Devil Review

[alexti]

Truper said:
I've seen them do some rather amazing things. I once had 4 castings of Ghost Riders wipe out 3 Angelic Hosts, an Ivy King with a largish stack of Vine Ogres, and a newly summoned Lamia Queen (I remember thinking at the time that if I'd been able to script the Lamia Queen I would have survived, although it would still have been costly).

That's surprising. What were Arch Angels' and Ivy King's scripts?

[alexti]

Cohen said:
I've seen GR killing fully equipped SCs.
Simply their Life Draining swords doesn't work against them (not that it is a bad thing). And thus this would imply that the SC act as solo.
But for 5 or perhaps 10 D.Gems, being able to kill an SC, I think it's too much.
Dunno how much it will change if the GR cost is 8 D.Gems now, but in the long run there's a difference.

Well, if SCs have decided to travel alone, they were asking for it I guess. Of course, you can get anything killed by pretty much anything. I've seen Moloch and 2 fully equipped Arch Devils killed by a bunch of PD and black hawks. (always take care of a safe escape route ;->)

But in the situation when the players remember about Ghost Riders, GR are not that good, at least not for killing armies. To some extent they're similar to Flames from the Sky, wrathful skies, rain of stones etc which can demolish careless armies. If anything, it's easier to protect from GRs than from the mentioned spells.

[archaeolept]

generally, the easiest way to tell if something is a bit too cheap is how prevalently it is used. on that yardstick, ghostriders is too good a deal. I love them, and use them all the time, but I think bumping up their cost, even to say 7 death gems, would be a good thing. As it is they are just one of the many things that makes castling such a necessary strategy, as the open lands are so dangerous.

[Truper]

alexti said:

That's surprising. What were Arch Angels' and Ivy King's scripts?

The Arch Angels were spamming Holy Pyre - they were in Carrion Woods territory. I don't recall what the Ivy King was doing (this was perhaps 8 months ago). Holy Pyre will kill alot of Ghost Riders, its true - but there were 132 of them, summoned up for only 20 death gems...

[Cainehill]

archaeolept said:
generally, the easiest way to tell if something is a bit too cheap is how prevalently it is used. on that yardstick, ghostriders is too good a deal. I love them, and use them all the time, but I think bumping up their cost, even to say 7 death gems, would be a good thing. As it is they are just one of the many things that makes castling such a necessary strategy, as the open lands are so dangerous.

Having been the Ghost Rider (not the Marvel comics one, mind, though that would be even cooler), I can state that a moderate army can deal with multiple ghost riders. A moderate meat shield (20-40 vine ogres, easy to come up with) both slows the undead down and kills a lot of them. Having several priests doing banishments, or astral mages doing the anti-undead fire spell, or fire mages doing Holy Pyre, or death mages doing wither bones, or ....

Ghost riders _are_ vicious. I don't think they're as much of a cause of castling as the cheap/easy raiding mechanism is, and they are, after all, a level nine research spell requiring D4 casters.

A very minor tweak might be okay for them - at 5 gems a cast, they already diminish your supply of death gems severely. And remember, unlike blood's Contracts, there actually are many other great things to be doing with death gems than spamming Ghost Riders : wraith crowns, Liches, Spectres, Tartarians, etc.

[Taqwus]

'course, one might note this: in combination with castling, Ghost Riders makes a nasty anti-raider spell as well. Enemy arrives in your province, perhaps by flying or magical means (several Tartarians cloud-jumping in for a visit, say), then get nailed by 5-6 castings of Ghost Riders before they can move away (short of using the Boots of the Planes or Gateway Stone to 'port/astral travel away) or breach the walls.

It's handy against PDs or unprepared small/medium armies; against the larger armies FFTS, Murdering Winter or perhaps even Beckoning can do more damage.

[alexti]

Truper said:

The Arch Angels were spamming Holy Pyre - they were in Carrion Woods territory. I don't recall what the Ivy King was doing (this was perhaps 8 months ago). Holy Pyre will kill alot of Ghost Riders, its true - but there were 132 of them, summoned up for only 20 death gems...

I had similar (but the difference is in details) battles few times, usually I'd only lose some small number of Vine Ogres. Though I'd always have somebody spam stoppers, like swarm, false horrors etc. I don't know how many Vine Ogres you had, but Ivy Kings casting 2-3 swarms would have helped greatly to ensure the victory and cut the losses. Idea is to stop and break down horsemen's charge.

The main application of GR vs large armies I use is anti-storming raids. You cast 4-5 sets of GR and opponents mages lose their cool and start expending their gems like there's no tomorrow. Then the enemy becomes much easier to defeat when he storms the fortress. It only works well if you don't put a dome though.

But of course, if the enemy insists on leaving his army unprepared in the open...

[alexti]

archaeolept said:
generally, the easiest way to tell if something is a bit too cheap is how prevalently it is used.

What about scouts, sages and indy priests then? They are used all the time. In all cases it's just the right tool for the common task. Same for GR - raid interception/raiding. However, for raiding purposes it is not efficient in general. You lose 5 gems and gain whatever is the target province income. After that you'll lose the province unless you bring some forces, in which case you could just take it using those forces (except, if there was overly well organized PD). So this exchange is good only for rich provinces, but they're usually castled/well protected. So it leaves GR for raid interception and tactical raiding (cut out escapes, demolish temples or high PD, allowing your army to advance without revealing details of tactics etc)

archaeolept said:
on that yardstick, ghostriders is too good a deal. I love them, and use them all the time, but I think bumping up their cost, even to say 7 death gems, would be a good thing. As it is they are just one of the many things that makes castling such a necessary strategy, as the open lands are so dangerous.

I don't see why it makes castling necessary. Sure you'd castle your best and strategically important provinces, but otherwise, what do you keep in the open lands which makes you afraid of GR? If the enemy wants to spend 5 gems to "neutralize" your 10 gold, 1 gem income province, better for you, those 5 gems could've been used for something nastier.

[Boron]

alexti said:

I don't see why it makes castling necessary. Sure you'd castle your best and strategically important provinces, but otherwise, what do you keep in the open lands which makes you afraid of GR? If the enemy wants to spend 5 gems to "neutralize" your 10 gold, 1 gem income province, better for you, those 5 gems could've been used for something nastier.

When you only castle the important provinces with e.g. a citadel or high admin castle then you won't have a lot temples .

So to protect your temples a bit you normally castle .
Otherwise you get probably either dominionproblems or the enemy kills your temples with ghost riders / other raiders always .

[Cainehill]

Which means you either build castles for your temples, or you build enough PD to neutralize spies (so they don't know where your temples are) or you build temples in spots where you have enough forces to repel ghost riders.

Admittedly that Last is really best suited to certain themes / nations, but _most_ themes can afford to sit a mage down in a province to shepherd a bunch of maintance free summoned critters.