Fools Lament II - Ended - Mictlan wins!!!

[Soapyfrog]

Sure I'll save it.... heck I'll run the save game utiltity and save this and all future turns!

[deccan]

Peter Ebbesen said:
Any chance that interested readers can get that turn file (after the game) to see a most impressive battle?

Well, I can send you a copy of my turn file and my own password if you want.

I don't think it was all that impressive a battle, even though it was certainly the biggest one I've had since I started playing MP. It was mostly won through brute force instead of any cool spell scripting and all of Yossar's SCs had pretty standard equipment, no artefacts.

I wasn't sure what Rigor Mortis did either, but I scripted it in anyway just for fun. I think the main thing it did was that when the Archdevils got all fatigued out from casting spells, Rigor Mortis prevented them from regaining any fatigue through rest. This was why they were unconscious when the rest of the Mictlan army (with Ethanim) routed and made them an easy kill.

Yossar had scripted all of his frost fiends for artillery duty it looked like, and I think in the beginning they hurt him more than they hurt me because my front lines were composed of cold-immune wights and mechanical men. It looked to me that the bolts from the frost fiends killed quite a few of Yossar's own devils.

Two of the ice devils and one of the Arch Devils died from mech men swarm (though my pretender helped some). When that AD died for the first time and his phoenix pyre went off, it did A LOT of damage to me in a surprisingly large radius.

Gaap had a grand time killing fall bears by the dozen until my Standard of the Damned carrying firbolg got around to targeting him with repeated castings of drain life. Why oh why didn't I spend ALL my earth gems on mech men...

Most of my mages were pretty ineffective I think, casting the occasional nether darts, useless buff spells etc., and got killed fairly quickly. My pretender survived but got blinded by Ethanim repeatedly casting Blindness at him. My bane lords were totally useless and got killed by repeated castings of incinerate. It didn't help me that most of my stuff was kitted out with lighting immune stuff because I have been mostly fighting Arco before then with his Wrathful Skies crazy harbingers and Air Queen.

Yossar was right though that the mech men were surprisingly long-lived tanks. They were cheap for me too with my construction bonus site.

[Soapyfrog]

Mechanical men are TOO good. IMHO they could well deserve a nerf to 75% elemental resistances.

They just become the standard late game troop, since they really have no disadvantages except low MR, and given they are lifeless and mindless and usually used en masse, this is not a huge penalty!

[archaeolept]

astral fires will annhilate them.

S3F1: 10 AN damage; 4+ area of effect; 100 prec; MR negates

vs. 8 hp MR 12 (-1 for magic dominion, -2 for spell focus)

so, if Magoth, w/ astral coin and cap, spell focus (runesmasher too) had been scripted for Astral FiresX5 ...

hell, even the wights would be punched up bad

[deccan]

archaeolept said:
so, if Magoth, w/ astral coin and cap, spell focus (runesmasher too) had been scripted for Astral FiresX5 ...

Hehe. Magoth was not at that battle. He was killed in an earlier battle by Mind Duel.

But I wouldn't agree with Soapyfrog that Mech Men are too good. I suppose that they would get owned by other MR negates spells too like Opposition and what's the other one that enslaves magic beings.

I risk sounding like a broken record here, but one thing that would help make Mech Men not such an obvious choice as late game troop would be to let mages be able to boost selected resistances to 100% for normal troops albeit expensively in terms of gems and number of mages required.

In my experience 75% resistance just isn't enough. 75% SR won't be enough to protect against Wrathful Skies. 75% CR won't protect against chill and Breath of Winter. 75% FR won't protect against heat aura effects of Abysians and devils.

[Soapyfrog]

deccan said:
In my experience 75% resistance just isn't enough. 75% SR won't be enough to protect against Wrathful Skies. 75% CR won't protect against chill and Breath of Winter. 75% FR won't protect against heat aura effects of Abysians and devils.

Exactly, so they would not be "the obvious choice" all the time, instead you would have to mix and match your supporting troops correctly instead of mechanical men for all occasions.

Its thematic too, since one assume that fire hot enough, or cold cold enough, or sufficient wattage WOULD damage a mechanical being made of metal...

Of course mechanical men have counters, as mentioned, but they arent easy ones, and they sure arent enough to discourage everyone from fielding armies of them in the late game to support their battlefield spells.

[Yossar]

deccan said:Gaap had a grand time killing fall bears by the dozen until my Standard of the Damned carrying firbolg got around to targeting him with repeated castings of drain life. Why oh why didn't I spend ALL my earth gems on mech men...

Ah, I was wondering where that drain life kept coming from. You had a bunch of D4 casters but none of them were doing it (what were they doing if not drain life?).

And you're definitely right that I should have just had my frost fiends fly in at the beginning. Cold bolts were mostly useless.

My astral mage casting antimagic was mostly useless as well. I don't know if you used a resistable spell the whole battle. And I think I forgot battle fortune which would have helped a lot.

What spells are there that can hurt Groups of mechanical men? Astral fires, shadow bLast, nether darts, cloud of death (works on lifeless?), gifts from heaven, stellar cascades (sort of), and? Looks like I needed to bring a lot more astral and death mages. But then how many big battles are there that that isn't the case? A bunch of buffs for my devils would have helped too. Fire and Ice were pretty worthless (except for the somewhat bugged Phoenix Pyre (does physical instead of fire damage I think))

Mechanical men make some of the best fodder because they're cheap, immune to all elements, lifeless, high protection, 0 encumbrance, and non-undead. Take away any one of those things and they're not nearly as good.

[archaeolept]

also magma spells are good; ice strike; the rust spells; acid; entanglement

[deccan]

archaeolept said:
also magma spells are good; ice strike; the rust spells; acid; entanglement

Hey, it's not like he needs even more help!

And I just downloaded the new turn while forgetting to backup the old one first, so I lost the turn file with the battle. Oops.

[Soapyfrog]

Dont worry I saved the whole kit 'n kaboodle on the server end.

Also now I have Huz's dom2save prog running so all future turns will be saved as well.