Air vs Nature

[Nerfix]

The Titan costs 125 points. Moloch costs 50.

Moloch is immune to Abysian Friendly Fireballs.

Titan isn't.

IMO the fire evocations are better than air evocations nowadays thanks to nerfed Orb Ligthning. And if someone says something about the precision of fire magic, i tell you that Abysians have precision of 8.

And Moloch is more in-theme with Abysia.

[ November 26, 2003, 20:26: Message edited by: Nerfix ]

Then why did you say "Lava Warriors .. Nuff Said." unless you were replying to Bless effects not being useful.

I agree that some are useful and in theme. Morloch works well with Abysia if you choose to go standard. I'm not arguing that point; only the point that you couldn't do the same with Air and have it be as viable -- which is my contention.

[Truper]

With Moloch, i can afford order and prod 3, growth and luck 0, heat 3 and magic 2 and take a decent castle and fire 9.

Yes, if you consider the Mausoleum a decent castle, and are willing to go with a dominion strenth of 4. But a few tweaks to those scales, and fire 9 is affordable for an Abyssian Moloch.

[Saber Cherry]

I've never had any temptation to go Air for bless effects. What value is Air Shield 20%? None. Air Shield starts to become valuable at around 50%, IMO. Unless I aim for Air 9, I don't care about Air for blessing.

I give level-9-specific (not including cumulative bonuses) blessing effects the following rankings:

Best to worst:

Fire
Water
Nature (which goes to #1 for huge sacred units)
Earth
Air
Astral (higher for Flagellants)

Useless (or I don't understand them):

Blood
Death

So... I'd love a Fire-Water pretender for Marignon=)

[HJ]

Air shield 20% is still useful for preventing friendly fire. Meaning, it might not be great when someone is aiming at the troop, but stray missiles get deflected fairly often. I use it when I know I'm going to have a lot of missile troops that I want to keep from butchering my sacred melee units (Marignon, Ulm, Man).

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by HJ:
Air shield 20% is still useful for preventing friendly fire.

I bet +4 protection from Earth 9 is about as good at increasing arrow survivability (say, for arrow-weak Flags) as 45% air shield. Plus, it's useful in many other situations as well.

[Pocus]

Originally posted by Saber Cherry:

Useless (or I don't understand them):

Blood
Death

So... I'd love a Fire-Water pretender for Marignon=)

I think you dont understand
the fear effect of death is generated for each sacred unit, and around him (depending of the potency). With a good number of blessed units, like flagellant, they could scare even very high morale units.

Aside that, I never actually played very far with blessing effects, too costly to my taste (320 points minimum I think).

[Keir Maxwell]

Its not suprising that given my penchant for bless effect/dual bless effect (two 9's) races that I like alot more of the bless effects than most seem to.

so:

Nature - great for supercombatents but its bad for your sacred mages (think Abysia) so its often just not a choice. Also not good for Sidhe or Van as they rely on not getting hit as opposed to getting hit and then losing some defence so they get hit easier. Very good with Niefel giants.

Earth - I like Earth as I'm trying not to lose the slow to build sacred troops and I also love the re-invigoration on my mages and Super combatents. Think reinvigoration plus water9 for quickness on your sacred mages. Unfortunately there are no water/earth pretenders I'm aware of so you can't go to overboard on this one - unless you are running an Abysia death 3 race and feeling playful.

Fire - so far I've only found this good on troops who are already really good. Even then my Earth Mother Machaka race out performed my Lord of the Desert Sun Version - I didn't lose a hunter spider (lost a few riders) with earth 9. I've only tested each once so these results are not firm. I like fire but find it tricky to keep the troops alive and thats a big thing to me. Still be fun with Van.

Water - My n.1 right now. Think double speed mages who don't have to cast quickness, think Van who smash knights as they are virtually unhitable once blessed (I have even looked at a water 10 race with Vanheim) and also the extra offense really matter. The C'tis Serpent Dancers and Sidhe are more water babies who love the extra defense and attack - makes Cu Sidhe useful to. Best results I've had with Mictlan so far have been using mainly Sun Warriors with a water9 blood5 Fountain of Blood and as with Vanheim, Tuatha and Abysia your battle mages are sacred so 2x casting.

