Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy ?
 

When I decided to apply for my first MP game I said myself not to cry for help right from the start http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif but since I rolled a race I don't know how to play (and kinda dislike what I read about yomi MP ability here on forums in the Corwin's thorough analysis - which was awesome btw) I could definitely use a tip or two, especially on the matter of pretender design, magic choice, what to research early on and maybe what army to use early on. It will be a large EA game with around 225 provinces and 15 players.

I will not tell you what I personally have in mind for the pretender god since I wouldn't like it if someone from the game could read it here and find out about my strategy for good, but still I am grateful for any advice or suggestion you are willing to give me

Thanks a lot !

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy ?
 

Master lich is nice.

4-5 death on him would keep you from having to raise your DaiOni's death skill to cast darkness. New patch fixed darkness (afaik) so it doesn't affect the oni, so it is a good spell to keep in mind. The Lich is a possibility for enetering water as well.

Also keep in mind, Yomi doesn't get sacred troops so don't bother going too high in any one path of magic.
You get a lot of death 2+ casters, and oni spirits are undead, so shadow blast is nice, albiet expensive to use.

Massing cheap bakemono archers early on usually works, then switch to oni once you have the economy to support it.

Earth magic would be a good pick for pretender too. If you go air as well, you will be able to get a contact kohonus tengu or even a dai tengu. The Dai Tengu is nice because he can cast arrow fend for your low protection Oni.

Dai Oni make decent SCs if you can replace their high encumberance armor. Something with low encumberance will be fine because they can cast invunerability on themselves. give them the elixer of life and smile when your enemies have to kill them 3 times over.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

The Earth bless is pretty nice for Yomi, because Dai Oni are sacred and can make good use of both the bonus protection and the reinvigoration granted by the bless.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

I generally prefer a 4earth/4nature green dragon (safer for particularly aggressive games as a dragon does tend to deter early wars simply because they're a hassle to track down) or maybe even a master druid with 4nature/4earth/1 astral. Note that you do NOT start with astral though so heavily consider at least one point of it on your pretender because the ability to make luck pendants make a HUGE difference later on for your dai oni's.

Scales you can run are order 3, sloth 3, misfortune 1 (I normally take 2 points of misfortune, but new players generally have a harder time dealing with bad events), magic 3. You might also consider a heat scale simply for your hannayas and death scales as well depending on your use of sorcerers (who are actually very cost effective if you don't take death or end up taking growth). Do NOT recruit many oni troops, they are not that great beyond tanking for some indies. If worse comes to worse, they do provide a decent gold sink if you need to troop flood (in which case, I recommend the fireball onis as well as the ones that can split poison + throw flames). Make sure those onis are near the fornt of the battle field with "fire closest". For the most part your army should consist of mass bakemono archers with perhaps a few bandits to give some morale mixed. If you're going bless, I heavily recommend prophetizing one of your starting commanders and recruiting an oni general straight off the bat to "tank" by using /him/ as a decoy and scripting for fire closest. To be honest, the manual's "recommended strategy" is not written too poorly so it's not a bad choice to follow it. For research purposes, I recommend going enchantment heavy till you reach enchantment 4 (flaming arrows). Your hannayas can cast it with 2 fire gems if I recall and it's a very very deadly spell with your archers. Speaking of hannayas, they're great in battle as both raise skeletons spammers or fireball/falling fires off phoenix power casters. For your "meat" I recommend either getting a second fort and literally spamming oni generals out of it or using indies for heavies.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Over the last two patches, the oni have gotten a considerable boost. I wouldn't write them off right away. Bakemono are flaky because they die so easily and can make your Commander auto-rout. That, and one pesky mage with arrow-fend and those bakemono are worthless.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

I didn't write them off. I said, don't recruit /many/. I actually use them every so and often now. Also bakemono's may be "flakey" but they are cheap as heck and easy to mass up for early game. You, yourself even mentioned that. Most exp. players will get arrow fend to counter you anyway since they'll expect it coming but generally the vast amount of projectiles just being flung is still menacing.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Hey, thanks for all the advice. I didn't expect this much input on such short notice!

