Countering Giants

[lord_khaine]

So, what are some of the general tools for countering sacred giant troops as they come rushing down the field intent on murdering all your men?

In general it seems like they would crush most kind of armies not specifically set up to deal with them. Especially the sort with high MR.

I can of course see some options.
Gifts from Heaven seems like a crude but effective tool to deal with anything. But are there better ways to handle it, besides spamming high level evocation spells?

[LDiCesare]

Sacred giant troops or sacred giant commanders?
The former are easier to manage, but are a threat early game when you don't have that many tools. The latter are a pain later when they have items and buffs.

For troops, swarming them is a solution, but you need to take out their defense/protection. A swarm of small soldiers with good defense should be able to scroe enough hits to make up for the losses. If the giants have regeneration, you need hard-hitting troops, however. Destroying armors, using maws of the earth to tie them down so there are more hits, using stellar cascades to tire them, fire or ice elementals or anything with an aura to fatigue them.
You can also try to spread disease on them on the strategic map.

For commanders, stuff like Fomorian kings are a complete pain in the *** and you'll need to adjust your tactics to the gear they are wearing so it's hard to give general advice.

[Lord Silverwood]

Something that seems to be very effective against kitted giant commanders, or any SC's in general, is having several mages summon air elementals. They have a stun attack that essentially just freezes the enemy. Two other great methods, if you have the mage. To spam the spells, are Frozen Heart or Curse of the Frog Prince. Earth Meld also works against them to a certain extent, along with False Fetters, for holding them in place. Most any strategy for dealing with an SC will work against a kitted giant

[lord_khaine]

Oh sorry if i were not more specific. I did mean sacred giant troops. So it does kinda need to be tools for dealing with several of them.

But i see. So stuff like Iron Bane and Maws.
And in general anything that debuffs without giving a MR check.

Is it worth it using fire/air elementals if the giants have magic weapons?
Or will they die to swiftly to be of any use?

[Nombrilist]

Generally, those troops have few attacks per square so if you can stick something that will be very hard to hit or kill in front of them they'll take a disproportionately long time getting past it. "Hard to kill" also includes things like skellispam, as the important thing is that they will have trouble clearing a square to advance even if they're killing off plenty of individual units.

[DasaKamov]

Giants generally hit very hard, so a Fire/Air elemental's main defense would be their Etherealness -- which is ignored by Magic Weapons. Generally, elementals wouldn't be very useful against those kinds of giants.

Another useful tactic against giants to to exploit their vulnerability to Fatigue-causing spells such as Dessication, Steal Breath, Heat from Hell and so on. The more Fatigued a giant is, the more likely it is to suffer a critical hit, and the fact that you can swarm giants with smaller troops means that you have that much more opportunities to score a crit.

[windrider03]

A.I. or human player? Dealing with A.I. is easy. Seasoned human players usually have counters ready for your counters. :-)
Nevertheless, any seasoned Dom 4 player will tell you that paralysis (thau 4, S2) is the most common counter against strong troops that are relatively few in number. You'll need blockers. Cheap high def (not protection!) infantry will do.

[Lord Silverwood]

Also, as always, it depends on what nation you are playing as. Each nation has different ways of dealing with stuff, between the different troops, mages, and magic paths

[terve886]

If you have access to some high damage dealing units, even indie barbarians, use them. You really want to out damage the enemy, especially if they have high protection and regenation on top of huge amount of hit points. Casting strength of giants will help a lot, as does weapons of sharpness.

Also do not overlook instakilling MR negating spells if you have good access to them and the enemy's magic resistance isn't completely overkill. A mage with no extra penetration against unit with 14MR still has 30% to get past MR check. So as long as you can keep the enemy still, you can keep taking them out. Of course this doesn't defeat spells like gifts from heaven in effectiviness, but they are also less prone for friendly fire (though sacroficing few human soldiers due to friendly fire from gifts from heaven is completely fine).

There is also the option of summoning some heavy hitters yourself in form of trolls and hilll giants, takes mage turns and might need some buff support to compete with sacred giantsthough.

You also have the option of equipping some commanders with magic weapons, such as greatsword of sharpness and try to take out the giants with some elite units mixed among normal infrantry. If possible, you will probably want to buff those commanders with spells such as quickness to increase their damage out put and survivality and probably luck as well as it makes them survive three additional deathblows on average.

[Norwegian Singbird]

Yeah, barbarians and lizard warriors deal huge amounts of damage and should kill giants very well, depending on the bless. Awe does kind of stop them short, and fortitude makes them a lot less efficient. If they have potential fatigue issues, like quickness but no reinvigoration, then swarm and creeping doom can be used to fatigue them out, though in Dom5 it's not easy keeping your own troops away from the enemies.

Enslave mind is a very good spell for such occasions, because it takes a formidable unit out of the game, it makes the formidable unit potentially deal a lot of damage to someone (unblessed, but still), it makes the enemy formations break up and the enemies kill one of their own (who are relatively few in numbers to begin with, probably) and is more likely to muck up the targeting of enemy mages because of the high HP.

[applenta]

There's only so many blows before the giants get tired, so swarming them is a cheap and dirty way to deal with them, but swarming requires good morale or the swarm will rout and scatter.

[lord_khaine]

Oh yeah its also a good point about Swarm. I can see how that could be used to make them reach their kill count faster and then drop down.