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Turin Turambar posted:Defense avoids arrows as well as a shield. Mechanically speaking, a def 13 and shield parry 7 unit is the same as an unit with def 20. This is completely incorrect. Arrows do not use defense at all, only parry values. A higher parry value = more like that that the arrow hits the shield = shield prot is added to prot against the arrow.
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Sep 12, 2014 23:24
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Jon Joe posted:This is completely incorrect. Arrows do not use defense at all, only parry values. A higher parry value = more like that that the arrow hits the shield = shield prot is added to prot against the arrow.
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Sep 12, 2014 23:36
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Jon Joe posted:This is completely incorrect. Arrows do not use defense at all, only parry values. A higher parry value = more like that that the arrow hits the shield = shield prot is added to prot against the arrow. Mmmm I should read the manual again. Oops.
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Sep 13, 2014 00:19
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Strudel Man posted:Another strategy that hasn't worked as well as I expected it to. The roadblock is always going to be their low hp and questionable protection even with an E bless and that they're really hard to mass. A cap only unit that's expensive and requires a good bless but only has 12(?) hp and has coinflip odds of dying to barbarian indies that have any morale boost is a single-purpose unit at best. They also gain combat fatigue, which is pretty lovely considering they're undead and it makes them poorly suited for long battles. The censors are also garbage because for reasons no one will ever understand, they don't have helmets, and without helmets or shields they're constantly getting hit/shot in the head and instantly dying because they have regular human hp. The special hammer that halts undead is thematic, but Sceleria has so many cheaper and more reliable ways to kill undead that aren't cap only they're kinda useless. If they had a #secondform that was a blessable undead version of themselves that would make them way more interesting and viable, but still not that powerful. Sceleria can be strong because it's easy for them to get into skelespam and easy for them to keep it relevant past the early mid game, plus they can mass summon longdeads and undead horsemen on the strategic view with the extremely cheap amulet of the dead. There's a reasonable argument to be made for taking an E bless for fatigue removal and forging access, but overall Sceleria doesn't get much out of a big bless--vestals are only really effective at clearing out indies, and as you already noted, they take unsustainable casualties from freak combat rolls and arrows. A better Sceleria approach is to take an SC pretender and pretty neutral scales, a wimpy pretender and good scales, or to choose pretender paths based on what globals you're going for.
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Sep 13, 2014 00:26
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Turin Turambar posted:Mmmm I should read the manual again. Oh also on Sceleria Bless Chat - W9 is always good for having them just pile into formation on turn 1 and not die, F9 is also great, maybe better because Vestals have such good defence already. N9 boring bless totally acceptable if you just want to make your massive priest communions borderline invincible when it comes to fatigue.
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Sep 13, 2014 00:42
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Doesn't an E bless go pretty well with the fact they want to communion up?
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Sep 13, 2014 01:10
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amuayse posted:Doesn't an E bless go pretty well with the fact they want to communion up? Nature bless actually helps that more, since every point of regen is effectively 10 points of reinvigoration once the slaves hit 200 fatigue
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Sep 13, 2014 01:12
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dis astranagant posted:Nature bless actually helps that more, since every point of regen is effectively 10 points of reinvigoration once the slaves hit 200 fatigue Yeah, but an E minor is a lot cheaper than an N major.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:13
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Flame112 posted:Yeah, but an E minor is a lot cheaper than an N major. N major will push their hp up to over 10 so that the regen gives +2hp per turn which is effectively comparable to 20 reinvig. A single major bless isn't that expensive an you can even take it on an awake dragon if you so desire. Your scales will kind of suffer a bit but that doesn't matter that much for sceleria and you can counter kind of bad scales by expanding really well. E minor is more for fighting units than communions.
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Sep 13, 2014 01:59
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jBrereton posted:Or just observe the game.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:09
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Huh, N9 seems to be good for everything.
