Let's talk about immortals

[Nebulosa]

In two games I've gotten substantial mileage out of an immortal pretender or disciple with Air/Earth/Death. There is strong value for paths on an immortal:

* Liches come with Death, so you've got that anyway
* Air lets you Cloud Trapeze with your pretender, allowing you to appear where needed after a respawn, and trapeze onto enemy armies
* Air/Earth lets you cast Rain of Stones
* Air/Death lets you cast Winds of Death
* Death (if you crank it high enough) lets you cast Bone Grinding

A unit like this is a powerful asset once you get some research done. It will always be a powerful battlecaster that can be used in any significant battle in your own candles. However, once you get Evocation 7, you can devastate mageballs with Rain of Stones and low-MR armies with Winds of Death, either by trapezing on top of them or by setting defensive movement traps. (If you trapeze on top of an army, Antimagic will insulate them from the worst of Winds, various buffs can save mages, and fliers can stop you from casting, but this seriously constrains enemy scripting and army design. Scripting fliers for a turn1 attack puts them at risk of dying to your PD.) You can also kit out and script your lich to deal with many enemy SC's/thugs depending on their gear and trapeze on top of them, killing whatever it was without risk. Plague is another hilarious suicide spell.

This sort of thing provides a great deterrent to invasion, since you can chip away at many enemy armies expending only a few gems. This puts any invader on a serious clock, stopping them from movement-dancing, and frees up your armies and thugs for other work. You also can get an earth/air bless out of it if you have sacred mages, someone who can make hammers and ele staves, and mid-tier access to three paths of magic that benefit greatly from 4+ path access.

What are other people's experiences with immortals?

[meglobob1]

My major experience with immortals is LA Ulm and when they get a sufficent amount of vampires they become effectively unbeatable. They can do the same as your Lich but with a immortal army / armies that never die, just respawn at there capital to fly out and attack you again.

[alexpoobum]

they only respawn if they die within friendly dominion so preach the hell out of them and your fine,

[Mormacil]

What about afflictions?

[Colombo]

Mormacil: Afflictions are healed by immortality, given time, but if you are not using your immortal dude to fight but only to cast that deadly spell that wipes whole enemy army, you you care only about feeblemind and mute.

[Mormacil]

Fair point, might try this sometimes.

[ben_sphynx]

One way of killing pesky immortals is using the spell Wind Ride. It works most reliably when the target is only one province away (it sometimes only moves the target one province, but that is fine if they are one province away), but there is something great about pulling an unsuspecting immortal pretender our of their dominion and into your, to meet their doom against an awaiting army.

[mel]

Did you take them imprisoned or dormant?
Fairly expensive if dormant. You can't really afford the suicide lich and get decent scales. If you want a major bless on top you'll have to trash your scales.
If imprisoned you might not get use out of him for most of the game.

[koboldlord]

Immortal pretenders aren't usually worth giving serious consideration on the basis of their immortality alone, because they've got important stuff to do immediately and the game is usually close to the end by the time army-wiping spells can come into play. You only get one pretender and it's much more important to pick one that buys you security and a good position in years 1 and 2 than one that gives you one additional way to wipe out a communion army in year 4.

SC disciples are another matter, since disciple players usually have build points to burn, and of course summoned immortal mages are fantastic pretty much no matter what.

[jBrereton]

My main experience with immortals is fighting waves of vampires/worms that walk/liches whenever you try to invade anyone who knows how to play the game right late on, especially if they are a nation with good sacreds that took something like a scales-trashed Mother of Monsters for an N9D4B9 bless which is difficult to fight early and then becomes a vampire (lord)/lich/worm that walks engine later on.

Gets to the point pretty quickly that sending in turns to (maybe) kill enemy mages you know are coming back anyway (and will likely be able to do a risk-free counterattack on the province you just took at presumably high cost) is tiresome.

Doubly annoying if they can blood sac!

