How do you stop a Body Ethereal rush?

[Hajduk]

I'm playing a MP game where the LA Pythium opponent is rushing me with Body Ethereal point buffs cast on Comitenses (spelling?). Dom 6 moved this up to Alt 3 and I believe he may have an awake researcher god because it's not even turn 10. Those legion troops are already good and with ethereal they absolutely crushed my scales troops in one battle we had. I'm playing Patala, and I don't have any innate magic weapons on my roster besides the hypnotize on the Nagas but that doesn't kill anything. I also don't have it on my bless, but it's a moot point because my god is dormant and it wouldn't show up yet. I can get Thaumaturgy 2 next turn for mind burn but he can get way more troops than I can get Gurus to cast a spell that maybe kills one guy a round.

My question is also more generally not just this game, since most nations don't have magic weapons on their troops and it got moved to Incarnate bless.

[anaris]

Host of Ganas (conj 2) will get u lots of magic weapons, and ethereal troops for a lot cheaper than a point of comitatenses with a theurg to buff them (comitatenses do not have magic weapons lol). And speaking of those theurges, a flanking elephant on attack rearmost will probly squash them and cause a no-commander rout. Markata attack density is probably the worst solution, bc comitatenses are fairly tough, but it's a solution nonetheless - mixed with hypnotising nagas they can probably land enough hits to do something.

[anaris]

Generically, things like Ignite Arrows give magic weapon damage to bow troops, evocations and fear spam don't check ethereal at all, and things like Seven Year Fever spam make expensive troops a liability

[Ragatokk]

Don't really know what you have, but if you got a bunch of yogi and a few guru you would want to communion them. 4 guru slaves makes yogi very efficient mindburn casters.

With your god being dormant, you may want to stall a little for it to come online tough, if you think it would make a big difference.

[boozermonkey]

Magic weapons, mages, troop density, flying troops to attack rear, cavalry to attack rear, clouds such as poison, sulpher, etc,

Fatigue and morale plays that include spells that fatigue them out or cause them to run. Awe buffs for your troops.

Spells like swarm and asps spamming, elemental spamming.

[powerfinder]

Why not use body ethereal too? :) But in general I think that alt3 is too early for body ethereal. Don't know why research tier for it was lowered.

[TheDeadlyShoe]

id favor fliers/cavalry to attack rear. replacing the body ethereal mages is a difficult ask this early on for the same reason you can't get enough mind burns.

maybe elephants. ethereal will make it difficult but throw enough tramples and you'll get kills.

you could also try a nagaraja on advance and cast spells with water gems. W2 Cold Blast, evo2 is brutally powerful so long as the mage doesn't get a sword to the face.

i dont have a lot of experience with monkey nations, can you force the nagas into snakeform for the w2?

[anaris]

ye nagas secondform is the snake so if u start them that way they won't change in battle

[Demonsthenes]

Most of these ideas are pretty hard to do before turn 10. I do think that with AOE Mistform and Body Ethereal in the picture, more nations might need to either have very focused early research (in this case, Evocation 3 magic duel might be a fine answer to Pythium using cap only S1s to point buff against a nation with D2s).

Another answer could be to just take a big scary monster Pretender; they all come with some very killy magic weapons.

[Huitzilopochtli]

I only play single player so I wonder how you are getting into a direct fight with your PBEM opponent by turn 10. Is it a small map? It takes me a lot more turns than that to engage my AI neighbors. Do human players always b-line towards each other to get it on early? I guess you have special magic spells you can use to win early like the ethereal buff.

I put ethereal cloaks on some of my assassins and they still get killed after 1 or 2 assassination attempts, and my arena contestants that used ethereal cloaks got smoked immediately so I prefer to use some nice crafted armor instead for better results on assassins and tourney participants. Do you use ethereal cloaks much?

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Nukoolamukmuk:

I only play single player so I wonder how you are getting into a direct fight with your PBEM opponent by turn 10. Is it a small map? It takes me a lot more turns than that to engage my AI neighbors. Do human players always b-line towards each other to get it on early? I guess you have special magic spells you can use to win early like the ethereal buff.

I put ethereal cloaks on some of my assassins and they still get killed after 1 or 2 assassination attempts, and my arena contestants that used ethereal cloaks got smoked immediately so I prefer to use some nice crafted armor instead for better results on assassins and tourney participants. Do you use ethereal cloaks much?

Ethereal is relatively ineffective for fighting any high-value heroes - magic weapons and most spell attacks bypass it.

It's a lot more of a problem for regular troops who don't have magic attacks and can only get them by the grace of buff spells.


Though Ethereal also only protects 75% of hits, so ethereal troops in limited numbers can simply be brute-forced by conventional troops. (Of course, if the ethereal troops also negate a lot of attacks with good protection or defense, that compounds multiplicatively...)

[Huitzilopochtli]

Originally posted by ulzgoroth:

Originally posted by Nukoolamukmuk:

I only play single player so I wonder how you are getting into a direct fight with your PBEM opponent by turn 10. Is it a small map? It takes me a lot more turns than that to engage my AI neighbors. Do human players always b-line towards each other to get it on early? I guess you have special magic spells you can use to win early like the ethereal buff.

I put ethereal cloaks on some of my assassins and they still get killed after 1 or 2 assassination attempts, and my arena contestants that used ethereal cloaks got smoked immediately so I prefer to use some nice crafted armor instead for better results on assassins and tourney participants. Do you use ethereal cloaks much?

