[SPOILERS]Ill Met by Moonlight-The Unseelie Court of the Svartalfar

[Selrahc]

4. [SIZE="4"]The Malakim[/SIZE]

Malakim are powerful researchers, and the Rainforest script often starts players in Floodplains. They could be runaway tech leaders quite easily. They should be fairly fragile though... Hope the Balz or Grigori decide to hurt them and not me.

Later on in the game, they can create insta mages with potent and mobility by building experienced lightbringers or savants. I hope somebody denies them the form of the titan.. but it probably won't be me.

The Malakim are the best spiritual dilettantes in the game, and going up the divine tech lines to get access to numerous priests and religious units is a strong possibility if they don't play for the mage gameplan.

Their back up forces are likely to be camel archers. Another resourceless horse archer replacement.

I think Nyxkin are the best units to fight the Malakim. Assassins aren't great against Priests, and the strength advantage of rangers won't be quite as important as the mobility advantage of Nyxkin.

[WarriorKnight]

Secondly, fireball spam will not work on an army of summonned illusions. Each illusion will be fully healed after successful battle, so the fireballs won't be gradually chipping away at a wall in preparation for a golem attack. They'll be slamming into illusions for no good effect.

Illusions only fully heal after defeating a living unit. Since Fireballs are non-living, Illusions won't have any specific advantage against fireballs.

Thirdly, in a weakness specific to this game, Golems can't handle their slow. Slow affects non living units like golems, utterly halting them. With no possibility of haste it means that my starting adept can be an invaluable asset against them right up until the end game.

Nope, since golems (except Barnaxus) don't have a unit class, they can't be promoted to slow, so that trick doesn't work either.

[Selrahc]

So, a note. The concept for this game came out of a conversation I was having with Bobchillingworth. Before we decided to just pitch it as a PBEM, we were discussing good starting adept spells and what civs would benefit from them, and it kind of got merged in with another conversation about burning down jungles.

With the stuff we discussed in that, I'm fairly sure that his spell picks are Enchantment, Meta and Death, with an outside possibility that he swapped around Death and Slow. He knows what mana I chose as the Svartalfar from that conversation, although he may suspect that I've changed them around.

The purpose behind that will be to have good early scouting from the metamagic floating eye, and early defence from enchantment and death. The adept can then provide valuable support for an early golem assault. It's a solid plan, and I don't think he'll have changed it.


What will the other civs have picked?

Metamagic is a strong spell for everybody, floating eye is a fantastic early spell that defrays the need for hawks. Once sorcerors are in play it will also pay off by having a ready made dispeller. I'm going to beeline hunting. Anybody else would be well advised to pick meta.

Water could be the choice of the Malakim. Rainforests tend to throw in several desert/floodplain areas which the Malakim would naturally want control over. Being able to spring any desert hills or oases from the start could be a powerful boon for them. Other civs won't be focussing on deserts quite so much, so probably won't pick water.

Mind is my choice for the philosophical Grigori. It's kind of a win-win for them. Either they speed up their adventurer production, or they get a *really* early academy. Either one has its advantages, although I'd be more scared of the adventurer.

Body is a good choice for everybody but the Luchuirp. Although probably the most useful to the Grigori or the Balz to speed up a rush attempt.

Entropy similarly works as a good spell for a rusher. I'm doubtful anyone would really want to use one of their starting spells on it though, given that none of the civs looks to be dedicated rush civs. If Tasunke, the Doviello or especially the Sheaim had been picked I'd expect it.

Death is a good defensive spell, and a decent offensive spell. It would be a decent pick for any of these civs, and I might somewhat expect it for the Malakim who might fear an early rush, or the Balz who can double up on skeletons.

Ice is a great spell choice for anybody who fears attack by one movers. Not just the other players, but the barbarians as well. Despite that, I'm not sure any of the other civs will have picked it.

Fire is only of much use for the elves. Everyone else would enjoy having extra forest, but not really get all that much use out of it. I'll be fairly suprised if other players pick fire as their spell of choice. But hey, it probably helps me. I want that map ablaze as soon as possible.

Enchantment is a kind of solid but uninspired choice for any of the civs. The Balz might pick it to help out hordes of freaks and the skeleton armies.

I don't think any of the other spell spheres really offer enough to a starting adept to be worth selection.


EDIT:
Other mana colours
Shadow, Air, Earth, Sun, Chaos, Spirit, Nature, Life, [COLOR="Magenta"]Law
[/COLOR]

[Selrahc]

Illusions only fully heal after defeating a living unit. Since Fireballs are non-living, Illusions won't have any specific advantage against fireballs.



Nope, since golems (except Barnaxus) don't have a unit class, they can't be promoted to slow, so that trick doesn't work either.

Thanks for the information. I guess the Svarts aren't nearly as good at fighting the golems as I was thinking. Illusionists in particular are now sounding fairly useless in fighting the golem hordes.

[darrelljs]

Checking in and very nice intro .

I missed a lot, I thought Keelyn was banned?

Darrell

[Selrahc]

Good to have you aboard.

Kuro is playing Perpentach, which is quite a different proposition to Keelyn.

[Selrahc]

Question:
Blinding Light can't be chained, the unit gets at least one turn of movement before it can be blinded again. Is Charm Person under similar restrictions? It's worse than Blinding Light in pretty much every other respect, but since I've got mind as a palace mana I might still be using it. If it can *keep* units locked from attacking it might be a bit more useful.

[darrelljs]

What, Blinding Light can't be chained? Man I never knew that .

Darrell

[Selrahc]

Looks like I'll have to take this case to the crime lab..



By which I mean test game.

What, Blinding Light can't be chained? Man I never knew that

Here is my understanding on Blinding Light. It lasts 2 turns, but the counter decreases at the end of your turn and can't be "topped off" by casting the spell again. So in a PBEM format, the unit will be unable to move once, and can move again on its second turn. In a simultaneous turns format, the unit will be unable to move twice and will be vulnerable to chained casts. Blinding light is a brokenly good spell in simultaneous turns multiplayer, while just being a good one in PBEM format.

And from the testing, a similar thing seems to be true of Charm Person. Units that had the charmed promotion when I pressed end turn were able to attack.

What the testing did give me though was a new respect for charm person. It has a 20% chance of wearing off each turn... but that can leave units unable to attack for very long stretches. In my testing I had a barbarian warrior sitting charmed for 15 turns before the effect wore off. I still think Charm Person is a worse spell than Blinding Light.. but maybe it's not as much worse as I'd thought.

EDIT: I'm going to do another quick test of something...
REEDIT: Druid immobility won't stack or override blinding light immobility, so you can't set up a chain between druids and sun mages/rathas either.

[darrelljs]

Does Entangle suffer the same problem?

Darrell