Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

All of the blesses I mentioned were for the sacred recruitables. Niefelheim, ashdod, and gath expand typically with a single e9n4+ giant, or a giant and 1 or 2 of the sacred giant troops if you want a really tough force. To fight the armies of other nations, you bring several of these expansion groups to one place and kill everything.

TNN is a bit different, but personally I use the tuatha warriors for expansion. Later, you switch to self-blessing sidhe thugs with mistform, air shield, a brand and a shield. Boom, you've beaten the AI. In fact, you don't even need gear to kill the AI. It certainly makes it much easier though.

Kailasa is expanding with the sword and buckler yavana, or whatever they're called. The troops, not the mages. Someone came up with a strategy guide for expanding with kailasa's recruitable commanders. That's not where I was going with my bless. Anyway, you recruit the sacred troops and expand with those, and it's not a bad idea to recruit a small amount of chaff to entice arrow fire to take fewer casualties from arrows. Eventually you will get celestial music in enchantment which will let you cast quickness on all your sacreds. You start doing this for big battles. With a little alt your sacred commanders are pretty decent thugs, able to cast nice buffs.


Pythium's sacreds are pretty weak and cap only so yeah, they're not great for a bless strategy. Again, however, you get summonable sacreds. Pythium's angels are pretty awesome. Take a look at them and think about what might work for those while also providing you a bless that will help either your mages or your vestals. Or both. The sacreds I pointed you at are not weak, and any of them should be quite capable.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

I actually find this offensive. Please edit it out of your post, or change it to 'newbie'.

Unless you really expect us to believe you are oblivious to the difference between the two terms?

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

If you're just doing single-player, then a lot of sacreds are worth using. MA Marignon's knights of the chalice are pretty hardcore. I really like E4W9N4 on them. Then, a paladin and 3 of those can take pretty much every indie province forever. The bless is also very useful later on on your summoned angels.

LA Tien Chi has awesome sacred cavalry.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

LA Pan has nice bless strategy for SP in E9N4. Early on a dryad (or indy priest) with with 4 dryad hoplites will take any indy province (pool up two or three such forces to take out knights though, if the knights get lucky with their morale check they might destroy the dryad hoplites on the charge), later on (when you have more income) Black Centaurs will see you through the whole game (and they have the mobility to be brought to frontlines fast); Black Centaurs need a critical mass to be hugelsy succesfull, but once you have a couple dozen on the field, most AI nations will crumble against them (and if you have time to drag some dryad hoplites to the field, so much better, as they are absolutely great heavy infantry to hold the center).

Doesn't work in MP though, as such at least (at the very least needs some serious magical back-up, preferably with some Sleeper and Bane thugs to get you through mid-game until you get the tartarians rolling out). Relying only on capital-only sacreds is not going to see you do that well in a MP, but doesn't make it less fun to see a few ladies absolutely destroy any opposition in the early turns :)

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

To use a bless nation, you need sacreds that you can mass, so capital-only sacreds are usually a bad idea.
Which is why, contrary to what my opening sentence may lead you to believe, I suggest trying EA T'ien Chi with a W9 or W9/S9 bless (minor earth and nature blesses can be useful too).
T'ien Chi has recruitable sacreds, warriors of the 5 elements, who are capital only, look like crap at first glance and always dealt tremendous damage to everything that was thrown at me in all games I played (except Ashdod but then...).
Once you have built enough forts that your capital only sacreds look like they're no longer massable enough, you start summoning your national sacreds: Demons of heavenly rivers, fires, and celestial warriors. Sped up celestial warriors and, even better, fast berserking demons of heavenly rivers that you can summon in every fort (since one out of 5 of your base mages can recruit them) make up for the capital-onliness of your human warriors.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

in your first post you wanted a bless nation that isn't a blood nation. that pretty much excludes all the classic EA bless rushes and their successors: Niefelheim, Vanheim, Helheim, Sauromatia, Lanka and Mictlan. thus for EA you don't have much left, unless you agree to be at least a partial blood nation(which is very good cause you get access to the awsome blood items and some summons too) you should aim at MA/LA instead. MA Mictlan, unlike the other Mictlans is not a blood nation, however its Jaguar Warriors are cap only, unlike the others, so it's weaker for a bless nation but still solid. Marigonon's Knights of the Chalice as mentioned above are a good choice, LA Tien Ch'is Ancestor Vessels are considered to be the best heavy cavalry in the game, so certainly worth a bless as well. there are a few, but a bit weaker alternatives such as Kailasa(EA) or Machaka(MA).

but in all honesty, if you want a bless strategy you should go for EA and at least a partial blood nation...

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

NO.
EA T'ien Chi is a very decent bless nation.
MA Mictlan has recruitable everywhere eagle warriors, who are different from but as effective as, if not more than, jaguar warriors.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Helheim can be played, especially in SP, as a straight bless nation. They've got minimal Blood, but it's usually ignored early on and just provides a few more options in the midgame.

LA Atlantis plays well with a bless, though it's not as overwhelming as the more traditional bless nations. Baalz has a guide for it.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

NO.
EA T'ien Chi is a very decent bless nation.
MA Mictlan has recruitable everywhere eagle warriors, who are different from but as effective as, if not more than, jaguar warriors.[/quote]

yes EA TC can be a bless nation, but it's not a bless rush nation! EA TC's bless is better in the late game than as a rush tactic, as such a rush would be ridiculous against a real bless rush... as for MA Mictlan, Jaguar Warriors>Eagle Warriors as far as bless rushing goes, and Eagle Warriors are harder to use effectively, seeing that the OP is a new player. EA and LA Mictlan can spam Jags like there's no tomorrow from all its forts, MA Mictlan can spam Eagle Warriors instead, which makes it inferior to the other 2 as far as a bless rush goes...

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Actually for a rush, the Mictlan's are roughly equal. MA Mictlan has Jaguar Warriors from the capital. That's all you need for a rush.
At least as I understand rush. A rush is essentially trying to take out another nation as part of/instead of expansion against indies. A good rush will hit as early as possible, before your enemy has any anti-rush research done. You're not going to have a second castle up and contributing in time. You need to be throwing those resources into offense.