Tactics

[loffenx]

Here I thought we would share our tactical tips, or perhaps our observations of odd AI behaviour.

Playing as the svartalfar conquering cities is kinda of a problem for a big part of the game, but I have discovered that given certain conditions the AI will walk out of their big cities to attack your troops. One trick is to send a couple of warriors up close to the city, and keep your main troops 3 tiles away (this requires that you can reach the tiles thoose warriors are at in one turn). The AI will then often, especially early on (don't know what controls this behaviour) attack thoose warriors, which opens his attackers up for a counterattack by your "hidden" troops. Next turn, the city is ripe for plucking.

As I said I don't really know what controls the AIs behaviour here. This does ofcourse not always work, but often enough to be worth a try. In a previous similair topic someone said that the AI has total visibility of all your land, but if it does, it does not use that information very well. It might also be an elven-related thing, perhap the AI does not take into account your troops double movement in forests.

 

[loocas]

The AI will then often, especially early on (don't know what controls this behaviour) attack thoose warriors, which opens his attackers up for a counterattack by your "hidden" troops. Next turn, the city is ripe for plucking.

Clever girl.

That sounds like a good trick. Very appropriate for the Svartalfar. I've never thought to use Taunt on city defenders as the Balseraphs, but maybe I'm just dense. Does that work too?

 

[Emptiness]

Yes, although iirc there is a unresolved bug related to Taunt that sometimes prevents the player from ending their turn.

 

[cabbagemeister]

Tactical tip: when invading a FoL civilization, Treants will never spawn from Ancient Forests if you send a Fireball into the forest tile first.

Tactical tip: Orthus' axe should not be used by your best unit, but rather by your TWO best units. They should trade it back and forth so that both units can always attack with the axe on every turn.

Tactical tip: if you're going to suicide with a lot of summoned creatures, it can be very useful to equip them with an item that gives an attack bonus (the Axe or a Golden Hammer or the Scorched Staff or something). The one item can be used by ALL the summons. This is because when a unit with an item dies, he drops the item and it can be picked up by the next suiciding summoned unit. If one of your summons gets lucky and wins, be sure to delete him so you can keep using the item!

 

[Tasunke]

as it works for summons, it also works for "shock" cavalry ... the meat n potatoes of your army, if not the strongest of units, can work well in unison.

Ok, so my own tactical tidbit ... is that with almost any civilization you can build a good strategy using assasins and Catapults. However, when some civs have a "superunit" in their midst, this can oft be overlooked ... :: cough, firebows, cough, cough ::

Unless your teching and your popping of Great sages is extremely superb, I would advise aligning Golems with Catapults as a winning Strategy.

Catapults and Vampires also works well.

 

[Calavente]

to defend a border town:
pillage the roads the ennemy would use.
when they stop : maelstorm. then rust.

attacking or defending :
always cast rust (adept level spell)
always cast it after maelstrom / fireball / cats / any multi-target damage.
(6-20% of 10 is more than 6-10% of 8.. 8 being the of the unit after rust.)
+ iirc, copper, iron (mithril?) weapon promo are a liability to lighting damage : ie : maelstrom

as a sidenote, for a lvl 1 spell, rust seems overly powerfull : 1-4 damage in stealing the weapon promo + -10% it seems one of the more worthwhile lvl1 spell combatwise for mid-late game, when every body has longbow, axmen, champion, and iron.

 

[Emptiness]

Mithril doesn't give vulnerability to lightning and isn't removed by Rust. And yeah, Rust is a great spell.

 

[[to_xp]Gekko]

I'm pretty sure rust takes away mithril as well, aside from the very latest Fall Further patch.

 

[Emptiness]

Ah, you're correct. Rust also removes mithril weapons.

 

[Calavente]

I was also checking that and testing it with the WB
rust removes mithril .. ouf.. such a wondeful spell... I would hate fighting against an Ai with rust :/

 

[Tasunke]

ah, the wonders of necromancy, the best magic tech XD ....

but I digress, how do you make it so your words stay on a post, just with a line crossed through them?

Edit: test tee hee thank you

 

[Calavente]

it should be the [ s] text [/ s] command, without the spaces
test