To be honest I wasn't very far in my test SP last night from what KissBlade and (to some extent) FAJ are suggesting. I did a druid (kinda like the stealthy pretender and it's rainbow capability) with W4/N4/E4 and also threw in 2F and 2A just because, with being close to a rainbow mage, I could search for all the sites of gems I will need more easily - with just my pretender. The initial pick is 10 anyway so it's no big deal. I did 3 order/3 sloth/ 1 misfortune also (what a coincidence) but took just 1 research to have 5 candles and the 2 in fire and astral, I'm not sure if that was worth it ... I did the bakemono at start with some mercs and some cold oni and some fire oni. I built a Dai Oni on second turn (to make him my prophet next turn) so he could be the only one casting divine bless instead of all the dai onis doing it for themselves .... et cetera et cetera it turned out very good against the AI in the end actually. Altho my Dai Onis which I trained every 3 turns started getting afflictions from all the fighting. Which equipement would help them stay more resistant? I did give them lighter armor and helmets like FAJ suggested ...

@KissBlade
When you said "your starting commanders" did you mean one of the 2 stealthy bandit commanders you get at startup? Also I didn't know Oni Generals were very effective, I'll have to try them out.

@FAJ

What boost? I only know that

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

If you gave them lighter armor, script them with bless, summon earthpower, fireshield (change this to soul vortex once you get it) and ironskin (change this to invulnerability when you get it). Plus you can buff them before battle with your pretender if you so choose with luck + body ethereal. Also look into gift of health from the enchantment tree =).

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

The Cyclops is an awesome pretender for Yomi (and to any other nation that has it available). E9N4 will give the Cyclops a terrific protection out the gate, the ability to cast summon earthpower to relieve fatigue and Strength of Gaia/Personal Regeneration to regenerate (as well as resist poison, elemental fortitude, iron will if the situation so demands), and provide a blessing that's very useful to the nation's sacred commanders and summons. An awake cyclops like that can even attack the indies from turn 1 if you're willing to risk it; in the Early Age the probability of facing something that can afflict the cyclops is low, but it's always real.

With the blessing mentioned, unequipped Dai Oni in their heavy armor can be scripted to blessing, summon earthpower, fire shield, fire at closest and still have the Oni almost fatigueless when the enemies engage in melee. (Firing missile weapons doesn't cause fatigue.) You should pay careful attention to the dominion in the province, though, since if there's drain you're better off dropping the last two spells.

Thus, early research goals in pursuing this strategy should be conjuration 3 for summon earthpower and enchantment 3 for fire shield and personal regeneration. (Besides thaumaturgy 2 for the site-searching spells, of course, but that's a given with all nations).

These goals are have formidable synergy with other approaches: At conjuration 2 there's the all-important Dark Knowledge and at conjuration 3 there's the Konoha Tengu -summon, which I think is actually rather decent for the cost: 5 sacred fliers with good attacks for 5 gems makes it a very nice spell if you should chance upon air gem sources. Enchantment 3 provides raise skeletons, which is a terrific spell indeed for the hannyas.

As for the early expansion, well, I've had some modicum of success with having a Dai Oni backed by a couple dozen archers cast blessing and then throw flames at the oncoming enemies. It is very durable even without further spells or equipment and can hold the line by itself while the archers deal the majority of the damage: the fear of the Oni make the enemy run soonish I've found, and as long as the hard targets are avoided there should be little chance of losing the Oni, at least for good. A group like that can be further augmented by putting Oni Generals next to the Dai Oni to partake in the blessing and to guard it's flanks: especially fire-random ones are neat since they can cast fire shield once it's available. That's pretty expensive, though, and you might prefer buying sorcerers or hannyas in your secondary castles. (I guess it goes without saying you'll want to start buying a Dai Oni each turn as soon as possible in your capital.)

Later development after the milestones of conjuration 3 and enchantment 3 are done would include:
-Enchantment 4 for flaming arrows. One of the cheapest archers in the game both gold- and resource-wise, and a mage capable of casting this spell recruitable in every castle!
-Alteration 3 for ironskin. Later invulnerability, soul vortex and Phoenix Pyre, but you'll want to equip the Onis by then.
-Construction for lighter armors which will come in handy when you start getting too many spells in your script: soul vortex is harsh to your fatigue even without the added encumberance from armor. Magical weapons and girdles of might won't hurt either.
-Thaumaturgy 3 for Iron Will. I always forget to research this before it's too late, and lose a turn of action just when you need it the most. (You don't want to face Pangaea with Charm without this!)

