War against tengu

[legowarrior]

I'm playing a custom mod, as the Shinuyama against the MA Jomon. I have two problems. First, there is a strong water bless, all the sacreds will have a ton of defense, and second many sacreds have gear that lets them do double damage to undead/demons.

What is the best strategy against them. It's mid game, and my research is through the roof, and I have 3 turns to get ready, so just imagine that any combination of spells is on the table. http://www.llamaserver.net/showScore...HappyKatanakka
For more information.

[Valerius]

How much encumbrance are those sacreds picking up per turn? What about tiring them out (and blocking them) with chaff (skelly spam, swarm, etc.) while you hit them with evocation spells? Shin of course has many options when it comes to evo. but I'll mention that cloud of death is a very nice spell if you can keep the opponent in position (though it is MR negates and I'm not sure what MR those sacreds have).

Also, Shin has size 1 units, right? Can you cast quickening on them combined with weapons of sharpness? That should bring that high defense down.

[legowarrior]

Quickening might be possible. How about the Shinuyama vampires, with a few items, could they stall them? Does spell penetration help their auto casted ability?

[legowarrior]

On that same note, what is the best way to arm shura?

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by legowarrior

Quickening might be possible. How about the Shinuyama vampires, with a few items, could they stall them? Does spell penetration help their auto casted ability?

The Shuten-doji? I haven't played Shin, only fought them, but I don't recall seeing these used. Looking at their stats they don't seem like they'd survive for long.

Originally Posted by legowarrior

On that same note, what is the best way to arm shura?

Shura are nice thugs but against damage multiplying weapons I don't think they'll fare well (since I'm assuming these weapons are magic and being ethereal won't help them). When they were used against me they were effective raiders with fairly light gear. You could go with a 5 gem item like luck or the hated (by me, anyway) lychantropos' amulet. And elemental resistances depending on the opposition. Of course used with an army you can put all kinds of buffs on them ranging from quickness to protection.


But I do think high prot non-undead thugs could be useful in this situation. If these are basically tengu with magic weapons then they should be doing base 17 damage, 21 with strength of giants. A protection of around 30 with a vine shield and some regen might do the trick. A sleeper or even a bakemono general could work. If you want to spend more, maybe an ettin. But if the tengu, etc., are buffed with weapons of sharpness then things get more difficult.

Since tengu are storm flyers you can't shut them down and that initial attack will be hard hitting. But this also means when they attack they will spread out, which will give you an opportunity to swarm them and reduce that defense.

And since your units have darkvision 50 and undead take no penalties under darkness I think this would be a nice way to even those stats. Some of those crappy skeletons might even land a hit.

You could also hand out some vine bows and set them to fire flyers to pin down some of the tengu.

Basically I think you need enough chaff to absorb his initial attack and occupy his elites while your mages do their work, along with darkness to even the playing field, and maybe some thugs/SCs mixed in as well.

One other thing about fatigue: it might be fun to start off the battle with a few penetration boosted castings of curse of stones. Add environmental effects such as grip of winter as appropriate.

[legowarrior]

The onni-bushi are basically samurai with Demon/Undead slaying naginatas and 50% home sickness. I am a little worried about them striking me, but I'm more worried about the tengu. He has a ton of Tengu and Ryujin to raid with I think.

[Finalgenesis]

Ah this is the ryujin mod nation you're up against. I see that 1.92 is also used.

Darkness as mentioned is a big one, and Val covered BE spells pretty well so I'll toss out some other options in whatever order they come in. I'm not sure what the new Jomon has spell access to so you'll have to prune whatever won't work =3.

If you have quickening, then you'd have manifest vitriol with easy national path access. While green lion's ethereal is negated by magic weapons, their AoE acid breath doesn't care about def or resistance. They're size 3 with 2x melee attack at att 14 too if they get engaged in melee though preferably they burn up their ammo first, quickening on them is glorious. You'd need to place them well tactically so they don't get engaged and fire their acid though (and it's not exactly long range), I'm sure you're expert on tactical placement so that won't be a problem.

Don't know if you have the research and access, but I could see gargoyle, treant, cyclop and maybe mechanical giant as good chasis in this case to gear up. Hell, if you have GoR capacity (pretender?) A Crusher would be a doable chasis with AoE weaponry and the usual defense. Anyway I'm sure you know more then I in terms of detailed SC/thug tactics with knowledge of enemy spell access so I won't go into the whole enemy MR spell counter counter, hold x5 stuff.

another option is mage archery, bane xbow has AoE 9, BoW is improved ...etc, and you have sacred self quickable mages. I think the ryujin can easily get enough A for mist though?

buffed lamia might also be decent, in particular a prot skin (marble warrior) with quicknening, size 2 double attack, life drain and 50% regen. Otherwise just use them as soul vortex battery for your bakemono sorc to keep up the spell barrage.

note green lion and lamia don't have DV, so if darkness is on the manual... I suppose lamia soul battery heh. Though most DV units you have access to are demonic/undead. I might segregate the armies into a night army (demons + undead) and magic (non DV summons) if tactically feasible and sensible given the situation.

