A big problem in many of my games when another player is starting to lose, but has a general and diplomat, he can just turtle up all his specialists in one outpost and spam the 10 driller general buff, and unless someone has a martyr/assassin/hypnotist, they're very difficult to take on.

Here's a specialist which could help: The Tactician
Abilities: For every enemy specialist involved in sub-to-outpost combat, the Tactician destroys 20% of the amount of drillers on your sub, of the drillers on their outpost.
Combat priority: 3
Icon: Knight chess-piece
Flavor text: One can easily turn the tides of war with the right tactics.
Tactician's ability cannot affect shields.

So: If you have a 60 driller sub attacking an 100 driller outpost with 4 specialists, their outpost would have [4*20%=80%, 80% of 60(your driller count)=48, 100(their driller count)-48=] 52 drillers before combat.

Feedback please, and if anyone could help rephrase that ability to make it a bit more clear would be great!

1. You can't attack with 4 specialists.
2. Is this supposed to help on offense or defense?

I do like this idea, But I kind of feel that an assassin or reverend elder plays the similar role of countering and/or flushing out specialists. Mind explaining your ideal situations for this specialist?

-1. It's an over-powered theif (Theif's only convert 15% to your side when you attack them) so it is essentially a theif. If this specialist and a thief come in the same draw, it is this one every time.

Well, the % increase is based on your own numbers and this damage increase is dependent on whether or not they have specialists.
Offence:
Either forcing the enemy to evacuate specialist before impact OR Send those based troops out to sub to sub battle without specialists (or fewer specialist I suppose)
Defense:
May discourage them from using helmsman or Lieutenant/Generals for their move speed on an attacking force when a tactician is around.

aclonicy wrote:1. You can't attack with 4 specialists.
2. Is this supposed to help on offense or defense?

Sorry if it wasn't clear.
1. Only the enemy's specialists affect the count. The amount of specialists you have don't affect the Tactician.
2. It's definitely offensive, as it destroys enemy drillers on enemy outposts.

r10t-- wrote:-1. It's an over-powered theif (Theif's only convert 15% to your side when you attack them) so it is essentially a theif. If this specialist and a thief come in the same draw, it is this one every time.

Except the Tactician will have no effect when there are no enemy specialists on the outpost being attacked. So the Tactician would be more of a medium/late game hire, rather than a early game hire.
EDIT: Also, the Tactician is highly dependent on his own driller count, while the Thief is based on the enemy's.
Here's an example: Player A has a sub of 100 drillers + Tactician versus player B's 100 drillers + Thief. Tactician goes first, so player A has 100 drillers, and player B has 80. Player B's Thief goes next, so player A has 85 and player B 95. Thief wins.

janitorialduties wrote:I do like this idea, But I kind of feel that an assassin or reverend elder plays the similar role of countering and/or flushing out specialists. Mind explaining your ideal situations for this specialist?

Comparing the Tactician versus the Assassin, The Tactician helps destroy drillers, while the Assassin just assures the death of specialists, while the drillers can still take the Assassin even with specialists dead.
Versus the Elder, Tactician helps damage outposts which have global ability specialists, like the general, admiral, engineer, or security chief, which the Elder can't do.

janitorialduties wrote:Well, the % increase is based on your own numbers and this damage increase is dependent on whether or not they have specialists.
Offence:
Either forcing the enemy to evacuate specialist before impact OR Send those based troops out to sub to sub battle without specialists (or fewer specialist I suppose)
Defense:
May discourage them from using helmsman or Lieutenant/Generals for their move speed on an attacking force when a tactician is around.

Those are some good examples, thanks for sharing!

It should be 0.8^[amount of specialists]. Not 1-0.2*[amount of specialists], if you get what I mean.

I forgot to mention the double agent, who also happens to be an anti specialist specialist. A double agent would trump the Tactician in defense, if only for one time. But there are ways to use a double agent multiple times.

So in short the tactician is a anti specialist that instead of eliminating or nullifying the enemy specialist, buffs drillers in response to their presence.
And it's best uses are to either flush out specialist from a turtled outpost with a high driller count, or intercept a specialist heavy offensive attack.

Explain the .8^ dealio? In like a scenario?