Some side notes:
-The cyclops will benefit greatly from a weapon, anything will do. A helmet would do good, too. The Dai Oni also reap great rewards from helmets, since they lack one naturally and thus do not get the earth-blessing bonus to the head-protection either without an artificial one.
-The cyclops can forge a thistle mace to give to the hannyas; this will greatly increase your forging possibilities, assuming you have the gem-income. Choice nature items for the Dai Oni are boots of the messenger (only N1 to make), ring of regeneration, amulet of reinvigoration, to name the most important possibilities.
-For scales, Kissblade's ones work nice, although you'll need to cut corners to get the bless. Order 3, sloth 3, heat 1, death 2, misfortune 1, magic 1 leaves you with 5 dominion, which is quite enough. Dominion 9 would of course have synergy with Cyclops's fear, but since you don't have any special reason for high dominion (the cyclops will function just fine even in neutral dominion), it might prove a waste. Dominion 3 would allow to reduce one negative scale, which might be doable since your pretender is awake and thus guarding you from dominion death. Forgoing the N4 would save a lot of points, too.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

I agree with Jurris E9N4 Cyclops, i have used it myself for Yomi and the dai oni are amazing with it.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Yah Jurri pretty much hit the nail on the head. Also I should point out, don't forget both oni commanders come with wolves. Not much but it's still nice to tie up the infantry for a turn.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Wow thanks Jurri for the extensive guide with tons of valuable info. This is exactly the thing I needed to get me started.

My pretender god is sent, I can't tell you exactly what I decided to use, but maybe I will keep a not-too-roleplayish log of the game which might turn out as an interesting AAR in the end - one from the eyes of the newbee http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

btw when I searched for a good name for a god of Oni or the ruler of Yomi (which is a Japanese equivalent of Greek Hades and to some extent Hell) I learned a lot about the Japanese folklore and mythology through a chain of articles on Wiki. Funny how games can inspire you to learn something new sometimes.


This topic turned out as quite a good guide for playing Yomi in the end. =) I am even starting to like them since it is so challenging to bring them to their full potential, it doesn't come right out of the box like for some races.

Cheers!
Marko

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Hey, I have another question - death gems - I think I have and will have more then I need - should I offer a trade for more needed earth gems (for forging helmets and armors for all the dai oni) ? If not what should I use them for ...

other than that everything is proceeding as planned =)

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Ghost generals are worth the cost. You can never have enough death gems as Yomi I find. Even if it is just handing a few out for shadow blast.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Yeah you are probably right =) I remember when I had a second SP tryout a few days ago. I took Misfortune 2 and on second turn I got a ghost general random event (if that is the same guy as the summon), he was awesome. Too bad it didn't hapen in MP =) But I guess I can always summon them myself ...

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

What do you find Ghost Generals to be particularly useful for?

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Maybe I am thinking of a different spell.

I am thinking of the ethereal samurai dude. I like them as thugs because I don't really have to equip them. They hold up enemies so my Dai Oni don't come into contact with anyone before they are done casting their buffs. They stop casting buffs when they come into contact with even chaff troops.

That, and they are undead, so darkness won't affect them.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

I think that it's the same guy as from the spell. The green etherial samurai dude - fits the description perfectly =) he is pretty cool as a thug like you said, and is undead (and can lead magical beings) with leadership 120,if I am not mistaken, so having him as a commander of your hordes is nothing to sneaze at ...

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Huh! I was expecting the high leadership to be part of it, but hadn't thought of using them as linebackers. Thanks for the tips.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Ah, death gems are the best! Here are some uses you might consider with Yomi:
-Horror helmets! The Dai Oni appreciate helmets, and the gems you have the most are death gems. (The added fear should rout your enemies even quicker, too.) Of course the 5 gem helmets from earth or nature would be more economical, but work with what you got.
-Black Bow of Botulf. These are way evil items, that can cripple most any thug/SC. Indeed, it would seem to me that none of the usual protections apply: mirror image, high-parry shield, high protection and air shield all have seemingly failed to prevent this from working in a very small test me and Ygorl did in a game. This could be the very best item in the game, in fact, for the research/gem cost and unstoppable power.
-Summon Spectre used to be great... I'm not sure what magics they can get in Dom3, but if they can get astral they would be very useful indeed, despite the cost.
-Manifestation is an excellent high-conjuration spell. It's pretty hard to cast, but well worth making a couple boosters for.
-Lichcraft gives you D4-mages. Give them a Skull Staff, and you have Ghost Riders -capacity for a reasonable price. As you can see, this is very late game indeed. Give 'em a couple more boosters and start making Tartarians while you're at it http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif Dai Oni with a death random can also be used for these purposes, so get Construction 8 and Conjuration 9 before Enchantment 8 for the demiliches.

