What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Abysia)
 

I started a Dom 3 game this morning with the Abysia, Children of Flame. It was early age, medium map, three other civs. I started in a corner and had some nice prospective provinces to conquer. My pretender was the Solar Disk with maxed out fire magic and heat scale.

Unfortunately, the barbarian independents were strong in the area, and since I was starting out I was going to have to rely on large, cheap armies.

This was my first time using Abysia, and I loved their troop/commander units. But I found their rank and file troops ridiculously expensive. I couldn't afford more than a small hand full. I tried filling out my units with those black winged demons, but they're useless. They flew right into a Barbarian army and died.

I'm interested in using fire spells, especially from the evocation school. But as a relative newcomer to the game, I don't think I'm ready for Abysia yet. Considering their high costs, and the fact that I couldn't even clear away the first couple of independent provinces, I wonder how usable they even are. Although I bet there's a dom3 player (or several) out there that thinks its perfectly easy http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/wink.gif

So, if I want to do well with fire magic, what Nation/Pretender can I play that isn't from Abysia? Sorry if I could have looked this up myself, but I wanted some player input.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

You should learn to give orders to your units so that they fight more efficiently. Spending design points on your pretender (like Order when you experience money problems) could make sense, too.

For fire magic, Marignon might be wort a look for you.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Abysia are quite hard at first: you need to really take advantage of their fire immunity for them to be worth the cost, and their high resource cost is also a problem. Make sure you take productivity and order. Also, don't hesitate to convert your fire gems into gold with alchemy at the start.
The anointed are amazing battlemages. Script them with summon phoenix power then falling fires / fire cloud / pillar of fire. You can also use anathement salamanders which are recruitable anywhere. The dragon is not so good due to old age.
Abysia are also very good at blood magic.

Other fire nations can suffer a lot from friendly fire, and I don't think anyone has a battlemage like the anointed of rhuax. I think that fire is one of the rarer paths. Perhaps Marignon is the next fire nation after Abysia? I haven't played them in dom3 yet, but in dom2 they had a fire-3 mage.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Yomi has up to F3 on their Dai Oni kings. They're expensive but kind of fun.

Agartha has up to F2 on their Oracles of Subterranean Fires. Since OoSFs also have E3 they can cast Magma Eruption at Evocation-6, which is smaller AoE but longer-range than Flame Eruption and is also a lot of fun. (The other Oracles can go with Blade Wind. Not fire but reasonably destructive vs. EA troops.)

Ermor has fire mages with astral magic, I think, which lets you do Communion to cast more powerful fire spells.

Machaka (MA) has some decent fire mages, IIRC.

None of these nations has fire immunity like Abysia does, so friendly fire becomes more of an issue. I imagine Flame Eruption for Abysia is a real hoot, but I've never tried it yet (still learning the game).

-Max

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Machaka, foo! Recognize!

Of course, you won't be doing fire magic *exclusively*, but 1/4 Black Sorcerer will have F3. You also get the fire/death combo which lets you build flaming skulls.

Try this build:
dormant great sage, F4A4W4S3N4, dominion 5, order 3, prod 2, heat 3, mistfortune 2, magic 1.

He gives a surprisingly powerful blessing to your awesome sacred spider knights, piles of personal research points, and excellent scales. His dominion is somewhat weak.

Anyway, friendly fire is less of a problem when your frontline units regenerate.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

From my little newbie experience with both MA Marignon and Abysia, I'd recommend starting with Marignon, because it plays like a more conventional nation, having plenty of options and answers to (almost) everything

In terms of units, you can fulfill all the battlefield main roles: missile support (Crossbowman), expendable front liners (Flagellants), heavy infantry (Man At Arms) and very good (although expensive) cavalry (Royal Guard/Knights Of The Chalice). On top of that, Marignon also have plenty of priestly/magic powers to unleash and some tactical warheads like Assassins and Spies; although Abysia has got the superior assassins there.
Marignon can also benefit a lot from a good fire bless and dominion: Flagellants are dirty cheap, can be recruited everywhere and combining two attacks plus Flaming Weapons it's pure evil! Knights Of The Chalice also become very nasty with the Flaming Weapons feature, BTW.

In terms of magic, Grand Masters have Fire 3/Astral 2 base plus two additional random paths, and one it's 100%. Recruiting some of them (unfortunately they're capital only) you reach F4 or S3 easily without any empowerment or magic item.
F3 grants you fully access to Evocation gems such as Falling Fires, Flare, Fireball, Fire Cloud and Holy Pyre (National Spell)... You can also cast Flaming Arrows (Enchantment, F3 required) giving an edge to your Crossbowmen/indy archers. Enchantment also gives you the chance to make your troops flame immune thanks to Fire Fend/Warriors of Muspelheim.
Another worth mentioning spells, from Thaumaturgy school, are Raging Hearts (F4) for crippling enemies' economy alongside with Spies, and Soul Slay (S3) a basic anti-SC spell. If you go Astral you can also try some of the outstanding National Summons...

