Strength 209 Repentent Angel

OK, so this is both a strategy question and a question about the mechanics of FFH. Bear in mind I'm new here and this is my first game of FFH...

So I'm doing quite well, controlling my side of the world and get into a scuffle with the Mercurians. After some faffing, I see a Repentent Angel with strength 209. No, not a typo. 209. See it here: http://www.maths.bris.ac.uk/~madjl/RepentantAngel.jpg

My question: what on earth can I do about it?

I tried zapping it with Chalids Pillar of Flame, and it didn't damage it. At strength 150 I attacked it with some tough first strike units and got slaughtered. I lost all my experienced units getting out of this fight, and both I and they have an essentially complete tech tree.

As far as I see it, there are three options: hit it with a LOT of magic (the sun 2 ability of Ratha should freeze it) but I expect it will resist a lot (can it get 100% resistence?). Or I could try and train a lot of first strike units to high levels and hope I can get more than it (how many can it have??). Finally, I can make a lot of weak units (summoners?) and just bog it down for long enough to win by tower of mastery.

Anyone got any ideas? Thanks in advance!

Dan



PS Ever seen anything like this before? Should it be considered a bug?

PPS I'm pretty sure it got this tough from attacking the elves - they tried the "loads of summoned panthers" technique, and survived quite well that way, losing only a few cities in 100 or so turns. So it must be a viable strategy...

This looks to be a bug to me... I would post this in both the bug thread and the Funny screen shots thread

That is not natural

Repentant angels will normally get weaker with time. I suspect there is a problem with the function that lowers the strength of units. It has been bouncing up and down for a while now but I had thought it was something I did.

You should definatly get a savegame and report it in the bug thread.

Actually, that unit is a 216 strength repentant angel.


I'm thinking that pCaster.baseCombatStr() might actually return the total strength of the unit, while pCaster.setBaseCombatStr() sets only the base, non-typed strength.

That would mean explain why pCaster.setBaseCombatStr(pCaster.baseCombatStr() - 3) actually increased an Ira's base strength by 1 when it looks like it should reduce it by 3, because the unit's 4 unholy strength is being counted in the pCaster.baseCombatStr() - 3 part but not the pCaster.setBaseCombatStr() part.

The same way pCaster.setBaseCombatStr(pCaster.baseCombatStr() - 5) should reduce a Repentant Angel's strength by 1 instead of 5 because the unit's 4 holy strength counts as part of the .baseCombatStr() but not .setBaseCombatStr(). This should work perfectly fine, so long as the unit cannot gain any more strength with a damage type. This unit has the Netherblade, Orthus's Axe, and the Staff of Souls, which means that with every combat its base strength is increased by ((2+1+4) - 5), or +2.

So its a perfectly valid (though arguably broken) game mechanic? Interesting...! Perhaps there should only be one artefact allowed per unit to prevent things like this getting out of hand? (Or some sort of diminishing returns on how much strength is gained...)

If its true that its not (strictly speaking) a bug, I'd be interested to know what to do about it Can I figure out how magic resistent it is? Can I conceive of damaging it with enough first strikes and high retreat probability? Any other ideas?

And how can we try to get ourselves one of these monsters!?

actually what MC was saying is that it is a bug =)

lol, thats hilarious. is there a particular reason the code dosnt have a provision for the base stat? This seems like one of those fixes that always gets into Vehem's fancy dll.

A Repentant Angel should not be gaining power from killing living units, no matter how much equipment it has. MagisterCultuum isn't saying that it isn't a bug, he's explaining how the bug is doing what it is doing (as Avahz Darkwood said while I was typing this).

I would just abandon the game myself, but if you want to continue then I'd recommend going into worldbuilder and giving that angel the Held promotion, which would prevent it from moving. Then you can just ignore it (it owns whatever square it is in, which is fine as long as you don't need that square to win). A non-worldbuilder option would be to just win a non-combat type of victory (cultural, tower of mastery, et c.).