Hmm, well, as you can see death gems are very much geared towards late game, at least in my strategies, with the important exceptions of the few items. Skull talismans are great on assassins, but Yomi doesn't have those. You can never have enough death gems once you can make liches, so just stockpiling them is a good idea. In fact, stockpiling them until you get Conjuration 8 and blowing them on a reinforced Well of Misery is not a bad idea at all. (You'll need a death-random Dai Oni, and a Skull Staff and a Skullface, so construction 6 first, though.)

The already-mentioned Ghost Generals are decent enough, but you're probably more limited by your items than thug-chassises; I should think you won't have your pretender and all your Dai Oni equipped very soon anyways, and they make for better thugs than the Ghost Generals would.

In Dom2 I loved Pale Riders, but sadly, in Dom3 it just doesn't cut it, I think. The same with Reanimate archers: these guys are rather useful archers, but they are just too expensive to make in the new economy. At least, in my opinion.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Yomi's troops are generally made out of tissue paper, but your mages are pretty good, so here are some strategies to consider.

1. Research God. A great Sage with only reasonable scales can pump out 40 research on Turn 1, so you can have Frighten for those Indies on Turn 2(your Demon Generals are perfect fot this). By your first human opponent on Turn 9-10, you can have some rightous Evoking.

2. Skull Mentors. The Oni are terrible researchers (except for the Hannya, whcih you make as your only researcher), but you get a nice death economy if you work for it and your can be a research powerhouse with Skull Mentors.

3. Some earth and blood. A god with some Blood and Earth can make Blood Stones, so its like printing money (or gems, in this case). There are worse things that you could do with your god rather than increase your gem income and mage's power (and earth gems can be money, if you get really desperate).

4. Oni General Prophet. An Oni General is a demon, so making him a Holy caster means that he can reanimate undead in his free time for free. Thats an excellent way to make free undead on Turn 3 to break down castles.

General thoughts: Flaming arrows is your friend, and any non-Air power you face should be on the recieving end of a lot of these.

Counting on your troops before you have lots of Alteration is a mistake. Wooden Warriors is the first real protection you'll get on your guys, but you really want to have Armies of Lead/Gold. Oni don't wear pants, so don't be surpised if the casting AI drops Legions of Steel on pantless oni and you get nothing out of it.

Darkness is a win. Demon troops in Darkness eat other troops alive.

High Earth income nations love Living Statues. They might not have the killer apps of Mechanical Men, but they have lots of protection and HPs, and in many cases that better than a grocery list of immunities that may or may not come up.

Hannya can get built in any castle with a lab. Do that. Trust me, you rarely go wrong with a bunch of Fire evokers who can also cast Banefires on people trying tricky crap.

Aka-oni and Ko-oni have an AP ranged weapon. Highly armored troops hate that. The classic Oni only lives in the place where Flaming Arrows is being cast in every battle and Evocations drop like rain.

Supercombatants are for suckers. Anyone who tells you to take your 500 GP mages and send them to the front is not your friend.

Your troops cost small resources, and you can mass them quickly. One good luck money event and you can field an army capable of knocking over a neighbor, so more money and less resources is a generally good scale tactic.

Final word: Yomi is a classic "good magicians, bad troops" position. Research like there is no tomorrow, recruit indies, build labs and castles for more magicians, and hit your breakpoint spells ASAP.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

i can't agree with this. Dai oni with a little bit fo new equipment and a round or two of buffs can easily turn the battle. In my last MP with Yomi I had prophetized a Dai Oni and fileld him with relitivly cheap gear. he often won the battles all by himself. The key to it is low/zero encumberance, and regeneration.

I would rather have my Dai oni soaking up chaff troops and slaughtering them wholesale than sitting back and casting spells untill fatigue 100.

Re: Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy
 

Demon sorcerers make cheap researchers if you spam 'em. For firepower, though - yeah, I second what the above guys said. Flaming arrows + bakemono hordes (assuming your opponent doesn't have access to arrow fend!) + massed hannya are an impressive sight. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif