Acid damage and Bane Fire damage

[Hoplosternum]

What if anything protects against these? Is Acid damage really fire or poison damage? And is there any defence against Bane Fire?

And are either armour piercing or armour negating?

[llamabeast]

There's no way of protecting against either except protection (and luck, twist fate etc).

I think both are AP.

[Verjigorm]

Aging prevention items will stop decay effects, I believe. If you have boots of youth or the elixir of life, those should prevent death by aging, though I have not tried this.

Other than that, if you want to destroy someone using acid or banefire, the best way to go about it is to use:

Acid: Units with high natural protection not armor. Armor is destroyed by acid. Acid is armor piercing which means that it halves protection when it deals damage the first time, but it is also armor destroying which means that any unit taking acid damage will receive no benefit from armor-based protection until the time they return to a friendly castle with extra resources to repair their armor.

Banefire: Banefire is best countered by units that do not age and who are immune to fire (unsure). Some demons and undead are useful for this. Banefire is very dangerous. Massed banefire crossbow thugs are a common and powerful technique for nations that can field such forces.

In both cases, spells that limit or restrict the accuracy of spells such as Storm, Mist, and Rain are useful.

Beyond that, frequently creatures using these attacks are quite fragile depending on the stage of the game--mages, weak skeleton archers, etc. Battlefield AoE will usually destroy them rather quickly.

There's really not much of a way to be immune to everything. The objective is to make it cost more for your opponent than it does for you. The best way is to kill something expensive and slow-growing with something cheap and easy to replenish.

Slingers, Markata or any cheap massable ranged unit with Flaming Arrows is usually quite affordable for dealing with such things and even if they all die it's no great expense. Whereas killing summoned units, mage commanders, or units carrying magic items with these pathetic things are of significant value. Communions or Sabbaths of low-level mage units can also inflict good damage without any significant equipment and if they die from banefire, you'll care less than your opponent cares about losing his big expensive dudes.

Just teleport/trapese mages in and summon a bunch of elementals or horrors and then retreat (if adjacent to your own land) or use RoR to warp out after. Minimize your exposure. Use your army to lead his on a wild goose chase so that on any given turn he only ever ends up smashing a few worthless PD with his massive, expensive war machine. Make him waste his resources while you use yours frugally.

If you were going to kill a turtle... Would you attack the shell or the belly? If you want to control a snake do you grasp the head or the tail?

[Gregstrom]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Banefire: Banefire is best countered by units that do not age and who are immune to fire (unsure).

Fire immunity doesn't stop banefire (FWIW, even the manual agrees on this point). Ability to ignore aging effects is secondary but useful, I guess. The aging is MR-negates anyway, IIRC, so good MR will often be sufficient.

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

Beyond that, frequently creatures using these attacks are quite fragile depending on the stage of the game--mages, weak skeleton archers, etc. Battlefield AoE will usually destroy them rather quickly.

...the notable exception being Green Lions, which are horrid. Ethereal, mindless, MR 16 and FR and PR 100. At least they're magic beings, which opens up a couple of possibilities.

[13lackGu4rd]

the King of Banefires is also an exception to that
but anyway, there are no hard counters(immunities) to either acid of banefire, which is what makes them so good in the first place... and also relatively hard to utilize.

[chrispedersen]

I think the units that have banefire auroas are immune to banefire. But I'm not sure.

Banefire archers are a great way to get banefire - so a good defense against those are the typical arrow decoys.

big, cheap banefire targets - they're gonna die - but if they can take two hits you're doing well.

Finally having lots of fast moving small targets lessens the advantage of having bane. who wants to use bane to kill a dragon fly.

[Jarkko]

If you are on the defense, any things that summons things that get to enemy first will attract skeleton archers, thugs w/Banefire bows and/or mages set to cast acid bolts or banefire. Howl, imps, Swarm, Summon sprites (especially useful against archers or thugs who have orders to fire archers, as the sprites will move close to shoot their darts, and thus should be the closest archer units to the enemy), Air elementals (excellent if shooters are set to target monsters).

If you are on the attack, you have to use decoy units to draw the first round of fire, so that you can get your countermeasures up on your first round.

[Hoplosternum]

Thanks to you all.

I have used numerous Bane Fire Archers in the past but did not find them very effective and they die in droves. Probably because I was facing more troops than Thugs/SCs at the time.

Acid Storm, that affects the whole battlefield, seems rather deadly from what you are saying. But presumably it kills the caster too rather quickly....

[rdonj]

Banefire archers are really useful when you're trying to kill otherwise annoying things... like ethereals, for example, since their weapons are magic.

[thejeff]

I've never been able to use Acid Storm effectively. I assume the only real way to do so is using a full scale SC? Capable of surviving both the Acid and the enemy until enough damage is done.

And it's only 4AP damage, which isn't going to make it through heavy protection often enough to matter. Sure armor gets destroyed, which helps but not if Army of Gold/Lead is in play. Or even Mass Protection.