Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

There are winning strategies for everyone, thats the joy of this game. But if you are talking small map fast games, I would have to do some thinking on an abysian strategy. Maybe a strong dominion push to make use of their heat scale?

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Most nations don't really have to spend blood slaves that are only huntable with a capital only mage to keep their other capital only mages from dying of old age. Especially not a nation that's supposed to be able to take heat 3 death 3 with little to no downside to offset their use of easily counterable fire magic.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Blood hunting turns up lots of slaves very quickly and the boots are cheap. Besides, Abysia is a blood nation so it's not like they aren't going to have some blood hunters anyway.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

My observations so far on:-

MA Man - This nation is powerful and very easy to play, especially early on. Mass Longbows with a small shield of infantary/cavalry in front of them slices through indie 5 provinces like butter. I often take 0 losses, many times the indie army has routed before its reached my lines, the rain of longbow arrows take a huge toll on any retreating army. Back this up with a awake combat pretender and u will be number 1 for provinces. Add in all the stealth units, powerful air/nature summons, lightning bolts, wind guide etc, etc... u will be a serious power early/mid game. Take good scales to get the most out of yr large empire.

The weaknesses r lack of fire/death/astral/earth magic, which could seriously dent yr endgame.

I would say its overall balanced and a good nation for a beginner to play, just concentrate on yr strengths.

This is based on 2 MP games with MA Man. (turn 16, turn 10).

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

LA Ermor

Typical for autospawn nations this is hard to gauge. I can't exactly say if Ermor is weak since i didn't play other LA nations yet to compare, however compared to D2 they took a few very hard hits.
Decent priests are quite hard to come by. No more battlefield undead buff spells for every army from turn 5 onward.
The autospawns are among the weakest troops for LA. The good national troops will wipe the floor with them, even without further boost spells.
Banish has been improved greatly.
Ermor is restricted to ashen empire, which is a lot weaker against indeps than ghost gate was because of a) not ethereal and b) no healing.
Ermor can't use a sleeping or imprisoned pretender.
Besides the pretender, the only magic paths are 3 death and up to two random picks on dusk elders. In LA whith standard settings (35% magic sites) every gem counts, and ermor needs to use a rainbow pretender to get some non-death mages summoned. At least in long games.

So, as i see it, ermors strength now lies in mid-game. Early expansion is slower than before and lategame all useful troops have to come from magic gems which are sparse in LA. after getting a few provinces set up with castles+temples and dom 10, and before the other nations have assembled big groups of LA troops with heavy protection and skills, ermor can still grab provinces with frighteningly large armies.

Conclusion: not terribly weak, but weaker than i'm used to. (well, i'm used to slaughtering my unsuspecting buddy with mass castings of ghost riders in games on really large maps http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif )

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Blood spells require more slaves to get an equivalent effect to other magic paths, and the boots need to be put on dozens of mages, so you'll need to spend thiry or fourty blood slaves a turn just to equip the new mages you'll be purchasing.

Abysia blood hunters are warlock apprentices, which are capital only and prevent you from recruiting a more generally useful Demonbred or Warlock in the middle age. This is even worse in the early age, where you have to make the choice between an Anointed of Rhuax and a warlock apprentice.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Well, you don't need to give the boots to every mage, just the important ones with good picks, HOF abilities, or prophets. And besides, you should have plenty of blood slaves, if you don't you're not bloodhunting enough, it's not uncommon for me to pull in more than 100 a turn with 6 hunters if you give them Dowsing Rods if you're picking the right provinces.

Once you have access to the boots, though, you'll only need to purchase a handful of Apprentices and forget about it as they're not good for much else and anything they can do a Warlock can do better. And if it's that much of an issue, you can use the Warlocks and Demobreds (who won't get old) to do the hunting for you temporarily if you really can't recruit an Apprentice for whatever reason.

Another thing is Warlocks and Demombreds are easy to get them to where you need them either through teleport or flying, so you don't really need as many as a nation that has difficulty moving their mages around the map. Just keep your blood hunting close to home so your Apprentices don't have to go far and it's not that much of an issue.

I don't know, old age can be a pain, but I find that with rejuvenate, Growth scales, the boots, maybe building a pretender that can cast Gift of Health, Abysia actually has an easier time dealing with old age than most nations.

Think about it, Abysia doesn't need the early game help of mages or a pretender, their national troops crush indies easily so you can imprison your pretender and take good scales and get a lot of researching done. Then later in the game every other nations mages are still dying of old age and yours will be able to either cast spells to be young again or not age at all, and the cost of that is a tougher early game, but so what? You're not really having a tough time anyway as your nationals can take most conventional armies easily. I think Abysia is balanced really well in that regard.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

I end up using mostly demonbreds. I hate old age to the point that I barely ever buy Anath. dragons. Ive had more than one game where I had a mage die to old age before my pretender even awoke (asleep, not imprisoned mind you).

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

The right provinces are any province with a population of around 5000, so that's not too much surprise. I think you're greatly overexaggerating how many slaves you get, however, since 6 B3 mages will average about 7 slaves each per turn. Those 6 mages also represent the total commander production of your capital for six turns, which is the real weakness of Abysia as a blood nation.

You need three apprentices for every province you conquer that has a population of about 5000 if you want to seriously invest in blood magic.

Blood hunting with warlocks and demonbred means that those units aren't available to cast rituals or forge items, or lead your summoned devils respectively. It also means that you've essentially devoted the turn that you recruited that mage at your capital to blood hunting, since you still have to recruit an apprentice to replace the expensive hunter. Then you have to constantly recruit replacement warlock apprentices as they die of old age. If you want 15 blood hunters to support a good blood economy, you'll be spending almost half of the first 30 turns recruiting those blood hunters and their replacements.

How many nations have real difficulty moving their mages around? Most have serious problems recruiting sufficient quantities of their capital only mages, but that's a different problem from getting them where they need to be.

Keeping your blood hunting close to the capital is another way to say that you won't be seriously blood hunting.

Abysia should be playing with death 3, not a growth scale, and yet trying to take advantage of their death scale resistance hurts them more than almost any other nation thanks to their universally old mages.

You'll be buying a mage every single turn in every castle, so researching won't be benefitted that much from imprisoning your pretender, and you'd get twice as much gold to purchase your mages and troops with if you had a pretender to help you expand.

I think you might want to compare Abysia's troops to those available to other nations. Abysia pays double price for units that are immune to fire and radiate heat. Their other statistics are nearly identical (except for hitpoints) to humans of half their cost. Compare them to Emerald Guard to see what they have to go up against for similar cost.

Re: Nations that seem strong/weak
 

Never had an age problem with Abyssia. Death or Growth scales both help (so far I've only ever seen disease kill an oldster, so unless your unlucky enough to get feebleminded it's not a problem under either scale).
Another option is to get into the Death path and simply undead your mages, through whichever spell is most convenient. Nature can also be a viable counter if you find yourself with plenty of nature gems (a single pick in nature is usually enough to knock the mage below old age level).