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Sep 13, 2014 02:55
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amuayse posted:Huh, N9 seems to be good for everything. N9 is a good general purpose bless. It's basically what E9 was in dom3, helped somewhat by the Best Pretender In The Game being the an immobile 0 point N3 (sort of kidding [not about the best pretender], high N pretenders are more common than high E though). That said, mages that don't get into communions will not benefit from N9 very much, so unless you have ubiquitous B1 or S1 on sacred mages don't take it solely for the reinvig edge case.
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Sep 13, 2014 03:34
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I played with Sceleria as W9S9, figuring that they were so hard to hit with super high defense and ethereal that the freebie from S9 will go a long ways, plus magic defense from banish. They were essentially unkillable by any indy and had no problem steamrolling people early game, but man was it boring.
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Sep 13, 2014 05:08
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You are receiving this broadcast as a dream...We are transmitting from the year one nine... nine nine ...You are receiving this broadcast in order t
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N9 being good for everything doesn't make it inherently better than doing something more specific. Take it on mictlan and giants all day ery day but when you're spending N9 points to regen sceleria mage communions ehh I'll take the scales or something that helps your expansion any day
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Sep 13, 2014 05:39
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TheresNoThyme posted:N9 being good for everything doesn't make it inherently better than doing something more specific. How do scales help your sceleria expansion? Their troops are pretty meh overall, either get an awake SC or use vestals to expand with a bless, scales will have more mages and research but bless will get more provinces. Easily repelled guys with 7-8 encumbrance are not good troops. (10 N9W9 vestals will take indies for forever and don't care much about the harder provinces) edit: Maybe I misread your post, but I think you are setting up a trade off that doesn't exist. You can get W9N9 Dom 7 O2S3G2Dr2 imprisoned god. While those aren't the absolute best scales, having sloth doesn't really hurt Sceleria that much and you almost have maxed order and growth. Plus that god can do serious ritual and global magic when they get out of jail, you can probably scare up some nature and water income to fuel it. The only thing that hurts is drain, and since you are going for big communions it's pretty livable in your dom and does protect your undead. As a side benefit, Sceleria makes good use of indy priests since for 1.6 gold a turn they make ~3 longdead, and with this build they can pick up a forged bow (you have access to almost all of them) and go to town if they actually need to hit the field (or just use them to raid with a turn of vestals and 10 longdead). akulanization fucked around with this message at 06:49 on Sep 13, 2014 |
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Sep 13, 2014 06:28
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akulanization posted:How do scales help your sceleria expansion? Their troops are pretty meh overall, either get an awake SC or use vestals to expand with a bless, scales will have more mages and research but bless will get more provinces. Easily repelled guys with 7-8 encumbrance are not good troops. (10 N9W9 vestals will take indies for forever and don't care much about the harder provinces) I said "scales or something that helps you expand." My point is not that both choices are equivalent (obviously Sceleria benefits a lot from the expansion help) but that there exist superior options to sinking your pretender points into an N9 bless for communion regen. Like, you can always just.... have more mages in your communion because you took better scales/expanded faster. N9 being more "generally useful" than other blesses is something I see mentioned on Desura forums all the time but personally I have yet to play in an mplayer game or read a postgame wrap-up here where an N9 build actually won the game (disciples excluded). Sometimes being marginally good in a bunch of wide situations isn't as useful as doing a narrower set of things well.
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Sep 13, 2014 06:44
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akulanization posted:N9 is a good general purpose bless. It's basically what E9 was in dom3, helped somewhat by the Best Pretender In The Game being the an immobile 0 point N3 (sort of kidding [not about the best pretender], high N pretenders are more common than high E though). That said, mages that don't get into communions will not benefit from N9 very much, so unless you have ubiquitous B1 or S1 on sacred mages don't take it solely for the reinvig edge case. Hah, that's the second time I've heard someone say the Irminsul is the best pretender in the game. I'm actually surprised to hear that; I love it too, but from reading this thread it seems like the overwhelming majority of players prefer dragons or other early expanders over everything else.
