Dealing with Tarrasques Thread - Dominions 3: The Awakening

OK, I am playing a game, and due to some discretion I won't go into much detail about this particular game as it is still ongoing. The situation is that there are a bunch of Tarrasques and I will have to find a way to deal with them in a cost effective manner. I do have some initial ideas in mind, but I was looking for some input from the more devious experienced players. I see they have reduced the gem cost of summoning them to 15 Nature gem from 25 Nature gem in CBM 1.94, otherwise they seem to be exactly the same in vanilla and CBM 1.94. The 1:1 solution would be to simply match the amount of Tarrasques with my own Tarrasque in the same numbers, but I was thinking there must be even better plays there?

Heres the unit

Tarrasque

245 hp size 6
Protection 19
Morale 30
Magic resistance 18
Encumbrance 3
Strength 27
Attack skill 13
Defence skill 8
Precision 12
Move 2/8
Regeneration 10%
Resist poison 100%
Poison cloud 10
Fear +5
Supply bonus -10
Recuperation
Swamp survival

Item slots
Head, 3 Misc

Weapons
Bite
Claw
Bile (Area 10 Poison attack, Ammunition 5)

Well, without info about your nation i cannot really help much. Anyway tarrasques are quite difficult to kill due to high hp and regeneration, however their attack skill is quite sub par, what really deals damage is the poison that surrounds them.
So a very cheap way to "hold" them is using poison immune stuff like spamming skellies or even better phantasmal warriors (i have seen tarrasques fighting a couple of these guys for 50 turns without harming them).
Using these things you should easily hold them for 50 turns and autorout them.

Yes, ok. I have good research, and thus lots of casters that I can use, I am playing EA Ulm. I don´t have very diverse portfolio though, I lack access to 2+ Air, Fire, Death, Water and Astral. I have abundance of E3+ and N3+ casters, plus my god has Air4 Earth9. I can stretch out Nature to 6+ as well with items on one caster, but I can't create communions and communion slaves, or maybe I could with some items? The astral spells don't work since I don't have astral on my casters.

My first thought was to fatique them, but can it be achieved with spells realistically? I expect the Tarrasuqes to be in numbers of 5+ and to be mixed in with mass of weak forces (Which my troops are able to wipe off). I was thinking that I would have to prepare to deal with the a) Fear +5, b) Poison, then actually with c) the regeneration + massive HP pool. The tools I guess available here are a) Growing Fury (Chance to berserk all) b) Serpent's Blessing (+50% Poison Resistance all) c) Instant kill spell such as petrify, Assasin type thug with armor negating type gear, Fatiquing them in combat with spells and finishing off with masses of regular troops

The problem is I don't have control of the battle so I was thinking what kind of things are typically mistakes and what kind of things work when the setting is mass vs mass with the other side having the Tarrasques. For example, anyone know if Growing Fury will effectively mean that casters go nuts and get themselves killed, or will it only effectively berserk the guys taking damage (front liners) ? And so on.

Maybe I should simulate this somehow...?

e3+ So with boots + earthpower you can get e5? Petrify.

You could, if you have the territory, fight a fighting retreat. Have somebody cast petrify enough time to just not fatigue out, set it to retreat.

Sure, you will lose a lot of territory, but there is a high chance it will eventually take one of them out. And you could spread out your mages more. (Of course, if you expect your enemy can take away retreat routes this is dangerous).

Any poison resistant high def thug could also work.

Or just getting a lot of high def poison res (or regenerating) summons. The tarrasque relies on poison to do damage. Take that away and it is just a large sack of HP. Lamia's perhaps? These can however still be affected by fear.

Polymorph is also a fun thing to try.

Personally I would not use growing fury. But the serpent blessing and mass regen spell are nice. Adding in an army of * spell also always helps. (Just don't get the -pr one).

Ok, so Polymorph, Petrify. These would kick ass I agree! Polymorph would take away their attributes and hp or how does it actually work? Does it actually work on such a big creature, or maybe the 18 Magic Resistance will be a problem? Petrifying a Magic Res 18 is doable then? Would fatique on the Tarrasque reduce the chance of the Tarrasque resisting spells?

I had an another idea. Since the Tarrasques are poisonous, maybe somehow I could slowdown their movement or root them in place. They would then deal damage to their own army this way, but I don't know, maybe this would require a thug with a rooting style weapon? How about confusing them, like Rage or something, or Charm to capture them? Viable vs Magic Resistance 18?

Edited by: flashey

Petrifying it will paralyze it even if it passes the MR check. If it fails the check, it dies. Charm will work wonders if you have penetration items. I've charmed MR 18 units with a dedicated teams of charmers equipped with void eyes (and maybe a spell focus or rune smasher)

Growing fury is not bad if you want to screw the battlefield, but set your mages to retreat after they buff everyone. You DON'T want them to berserk. Its not a fantastic surgical spell, but as EA Ulm, you can probably mass decent troops much more easily than they likely can, so it isn't bad either. I've used it to force a battle's casualties much higher than they otherwise would have been.

A squad of heavily buffed berserking steel warriors will maul even a tarrasque in a couple of rounds. Rage isn't going to help so much. Fatigue doesn't change MR. Polymorph is an MR spell, but will effectively kill the Tarrasque IF it works, but it isn't any better than charm for this. A vine whip on a thug will "root" them as you put it. Feebleminding will reduce MR- build a couple bows of botulf for this, set "fire large monster." Orb lightning via Air access will do heavy damage each round it hits, too.

If you have blood, they should be easy to take care of (life for life, claws of kokytus, etc), but I suspect you don't have any.

iirc growing fury gets cancelled if the caster leaves the field (berserk units still berserk btw). 18 mr is not that high. I had a lot of mr 18 skrattir once. The enemy threw around a lot of blindness and eventually it started to stick, and my wereskrattir started dying. Dom3.servegame.com 11% chance.

And indeed, petrify is great because it paralizes on a failure. And mages target high HP units usually first.

No idea how paralize works. I ... never got it to work in a game sadly.

LOL.....850 units defending and hes asking how to deal with my tarrasques