eye shield

[Xietor]

I think the eyeshield is fine as is. There is no need to have 1 item work against everything you face.

[Baalz]

No doubt, blind/more than 2 eyed units are relatively rare. I'm at a bit of a loss as to what to field against an eye shield equipped SC. It's often not terribly difficult to become (virtually) immune to the offensive spells your opponent's national mages can cast, so if you can't really kill him with spells, he's too tough to kill with regular units, and any of your tougher dudes are likely to be blind a couple rounds into combat.....what's that leave you? This is a con-4 item, seems a bit odd there isn't a reasonable counter short of fairly extreme measures.

[Reverend Zombie]

Baalz said:
This is a con-4 item, seems a bit odd there isn't a reasonable counter short of fairly extreme measures.

If the effect is "MR negates", then high MR units seem a good, non-extreme counter. I've used the shield against even average MR units, and they don't seem to be automatically suffering the eye loss.

Or, attack with your own Eye Shield thug.

Use physical damage spells.

Focus on routing the rest of the attacking army so that he will retreat.

[vfb]

If you are Mictlan, then your jaguar warriors do get a chance to heal afflictions when they change from a warrior to a jaguar.

Have you sent in a turkey mage to curse the SC yet? He could get a "lose an arm" affliction and drop his eye shield when he gets hit.

If you've managed to research blood 7, then 5 Mictlan priests casting leech should manage to get off 2 casts of Leech each, for a total damage of 250 at precision 100.

Or try building temples all the way to his capital and use jade knife sacrifices to wipe out his dominion.

[Xietor]

It is tough to deck out a sc that is resistant to all magics.
But if you are facing one that is, use spells that cannot be resisted.

[Foodstamp]

I think I know a counter that trumps all these. But I can't tell you because I built the SC. I expect you will figure it out within the next few turns.

[Baalz]

Oh, I wasn't really looking for specific advice for my situation, rather more generally what the heck do you do against the eye shield that's reasonably universally available? MR doesn't seem to help, my 13 MR jaguar warriors seem to lose an eye about 75% of the time they attack (small sample set though). Defense also doesn't seem to help as it seems equally effective against vans. The only other thing I would think would be head protection, but nobody's mentioned that helping.

As for my particular situation, awe +2 (+fear 0), 21 protection and almost 300 hp makes Jaguar swarming not really an option (you still lose an eye, BTW, even if you're too awed to attack), and the difficult research and relatively early timing makes blood -7 a bit of a stretch (though of course I'm headed there). Immunity to every other damage type I can cast in combat rounds out my lack of options. Never fear, I've got a couple ideas I'm gonna try, but wouldn't want to tip my hand yet.

[Foodstamp]

One thing I would like to point out. This shield is available at research 2. I enjoy the discussion on how to counter it, but I don't believe this item is all that extraordinary. I employ this item a lot as well as the vine shield. I think both are great alternatives to the shields normally used to kit an SC.

As far as the rest of the gear my guy is wearing. It is just what I had on hand. I am down to just a few provinces, so my resources are fairly limited. I expect that you will topple me due to the fact that two other nations are chewing up my land as well, so this is hardly a dire situation for you. What will be humorous are the blind armies I shall leave in my wake with the fear 9 routing the blind foes. I can only hope so anyway

[Natpy]

This is one of my favorite item. Eye lose effect dosnt "MR negates". I think i know the mechanics: the attacker lose his eye only when hit on shild (attack+DRN>defens+DRN, but attack+DRN<defens+parry+DRN). So, very big value of attack is a counter.

Sorry for my bad English

[Baalz]

It certainly does not seem to be the case that you lose an eye only if you hit the shield, if so then the counter would be having a really high attack value. As I mentioned, my jaguar warriors lost eyes over 50% of the time...even when they never swung their sword because of the awe effect. By the second round close to half of them were blind and most of them had lost at least one eye...despite the fact that their attack value was 2 higher than the defense value including the shield and less than half off them overcame the awe each round to even swing. They've got good MR, good attack, good defense and a lot of them didn't even swing, yet still had a *very* high rate of eye loss. Given that eye loss rate and no apparent way to counter it there certainly seems no point in sending my own SC in....the best I could hope for is that they blind each other if I bring my own eye shield. :/