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Sep 13, 2014 06:50
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TheresNoThyme posted:I said "scales or something that helps you expand." That's true as far as trying to be good at everything goes. But looking at Sceleria in particular at least, they do three things well: undead, vestals, and communions. If you make the choice to go for a bless on them, W9N9 isn't actually a general "good bless" it's probably the only bless that adds something pretty decent to every dimension of Sceleria's (limited) strengths. With N9 your 16 mage communion is acting more like a 20+ mage force while allowing vestals to take a hit in the early game. W9 makes the vestals deadly and makes the temples you will spam (for eventual forting) give you a unit that takes 3-5 gems and research you already want to become combat viable. It's actually a fairly targeted approach, at least on paper. Jabarto posted:Hah, that's the second time I've heard someone say the Irminsul is the best pretender in the game. I'm actually surprised to hear that; I love it too, but from reading this thread it seems like the overwhelming majority of players prefer dragons or other early expanders over everything else. Dragon's are really good, there's no way to argue that, but Irminsul is the best immobile in the game, and sets you up for a strong game if you can expand well and survive without a combat pretender. I like the style of play that it works well with.
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Sep 13, 2014 07:06
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dragons/expanders are good in their own way, and immobiles are generally good in their own as well. pretty much the only pretenders that get hosed over hard in the grand scheme of things are the human casters. everything else is pretty okay.
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Sep 13, 2014 08:10
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To the previous talk: one moment, Shadow Vestals has a shield.
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Sep 13, 2014 08:31
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:dragons/expanders are good in their own way, and immobiles are generally good in their own as well. pretty much the only pretenders that get hosed over hard in the grand scheme of things are the human casters. everything else is pretty okay. Dagon is pretty poo IMHO
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Sep 13, 2014 16:51
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Agent Kool-Aid posted:dragons/expanders are good in their own way, and immobiles are generally good in their own as well. pretty much the only pretenders that get hosed over hard in the grand scheme of things are the human casters. everything else is pretty okay. I like human casters, since I'm always bad at planning and like to just pile on magic paths on them to make sure I can change strategies at a whim. Of course, playing with other people has corrupted me and nowadays I've started to plan ahead a bit better, so I can easier use non-human pretender chassis and just take what I need for a strategy. (Instead of having magic paths for everything I could possible do if I end up loving myself over with bad planning.  )If you have no idea what you're doing, having a rainbow-pretender with a shitload of cheap paths can be pretty useful.
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Sep 13, 2014 17:35
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akulanization posted:Irminsul is the best immobile in the game Can you expand a bit on that? How's treeman different to the monolith or oracle? Is it simply the benefits of cheap high-level nature access?
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Sep 13, 2014 17:45
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scalded schlong posted:Can you expand a bit on that? How's treeman different to the monolith or oracle? Is it simply the benefits of cheap high-level nature access? It's the combination of starting with 3 Nature, 4 domscore, and having a reasonable pathcost for extra magic. The fountains also both start with 3 in a path and 4 starting domscore and even have cheaper pathcosts, but in most cases nature is a better bless than astral or blood.
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Sep 13, 2014 17:51
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Question, does boosting your pretender your pretender through items or empowerment also affect the bless?
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Sep 13, 2014 18:00
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Kurnugia posted:Question, does boosting your pretender your pretender through items or empowerment also affect the bless? No, nothing done after the game start affects your bless. Even if your pretender loses all his magic paths through dying and being revived constantly, your bless remains the same.
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Sep 13, 2014 18:04
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Torrannor posted:No, nothing done after the game start affects your bless. Even if your pretender loses all his magic paths through dying and being revived constantly, your bless remains the same. Except claiming thrones.