Death - low level death bless effects seem very worthwhile making the PoD with death 4-6 and something 9 a very good bless God. Serpent Dancers with fear have got alot going for them. Still working on death 9 and I'm going to start a thread soon on how to kill my mages.

Blood - I've only used this at low levels for the extra strength bonus as this can make or break troops. Death curse - seems a bit specific in its usefulness given the cost. Flagellents getting the Last laugh on super combatents, knights etc would be sorta cheery.

Astral - I've tried this with Marignon and considered it with Van but I need to find out if mirror image is canceled when you use up the Twist of Fate - anyone? Extra MR could be worthwhile for the right sacred troop as the game goes on. Dunno.

Air - On the whole I'll give this a miss for know but then air's pretty powerful so does it need strong bless effects too? Same could be said for Astral.

I'm looking at ways of combining multiple effects to change the way troops/mages operate. To me the bless effects are the biggest change in the game.

In general bless effects are good value for the races with good sacred troops and hardier to get value out of for races whose sacred troops are more borderline. I suspect that the better Bless effect races will be fairly evenly balenced compared to non-bless effects races. C'tis, Van and Machaka look the easiest to get good returns out of the ones I've tried so far with perhaps Van and C'tis being the strongest. Niefel looked good (haven't played it since I first got the demo) but somewhat tricky to play. Tuatha is decent but tricky, Mictlan highly challenging. Haven't had much success with Marignon yet but there is still more to try there. Abysia is an unusual bless effect race as the 1 strat move of the Lava Wariors is off putting while the death3 option opens up a heap of points. Abysian mages work well with bless effects and there is no reason you can't have some fun with Lava Warriors - just don't rely on them they way you can/should rely on sacred troops with other races.

I believe one of the keys to most bless effects races is to build the key sacred troops right from the start. Finding a good supporting troop to catch arrows/spells is often crucial and I generally go for strat move 2 MI costing something like 10gps/11-13 res. They aren't much good at fighting but they do their job as someone has got to die. More tricky vs players but it works a treat vs indies and its nice to be using troops that I wouldn't have bought in Dom1. If they have Javelins all the better as these seem very accurate in Dom2.

Still more races to try and gold mines to be plumbed. This is all very much preliminary thoughts and they will evolve over time and testing.

Cheers

Keir

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Pocus:
I think you dont understand
the fear effect of death is generated for each sacred unit, and around him (depending of the potency). With a good number of blessed units, like flagellant, they could scare even very high morale units.

Oops, my bad. I though fear was only a graduated Death trait; I didn't realize level-9 death got both Life after Death AND additional fear.

Hmmm, wait, no. The greater fear is only for undeads. So, I still think the Death-9 bonus is weak compared to others, though the cumulative effects are nice.

[ November 27, 2003, 17:00: Message edited by: Saber Cherry ]

[Saber Cherry]

Originally posted by Chris Byler:
Doubtful. Protection gives increasing returns as you get higher. I don't think it would do much for practically-naked Flags...

On the other hand, 45% air shield isn't very much - what level of air do you get that at?

Air Shield 45% is Air 10, unimaginably high.

As for the naked flags... they have 9HP, protection 0. Shortbow arrows do 10 damage. So they have a 62.66% chance of dying from an arrow hit.

Chance of flagellant dying from a shortbow, according to bless effect:

No Bless: 62.66%
Air Shield 20% (Air 4): 50.13%
Air Shield 45% (Air 10): 34.46%
Protection 4 (Earth 9): 30.16%

Those come from the fourth chart here: http://www.shrapnelgames.com/cgi-bin...;f=74;t=000431

For no bless or air blessing, the arrow roll has to beat the flag's roll by at least -1 for a kill, but for Earth 9, the arrow has to beat the flag by at least +3.

For longbows and crossbows, Air 10 would be more valuable, of course. Regardless, since Earth 9 allows flags to survive numerous situations in which they would normally die (not just arrows) I like it better... not worthwhile, of course, I'd want fire and blood. But still better than air.