes before they can exit the field. Of course, any cavalry save light cavalry are overqualified for this.
Besides which, a group of scattered, hungry, leaderless troops are usually much more of a burder to their general than a group of corpses.

4. Yer lookin' at 'im.

5. In addition to everything already stated, there's always the chance of finding a mage or pretender, all alone, searching for magic sites.
And just think of the psychological impact! Take out his prophet or destroy a temple an inch from his capitol with an army that comes out of nowhere, and it's safe to assume your opponent will be more than a little unnerved. There are countless ways the resulting paranoia can be bent to your advantage.

[Alneyan]

I should be ashamed of having forgotten the psychological value of doing some sneaky attacks. It might be very, very fun to deal such a blow well behind the lines, especially if it looks as if you did it on purpose (luck might work just as well though). I will be remembering that one.

How would cavalry be helpful as an alone army? Unless you have flying commanders as well (or anything else going at a map speed of 3), they will have to fight on their own, without any kind of support (archers, spellcasters, cheerleaders). Or should they mostly be used thus for diVersion attacks? For example, while the bulk of your army heads for the enemy army, one or two cavalry raiders may be a nice annoyance. Chasing them down will result in spreading forces, and buying PD may still hurt the economy.

Thanks for your patience everyone! Here comes two other small questions that did not seem to bring any result when searching the forum (which either means they haven't been asked before, or more likely, that I do not know how to search my way out of my bed).

6) Mountains, forests and swamps reduce strategic movement speed. However, waste does not seem to have such an effect. So is Waste Survival only useful to lessen the effects of starvation in Wastelands?

7) I gather that C'tis' Miasma effect does not affect neutral units? (Assuming they can suffer from disease and are within your Dominion)

Edit: Duh, that Last one was easy enough to check. If anyone else is interested, Miasma works as well against neutral units, but you should expect quite a few turns before killing off most of the neutral army this way. Still, it might be helpful for a very lazy pretender.

[Boron]

Alneyan said:
I should be ashamed of having forgotten the psychological value of doing some sneaky attacks. It might be very, very fun to deal such a blow well behind the lines, especially if it looks as if you did it on purpose (luck might work just as well though). I will be remembering that one.

This can be done by other means too . A teleported in / cloud trapezed in Sc can do this too . Earlygame a timed call of wilds / winds attack on several provinces can work too because lots of players buy only 1 pd earlygame .
Later in the game Ghostriders is just awesome .

I am more a fan of conventional attacks though . If your stealthforce is detected by e.g. patrollers and beaten then the whole effort was mainly in vain . The problem there is imo that the bigger the stealth army is the more likely it is detected . Against a castling opponent you have to besiege then the fort anyways which gives him the chance to catch you even if he didn't detect you before .
For Pangenea though a stealth strategy might be really nice because they are extremely good there . Their pans / pandemoniacs are stealthy and they can bloodhunt a bit . Fiends are stealthy too and there is an item that gives stealth leaders assasination orders . Gandalf stated he likes this and with pangenea this might really be worth a try .
I find them just personally too complicated

Alneyan said:

How would cavalry be helpful as an alone army? Unless you have flying commanders as well (or anything else going at a map speed of 3), they will have to fight on their own, without any kind of support (archers, spellcasters, cheerleaders). Or should they mostly be used thus for diVersion attacks? For example, while the bulk of your army heads for the enemy army, one or two cavalry raiders may be a nice annoyance. Chasing them down will result in spreading forces, and buying PD may still hurt the economy.

The ulmish cavalry has only 2 strat movement , as the sappers do . A cavalry / sapper force with ulm smiths has lots of combat potential .
Same for marignon their cavalry has 2 strat move , so do their x-bows / flaggelants and commanders .
So no need to run them as a single force . Especially a marignon knight/mage/x-bow force is not easy to deal with .

[Pickles]

I tend to only buy elite troops as I found when I started the other types ran away too much while my knights etc did the business. Of course it's so long since I used dross that I may get better value from it now.

Anyway knights will tend to tear through every indy without loss once you get a critical mass of them 10 or so on indy 6. This may make them too slow to be useful & sub critical massses suffer attrition.
Some support from casters or missile troops does no harm & you need sappers or some mass if you are not Ulm for sieges.

Pure knights are very vulnerable to certain counters - Smite for example especially Ulm's MR 9 Version but if you avoid these they do not actually need battlefield support.

Pickles