add more ubar counters

[obama]

or delete it from the game
why dont all demons have spirirt vision?
why do I have to spend an infinite amount of gems to counter regular recruits?
why did they nerf xibalba, only to add ubar?
how come no other nation ever thought of making itself invisible before...

[Eldritch Gentleman]

Ubar has plenty of counters- what nation are you playing that you need help figuring some out?

[obama]

i played berytos. ive given up because it was too cancerous
plenty of counters being have paths for elemental spam or spirit sight bless or lose?

[terve886]

Ubar's unseen units are tricky in a way that it is essentially buffed glamour, but because the spirit units also have ethereal, you can't pop it with massed arrows. Your best options to counter it would be using evocation spells that can do damage to them.
Cold damage dealing spells are obvious choice, but air magic will also get generally through the 5 shock resistance.
From earth, blade wind is a working solution to pop the unseen and astral can take advantage from the magic being tag and use arcane bolt getting past all their defenses.
Of course there is also the salt vulnerability, but you aren't forced to use it.

[Eldritch Gentleman]

Consider:
Lightning- they only have 5 shock resist.
Iron- As Berytos, you have iron-equipped troops, meaning you deal more damage- a square of hoplites can attack twice as often and deal 16 damage per strike- you'll overwhelm them with sheer numbers.
Cold- Summon some winter wolves or fire some cold bolts, they're weak to it.
Archers- Pop their glamour and unseen with a stray arrow, and they'll be easy pickings.
Edit: Consider a small Sabbath or Communion to enable blade wind- it's an iron attack, meaning they'll be shredded quite handily.

[obama]

regular troops do absolutely nothing because hitting them is impossible
needing heavy mage support to deal with regular recruitable units is just awful
there need to be anti djinn spells like salt rain, salt earth, salt weapons and of course salt wind

[terve886]

Originally posted by obama:

regular troops do absolutely nothing because hitting them is impossible
needing heavy mage support to deal with regular recruitable units is just awful
there need to be anti djinn spells like salt rain, salt earth, salt weapons and of course salt wind

Its not awful, it is regular part of the gameplay to use mages in battle. Unseen units may be powerful and especially in early game with low amount of mages and research it can be hard to deal with them, but the unseen units are rather expensive and cap limited. A single unit costing 75 gold means you can easily pitch 7+ of your own units against a single one. Heck, you could almost afford to go 1:1 with mages against single unseen troop.

And while salt spells could be interesting, the existing spells literally already do pretty much everything mentioned. I have trouble imagining how salt wind would be different from blade wind or salt rain from freezing mist, which by the way is awesome spell and you should use it with your storm callers. Even if you need to use gems to cast it as single cast can easily wipe multiple unseen units and if you think it in terms of gems to gold, a single unseen unit is worth 75 gold so just one kill per cast would be huge economic victory, not to mention the surviving ones would lose their unseen trait.

[Eldritch Gentleman]

I see his strategy- he's trying to generate enough salt in this thread to beat Ubar.

[Big Dog]

Originally posted by obama:

regular troops do absolutely nothing because hitting them is impossible
needing heavy mage support to deal with regular recruitable units is just awful
there need to be anti djinn spells like salt rain, salt earth, salt weapons and of course salt wind

Have you tried beating Ys knights without mages before?

Can we get some anti Ys knights spells tbh...

[obama]

Originally posted by terve886:

Originally posted by obama:

regular troops do absolutely nothing because hitting them is impossible
needing heavy mage support to deal with regular recruitable units is just awful
there need to be anti djinn spells like salt rain, salt earth, salt weapons and of course salt wind

Its not awful, it is regular part of the gameplay to use mages in battle. Unseen units may be powerful and especially in early game with low amount of mages and research it can be hard to deal with them, but the unseen units are rather expensive and cap limited. A single unit costing 75 gold means you can easily pitch 7+ of your own units against a single one. Heck, you could almost afford to go 1:1 with mages against single unseen troop.

