[Eitb spoilers] Miguelito's fortune hangs on a thread

[Ginger*]

What exactly does death->entropy and spirit-> law do? Enables spells for our mates I guess but what do those spells do?

[xist10]

All four are a mana typ.
I don't know the spell so, but you could search it in the ingamewiki - law1/spirit1/etc. as promotion should link the spell.
And a few mana types have addional effects, which are added per manasource. So 2x lifemana gives +2 health, not +1 health.

[Quagma Blast]

What exactly does death->entropy and spirit-> law do? Enables spells for our mates I guess but what do those spells do?

All four are different mana types, with that division into pairs that come at the same tech.

Death allows you to summon Skeletons at adept level (3 strength 1 move permanent summons) and Shades at Mage level (5 strength, 2 move temporary summons). Entropy allows Rust (debuff nearby melee units), then Summon Pit Fiend (5 strength, 1 move temporary summon, duration extended if it wins a fight)

Spirit allows Courage (all units here get permanent +10% healing rate and immunity to some negative effects) then a city-buff that gives +4 culture and some GPP related effects as long as the mage stays in the city. Law enables Loyalty (immunity to some different negative effects than Courage) and then Summon Einherjar (basically the same thing as Entropy's Pit Fiend)

Spirit -> Law and Death -> Entropy are because at Mage level there is a spell that lets you switch the type of a mana node, summons are basically "how arcane units get direct combat utility", and the Shade has some of its strength in "Death damage" which is ineffective against the golems that Aurorarcher can build.

[DaveV]

Here's a table from the FfH manual that I find very helpful for keeping track of all the spells:



Most of Quagma Blast's explanation is spot on, except for the Death summons. Skeletons are strength 2 + 1 Death; Spectres are strength 3 with Death affinity (+1 Death strength for every Death mana in your empire). This means you can turn Spectres into a very powerful unit if you stack up death mana (which runs counter to the usual Amurite best strategy of maximizing mana types, although there are a couple buildings that produce death mana). Also, several types of units are resistant (Angel +50%) or immune (Elemental, Golem, Illusion, Undead) to death damage.

[Miguelito]

So Dave, which route do we go? If Law II summons are as good as Pit Beasts I'm leaning Divination, because of the marginal benefit with Spirit.
If we get serious conflict with coldrain during the next few turns it's Necro probably?

[DaveV]

It's a tough call.

Einherjars are strength 5 against most units, and as angels, extra strong against both undead (skeletons, spectres) and demons (pit beasts), and +20% resistant to fire. Popping borders for free would also be a nice side benefit. And don't underestimate the utility of Blinding Light, which freezes units in place for a turn. Inspiration would let you pump up your research and gain an extra sage GPP.

On the other hand, I think Necromancy is better from a purely military standpoint. Since skeletons are permanent, you can effectively have two summons per mage; Rust is a very nice debuff (capable of removing Bronze weapons, so potentially -1 to strength on top of -10% strength). Dance of Blades gives an extra first strike which could make the difference in a close battle, and Blur lets you nullify first strikes from the other side. It would be nice to have the option of either Pit Beasts (strength 5 against everything but undead (4.5 vs them), but only speed 1) or Spectres (3 damage against everything, plus potential death affinity, speed 2). Spectres are great at pillaging, since you can just delete them if they're left exposed.

You were talking earlier about burning away forests; you don't need mages for that, the level 1 Fire spell will eventually clear forests and jungles. But watch out for the mistform event, which spawns three invisible mistform units on a tile with smoke. Even if that happens, you have a big advantage because floating eyes can see mistforms.

[Ginger*]

I assume Blinding Light cannot affect the same units turn after turn because that would be ridiculous. But still freezing a stack of units every other turn sounds incredible for a defender

If we do get our preferred border with coldrain, then we just want to defend on that front and potentially look to exploit Auroracher. Maybe I’m wrong on that call of which player is friend and which is food—how well do these three civs scale? Lurchuirp and Elves scale pretty well iirc, so that probably leaves us as the midgame beatdown with faster mages.
Focus on who we befriend and who we try to pressure
Final thing I’d ask is how bad do we value border pops?

[RefSteel]

Thanks for the reports; it looks like a really interesting situation! I just wanted to add a couple of mechanics notes:

In fact I want to use Haste to speed up the settler a bit...

If you meant to speed up e.g. defenders to accompany the Settler, sure, but Haste doesn't work directly on Settlers, Workers, or Slaves (nor non-living units).

I assume Blinding Light cannot affect the same units turn after turn because that would be ridiculous.

True. The spell wears off at the start of the unit owner's turn, and doesn't work on anyone that's already in the throes of its effects, so affected units always get one turn to act before it can be cast on them again. ... Unless of course they die first.

[Miguelito]

on the settler, thanks Ref. Will see if Sybill can support a Polar Bear hunting party instead.

I will continue to post vague and partly wrong musings, this is driving lurker participation nicely



Lovely, as the city was pretty starved. It fell on the tile W of the sheep, so the worker's going there to cottage. I want to do so much stuff in this city - Cave of Ancestors, Adepts, Desruptus - but what really needs to be done is settlers, one by one.

[Miguelito]

Sybill promoted to C1 and valiantly took a (high odds) fight against a goblin - she's almost wizard ready now!



The southeast. No new culture spotted. If Auror gets all of this it's probably game over, so we need to figure out how to cut out a slice. I feel a little bit like lighting it all on fire - we'll have BW, but that's a lot of worker labour. But from what I remember, fire is also slow, and also what you said about mistforms
Most difficult part of course is figuring out where to get the settlers.

I tried to read score, but all of Q, Auror, and colrain had major increases, so no idea where religions went. Expected would be Leaves with coldrain and OO with Q then?

Ginger, I don't think we can epect Auror to be a reasonable target for us. He has much better stats already, and I don't see how that will get better anytime soon. Also we're far from having a border with him yet. So probably we need to attack coldrain and hope that as a new player he'll make mistakes defending, even though his buildup has been convincing so far.