Illian Cold Penalty WOW!

[mcwill123]

Wow! I was playing the Balseraphs last night. We were at war with the Illians. I noticed that their closest city had MITHRIL. Anyway I sent my elite stack of units, many of which were very highly promoted along with Bambur, 3-4 catapults, 3-4 mages and a Stonewarden. As they were attacking the city, it dawned on me that this was way more difficult than I had expected. But what the hell. I pressed on. The Illians won combat after combat that were 65% - 75% in favor of the Balseraphs. (Probably 5-6 in a row.) Only by sending my mages and the Stonewarden into the fray was my army finally able to prevail. (Funny thing, those guys won every combat that they got sent into.) Finally on the third turn of the assualt, as my army was finally taking the city, I noticed that the mimics were now base strength 4 rather than 7. When they finally entered, the "Unit upgraded to iron weapons" messages came on the screen. I guess those guys must have been freezing out there. Two thirds to three forths of that army was lost. Gotta say it was far from boring though.

 

[Emptiness]

What cold penalty do you mean? (Your post does not seem to match your thread title.)

 

[MagisterCultuum]

Well, Winterborn (the Illian & Doviello racial promotion) does give them a bonus on Snow and Tundra, which aren't great for other defenders. Maybe that is what he means.

 

[aimlessgun]

Well judging from the "promoted to iron weapons" part of the post, they cast Rust on you?

 

[mcwill123]

Maybe it was rust. I saw tons of spell resisted notices, but nothing to say that anything succeeded.

 

[mimic]

Yeah it only says it if it fails.

 

[Emptiness]

Well, Winterborn (the Illian & Doviello racial promotion) does give them a bonus on Snow and Tundra, which aren't great for other defenders. Maybe that is what he means.

Ahh, I understand now. Bonus for the Illians, but penalty for anyone fighting them. Strange way of expressing it.

Maybe it was rust. I saw tons of spell resisted notices, but nothing to say that anything succeeded.

Well, Mimics have base str 5 so if yours were originally str 7 then you had Iron weapons. If they reaquired Iron weapons after entering the captured city then the Iron was obviously rusted off of them. I'm not sure how yours were ending up str 4 though. Perhaps you happened to look at one with the Weak promotion.

Rust has two parts, removal of weapon promotions and application of a penalty promotion (Rusted). Neither part gives a notice when it succeeds. If both parts fail then you get two spell resisted notices. If one part succeeds and one fails then you get one spell resisted notice, which can be confusing because part of the spell has succeeded and your unit has either lost its metal weapon promotion or has aquired the Rusted promotion.

 

[Folket]

I'm certain rust give -1 strengh.

 

[UncleJJ]

The Rusted promotion gives -10% strength to the unit and removes any metals (I checked using WB and I'm running the latest patch). The Rusted promotion can be removed by re-casting the Enchanted Blade spell (even if the unit has the Enchanted Blade promotion) so Bambur could have helped by removing the 10% penaltly. The +2 strength from Iron can only be recovered by entering a city.