And while salt spells could be interesting, the existing spells literally already do pretty much everything mentioned. I have trouble imagining how salt wind would be different from blade wind or salt rain from freezing mist, which by the way is awesome spell and you should use it with your storm callers. Even if you need to use gems to cast it as single cast can easily wipe multiple unseen units and if you think it in terms of gems to gold, a single unseen unit is worth 75 gold so just one kill per cast would be huge economic victory, not to mention the surviving ones would lose their unseen trait.

blade wind is e3 with high fatigue. the only way you can get that as berytos is a sabbath of cap only slow to recruit mages or with expensive boosters which you can lose. it also has 'hard to hit ethereal' tag in mod inspector.
freezing mist is w3a1. you need slow to recruit non-sacred mages to random w3 (25%) or get them a booster. this could be decent, but I imagine it would cause a lot of friendly fire.
djinns being flying, storm flying, means you have to pile tons of troops on top of your mages to keep them safe from getting 1shotted by a 20+ dmg scimitar and hope they don't rout.
the point of the suggested spells would be battlefield-wide salt effect.
imo djinns should be floating, not flying and demons need to be upgraded to spirit vision.
is there a spell that gives troops spirit vision? I dont think so. the only spirit vision item I was able to find is 5 astral pearls and causes loss of an eye and horror mark. as for salt... its a melee attack with aoe 1? so you spend 5 gems to give this to your commanders, they have to get into melee, disable 1 square of djinns (can it miss?) and then they get beheaded by a square of djinns next to it.
ubar can get 3 (default scales, no cap circle) to 10+ (perfect scales with 4 province cap circle, low resources) djinns per turn and they are insanely powerful. also, they cost 50 gold, not 75. i dont think theres a unit thats as cost effective as djinns.

[obama]

Originally posted by < blank >:

Originally posted by obama:

regular troops do absolutely nothing because hitting them is impossible
needing heavy mage support to deal with regular recruitable units is just awful
there need to be anti djinn spells like salt rain, salt earth, salt weapons and of course salt wind

Have you tried beating Ys knights without mages before?

Can we get some anti Ys knights spells tbh...

whats that unit called?
i dont see why not. theres already an anti-ubar item in the game, though its not terribly useful.

[obama]

compare djinn to other units you can get for 50 gold. for exmaple, mounted hirdman. 50 gold, glamor, stealth. both are size 3. djinns have that, but also better stats (except defense), get ethereal, unseen, storm flight, as well as 2 resists and magic power, and are much better balanced in terms of resource/rec points, though hirdmen arent cap-only.
30 djinn beat 40 hirdmen with 11 losses. only outnumbered 2 to 1 do djinns lose, sometimes cost effectively. this isnt even taking magic power into account. and of course, elfs are way easier to counter, you can do that without mages or with just light mage support. meanwhile, to beat djinns, you require mages highly skilled in specific paths (earth, astral, water) and higher leves of research, contrasted with the fact they probably have an easier time expanding than elfs do, not to mention they have complete fire immunity and shock resist.
djinns definitely need some sort of nerf.

[Razor Feather]

Being cap only is a pretty major limitation though. It means the amount that you can produce never really increases even as you grow in power, so in a larger game you will eventually be forced to rely more and more on other tactics. It also means that if anything especially nasty happens to your capital, you may lose access to it, all or in part. And it means that they can’t reinforce without dragging troops all the way from base, which takes time. There is a reason cap only units tend to be pretty powerful, they just wouldn’t mean much otherwise due to the limitations on their use.

Also a number of units have salt vulnerability, not just ubar. Perhaps most notable is the ghost king pretender.

[Eldritch Gentleman]

To be fair, it's easier to reinforce given that Ubar's djinn are flying.

[obama]

Originally posted by Razor Feather:

Being cap only is a pretty major limitation though. It means the amount that you can produce never really increases even as you grow in power, so in a larger game you will eventually be forced to rely more and more on other tactics. It also means that if anything especially nasty happens to your capital, you may lose access to it, all or in part. And it means that they can’t reinforce without dragging troops all the way from base, which takes time. There is a reason cap only units tend to be pretty powerful, they just wouldn’t mean much otherwise due to the limitations on their use.

Also a number of units have salt vulnerability, not just ubar. Perhaps most notable is the ghost king pretender.

Originally posted by Eldritch Gentleman:

To be fair, it's easier to reinforce given that Ubar's djinn are flying.

yes, they are flying. this is an enormous advantage, as they can reinforce faster and have more options in combat. on top of that they are stealthy. together this means they can pick their fights and strike where other units couldnt. this probably also means they scale better later in the game than other similar units, and on bigger maps. it is true that being cap-only is a downside, but I dont think its enough of a downside. they need to be more expensive or have more weaknesses.
the final little bonus is that they are one of the few recruitable units that gets flight without wings, meaning they are 'true' size 3s, unlike xibalbans and caelum, who get the size increase because of wings but no HP or stats to back it up, or abovementioned hirdmen and other mounted units.

[Eldritch Gentleman]

Zotz are size 2, not size 3.