Re: Abysya Help Request.
 

Moloch isn't very good really, I tried it. Blessing it's nice but not so strong considering you can recruit only few Lava Warriors.

I found interesting playing with an Air9 Virtue (60 pts Fortress, 3 Order Prod Magic Heat, -2 Misfortune, -3 Death).

Dominion 8
Desert Sun

6 Pts in advance.

Virtue can do a nice job dealing with common indies. Even HC. She can Air Shield, Mirror Image, Mistform and go. She's mobile to react quickly to enemy attacks, she can trapeze if necessary and have a great aim for thunderstrike or orb lightning. She can wrathful skies too without even scare the effect or waste an item slot to be protected. Sadly she's very frail even in her own dominion and have slow stats ... I believe a such angelic being should be with moloch like stats.
The bless make your mages protected by arrows and 75% lightning.

Re: Abysya Help Request.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Every time I hear this, I start to wonder. There is NO WAY the Virtue should have similar stats to the Moloch. The Moloch is one of the best fighters, stat-wise, in the game. The only thing preventing him from SC-dom is his Imp posse. If you made the Virtue as good as the Moloch... she'd be first choice as Pretender.

The Virtue has many bonuses over the Moloch already. She has a one higher starting Dominion. She has a better path. She has Awe(+6). But she's not meant to be a SC. Like the Phoenix, she's much more of a combat mage. As you point out, she can cast Wrathful Skies and not care. All this, and IIRC she costs less than the Moloch.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">It also extends the same benefits to your Lava Warriors, which become quite a bit better once they're virtually immune to crossbows.

Re: Abysya Help Request.
 

Screw production. Hell you can even take a sloth scale. Think about going blood of humans, since they have MUCH cheaper bloodhunters. Really all I ever used the abyssan infantry for were for expanding and to guard my mages.

Couple of things to remember... your best combat mage is also your priest. 2-3 Anathemant Dragons in every army is a good idea. Research up alteration for combustion. It's precision 100, so you don't have to sweat the misfires. Eye of aiming on these guys isn't a bad idea either, for when they start with the falling fires.

If you go with a SC pretender (and thus have earth 3), then consider going the dwarven hammer/lifelong protection/soul contract route. Don't take blood on your pretender. It's a snap to forge a few items with your first blood 3 mage and get those items forged. This way you don't even have to research blood magic until the midgame.

One of the nice things about Abyssa is that they have mages in Fire/Astral/Blood... and your pretender will probably have Air/Water/Earth and maybe even Death and Nature. You can get a really nice gem income going by searching with just pretender/dragon/warlock.

When I play Abyssa it's blood of humans with sloth 3/Order 3. BOH also gives you the newt who is a nice researcher... although I usually use the blood hunters for both jobs. Keep recruiting warlocks when you can until you get one of every elemental random. That way your pretender can kick out some boost items and you can get those Demon Knights and Storm Demons going.

Consider the research path Alteration 5, Construction 4. The first for SC skills and combustion, the latter for dwarven hammer, Soul Contracts, Lifelong Protections, SC gear, and sanguine rods. After that I usually go for searching spells.

Good luck.

Re: Abysya Help Request.
 

E-9 Cyclopses are your friendly neighborhood Blade Wind spamming Pretenders. I never use any Pretender as a tank in the early game unless it regens, is immortal, or is a disposable SC.

Re: Abysya Help Request.
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Conjuration 3 gives you summon earthpower, which will handle the cyclops' fatigue quite well.

Re: Abysya Help Request.
 

Another point : I've just won a MP game with Abysia, and my previous 2 MP games were also won by Abysia (played by others http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon12.gif ) !
We're usually using VP victory, and it looks like Abysia, has a definite advantage in those in "late mid game" (ie before magic levels 8-9 are attained) mainly with Astral scrying + Horde from Hell and/or flying Demons armies.
Another Abysian strength http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif