Wither spell - what the hell is this?!

from Elemental Forums

So I'm a couple of days into an epic game with ridiculous ai, and having absolutely massive amounts of fun. Game is stable, runs well, and AI has much stronger economy and army size than I do.

I have a crazy tech advantage so I march into battle with my squad of advanced uber soldiers (160 combat rating per squad) and my vastly levelled up champions. 

Ceresa casts 'wither' on my squad which took 35 turns to build. One shot....dead.

WTF? I can't find a description of what this spell even does. Is it meant to just one shot kill units?

elemental
5,750 views 8 replies
Reply #1 from Elemental Forums Top

Nice! For you, it sounds like Ceresa is a nasty evil sorcerous that you need some spell immunity against Ceresa before trying that hero stunt again.  ;)

Cheers! 

Reply #2 from Elemental Forums Top

That's awesome... I want a spell that does that... Lol

Galactic Civilizations IV
Reply #3 from Elemental Forums Top

Level 3 - Death Spellbook

Wither - Reduces the strength and constitution of target foe by 25% for 3 turns.

(Actually it reduces the attack and HP of the unit, so the description is off a little bit).

 

They shouldn't have died unless they were already hurt, if so then she made them shrivel up like a raisin. XD }:) 8O

Reply #4 from Elemental Forums Top

They weren't hurt in the slightest :(. Must have been a bug...I'll try replaying the battle. 

Spell immunity sounds like a good idea lol, I've only used it on some champions up to now but buffing my armies before battles is probably wise. 

Reply #5 from Elemental Forums Top

I have this same issue in 1.19b.  I went into a battle where the enemy had armies and I didn't yet.  I cast wither on their army units, and boom the entire army (which had full hit points) died with one cast of wither.  I noticed the word wither appears like 3 or four 4 times above the units head with a single cast, which seems a bit odd.

Reply #6 from Elemental Forums Top

From the description it seems like it's reducing groups hp by 25% four times. Thus they end up with 0 health.

Reply #7 from Elemental Forums Top

Wither - Reduces the strength and constitution of target foe by 25% for 3 turns.

(Actually it reduces the attack and HP of the unit, so the description is off a little bit).



They shouldn't have died unless they were already hurt, if so then she made them shrivel up like a raisin.
End of quote

 

You are right that the description is off. The truly strange part, which is probably causing the problem, is that, instead of the spell doing a damage effect like curHealth or DefendableDamage,  the spell is actually adjusting the unit's overall hit points directly and thus is probably being applied per unit. As far as I can tell, when doing an AdjustUnitStat by value, the game will usually try and apply all relevant bonuses. So in the case of wither, it is getting the values correctly, but then applying them per unit. In general, this spell should probably use the multiplier tag with 0.25 instead of a calculation of value since it does not appear to scale via another stat.

Reply #8 from Elemental Forums Top

So I'm a couple of days into an epic game with ridiculous ai, and having absolutely massive amounts of fun. Game is stable, runs well, and AI has much stronger economy and army size than I do.

I have a crazy tech advantage so I march into battle with my squad of advanced uber soldiers (160 combat rating per squad) and my vastly levelled up champions. 

Ceresa casts 'wither' on my squad which took 35 turns to build. One shot....dead.

WTF? I can't find a description of what this spell even does. Is it meant to just one shot kill units?
End of quote

REally?  Now this is cool. So the AI has a spell that gives it a littel punch I do approve. Sadly the AI never used this on me but I really wish it would. Be nice to have a little challange in the game.