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[Wysthric]

Anyone got any tips for MA Pelagia? I'm playing against 6 Hard AI's as the only water nation. T'ien Chi got destroyed, but Vanheim, Ermor, Nazca, Mictlan, and Caelum still remain. I own all the water and I'm raiding Caelum with Spectre's at the moment, but I can't really crack anyone open. On the other hand, Ermor's attempts to get into the water have been feeble and I'm pretty safe unless someone casts that enchantment which allows everyone to enter the sea.

[ThtblovesDF]

Don't they have pretty good researches and astral? You can do some nice communions - and war in late, even mid game, hardly ever goes fast. If you can take one fort at a time, its fine.

[Wysthric]

Loads of their stuff is Sea - Only. The amphibious mages are W1?1, which even in large numbers, isn't strong enough. Research is going good, but when your only options seem to be "frost bolts and wave warriors" as a staple, I don't know how I'll ever win, unless I'm the only person with a growth dominion. Speaking of which, is Wolven Wintering the enemy Cap every turn a good idea?

[etgfrog]

Loads of their stuff is Sea - Only. The amphibious mages are W1?1, which even in large numbers, isn't strong enough. Research is going good, but when your only options seem to be "frost bolts and wave warriors" as a staple, I don't know how I'll ever win, unless I'm the only person with a growth dominion. Speaking of which, is Wolven Wintering the enemy Cap every turn a good idea?

If you get up to casting maelstrom, you can cast wolven winter then murdering winter if the enemy army is still where its cold 3.

[USEC_OFFICER]

As MA Pelagia you have 4 different amphibious mages. Pelagian Mermages which are W1 + 100% AWEN, Pelagian Mystics which are 4 CP and A1W1E1 + 100% AWES, Conquerors of the Closed Realm which are capital-only and H1 + 100% AES and finally Daduchoses which are coastal only, 4 CP yet only F1 + 100% AWES. Since you have access to Air and Water, you can also forge amulets of the Fish to get some of your aquatic mages onto land too, though obviously not in very large numbers. You also have Summon Hekateride and Daktyl at Conj 5 and 6 but unless you want high Nature or certain magic items forged I wouldn't bother with them. Troop-wise you have unarmoured mermen with coral spears and nets, medium-armoured wave warriors with tridents, Champions of the Closed Realm which are well-armoured, cap-only sacreds, heavily armoured mermen hoplites on the coast and semi-elite Apostates of the Closed Realm on land wherever there's a temple.

Personally I would recruit a fuckton of Pelagian Mystics and forge amulets for your Titron Kings. Mermages are rather lackluster, Conquerors are only super useful if they roll Astral, and you probably don't have the gems to worry about your other aquatic mages. Titron Kings cast huge water spells and maybe lead communions, Mystics throw out lightning, E3 buffs or Frost Bolts depending on crosspaths, and you use your wave warriors and Champions of the Closed Realm to help you get a foothold on land. On land you're recruiting as many Mystics as you can simply because you don't have any other option. If they have good paths then they can throw out some acid spells or act as communion slaves. The addition of mermen hoplites to your army is great since their heavy armour and long spears can hold the line while your wave warriors and Champions flank. Apostates are just okay. They're flexible but you'll probably want to focus on your more specialized units instead of them. Similarly the regular mermen are pretty useless unless you really have some high defence units you want to trip up with nets.

To summarize: Built a ton of forts underwater and spam Mystics, wave warriors, Champions and eventually hoplites. That is the core of your armies, to which you can splash on other mages/troops as needed or desired.

[E. Albright]

Loads of their stuff is Sea - Only. The amphibious mages are W1?1

Since you have access to Air and Water, you can also forge amulets of the Fish to get some of your aquatic mages onto land too, though obviously not in very large numbers.

Eww. No. These aren't Aboleths; they have body slots. 1W gets you a Shambler Skin, which lets BOTH kinds of non-amphibians be amphibious. It's expensive for mage blobs, but for a handful of strong-ish ones it's good.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Oh. Shambler Skins do that? I thought that they were only useful for terrestrial units. My mistake.

[E. Albright]

Mid-Dom4 change, that.

[Wysthric]

Ok, I'll admit I overlooked the Mystics because of their ridiculous 4 CP cost but I suppose they are worth it.

Edit : Both Mictlan and Ermor have been domkilled, and Nazca has gutted most of Vanheim's army, which is letting me take some stuff from them. I've just unlocked and am summoning the Elemental Water Queens, and I've empowered my pretender in air twice so when he gets onto land he can also get the Queens of Elemental Air.

It looks like it's going to be me, Caelum and Nazca going towards the end, but I'm pretty sure Nazca is going to take 70% of the Ascension Points without even stepping into my lake... unless I can get enough eco damage spam (e.g. hurricane, wolven winter) to ruin them.

