Remote Unrest Raising

[licker]

Well even if you cannot maintain the unrest over 100, you still force them to nerf their income and/or reduce their population by patrolling (also ties down the patroling units, and exposes them to attack).

[Jazzepi]

You really should just test this stuff yourself. Get a copy of the debug mod from the mod forms and fire it up. Start a two player hotseat game with both as humans so you know where the other person is. You could test this in under 3 minutes once the mod is installed. Heck, you can probably cast the spells on your own provinces to test.

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=36453

Jazzepi

[llamabeast]

Gosh, what a sparkly clean thread!

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by licker

Well even if you cannot maintain the unrest over 100, you still force them to nerf their income and/or reduce their population by patrolling (also ties down the patroling units, and exposes them to attack).

Which would lead to the question whether that's worth it.

You are spending mage turns and gems (which could be translated into gold somehow) continuously to keep his income lower.
I'm sure that if you consider all factors you are paying more than he is loosing which is only good if you would be worse off if these investments would show on the battlefield on both sides. In that case I would try to lock him down completely though.

Unless maybe you are talking about influencing wars between foreign nations in your favour...

[Edi]

It depends heavily on which nation you use that against. Some nations are heavily capital restricted in terms of commanders and units that they just absolutely need, so if you shut down their capital, they will simply be out of their main combat mages and other best units.

EA T'ien Ch'i for example can recruit Celestial Masters and Masters of Five Elements from their capital. All the other mages they have are Masters of the Way and Masters of the Dead. That's a pretty crippling disadvantage. There are other nations with similar problems.

On the other hand, something like Jomon or Shinuyama or Marverni couldn't care less if one castle or even the capital is shut down, because they can recruit everything that counts from everywhere.

[licker]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Which would lead to the question whether that's worth it.

You are spending mage turns and gems (which could be translated into gold somehow) continuously to keep his income lower.
I'm sure that if you consider all factors you are paying more than he is loosing which is only good if you would be worse off if these investments would show on the battlefield on both sides. In that case I would try to lock him down completely though.

Unless maybe you are talking about influencing wars between foreign nations in your favour...

Well there are two concepts in play as I am looking at it.

The first is to hit a nation hard with these kinds of spells before they have a chance to get to 3+ forts. If you lock down their capitol sometime in year2 that kills their recruiting and perhaps a large% of their income. If you lock down all their forts, even if just for a couple turns, it could be enough to provide you with the extra edge in mages/troops to take them with minimal loses.

The second is more along the lines of your suggestion, which is to help dictate the outcome of a war somewhere else, either to prolong it or shorten it as suits you. This is likely something happening in the 3rd year on after nations have established themselves, but against some capitol recruit intensive nations, taking down their ability to recruit cap only units, even if only for a few turns, can be quite devastating to their long term chances.

I know this happened to me in one game (though it was through my own inattention, but the outcome was the same) where I lost 3 turns of cap only mage recruitment, and soon after didn't have enough mages to reach that critical mass some nations require on the battle field.

The investment is rather steep on the first turn, 4 or 5 mages and 20+ gems, but once you've redlined the province, it's one mage and a handful of gems per turn after that to keep the pressure on.

Of course this has to be an opening salvo in a coming bombardment, you can't just do it to screw with someone and leave them to get out of the mess, you have to apply the rest of your pressure soon after if not immediately to get the best results.

It's also a handy way to help an ally out, and you can probably get them to pay the gem portion of your costs, with some interest even for the mage turns.

[chrispedersen]

Remote unrest is one of my standard ways to knock out EA-niefle.

There are some nations that are just set up perfectly to do it. Blight spammers (agartha), for example. Rain of Toads......

[Agema]

Anyone leaning heavily on mages or bless troops from the capital will be messed up by having the capital nailed. It's not just that though, but a capital can be something like 400+ gold: 40 basic units wiped off your opponent's recruitment, or 2-6 mages lost who could otherwise be researching nasty new spells or chucking Evo at your troops. Not only are you ruining their production, but if they want to sort their rampant unrest out, they're going to have move a load of troops that could be otherwise fighting you to patrol their capital instead.

If you have troops with unrest raising capabilities, it's a whole new ball game. Start the unrest rolling with a couple of remote spells and do the rest with spies.