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Sep 13, 2014 18:05
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amuayse posted:Dagon is pretty poo IMHO yes Libluini posted:I like human casters, since I'm always bad at planning and like to just pile on magic paths on them to make sure I can change strategies at a whim. Of course, playing with other people has corrupted me and nowadays I've started to plan ahead a bit better, so I can easier use non-human pretender chassis and just take what I need for a strategy. (Instead of having magic paths for everything I could possible do if I end up loving myself over with bad planning. the catch is that you can pretty easily tack some cheap paths onto a non-human pretender as well and thus have a pretender that won't get shredded in about two hits and can probably help you expand without needing a shitload of research to be able to do more than just sit in the back and cast single-target damage spells occasionally. rainbow mages aren't exactly bad, but using your pretender solely to be some sort of catch-all mage when you're probably not going to use about half those paths effectively is sort of a waste when you can put points into things that'll benefit your nation more. there's also the fact that the human casters are sorely lacking in real power compared to a lot of the million other pretenders, if only for the fact that they have pretty much have no base hp and nothing like a second form to help cover for that. the problem lies with illwinter, of course, so really all we can rely on is mods or hope that they see fit to buff human casters to make them actually better at being super mages than the competition.
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Sep 13, 2014 19:55
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Flame112 posted:It's the combination of starting with 3 Nature, 4 domscore, and having a reasonable pathcost for extra magic. The fountains also both start with 3 in a path and 4 starting domscore and even have cheaper pathcosts, but in most cases nature is a better bless than astral or blood.
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Sep 13, 2014 19:58
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Turin Turambar posted:To the previous talk: one moment, Shadow Vestals has a shield. I guess I was misremembering? I could have sworn they just had the spear. So what the heck is killing them off, then? They should be able to ignore most incoming attacks, and to deflect the rest when they have 20 defense.
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Sep 14, 2014 02:09
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Strudel Man posted:Whaaaat. Set them up right at the back (but a couple of squares in front of your priest so the archers don't aggro him and end the battle) and let fly.
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Sep 14, 2014 02:23
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Strudel Man posted:Whaaaat. The shield blocks only add the shield prot to the unit's prot. 16 prot (20% reduced to 13) vs the 9 damage of a short bow (even more damage or armor pierce if composite bow, long bow, or crossbow) is not a whole lot, and that's only if the arrow actually hits the shield, which doesn't always happen.
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Sep 14, 2014 02:25
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I think it might actually be the priests. Priests do love casting banishment every chance they get, and while vestals have pretty good magic resistance, some damage still tends to get through when it's cast turn over turn, or when there's multiple priests on the enemy side. Hordes of undead could shrug it off, but not low-HP stuff you have to recruit. Also, man but they're terrible at sieging. edit: Yep, observing closely, it's banishments. Stupid priests. 
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Sep 14, 2014 02:35
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Sep 14, 2014 02:51
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As far as philosophical clashes go, that one seem to have a clear-cut victor. Incidentally, can that "reincarnate" ability do anything interesting?
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Sep 14, 2014 03:50
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My scout witnessed this. I like to imagine with a bag of popcorn.
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Sep 14, 2014 04:40
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Hoof. Phoenix Pyre is doing a number on my troops, now that I've finally gotten Vestals working with a W9 bless (doing nothing that different from before? Though my initial position was a lot more defensible). Shinuyama's casting it at the start of battle, and though my troops cut theirs down with negligible losses, the ensuing fireball when I stab their mages is taking out in the range of 30-50 vestals. And not only is my research pretty cruddy, but despite acashic recording my entire territory, I have zero fire gem income. Maybe casting storm would help...
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Sep 14, 2014 05:37
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Strudel Man posted:I think it might actually be the priests. Priests do love casting banishment every chance they get, and while vestals have pretty good magic resistance, some damage still tends to get through when it's cast turn over turn, or when there's multiple priests on the enemy side. Hordes of undead could shrug it off, but not low-HP stuff you have to recruit. If there aren't that many sacred targets, it'll go straight for the priests.
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Sep 14, 2014 05:50
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Hm. My caster is already pretty busy with unholy blessing and powering of the sepulchre and raining and antimagicing. I suppose I should toss some more grand thaumaturgs into the mix. I just have this foolish resistance to moving a big mess of commanders around, even when it's obviously beneficial.
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Sep 14, 2014 06:05
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Well, you're Sceleria, so you should be bringing a huge block of longdead to every fight. Grand Thaums are your best way to get those around. You can recruit cheap H1 indy priests to make more longdead.
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Sep 14, 2014 06:12
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