High Inquisitors are level 3 priests capable of Divine Blessing/Smite all day, and they're also very effective at killing enemy dominions

The biggest drawback they've is the ageing problems that the best units suffer (Grand Masters/High Inquisitors)

That's in a nutshell what can Marignon do for you...

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Thanks for the feedback, I'll give Marignon a shot.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Another thing you could try is an S9 bless, which almost doubles Flagellants' survivability. The two flail attacks ignore shields so they should already be pretty good at hitting, and if you want a damage boost B6 gives almost as good a damage boost as F9 against anything armored. An unblessed flagellant can expect to do about 5 points of damage per-hit against Prot 10, and either a B6 bless or a F9 bless will boost that to 7.5. (The +4 attack of F9 is non-negligible but you can also just throw an extra flagellant in the fight. 2 more attacks = -4 more to defense. Don't get too attached to the attack bonus.) Of course you could take both F9 *and* the B4 or B6, which lets you forge some nifty items. And Knights of the Chalice benefit a lot from the B6 bless.

Don't get me wrong, the F9 bless is clearly better, but the B6 is a lot cheaper.

-Max


Average per-hit damage for flagellants (2000 runs):
Prot 1 Unblessed dmg 13.11 Fire bless 19.47 B6 bless 16.05
Prot 2 Unblessed dmg 12.09 Fire bless 18.03 B6 bless 15.00
Prot 3 Unblessed dmg 10.91 Fire bless 16.55 B6 bless 13.89
Prot 4 Unblessed dmg 10.06 Fire bless 15.07 B6 bless 13.21
Prot 5 Unblessed dmg 9.19 Fire bless 13.86 B6 bless 11.86
Prot 6 Unblessed dmg 8.17 Fire bless 12.47 B6 bless 10.82
Prot 7 Unblessed dmg 7.44 Fire bless 11.51 B6 bless 10.06
Prot 8 Unblessed dmg 6.48 Fire bless 9.48 B6 bless 9.20
Prot 9 Unblessed dmg 5.58 Fire bless 8.73 B6 bless 8.10
Prot 10 Unblessed dmg 4.77 Fire bless 7.54 B6 bless 7.40
Prot 11 Unblessed dmg 3.99 Fire bless 6.59 B6 bless 6.54
Prot 12 Unblessed dmg 3.28 Fire bless 5.56 B6 bless 5.73
Prot 13 Unblessed dmg 2.82 Fire bless 4.77 B6 bless 4.78
Prot 14 Unblessed dmg 2.13 Fire bless 3.86 B6 bless 4.08
Prot 15 Unblessed dmg 1.70 Fire bless 3.33 B6 bless 3.32
Prot 16 Unblessed dmg 1.35 Fire bless 2.56 B6 bless 2.70
Prot 17 Unblessed dmg 1.11 Fire bless 2.29 B6 bless 2.29
Prot 18 Unblessed dmg 0.80 Fire bless 1.84 B6 bless 1.71
Prot 19 Unblessed dmg 0.59 Fire bless 1.71 B6 bless 1.26
Prot 20 Unblessed dmg 0.46 Fire bless 1.30 B6 bless 0.95

Average per-hit damage for Knights of the Chalice (2000 runs):
Prot 1 Unblessed dmg 16.84 Fire bless 23.57 B6 bless 20.05
Prot 2 Unblessed dmg 15.98 Fire bless 21.62 B6 bless 19.11
Prot 3 Unblessed dmg 15.04 Fire bless 21.01 B6 bless 17.77
Prot 4 Unblessed dmg 14.00 Fire bless 18.72 B6 bless 17.09
Prot 5 Unblessed dmg 13.24 Fire bless 17.77 B6 bless 15.98
Prot 6 Unblessed dmg 12.05 Fire bless 15.70 B6 bless 14.96
Prot 7 Unblessed dmg 11.17 Fire bless 15.06 B6 bless 13.86
Prot 8 Unblessed dmg 10.05 Fire bless 13.63 B6 bless 13.09
Prot 9 Unblessed dmg 9.33 Fire bless 12.47 B6 bless 12.29
Prot 10 Unblessed dmg 8.34 Fire bless 10.76 B6 bless 11.01
Prot 11 Unblessed dmg 7.14 Fire bless 9.99 B6 bless 10.47
Prot 12 Unblessed dmg 6.46 Fire bless 8.65 B6 bless 9.38
Prot 13 Unblessed dmg 5.49 Fire bless 7.68 B6 bless 8.31
Prot 14 Unblessed dmg 4.77 Fire bless 6.59 B6 bless 7.29
Prot 15 Unblessed dmg 3.89 Fire bless 5.54 B6 bless 6.38
Prot 16 Unblessed dmg 3.22 Fire bless 4.56 B6 bless 5.58
Prot 17 Unblessed dmg 2.82 Fire bless 3.95 B6 bless 4.81
Prot 18 Unblessed dmg 2.15 Fire bless 3.12 B6 bless 3.98
Prot 19 Unblessed dmg 1.53 Fire bless 2.56 B6 bless 3.26
Prot 20 Unblessed dmg 1.33 Fire bless 2.08 B6 bless 2.63