Ethereal is relatively ineffective for fighting any high-value heroes - magic weapons and most spell attacks bypass it.

It's a lot more of a problem for regular troops who don't have magic attacks and can only get them by the grace of buff spells.


Though Ethereal also only protects 75% of hits, so ethereal troops in limited numbers can simply be brute-forced by conventional troops. (Of course, if the ethereal troops also negate a lot of attacks with good protection or defense, that compounds multiplicatively...)

That makes sense seeing so many mages in the arena fights. The strongest in my current game is a "Blindlord" and I don't know what it is off-hand but it is top of the best charactes in the world list and wins the arena. I have a vampire prepared for the next arena with nice items. Do you think the life drain vampire "weapon" is the best or he needs something better? He also has the green viper item (ring slot) for attacking plus chi shoes and gore helmet with some red dragon armor. I hope that can help the vampire win the arena.

One of my assassins was insta-cooked by a Pillar of Fire spell in a tavern brawl. Seeing my well-trained assassin all tooled-up with crafted items and carefully positioned in the enemy's empire getting cooked so fast caused me a bit of PTSD. But my new assassins are doing really good with better kit.

About using Ethereal for your whole army, I don't know how to do that. I haven't seen that spell ingame yet. Is it a necromancy or glamour spell perhaps?

[ulzgoroth]

I mean, the OP put the name of the spell in the thread title...

Though Body Ethereal is a small area buff. I'm not aware of a big-area one.

You might be able to get an ethereal bless?

But for really large numbers of ethereal troops, you need to go to inherently ethereal units. Mostly various ghost-like undead. Anyone with death paths can stir some up with rituals, some nations (particularly Lemuria and Therodos) are naturally supplied with them.

I think most etherial troops don't have any armor, which is why I killed a lotta Lemurian legions with rock-chucking monkeys.

[Huitzilopochtli]

For the rock chucking monkeys, do you still have to over-whelm the 75% miss chance by spamming rocks? I haven't played the monkey nations so I am not familiar with them. I guess Agatha must have a lot of ethereal units cause they are very strong.

[Dezzmont]

Firstly, point buffed body ethereal doesn't hit a lot of troops, and the troops they are hitting aren't exactly special by LA standards. You don't really need a scaling option to deal with them so much as something that eventually kills them, as they are more a tar-pit absorbing damage from your army than the true threat, or they are just personally tipping the scales a bit too hard in troop battles.

Firstly, and most generically, you could just toss some basic mages into combat with basic evocations to kill them. In your case, at evo 1 you get star fires, which does 5 armor negating damage. With no natural protection and 12 HP, comitatense die in around 2-4 hits, which isn't ideal but will ensure that as long as you have sufficient troops to not lose your mages you win the battle. With your water mages, spells like cold blast also can handle basic buffed troops extremely well. Your priests, depending on your pretender paths, also may have a pseudo-evocation they can contribute for magic damage.

You also have the option to meet them with your own tarpit, and one that is more robust than 15 protection hidden behind a 75% miss chance. First and foremost, as Patala you have the ability to shove way more astral into a fight than Pythium does, with your more accessible and much less expensive. So you could toss in body ethereal yourself... and then because your able to recruit nature mages into your communion you can also buff your monkey's protection up to something like 21 if we are talking the Gorillas, who also hit with their weapons waaaay harder than Comitatense do with their swords. If your willing to toss your Naga into the mix their multiple attacks will let them melt your opponents as well. Even if you go 50/50 (and you shouldn't, as your troops are a better chassis for this sort of strategy than theirs are) they are using cap only mages to trade with your cheaper mages that come from any fort. You win this head to head fist fight.

Summons also do a good job. Your Naga unfortunately don't pull fire or air elementals easily, which would be the best ones to deal with ethereal, but you can use out of combat summoning to pull something like an Ice Drake, which serve as a sort of evocation magical artillery that ignore armor and will kill your opponent's soldiers in 2 hits on average.

So as to how most nations handle it, Body Ethereal is a really strong buff, but it basically is just a 'do you also have mages doing a basic magical strategy' test, because it loses to almost every other magical strategy. AOE debuffs, buffing your own guys, evocations, ect., it doesn't handle any of them well. That is still very good, a mage based strategy that forces mages to counter it is in some ways amazing economy of force because you can do things like raid PD or kill expansion armies with a way smaller troop pool than other magic strategies need, and with fewer magical resources to boot. It is one of the earlier 'magic is unfair, this is not a world where a talented fighter can roll with some wizards and have fun adventures' spells, but almost anything you can do in the game with magic answers it in some way sufficiently and pushes it back to 'normal troop' tier, and it becomes a question of if your chosen tool actually is a good counter to the unit using body ethereal (ex: Mind Burn might work alright on ethereal thugs, not so much on body ethereal troops).

[ulzgoroth]

Originally posted by Nukoolamukmuk:

For the rock chucking monkeys, do you still have to over-whelm the 75% miss chance by spamming rocks? I haven't played the monkey nations so I am not familiar with them. I guess Agatha must have a lot of ethereal units cause they are very strong.

Yes, ethereal has a 75% chance to cancel non-magical damage.

It's just that the rock-throwing monkeys are a very affordable source of damage output if you don't mind that the damage output is low.

(Also, they do some work as a tar-pit holding the ghosts down to be banished by clerics. Another good counter to ghost-type ethereal but usually not to buffed regular troops or thugs.)