Tornado Spell

from Stardock Forums

Is there any way to defend against the tornado spell? It's a real pain when an enemy throws it on you.

 

10,395 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

There's a bug report saying that Ophidians and other magic-immune creatures prevent armies on the same tile as them from being targeted by strategic spells. You could try that and see if it works.

Reply #2 from Stardock Forums Top

One of the armies I had that was hit by a tornado spell had an ophidian in it, but that didn't make any difference.

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

That's interesting -- you had an AI cast tornado on you?!?!  Cool!

I couldn't cast tornado (message said no offensive spells could be cast on the target army) on an AI army that contained an ophidian.  My best guess is that the ophidian was why.  I also couldn't cast starfall on a different army (that had no ophidian) if starfall's AoE included the ophidian-containing army.  Strange that your ophidian army could have offensive spells cast upon it...

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting Nick-Danger, reply 3

That's interesting -- you had an AI cast tornado on you?!?!  Cool!
End of Nick-Danger's quote

Ditto! If the Ai did this to me, I'd really be screwed. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

Lucky! I wish my AIs would cast interesting spells on me. The occasional freeze, tremor or wither is about all I see for strategic spell use.

Reply #6 from Stardock Forums Top

It was Umber who cast it, and I was playing on Hard. Though it's not a game killer, it was definitely annoying. He kept casting it again and again until he apparently ran out of manna. He didn't take advantage of my dispersed units though. One reason for casting the tornado would seem to be to disperse an enemy army so you can pick off some of the individual units, but Umber didn't do that.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Actually I am playing the Scenario right now and whenever I would wander into Resolns territory I would get hit by 1 strategic spell every turn. Freeze, Tremor even Falling star, and many more.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

Quoting dacty4491, reply 6

It was Umber who cast it, and I was playing on Hard. Though it's not a game killer, it was definitely annoying. He kept casting it again and again until he apparently ran out of manna. He didn't take advantage of my dispersed units though...
End of dacty4491's quote
I wonder if the mana cost increase for tornado will end up hurting the AI more than us players, by causing the AI to drain all their mana without their taking advantage of players armies being split up and scattered (as seems likely to be the usual case).

Players can better adjust to the new increased cost of tornado casting (and then taking advantage of it to kill scattered units), so the change may end up hurting the AI more.

Another reason why the 'increased tornado mana cocst' change is a step backwards (other reasons include it 'dumbing' down the game instead of 'smartening up' the AI by having the AI do a decent job of reforming scattered armies, and taking advantage of our scattered armies).