Counter to Sheaim Fire Zombies?

[Onionsoilder]

Hmm, not sure if I'm remembering this correctly, but I think I was playing recently as the Elohim on a Monarch Pangaea map. Came up against the Sheaim and huge PZ stacks. I ended up building Devouts, who come with Life I, and then upgrading them right away to whatever Priests line I had (Vicars I think). Instant Life II priests = useless undead stack!

This is a very useful strategy, but that requires Poisons(which costs much, much more than bronze working) and Priesthood.

 

[Tasunke]

The cheapest way to get "Destroy Undead" is Gibbon Goetia through a beeline to Deception.

Basically get your economy techs, defend with Warriors (see other thread ) and get Goetia. Hopefully this will be soon enough to counter PZ aggression. Perhaps take the horseback riding path to trade and deception so that ye can get Mobility I warriors and Withdrawal horsemen in the meantime Pre-Goetia. Once you have Goetia, if you have horsemen, work your way up to HorseArchers. If not, probably use regular Archers or even the lowly warrior (+ some catapults if possible). If you ARE using the lowly warrior, then tech up the melee line to upgrade your sucessful warriors into higher level units, and pray that Gibbon Goetia survives to meet your Destroy Undead needs.

 

[Tlalynet]

You can do it with medicine too, if you go RoK, that would let you win a war with nothing but economic techs.

 

[Freesmog]

I've never had a problem with the Sheaim, and don't add them to my games because many other AI are more powerful. The only time I can recall them ever being a threat I simply kited the fire zombies, but it wasn't anywhere near the size that you faced.

 

[DaveGold]

I've never had a problem with the Sheaim, and don't add them to my games because many other AI are more powerful.

The other AIs are more powerful until a stack of pyre zombies smoke them. The Sheaim can wipe out more technologically advanced civs as the AI will lose a 'stack of doom' against pyre zombies every time. If the Sheaim wipe out another civ and then attack you with highly promoted pyre zombies ... it's bad.

 

[Tasunke]

Maybe Shieam Fire damage should have a 95% damage cap instead. I mean, its still pretty much the same, but slightly less brutal. Eh?

 

[esvath]

I vote for "Keep Pyre Zombie as it is" (if there is a poll about this )

Seriously. Sheaim is unable to build more advanced units. They rely heavily on Planar Gate, which is an expensive building, without any straight effect to culture, science, gold or commerce, and with low-spawn rate until high AC. Thus, Sheaim really, really, really needs a tank to survive early-to-mid game.

If there will be some nerf, I propose to cap the number of units affected by the fire damage. And this nerf also work on Ring of Fire, Maelstrom etc as suggested in another thread. Make it that Pyre Zombie explosion damage only damage (and kill) one unit (the one attacked it/or it attacked), RoF damage only top 4 units, Maelstrom top 4, Pillar of Fire top 8 and so on, and so on. Unfortunately, I don't know how to modmod this and whether this feasible or not

 

[JonathanStrange]

I often have my Druids cast Entanglement on the Pyre Zombie stacks stopping them in their tracks. With enough marshmallows, we could hold 'em there 'til Kael returns from the Great Unknown.

 

[esvath]

Blinding Light (Sun II) also work on them, right?

 

[Tasunke]

sure, keep Pyre Zombies the way they are ... that doesn't make human players that rely on them in Multiplayer any less annoying though


although fighting off such a player was quite ... hmm ... entertaining

I had double his Production rate however, with warrens ... and eventually Mines of Galdur. Although I lost many cities.... they were all border-cities I kept rebuilding. He usually destroyed this one city everytime it grew up to about size 10 IIRC ... but strayed not much beyond that. Thousands of Troops died on both sides (thousands being figurative ... it was more like several stacks each ... and eventuallly all 50 or so of his PZs lay dead)

 

[Zobo]

I dislike fire zombies.

Mostly not only because they are so strong, but because once you get 4 life 2 mages Sheaim just.. disappear.

Their stacks become thin air. They usually have pyre zombie heavy stack, which means once you take those out it's a simple mop-up.

But till those you are really screwed. It's too all or nothing.

 

[Azhral]

My latest Sheiam game (playing with Tasunke) I haven't used PZ's at all. Beelined the Arcane Techs and used the Infernal Grimoire to get EoDs. They were carving up until a SoD full of Angels crushed them. Now I only have 1 Liche left and am struggling to rebuild, thanks to the Sheiam having no social/economic skills what-so-ever. PZ's might be my answer to the 'How do I continue killing the world?' question.

 

[Angel-Julia]

I just took down a stack of 20+ zombies in my Mercuriam game. I promoted all my angels with mobility, and had haste, giving 3 moves(i really only needed 2, but more is always better; mobility+haste+march+C3+CR3 commando angels just kill sooooo fast!!). then stand 2-squares away from their city full of zombies, fireball to start with(cos i could), then one at a time move in, kill one, and retreat again. that meant only one was hit by the explosion at a time, keeping my stack nice and safe at a distance.

I should play a Shaem again soon, though PZ's dont really fit my playing style, i normally play for zero casualties (no wasted hammers), and just creaming all with a handfull of elietes that just become even more rediculously eliete over time.

 

[Emptiness]

Angels are not affected by the Haste spell, because they are not living units. With Mobility and Commando you probably never noticed that Haste wasn't increasing their movement points.

 

[Angel-Julia]

yeah, just noticed that while playing this afternoon. no big loss, as angels are so damb fast anyway. The haste at least lets my mobility1+commando mages keep up with my repentant angels (stack movement speed 6 in ennemy land, means a city per turn).

it's kind of unfortunate that the flying angels cant make use of the roads. they were too slow to keep up with my super-speed comando+mobility repentant angels, so had to be split into another seperate stack.

anyway, all PZ have exploded without scratching my stack, and now Sheam is paying me all their manna to let them keep their last city.

 

[the_fish]

Pyre Zombies are terrifyingly effective, and don't appear to fit the Sheaim lorewise (they're suited to a early game rush strategy, instead of the late game armageddon strategy). I don't think it would hurt to nerf them here and boost them later.

I was thinking some kind of (expensive) "Great Wall" type wonder (barbs cant enter borders on continent), which would give them immunity from a lot of the later AC events. Maybe that's overpowered - I've yet to play a Sheaim game this late to see if it's necessary.

(I've recently started playing again since around when BtS came out, so a lot of things are new to me)

 

[DaveGold]

Pyre Zombies are terrifyingly effective, and don't appear to fit the Sheaim lorewise (they're suited to a early game rush strategy, instead of the late game armageddon strategy). I don't think it would hurt to nerf them here and boost them later.

Perhaps their splash damage could be linked to some sort of fire affinity. This would probably be weak in the early game but strong strong after elementalism is researched, an appropriate time for a boost.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

that's a very nice idea indeed.

 

[Angel-Julia]

Time to stack 10+ fire manna! BOOM!!

 

[readercolin]

ahh - but now you have a choice - do you stack fire, for bigger pyre's, or do you stack death, for stronger specters?

-Colin