Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Delta Foxtrot]

If you have both on one mage, casting Naiad Warriors is pretty fun.

Speaking of those crosspaths, Bone melter (W3N2, AoE1) and Liquify (W4, AoE3) are both pretty fun spells if you can pull them off. MR-negates instakill spells. Between high path requirements and alt-5/8 means you won't be casting them often, but instakilling is always fun when you can manage it.

And Naiad warriors are probably one of the better summons when it comes to cost efficiency and actual performance. Decent gear, awe, mage-turn efficient, can't complain about them.

[EnigmaticHat]

So, new question.

I've got MA Tien Chi running a communion strategy to get up to E3 and cast a big battlefield buff or debuff.  This isn't my only strategy of course, but its my rush to get some combat support up.

So the way I look at it I've got two potential targets for my early research: Construction 4 and Alteration 4.  Alteration gets me Curse of Stones, Destruction, and it also opens the way to some higher level spells I really want.  Construction, on the other hand, will let me build Earth Boots, which lets me communion with less mages, but all it will get me in combat is Legions of Steel.  Which... still seems pretty kick ass.  It also of course gets me a bunch of great items and would let me kit out a titan pretender into an SC.

So, which should I go after first?

[Shadowlord]

I've never played Tien Chi, but...

Legions of Steel can boost your regular troops' armor a bit (+3 per armor piece, reportedly, but it targets commanders with an AOE, rather than targeting troops, so you may have issues getting it to actually hit your troops but can potentially solve them either by embedding your mages or embedding dummy commanders for your mages to target). (I don't know if the other aoe spells work the same way, but should probably find out, heh.)

If you go for alteration you eventually hit Iron Warriors (Alteration 5), which sounds much better than Legions of Steel but gives your troops an elemental weakness that your enemies could potentially take advantage of (extra damage from lightning). You can, however, combine it with legions of steel. You also get Marble Warriors at Alt 7, which is stronger, and has a different elemental weakness (extra damage from cold).

Curse of Stones was unimpressive when I tried it (too slow to be useful, considering how fast the killing happens). Destruction's potentially useful, but it won't work on anything with magical armor, which means it's useless against SCs and the various summoned troops etc which come with magic gear. Same for the one-person variant of the spell with the confusing name... Armor of Achilles? Yes. You'd think that would make you invulnerable except for your heel, but nooooo. 

[ThtblovesDF]

I wish I had the amount of free time to get really good at Dom4 and play Multiplayer games again, which are great even when failing around.

Mostly I struggle with finding a good early game, to setup the late game. It's just - build any big unit with trample or high protection, fill with smaller units incase its a "big-size" unit and always use the commander slot to build something, repeat and conquer... yet it feels to slow unless I play pangeaa and just punch face.

[Shadowlord]

Large armies of longbowmen or crossbowmen work well too, and some nations have decent national archers (rather than needing to find indie ones). MA Marignon, for instance, has their own crossbowmen.

[USEC_OFFICER]

-snip-

Actually, if I remember correctly, magical armour only refers to the stuff that you need to forge gems for. In other words, any unit with armour can have it be destroyed with Destruction. Even summoned units. Though I don't remember Destruction having a large AoE so spamming it might not be the best idea. This is all going off of memory though.

-snip-

Nothing wrong with always playing a nation that you like and are good with.

[Delta Foxtrot]

I'm fairly sure Legions of Steel targeting was fixed within the last few patches, but I couldn't find any mention of it during a quick googling.

So, new question.

I've got MA Tien Chi running a communion strategy to get up to E3 and cast a big battlefield buff or debuff.  This isn't my only strategy of course, but its my rush to get some combat support up.

So the way I look at it I've got two potential targets for my early research: Construction 4 and Alteration 4.  Alteration gets me Curse of Stones, Destruction, and it also opens the way to some higher level spells I really want.  Construction, on the other hand, will let me build Earth Boots, which lets me communion with less mages, but all it will get me in combat is Legions of Steel.  Which... still seems pretty kick ass.  It also of course gets me a bunch of great items and would let me kit out a titan pretender into an SC.

So, which should I go after first?

I wouldn't go for earth boots until you actually have something worth casting. Legions of Steel is certainly a nice troop buff, but I'd prefer more casting options for my E mages. Ench-3 for Strength of Giants, Evoc-4/5 for Blade Wind, Gifts from Heaven, Earthquake, Alt-4/5 for the (de)buffs and Maws of the Earth. And perhaps Conj-3 for Summon Earthpower and lesser elementals, SEP is less research than boots at the expense of a combat turn it takes to be cast.

In general I go for construction as my third or fourth school, so I might be a tad blind to the opportunities to be had there early. I'd probably go for either alt or ench first (with thau-1 of course) if playing MA T'ien Ch'i, then follow up with alt/ench or conj. I haven't played or tested much MA TC though.

edit:
Destruction may or may not be best against SC's, but it's great for fighting heavily armoured nations like Ulm, Abysia or any of the giants. And you're lot more likely to see troops rather than SC's, especially early on.

[tompliss]

And still about Destruction, I read about summoned units that won't have their basic armor destroyed by it, because they're summoned with a "magical" armor (even if it's not a slot item.
There may not be many, but they exist.

[ThtblovesDF]

-snip-

Nothing wrong with always playing a nation that you like and are good with.

Oh I love Ry'leh, but it seems everyone does and it rarly free in Multiplayer games and more of a lategame-nation anyway - which is a bit of a issue since most "other" water nations win the water war... or at least against me. I do love there sneakyness and the ability to sell my mind-attacks to players for a few more rounds of having my peace.

[E. Albright]

I'm fairly sure Legions of Steel targeting was fixed within the last few patches, but I couldn't find any mention of it during a quick googling.

The patch notes are indeed mum on this subject, but a quick test will show that LoS has finally discarded its legacy Dom1 targeting mechanisms and at long last targets units like every other spell.

[EnigmaticHat]

So it turns out if you use #clearallspells in a mod, the game crashes during turn resolution.  Does anyone know why?

[E. Albright]

What's the nagot gik fel message? My first thought is that there are AI players who are trying to cast spells that don't exist.

[EnigmaticHat]

What's the nagot gik fel message? My first thought is that there are AI players who are trying to cast spells that don't exist.

"Pointless spellfx"

Edit: The mystery deepens.  I tried adding #clearallspells to an otherwise empty mod as a test, and... nothing happened.  All the old spells were there.

Then I started adding it to legit mods I had already downloaded, and got the same "Pointless spellfx" error.

[EnigmaticHat]

So, trying out MA Jotunheim.  If I want to dip into blood, how important is it to go construction 4 first to get SDRs?  Considering that I have some use for construction anyway.

[Karlito]

I rush out the Sanguine Dowsing Rods even when I'm playing Mictlan. . Honestly, I'd say it depends on how heavily you want to invest in blood (sorry for the non-answer). Your only real option for blood-hunting is the slow-to-recruit Skratti, but a mid-game nation could easily spare 3 or 4 of those guys to generate slaves. If you want to really build a blood economy though, with armies of frost demons and whatnot, then getting the access to the dowsing rod is pretty critical.