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Remote attacks are rituals that directly and negatively affect remote provinces. These can be divided into a few categories: army killers, assassinations, province attacks and province killers. Although remote attacks are usually expensive for the effect, they provide a safe way to harass opponents that does not involve direct military action. Since rituals occur in the magic phase, remote attacks have the potential to snipe commanders and prevent any units under their command from moving that turn. Remote attacks are countered by domes.
Who do army killers hit when targeting a province where an enemy army is sieging a fort owned by another enemy?
Army killers target enemy units and commanders in a province. Despite the name, not all army killers deal direct damage; some merely apply status effects that may kill enemy units indirectly.
Alteration | ||
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Baleful Star | Alteration 5 | 3 • 7 |
Curses some of the enemy army. Curse is debilitating for thugs but mediocre against casters (who are unlikely to survive direct combat anyway) and troops (on which individual injuries are generally less significant). Since Curse adds a flat 15% risk of affliction on damage, combos well with Bloodletting and Earthquake. Doom is a combat spell which curses 100% of the enemy army, making it a more efficient spell for this kind of effect. | ||
Evocation | ||
Fires from Afar | Evocation 3 | 3 • 10 |
Deals 15 AP fire damage to a small proportion of the enemy army. Relatively weak and entirely useless against units with decent armor or giant hp. Shots are only guaranteed to hit against very large armies, but can also be used against a single unit to almost guarantee 1 hit as part of a snipe. | ||
Murdering Winter | Evocation 7 | 5 • 40 |
Deals 8 AN cold damage to 75% of the units in a province. Deals +2 damage per cold scale and -2 per heat scale. Fails if cast into a province with 3. Commanders take 3 less damage. Wolven Winter can be used to force cold scales. Devastating to human-hp nations in cold scales. | ||
Flames from the Sky | Evocation 9 | 5 • 30 |
Deals 15 AP fire damage to 75% of the units in a province. Damage is independent of heat scales. The bane of human-hp nations in the late game. | ||
Thaumaturgy | ||
Melancholia | Thaumaturgy 6 | 5 • 20 |
All units make an MR check vs. 10 and a morale check vs. 10. If they fail both, they desert. Does include commanders. Rarely effective against elite units, but ~20% of average human infantry will desert. Potentially devastating against monkeys, slaves (including slave mages), or starving armies. : do MPen boosters apply? |
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Leprosy | Thaumaturgy 6 | 5 • 10 |
50% of the units in the targeted province make an MR check or get diseased. All but guarantees killing half the army, but is very slow-acting. Sine disease disables healing, this pairs well with other remote attacks or low-damage battlefield threats like Earthquake. : do MPen boosters apply? |
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Beckoning | Thaumaturgy 6 | 5 • 20 |
50 + (5 × additional caster level) units make a difficult MR check and a difficult morale check. If they fail both, they desert. Units with forest survival ignore the spell. |
Remote assassinations target a random commander in the enemy province with an assassination or direct attack. The global Vengeful Water causes massed assassinations, though these occur in the event phase after ordinary movement and battles rather than in the preceding magic phase. Spells that cause assassinations can pull in bodyguards.
When cast by third parties, Mind Hunt and Seeking Arrow are confirmed to target randomly among both sieging/sieged commanders.
Conjuration | ||
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Winged Monkeys | Conjuration 5 | 32 • 10 |
Expensive and awkward to cast, and killing non-mages is rarely worth 10 gems. However, the predictable targeting can be used to eliminate generals and Mound Kings so that mages move without their armies. what is "too heavy"? Are priests counted as mages? What happens to picked up commanders, do they fight PD/patrollers on arrival? Does this use Wind Ride mechanics, and can it target friendlies? |
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Earth Attack | Conjuration 8 | 5 • 5 |
Sends a size 6 Earth Elemental to assassinate. Does not affect floating commanders. | ||
Manifestation | Conjuration 8 | 5 • 4 |
Assassinates an enemy commander with an Ashen Angel. If no commander is found, the caster suffers the assassination. The Angels are tough to kill and exceptionally deadly, bypassing Water Bottles via flight and dealing 30 damage with a magic sword at high Atk. Relatively common since Well of Misery draws high-death nations to Conj 8 and funds the attacks. | ||
Evocation | ||
Mind Hunt | Evocation 6 | 4 • 2 |
Attacks a random commander with Mind Hunt or Soul Slay, depending on which has been researched. Every enemy astral mage in the target province has a (40 × astral level)% chance of feebleminding the Mind Hunt caster, even if stealthed. Can catch stealthed commanders, is relatively cheap and instantly kills its target, provided they fail the MR check and Soul Slay has been researched. The ability to bypass stealth is valuable against stealthy raiders, but also means scouts of any nation can intercept hunts. | ||
Enchantment | ||
Seeking Arrow | Enchantment 3 | 3 • 4 |
Deals 8 AN negating damage to the chest of a random commander. Can be negated by air shield, twist fate, and some other conditions. Dangerous against human hp or lower, much less deadly against giants. | ||
Thaumaturgy | ||
Vengeance of the Dead | Thaumaturgy 4 | 31 • 3 |
The commander in the target province with the most kills is drawn into an assassination battle in which they fight one Soulless for each kill. Can be negated by Magic Resistance. Mostly kills via the turn timer due to sheer number of Soulless. | ||
Blood | ||
Infernal Disease | Blood 6 | 5 • 5 |
Assassinates with a Disease Demon. Relatively tough to cast, but highly valued for being cheap and low-level. Unreliable against thugs and ineffective against SCs, though any damage inflicted will cause disease. Otherwise tough to stop with bodyguards or items due to flight. |
National Only | |||
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Send Tupilak | Enchantment 5 | 31 • 5 | LA Atlantis only. |
Sends a flying, scary Tupilak to assassinate. | |||
Dreams of R'lyeh | Thaumaturgy 6 | 4 • 4 | LA R'lyeh only. |
Pulls the caster and target into an assassination duel with no bodyguards. Units without Void Sanity take massive attribute penalties, including halved MR, usually permitting a kill. |
Some ritual summons can be targeted at a remote province; if the target province belongs to an enemy (or the remote summon is neutral rather than friendly), the summons will attack the province. With a few exceptions, most remote summons are too weak and/or expensive to be practical for province attacks; using magic phase-capable thugs is often a more efficient option.
Province killers change the properties of the target province to damage its economy, often by causing unrest or sometimes by killing its population directly. For unrest-increasing province killers, the critical threshold at which recruitment is blocked is 100 unrest. Rather than occurring in the magic phase like the previous kinds of remote attacks, most province killers generate events and thus occur in the event phase after ordinary movement, battles (and most rituals!) are resolved. They are usually reported as random events, but the aggressor can often be guessed based on the path requirements.
Notable Spells | ||
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Rituals | Personal Enchantments | Divine Name/Gift of Reason • Transformation • Twiceborn • Cure Disease |
Strategic | Domes • Globals • Magic Phase Movement • Remote Attacks | |
Summons | Cross Breeding • Elemental Royalty • Hidden Underneath/in Snow/in Sand • Infernal Breeding • Reanimation • Release Lord of Civilization • Ritual of Rebirth • Tartarian Gate | |
Other | Wish | |
Combat Magic | Battlefield Enchantments | |
Buffs | Hell Power • Life after Death • Mossbody • Pain Transfer • Phoenix Pyre • Returning • Soul Vortex • Strength of Giants • Time Stop | |
Debuffs | Armor of Achilles • Earth Grip • False Fetters | |
Direct Damage | Divine Magic • Magic Duel • Soul Slay | |
Summons | Reanimation | |
Other | Communions • Enslave Mind |