Anyway, random, chaotic, sleepy ideas...

[rdonj]

Valerius has good advice for fighting against his armies, but yeah, that is a bit much for just some raiders. FG's advice is also good. What you want ideally is to be taking these armies out in the magic phase. Unfortunately I don't think there are going to be many ways to do this cost effectively, but...

1. Assassination - Losing the ryujin makes the tengu much less scary. Earth Attack ought to be capable of taking out a ryujin, and earth elementals shouldn't much mind any bodyguards they might have. This can be pretty luck based though depending on paths and scripting of his ryujin. Mind hunt. Any other remote attacks you might have with much chance of killing a ryujin or the tengu? Go for it.

2. Thugging - Thugging is going to be tricky to make work realistically. I'm pretty sure any one shura put up against 25 w9 tengu is going to lose, no matter how much gear it has. 3 shura with a vine/gold shield stuck on one to act as blockers, and then one or two mages raining down fear and damage your shura are immune to on the tengu's heads? Maybe, just maybe that will work. You're putting a lot more gems on the line than he is though, and probably more gold. Test before using. An alternative to this could be bakemono sorcerers with phoenix pyre, winged boots, weapon and vine/gold shield. Tengu are fragile enough that just one or two pyre explosions should kill most of them and get rid of most of the threat. One sorcerer may not be enough... so you can see gem costs are adding up again here. And this won't work if the opponent casts appropriate protections on the tengu first. If you've got gold and sorcerers to spare though, you could certainly try using them in sets of 2-3, phoenix pyre with no gear. They'll get chopped up quickly, but the tengu won't do so well either! If anything is left afterwards, it can probably be taken by remotes or flying boot thugs.

3. PD or solid blockers backed by commanders holding bows of war. Konoha Tengu have no appreciable protection, so again unless that's fixed through your opponent's magic, this will destroy them quickly. You will need to ensure that your line doesn't flee before the tengu have been decimated though. A mage casting darkness here would be very handy, and you should either be doing magically supported spear bakemono or tough/ethereal creatures. Summer lions/winter wolves with army of gold would murder tengu gloriously, for example.

4. If you have Dai Oni SCs, you can use these with phoenix pyre and a good gear set. They are expensive though and if you're seeing weapon of sharpness tengu, just don't, they cost too much to throw away like that. Other SCs would likely work better, such as treants or grendelkin. If you use SCs, they should be flight-capable.

5. Cast GoNB, fill every province with mages, profit. Not necessarily practical :P

There's definitely more things that you could try than what I've spelled out, so do give it some thought! You might be surprised at the creative solutions you come up with.

[legowarrior]

Thanks guys. I won't tell you what I'll go with in the end, since the game is going on right now, but it is something to work with. As to spell access on the MA Jomon, pretty much the same spells as LA Jomon but without the Demons.

War starts in 2 turns I think, so I'll spend the some time getting together a counter force, and I'll get ready to defend against the rush of troops on the first turn.

[rdonj]

Although, probably the most important thing you should know right now is that you should already have been preparing for this war in the back of your mind and stockpiling some things "just in case". If you have been doing so that's good and you can ignore the rest of this, but I'll go ahead and write this as a note to newer players in general:

It sounds like you're really under-prepared for war at present based on things you've said, and that creates a huge issue. Three turns isn't enough time to build up magical infrastructure, summon up troops and mages, and deploy everything where you want it unless you already have that magical infrastructure. And even then you probably have some limits as to what mages you can produce your important items and summons with, while you have to be preparing for other things. In dominions, especially the late game (which is thankfully not entirely where your game looks to be) you need to anticipate your opponents and get ready to fight them before war is ever declared. The lack of hammers in CBM lets you avoid this to a significant extent compared to how things used to be (which is no doubt one of the biggest reasons our dear friend Calahan disagrees with the change), but you still have to make sure that you have a good supply of some of the more important items/mages/summons that you'll be relying on for your plans ready, as these should generally be things you're constrained in the ability to produce.

If you have to make everything at the last minute, you will be rushed and underprepared for when the time comes to face down your opponent, and unable to deploy in an ideal fashion. His nation being what it is, he should be intending to cover half or more of your lands in tengu in a single turn, as well as send in some other threats that you may or may not know about already, like teleporting thugs to block your movement so that when you try to deploy your units can't get to where you want them and you could lose a lot of gems and income without being able to fight for it. So you should be able to put out a significant defensive force the turn BEFORE hostile orders are allowed to be given, so that he cannot prevent you from acting. You should also ideally have a stable of at least 6+ flying/magicmove thugs in an empire your size ready to contest any territory that is seized.

Anyway, hopefully I don't come off as too condescending, but hopefully that little demi-rant has helped someone, somewhere to understand the game a little better :P