Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

I don't follow the logic there. Once you're in the later game there are far less armies running around, rather you have specialised raiders, thugs and SCs.

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

Indeed, Pillar of Fire is not a very accurate spell, which combined with the AOE=1 means that it's just not ever going to be as effective against smaller numbers, as Thunder Strike. On the other hand, it's F2 and 20Fat, whereas Thunder Strike is A3 and 50Fat. So it's significantly more spammable.

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

Caelum (or whoever) responds by returning to normal battlefield placement, with troops in front, and mages in middle.

What now?

The shorter range Abysia can guess about enemy placement, but he always eats the downside of the mismatch.

Anyhow, thanks for the comments. I guess it's just another reason why I can't see how EA Abysia has any chance in vanilla MP (don't know about CBM).

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

EA Abysia "has a chance" because they won't always fight against the enemy who is the strongest against them.
With nothing else luck alone can win a mp game, if you have enough of it.

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

EA Abysia's pretty strong isn't it? If a nation is weak against another particular nation, that doesn't mean it's weak.

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

Yeah EA Abysia can be a nightmare for some nations because though it's a little single minded at first it is extremely good at what it does. If it can rush research to something like firestorm it can do a lot before you can counter it. It can also mount a strong bless rush and has access to two of the strongest lategame paths in blood and astral. The amount of remote death they can drop of people is pretty crazy too with horrors, devil/imp farsummons, teleports and remote fire spam.

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

I have played against EA Abysia in numerous 1 on 1 scenarios. While it is true that Caelum can just tear EA Abysia apart, I would say that *isn't* true for *most* (not a few, most) EA nations.

The combination of very strong sacreds (a challenge to giants a vans) and powerful Fire mages that can spam all the most powerful evocation spams without fear of even scratching those beautiful sacreds is very strong.

Add to that that fire magic is more common (and powerful) at early evocation levels than any other, and Abysia *never* has to worry about it.

While Caelum can use their flight to deprive the enemy of evocations, Abysia already does the same thing for many nations without even needing to modify their setup.

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

Burning ones go down pretty fast to anything that tramples, destroys armor, causes a lot of fatigue, or is AN.

Later on fire fend and fire ward are pretty bad news, and firestorm isn't all that effective against high protection troops (it's only 6 AP).

Wolven winter is also a huge pain in the ***.

I guess I wasn't trying to imply that they were weak versus everyone, simply that there are enough nations that play strongly to their weaknesses that it would require a lot of luck to come out on top.

And warlocks, can teleport, but only with a cap and coin, neither of which they can forge without help (coin is pretty much pretender only barring a very lucky warlock with the 1/40 chance for earth or empowering or indies). They don't make good thugs anyway and are cap only.

The only thing I really do like about EA Abysia is rushing to Thau 5 for raging hearts. Early site searching means lots of fire gems, and the spell creates 60(!) unrest for 10 gems, and you just happen to have a preponderance of F4 casters...

Not a great strategy, but pretty rough to the first person you run into. At least in the one game I used it in.

Anyhow I'll yield to the opinions of those with far more experience than me who say they're decent, but I've had too much trouble with them.

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

Yeah abysia struggles against strong air users and tramplers, but against all others is very strong in the early stages. In the late game the lack of diversity can be punishing, you have to build yourself to handle that somewhow. In MA and LA you have good blood and astral access. In EA you are stronger upfront but less able to diversify into blood and astral. The upside is your Anointeds all have earth, which adds a lot to abysia. A bloodstone economy isn't too hard to get into, and suddenly everyanointed is E2, can summon earthpower.. apart from the useful reinvig a host of spells become available, including the useful magma ones for fire immune opponents.

Re: Battlefield Tactics cheese
 

I think you are missing the point here. It's not a case of Abyssia being strong or weak. It's the fact that you CAN in fact "hold your ground" in battle, and whether this is balanced or not