[bulborbish]

Out of curiosity, how effective are Priest Banishes against undead? I'm having some issues right now with them, and really only have those as an option to deal with the horde in the short run. If it helps, I currently have the Death variant of the spell.

[etgfrog]

Out of curiosity, how effective are Priest Banishes against undead? I'm having some issues right now with them, and really only have those as an option to deal with the horde in the short run. If it helps, I currently have the Death variant of the spell.

The death banish spell acts just like normal banish, except after a second MR check it will confuse the target, potentially causing it to attack allies. Banishment in general scales very well with priest levels, but in a pinch large amounts of level 1 priests can work but it gets harder the higher the mr of the undead. To get into more specific numbers, a level 1 priest will hit up to 4 tiles of undead(3 human sized units per tile usually), higher chance to hit with large undead numbers, now lets say the undead your facing has 13 mr, each undead hit has a 24% chance of resisting it, if it fails the undead unit takes 4+DRN-DRN damage(This looks wierd, but the undead gets a protection roll against the banish damage). It also has a 5% chance of confusing each undead unit when hit.

[USEC_OFFICER]

Out of curiosity, how effective are Priest Banishes against undead? I'm having some issues right now with them, and really only have those as an option to deal with the horde in the short run. If it helps, I currently have the Death variant of the spell.

It depends on what kind of undead you're facing, honestly. If it's non-mindless undead then you're in luck, because Death Banishment has a chance to make them bewildered (and presumably attack their allies or meander aimlessly). That's the only advantage that it has over generic Banishment, unfortunately. If you're up against longdead or soulless then Banishment should work well if you can amass enough priests. Ideally they'd be H2s but H1s will work fine too. Longdead have low HP and average MR, so they can resist banishment better but will die in one or two hits. Soulless have low MR but good HP, so they'll resist less often but can take a handful of hits to kill. Thankfully Banishment has a pretty large AoE compared to other spells and costs 0 fatigue so you can get pretty good coverage with your priests, especially since banishment is going to be a high priority for them once they go off-script. You just have to figure out what the critical mass of priests is for the situation.

If you're up against undead that aren't longdead or soulless you'll have to tell us, because that definitely changes almost everything, but otherwise I'd say that priestly banishment is definitely effective against the basic types of undead. That's what it's meant for after all.

It also has a 5% chance of confusing each undead unit when hit.

The confusion effect only affects undead without mindless and they get an MR roll to resist. So it's really not that great except against certain units, but at least the Death Banishment is comparable to the generic kind in all other respects.

EDIT: As an aside, I think that Fire Banishment is the best Banishment spell since it's useful in all situations, due to setting undead on fire if they take damage from the spell. Air and Astral both have the biggest AoEs but lowered damage and a secondary effect that only targets non-mindless undead with an MR negate effect. Water is good mostly if you have the H2s or H3s to make the most of its secondary effect and larger AoE, which isn't true for all nations. Earth has a secondary earth grip effect but it's MR negates which limits its usefulness quite a bit, especially against higher MR undead which you probably want it to affect. Death is only an upgrade if you're up against non-mindless undead which is a pretty niche case and again suffers from the extra MR resist check. Nature has a reduced AoE and is MR easily negates but does 999 damage and will pretty much kill any kind of undead. If it hits, that is. Blood only gets the generic kind of Banishment, meaning it can never do better than 4th place and is probably even worse than that. At least it does have a banishment spell though, unlike what the Pretender creation screen might lead you to believe.

[etgfrog]

I'm going to guess its regarding the spectral troops from therodos, all have MR 13 and minds, 16 hp on the Hoplite but it has formation fighter, 9 hp on the Peltast and 7 on the archers.

Mainly taking advantage of ethereal troops being able to walk through walls of a fort. Speaking of, why does an army of ethereal troops need to siege a fort anyways, why not just walk inside?

[Cruxador]

To give a single succinct answer, banish spells are good against the kinds of undead you're likely to encounter in large quantities. Though for REALLY large quantities, you'll need a lot of priests. Especially if the enemy is casting horde of skeletons and you need to outpace them.

Mainly taking advantage of ethereal troops being able to walk through walls of a fort. Speaking of, why does an army of ethereal troops need to siege a fort anyways, why not just walk inside?

I don't think there's any lore reason, I think it's purely for reasons of gameplay.

[Frumple]

You could probably make an excuse pretty easily, though. Mutter something about the walls and be done with it. Maybe forts all have an outer layer we don't see encrusted in wards that have to get torn down before ethereal stuff can get in. Want to say most/all of the passwall ethereals even have something in their description that would suggest they have the means to bypass something like that, too.

...

... though, y'know, I suddenly wonder why there isn't a strategic level passwall buff. Something like a hell-travel check to jump directly into the fort battle, maybe even right past the walls. Probably be expensive and/or pretty risky, to balance it out, but... still. Feels like it's a gap in dom's magic.