[jBrereton]

Originally posted by koboldlord:

Immortal pretenders aren't usually worth giving serious consideration on the basis of their immortality alone, because they've got important stuff to do immediately and the game is usually close to the end by the time army-wiping spells can come into play. You only get one pretender and it's much more important to pick one that buys you security and a good position in years 1 and 2 than one that gives you one additional way to wipe out a communion army in year 4.

Right, is it worth 3 or 4 worse scales to have a single rain of stones caster that can come back inside your own dominion? Probably not. That's a trifling use for immortality.

[Curious]

I find that against immortals, the wonderful spell Horror Mark does wonders with shutting them down for good (eventually).

[Nebulosa]

Originally posted by jBrereton:

Originally posted by koboldlord:

Immortal pretenders aren't usually worth giving serious consideration on the basis of their immortality alone, because they've got important stuff to do immediately and the game is usually close to the end by the time army-wiping spells can come into play. You only get one pretender and it's much more important to pick one that buys you security and a good position in years 1 and 2 than one that gives you one additional way to wipe out a communion army in year 4.

Right, is it worth 3 or 4 worse scales to have a single rain of stones caster that can come back inside your own dominion? Probably not. That's a trifling use for immortality.

In my group, getting to a "good position" in years 1 and 2 by expanding quickly with an awake SC is a recipe for diplomatic issues. Most players either take a major bless or some variety of scales build. The immortals I'm suggesting are a variety of scales build, one that can come with a minor bless for mages.

You can get good scales plus this sort of access on an immortal. Looking at the opportunity cost is a reasonable thing to do, but the cost of such a pretender isn't extraordinary. A4E4 is a good bless on nations with sacred mages (the Agarthas), and both air and death magic get substantially more effective if you have access to a strong caster.

EA/MA Agartha, for instance, can get an imprisoned dom6 A4E4D5 risen oracle with +6 scales, or eschew the bless and get dom7 A2E3D5 with +7 scales. (A2 is enough to forge some winged boots, which if you have no luck scales will chew up many of your air gems.)

MA Pythium (who I'm playing now) can get a teleporting Wind of Death caster at A2D6, dormant dom7, +7 scales, or can add in RoS capability and a bless, with something like A2E4D5 imprisoned dom6, +8 scales.

So these are very, very strong scales. You don't get a major bless but these are nations that really don't want a major bless anyway. In exchange, you get access (or bigger access, in the case of Agartha and death) to some paths you wouldn't otherwise (in the manner of a "diversity titan"), a useful minor bless, and a caster that can operate with nearly complete safety in your own candles.

[koboldlord]

Originally posted by entropius:

In my group, getting to a "good position" in years 1 and 2 by expanding quickly with an awake SC is a recipe for diplomatic issues. Most players either take a major bless or some variety of scales build. The immortals I'm suggesting are a variety of scales build, one that can come with a minor bless for mages.

I haven't found deliberately sucking to be a particularly good strategy in the general case. Yes, dogpiles sometimes happen. It's still much worse to be small, and looking like you might be edible is much more dangerous than being one of several players on the map with 20+ provinces at the end of year 1.

You can usually get perfectly respectable diversity off of an awake expander. There are a few nations that just have wretched choices, but a mid-N or mid-D monster pretender will still break you into several other paths once you retire it to a lab after the early game.

[Catowl]

Originally posted by ben_sphynx:

One way of killing pesky immortals is using the spell Wind Ride. It works most reliably when the target is only one province away (it sometimes only moves the target one province, but that is fine if they are one province away), but there is something great about pulling an unsuspecting immortal pretender our of their dominion and into your, to meet their doom against an awaiting army.

Unless they have E4 or more

[garegoylant]

Since immortal worm mages were mentioned: how should they be used? I can find no good use for him. So what if he's immortal, he can't teleport, won't kill much stuff with N3 and can't be equipped as thug because items would be lost on death.