How to deal with powerful stealth army?

[Innocence]

Vanheim is wreacking havoc in my lands with a powerful stealth army. If I could catch the stealth army with my main army I'd be fine, but that's practically impossible.

How do you deal with this kind of thing?

[NTJedi]

Cut off the head of the chicken... thus the leader(s) of the stealthy troops. Use spells like seeking arrow, earth attack, disease demon or mind hunt to kill the sneaking leaders before their next move.

Kill one leader and whatever troops under his command will be left behind for killing.

[Gandalf Parker]

How big an army? Spending one turns gold to totally crank the PD in one province can catch them off guard.

Also along with the spells that NT Jedi listed, this is where I love to have a conversion lab running. Steal his commanders causing his units to rout, then use the same tactics back against him.

Stealth armies with guerilla tactics is one of my favorite strategies.

[Baalz]

You can also try to outguess where he's gonna attack and have your army there waiting for him, or teleport in a very tough guy.

[Coldshard]

I like casting wrath of god when this starts happening.. it is really fun to have a message pop up declaring hidden troops being discovered and watching them auto-rout because their commander was killed

[Innocence]

Gandalf Parker said:
How big an army?

50+ Vanherses (Sacred, Stealth, Glamour). Only my main army will be able to defeat it (playing Ulm myself).

Spending one turns gold to totally crank the PD in one province can catch them off guard

He walked right over 40 PD and I can't afford paying for much above that.

Stealth armies with guerilla tactics is one of my favorite strategies.

No wonder, it's wicked

Is it true that using the Move and Patrol order will not enable my army to move a province and catch him? I read somewhere that only the normal Patrol order would actually search for hidden units.

Looks like I'll have to look for spells and/or depend on luck catching him.

[MaxWilson]

I believe so. I know Move and Patrol does not reduce unrest, so I suppose it does not help to catch him. Of course you can always just Patrol and hope he walks right into you (he won't know where your armies are unless you're on his border because he's stealthed).

Stealthy armies are much less of a pain IMHO than flying armies, because they can only attack every couple of turns (or else they might as well not be stealth).

-Max

[PvK]

Which era of Ulm are you?

(PD 10+ can catch an army though, especially because there is a modifier for the size of the sneaking army.)

[Saulot]

PvK said:
Which era of Ulm are you?

(PD 10+ can catch an army though, especially because there is a modifier for the size of the sneaking army.)

Not likely since that only counts units that have less than 10 stealth, which the vans don't. So the vans should be plenty difficult to catch with patrollers.

And PD below 25 (what he's likely to have in most provinces) is highly unlikely to catch the vans since it would require getting a high roll on the patrol (2d25), with at least one reroll, while the stealth roll was a total bust.

If you can't catch the raiders without just a lucky positioning of your army, and you're not yet ready to throw artillery magic at it, I'd recommend ignoring the raiders, and fight fire with fire, if he's focusing so much of his fighting resources on raiding, go send your army into his lands, and take provinces faster than he does. Invading Van is usually unpleasant because you never know when you'll bump into a large army defending one of his provinces due to the glamour, and not being properly scripted to deal with it, but since you know exactly where his army is, you also know where it isn't.

Meanwhile, focus on building more forts where you don't expect an attack during the construction.

[Innocence]

PvK said:
Which era of Ulm are you?

This is MA (Forges of Ulm). Not worth much against those Vanherses unless in very superiour numbers