If you really want to defeat that unit in combat then I'd recommend going into worldbuilder and removing the equipment it is carrying (by turning off the corresponding promotions) and the suicide 216 (or whatever) warriors into it. Without the bug increasing instead of decreasing its strength it will eventually die (or become killable) as a penalty of killing living units.

If you (are crazy) and really want to defeat the unit as is, then you'd need a lot of mounted units with maxed withdrawal chance and maxed first strikes. When I say "a lot" I mean a couple thousand. You could cut that number down quite a bit if you draw the angel out of the city and soften it up with Maelstrom or other AoE spells. Just be aware that it is immune to holy damage, so don't bother using that. The important thing is that you'd need to kill it all in one turn, because if you give it a chance to recover health for even one turn that's hundreds more units you'd need to do the job. Once you finally take it down, celebrate by seeking professional help...

By the way, what FfH2 patch version are you running?

I think a sizable group of Auric Ascendeds all casting Snowfall(_greater) and then attacking would be one good way of defeating it.

MagisterCultuum said:

I think a sizable group of Auric Ascendeds all casting Snowfall(_greater) and then attacking would be one good way of defeating it.

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isnt aurics snowfall one of the two lethal direct damage spells?

cIV_khanh93 said:

lol, thats hilarious. is there a particular reason the code dosnt have a provision for the base stat? This seems like one of those fixes that always gets into Vehem's fancy dll.

Click to expand...

Actually just today I happened to read through the Bug Thread (remarkably few new posts) for FfH base and came across this one. Sounded like a serious issue and I almost set aside my projects and studying to squash it, but it turns out that a fix has existed in Fall Further's DLL for quite a while now (since 050 released), it just needs to be used in this particular case (and a few others, like the mentioned Ira units). So hopefully I can comb the python there sometime and change things around (the fix being to use a new function we made for changeStrBoost(int), which doesn't directly modify the base strength, but rather directly modifies a modifier applied to it, so no need to know what the unit's current base strength is like with the setBaseCombatStrength function)

I only mention it in case anyone who uses our codebase wants to fix the issue for themselves before any of the team can get around to it.

Thanks to all for clearing this up! I shan't be taking him out, but it would make a good challenge


PS I have to say that just a little part of me is disappointed... wouldn't it be fun to have units like this running around? I see him as some sort of god... You could imagine making some units ("gods") whose power increased say with the number of cities with a specific religion. Then to defeat them you'd have to use inquisitors or respond with a god of your own Perhaps a new victory, armageddon, where you have to defeat all the other gods?

if you have thousands of horsemen, just lure the angel out of the city, then take all of Basium's cities in one turn. The angel, not willing to bend the knee to Flauros, will fly back to Arawn's lair.

Try and make peace with them, found concil of esus, create some beastmasters and steal all the items, then use some summons to slowly wear him down.

Why don't I run into stuff like this? I've the usual Hippus, Balseraph, Hyborem, etc. but I've never fought an Angel of that strength. Time to get out the "good" arrows!!

I would go into world builder and remove it since its obviously a bug.

I would give myself a dragon with blitz and a modified strength of 365. then all u have to do is take out the empire, and not even have to worry about the angel posing a threat.

However, if you wanted to be "fair", create a unit called Knife of Agares and give it a +2000000% vs angels

and then send it back to its master once the heathen is dealt with (disband). Of course if your "good" you may just have to suffer for your petty morals

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't there a spell called 'domination'?
This angel shouldn't be immune, i guess.

Frostdrake said:

Correct me if I am wrong, but wasn't there a spell called 'domination'?
This angel shouldn't be immune, i guess.

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Angels aren't alive, and so are indeed immune to domination (as well as to the "Command" promotion). I think there is no way to get control of that angel, much as it would be cool to do so.

You should post the save game with that unit in it. I'm sure some insane people on this forums would love to take a crack at him