also you forget that juggers can move and fire, so a micro-heavy player could weave his jugger in and out of range of the idol, and trample your troops, and get free juggers from industrial districts

but believe me, after the game's i've played i'm not suggesting cuotl are weak =/

Yes, another thing which gives Juggernauts an advantage. Though they do move slowly, so it's not an entirely massive advantage.

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Yes, they're certainly not.

Sun Idols have the same trample and Xil though the HIGHEST Tramples by FAR are the CoV and Czin around lvl 4
see big army
run over big army
watch big army be turned into paste

Here's a useful combo I'VE used that seems to work fairly well
Hero - Xil (charge him up to about 3 if you can)
Units - 4 Elite Sun Idols, 2 Death Sphere, 2 Elite Storm Disks, and last but not least the CoV

You throw this combo at anyone and I guarantee that if your partner(s) can keep the others busy you can solo take someone out. The Spheres and Disks are for the constant charge of armies ground and air trust me the disks match the CoV nearly in AA power. The Spheres will annhilate group after group of units. The CoV can be used to either A)Shockwaving the crap outta the armies or B)melting a city down to capture point
If you upgrade the CoV it only upgrades its normal attacks too bad it doesn't up the energy attacks

if you use sun cannons they're easily destroyed by pretty much everything they lack in HP severely while the sun idols are slow as molasses they do have the staying power to make them last a short while longer than the cannons.

Sun Idols are AMAZING units . I love them!

Remember- Sun Idols are all-purpose units. They lose to Juggs (its close, though), but they beat Rukhs whereas Juggernauts don't. Sun Idols also counter Fire Elementals, which are the Alin's way of handling large units....the two kinda cancel each other out :P.

In a fight between 5 Juggs and 5 Sun Idols, I wouldn't be suprised if the Idols won because superior range would bring down one jugg to near-death before the juggs got to shoot...it'd be a different story than a 1 on 1.

Probably the best unit in the game if you don't know what your opponent has. Fire elementals take care of them fairly easilly once upgraded though.

sun idols are without a doubt the coolest looking unit in a game EVER!!! they are so cool... especially elite ones since they get bigger (i think). then they fire that beam of light from their arms... pure awesomeness

lol, i'm pretty sure they don't get bigger :P

so far the only unit i've seen with a difference with an upgrade is the glass spider of the alin (normal one) which gets armour with one of the upgrades i think

I think the sun jaguars also get bigger with at least the 1st upgrade.

On-topic the sun idols are very good all around units if supported well.

MudokonGod: Gold star for one of the most interesting posts to date! Nice one!

It's a bit unfair to test Sun Idols against Rukhs in a duel because Sun Idols have sizeless/armor-negating attacks while Rukhs have Skilled attacks, not to mention one helluva splash. I'd say, if anything, Rukhs should lose even worse against the Idol.

Anyways, I would never trample with my Sun Idols unless my opponent is using Dune Walkers, Fallen Warriors, Condotierri Soldiers or melee Desert Walkers because anyone with decent micro can get their infantry away in time to save them, and while you're chasing gnats, you're also not firing your sunbeams.

Also, as a word of caution, just because a unit has sizeless/armor-negating damage, it doesn't mean they're all-purpose. There are still specialists out there designed to kill your Sun Idol.

Anyways, the thing I like about the Sun Idol is that it gets what I like to call the "Longbow effect." With the long range, you start killing people before they fire, giving you an advantage (the advantage gets larger as the battle is scaled larger), but more importantly, they outrange buildings so they can function as artillery.

Actually their siege attack is stronger than their ground/air attack beeing siege 17 and ground/air 15.75 i think.

GamerAeon, I can comfirm beyond all doubt that CoV's do not have one of the best cuotl tramples, THEY DON'T HAVE A TRAMPLE!
Otherwise the CoV would quite simply be a unit that made the enemy players, AI or Human, always instantly resign.

Widely believed to be true and known since demo 1.
Rechecked before this post from full game unitrules.xml.

So what's a decent counter for Sun Idols as a Cuotl?

I mean, are *more* Sun Idols the only answer? I was wondering if massed Death Snakes would be effective, if say you cloaked them on approach and swammed the idols one at a time.

I'm finding at the moment that the first Cuotl player to get about 4 idols usually goes on to win as I if I can't match idol production, I'm usually sunk.

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Exactly - but, Trample is much stronger than the beam attack, and it kills infantry instantly. There's no getting up again once a Sun Idol has trampled you. The most effective way, one supposes, is to distract his infantry with other units so you can bring some Sun Idols sneakily in to trample.
If they have cloaks (I can't remember ), this would be a fantastic use of the invisible cloak.

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Indeed. Isn't the CoV a flying unit?

[This message has been edited by MudokonGod (edited 06-13-2006 @ 05:02 PM).]

Theoretically, Death Snakes would do a good job because they're a pounding unit, but in practice, their melee-ness often lets Sun Idols outmaneuver them and force them to fight in range of... y'know, some other nasty stuff, like a Sanctuary.

Even if Trample Insta-kills small units, it is still a melee attack and the Idol is easily outrun. Trample is a really big gamble with Idols.

if i trample with idols it would be when the enemy infantry are crawling at my idol's feet and screaming "squish me! squish me! i've always wanted to be a dinner plate!"

you may be surprised how often this happens O_o

So you *could* use death snakes... hmmmm

Considering Death Snakes are faster than Idols, providing I can draw them away from a defensive structure, it should be doable.

Actually, I wish death snakes were a little faster... not by much, but they're not cheap and they're melee only... They tend to get *eaten* before they even get in range.

Put it this way if you're playing Cuotl going AGAINST cuotl and you have some Sun Idols to take care of Think....what is the most powerful ground force unit vs ground units that you could create....The Death Sphere of course it eats ground units alive. Take a couple of these bad boys into action and that sun idol shouldn't be a problem if you couple the spheres with a holy ark to keep the dmg down to a minimum as if you have worship charged up to 2 or more then you have the heal effect from the Ark and it's pretty good.

I thought the CoV had a trample effect maybe I'm getting it confused with Czin or the Death Sphere *shrug*

In cuotl mirror, I find its best just to get sun idols first.

Trample should be usable if you cloak so you can get close.

I actually did that in a recent game. Since my Idol spawned away from the enemies eye, I cloaked it and managed to trample 3 squads of sentinels, before he started microing away.

Yeah, I was kind of hoping that every Cuotl mirror wouldn't be reduced to a maximum-energy-rush-to-idol race..

If you're forced to go idols every game, you basically get forced into a certain build designed to maximise your energy asap. I suppose the other option is to just kill the guy before he can get his first idol up and going

*shrug*

I think there's a "must have" unit in every army. For Alin it's the Fire Elemental, for Cuotl it's Sun Idol, and for Vinci it's the Juggernaut. All three are the "counter large units" units.

Keep in mind that a sun idol loses to 2 fire elementals (i think?) if they are upgraded with health/attack.

It's only got 14 dps, the jug has 18, and the fire els have 11 each.

Nice work.

did an experiment last night and pitted myself as Cuotl against a tough computer it upgraded the juggernaut and I found that if you couple 3 Idols with 2 Cannons the jugg = junk

juggs are not must have. Air destroyers are.

[This message has been edited by W_D_I (edited 06-14-2006 @ 10:22 AM).]