Re: Dud nations
 

LA Abyssia still gets warlocks, and warlocks still rock.

The Guardian of the Pyre compares fairly to most *late era* sacred units. His purpose is not to kill the enemy - with a 4N blessing he's a good shield wall to prevent the enemy from reaching your anathemants who are spamming fire magic.

LA Abyssia is an extremely poor sacred rusher - so if you evaluate all nations according to face-hugging potential, it stinks.

But it's in the late era for a reason - by the standards of late era nations, their magic is extremely powerful. Their military is uninspiring, but that's fair to balance their devastating magic. I'll admit that LA Marignon is better in most ways.

That said, I'm working on spells for every era of abyssia.

Re: Dud nations
 

LA abyssia has good battle mages, cheap blood mages (100 gold, sacred), decent infantery, they get 80 extra design points (due to heat 2) - probably among the top 50% nations.

Re: Dud nations
 

The reason that someone will always mention Abyssia on such lists, especially late Abyssia, is that its benefits dont appear to some players. Its particular to the playing style. Of course all of the nations are to some degree which is something I LOVE about this game. But Abysia seems like a good idea for using the fire auras in head-to-head combat, then when they try it doesnt seem to work out as well as expected. Finding its other benefits involves working in areas that might not be apparent to the kinds of players who try it looking for a super army.

I think thats part of any nation. Anytime there DOES seem to be an agreement about a weak anything (nation, spell, units, strategy) it tends to make me focus on it to try and develop a use for it. I think that many of the expert players do the same thing but being an expert player tends to go hand in hand with not telling everyone when you discover such things.

Re: Dud nations
 

I disagree on one point, most so called experts that you talk to do what they can to give constructive advice and their opinion in matters.

Re: Dud nations
 

I'm sorry, but perhaps you're thinking that a mass of overly-expensive Guardians of the Pyre and some Falling Fires casting scared, err I mean sacred, units are going to take anyone down with anything but late to end game noise, Gandalf Parker? Go play LA Abysia in MP. You expect them to use blood to summon what? Their troops don't radiate heat, and everyone will know what's coming once they manage to research up to decent fire spells that utilize their fire resistance. I'm still not understanding. They suck.

In fact, has anyone ever been overrun by LA Abysia? Has LA Abysia ever won a game? Hmmmm.

Re: Dud nations
 

Have you even tried blood ? It is very strong in fact, and the ability to build blood hunters for 100 gold (and since they are sacred they cost half the upkeep) is a very nice trait. They have strong fire, astral and blood mages, and strong mages are pretty rare in LA, in fact there are dussins of worse nations out there. Sure they are not a powerhouse but they are not as weak as you think.

Re: Dud nations
 

On average one in 40 smiths have an air random... I think you'll need a searching pretender to get usefull amounts of gems.


Cheap anywhere blood hunters, heavy infantry with tower shields, immunity to fire storm/heat from hell... ought to be able to do something?

Guess all usefull mages being old and capitol-only counts for something too.

Re: Dud nations
 

Good points. One thing about this game will be finding out whether or not rush tactics will count for anything. If not, then many of the usual nation considerations learned from smaller MP games might need altered. If Abysia plays slowly with a strong heat dominion then things might get interesting. They could even go to heat +3 which would affect others more than it would them. On the other hand, there are nations which will be able to make better use of indepts to push without waiting for their dominion to catch up.

Would Abysia playing a defensive game inside a powerful dominion until they research some power for their mages might be a tactic?

Re: Dud nations
 

LA Marignon has the same or better blood potential, better magic diversity, 2 mapmove crossbows (which work great with flaming arrows), better researchers, non-cap-only mages that are actually useful, sailing, and spies, along with some kickass national summons and possibly the best PD in the game, along with non-cap H3 priests that can blood sacrifice up a storm, which is especially important with Rlyeh and Ermor's LA dominions being a very real LA threat. Abysia gets...2 free picks from heat 2? And a shot at S3/B4 on their warlocks, which is one higher than the Goetics. FR troops across the board and one extra MR is nice, but that hardly makes up for everything else being vastly inferior to Marignon. They're going to see maybe 2 anathemants all game since they'll be making warlocks the rest of the time, so less potential blood sacrificing abuse on the whole, even though they do have H3 priests as well. Abysia is a clear loser against any opponent that isn't tossing around gobs of fire magic, so their only good matchup is probably the head-to-head with Marignon. Most of the other LA nations won't really care about the FR til the battlefield enchants come out, and by that point Abysia's reliance on cap-mages is going to start to hurt them pretty badly.

Re: Dud nations
 

I didnt realize we were trying to discuss who might actually win. I might try that will a 4 man small-map blitz but not something this big.

Diplomacy and alliances are likely to affect the outcome of this game more than anything we have discussed so far. Second to that is likely to be how closely matched a nation is to the playing style of the person playing it.
If gambling wasnt illegal here Id be tempted to start a paypal betting pool. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/image...es/biggrin.gif