More Elohim Strategies (Corlindale)

[Arcite36575]

For .33, I decided to try out Elohim for the first time ever. I generally am a wargamer so the Elohim had never appealed to me before, but the tolerant trait really intrigued me.

Anyways, one thing I noted was that Corlindale was a basically useless archmage since he had 0 strength. That meant he was essentally impossible to defend from assassians, and since he couldn't engage in combat, you couldn't get him more experience. Therefore, for much of the game, I just used him to cast "trust," as well as "inspiration" and "hope" in my capital city.

I found a MUCH better use for him by accident. I managed to capture the Soul Forge and used the death mana to turn him into a lich. That boosted his base strength up to 7 which made him much more useful on the front lines, as well as gain experience past 100.

Second, since I turned Corlindale into a lich, my hero was now considered "dead." This allowed me to build Shrine of the Champion, even though I still had my hero, albeit undead.

Third, and this is a MAJOR exploit, since my hero is considered "dead" I could teach my Corlindale lich the life 3 spell. Which meant that I could "resurrect" my old hero allowing myself two archmages. If course, you can then repeat this process by giving your "reborn" Corlindale the death 3 spell and repeating the process until you have cloned 4 liches and a living Corlindale hero.

I was wondering if anyone has noticed this.

 

[Arcite36575]

I would assume that this would work for the Amurites as well with their hero too.

 

[Monkeyfinger]

Man, the Elohim really have a thing for unthematic strategies. I still remember the days of archmages having a variety of stack destroying spells, and going OO and having Hemah and Corlindale just rape everyone.

Is it still possible to have the resurrected Corlindale repeatedly cast Peace and get revived, or was that patched out?

 

[Arcite36575]

Is it still possible to have the resurrected Corlindale repeatedly cast Peace and get revived, or was that patched out?

I hadn't thought about that possible exploit too, but I'll dig out one of my saves and try it out over the weekend. It'll take some time, because my laptop takes quite some time between turns.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

wow, that sounds really really exploity, you should post it in the bugs thread

 

[fuzzy_bunnies]

OUCH... yea, thats hella exploity heh...

BTW one GIGANTIC thing that was missed... Corlindale starts with Mind and Channeling 3 so you can get him Dominate pretty easily without actually needing a mind mana node.

I admit, I do reload if I fail a dominate but I'm trying to wean myself off of it. Even without Dominate, having a free charm is pretty sweet to keep in a stack. With his extra moves and charm, you can use him as a home defender to hold off stacks of attackers until your army can deal with them.

 

[brucedecatz]

Well, it is not entirely impossible for Corlindale to attack. Bless (from confessor), stone skin, plus Orthus's axe, he can finish off an catapult heavily damaged by spells and collateral damages (I am thinking of going Order first, then switch to Empyrean).

But really, why the trouble? Dominate is incredible. And Charm works great too. Currently the AIs have no idea how to use magic, so spells like blind and charm and entangle simply kills.

 

[Blackmantle]

Nah, the thing with corlindale + peace + resurrection has been thought on already in the forums and by the team. So at least no entry in the bug-thread necessary. If anything a thread in its own right in the main forums or thread necromancy on the old thread on life 3 / body 3 / dragon exploit might be appropriate.


Thats the reason why resurection (and peace?) have a delay now among other thigs. I doubt peace can't be cast more than once now. Might be wrong though.


So feel free to use it. And have fun with it. (The lich thing really sounds odd not just (but rather strongly) for him but for Amuirites and others with arcane Heroes (if in a modmod or else) as well which have way better options for getting 4 heroic liches though thanks to beeing able to turn things like Chalid and the likes into heroes + grabbing a lot of free spheres via teaching and changing Manas. The liches though can't cast peace or teach other units spells since they are no longer Ganovan / Corlindale type units.)

Together with Tolerant it makes the elhoim a very decent civ now. Still not the pinacle but definately nice to play. Especially vs. AI. And the repidiate peace / reducing the counter thing is not unflavorful for the Elhoim. At all. (Also remember that usually Life is, by far, not the best of all spheres exept for Tier 3 (which justifies a rather solid Tier 3 Spell, doesn't it?) and very civ-dependent. The synergy of Life 3 (which the Elhoim also have really easy and early acess to without caring for the arcane path even remotely thanks to devouts) and Elhoim very much sounds coherent and part of the overall balance of the civ. So one could argue it is indeed balanced on a macro scale even though the individual thing looks like an exploit. (I very much can understand a different view though. Its just not the only one possible. )

One thing though: I belive Corlindale / Ganovan get the pass on free Spheres if you got enough Mana and ressurect them as opposed to building them (unlike the starting promotions for Corlindale which he should get on resurrection still.). For Corlindale thats not a big deal though unlike for Ganovan.

I don't know if thats Tactics is any real issue in multiplayer (because of the overall rather low power of the civ in the usuall settings some favor for multiplayer.).
In Singleplayer its an AI-Problem which should be fixable in the long run. (Don't let the peace-thing lock you in all to long... Also using Spells to brake the peace untimely is possible if available and should be teachable to the AI in Wars involving the Elhoim.)


So if there is any issue here for me its the thing with liches (don't those things keep the soul of the user of Lichdom? Or is the background different for erebusian liches?). But thats a thing which only works for civs with arcane tier 3-heroes. So this could also be seen as a (if quite unthematic) civ-perk / part of civ-macrobalance.