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Max,

Very good analysis, nice to see how things work statistically

Personally I'm not very fond of a S9 Bless for the cheap front line units, but as you said, since Flagellants die with a single blow, Twist Fate can be really useful here. OTOH the Twist Fate thing can save the mage's bacon from a lucky arrow hit, which is excellent.

Overall, I think that Marignon benefits more from a F9 bless instead of a high blood bless because Knights Of The Chalice are really difficult to amass.

In fact, with a proper Pretender selection and design you can reach high blesses without wasting tons of points.
In my Marignon test game, I used the following Pretender with pretty good results:
Imprisoned Baphomet (starting with F2S2)/F9S3/Dominion 8/Order 3/Production 3/Neutral Scales for Heat and Luck/Growth 2/Drain 2

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Good ideas. There are many options that can work. Another thought though is since Marignon's mages already have Fire magic at 4, it might be wise to give the pretender different paths.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Sorry, but I forgot to say that Flaming Weapons also adds the chance to set the defender on fire, giving an extra punch of excruciating pain...

A unit on fire takes 1-2 points of AP damage per turn until fire extinguishes, and it takes longer to go out in warm dominions.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

The destructive potential of flame eruption is huge, but it's risky and not very easy to pull off (In my experience at least) as you need to get your mages very close to the frontline, where the survival rate is noticeably lower than safely at the back.

I've tried it a couple of times in important battles, and it has won me the battle on occasion, but never without loosing at least some of my mages, while another time I just got all my mages killed, exept for those who ended up in a bad position where all they did was cast a fireball anywhere.

So to sum it up it's a potentially powerful tactic, but you'd best script everything carefully, and expect losses, so only try it if it's really worth it. (or if one of your mages has upset you of course. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/evil.gif)

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Astral path seems a good candidate to Marignon since their initial sites add +4 Fire gems and +1 Astral gem per turn, and it is very good in the long run.

A high Astral rating also unlocks their mighty National Summons, although some Arcane Probing (Evo 2)/site searching should be done beforehand due to the high number of gems required per summon.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Another advantage of Fire compared to Blood for Marignon:

Knight of Chalice
Hoof is 'strength not added' weapon.
Lance is 'strength not added' weapon.

These weapons won't benefit from extra strength, but Flaming Weapons will most likely still work.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Flaming hooves! Good point, I wouldn't have thought of that.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

I actually just played a single player game as MA Marigon. I used an imprisoned Baphomat(?) with enough fire and astral magic to get the high blesses from each. I'm still quite new at this game (haven't done multiplayer yet), but I still have a few observations.

1)Flaggalents are difficult to use and are VERY vulnerable to arrow fire. If they get hit, chances are they get wounded if not killed outright. Yes, they are cheap and can be ammassed quickly with high domain and seemed to have good morale, but they are still pretty much fodder even with Twist Fate.

2)Knights of the Chalice are excellent. I was never able to build more then four a turn due to resource limitations and had problems getting from my capital to the front, but I annihilated an army of around 800 miscellaneous Mictlan warriors with about 40 of these mixed in with Mari's other heavy cavalary unit (blessed of course).

3) The Angel of Vegeance (national summon spell Heavenly wrath, I think) seems ideal for a thug. It comes with Fear and Blood Vegeance and can't command any units anyways. With no basic armor though I had to equip it before I could use it to try to rout enemies. I thinks its sacred as well. Any advice on how to make a thug out of this unit would be appreciated.

4) Maybe the Best priests in the game. Beyond High Inquistors which are level 3 with double priest level when preaching to reduce enemy domain and can be built at any fort, most of the angelic summons have priest levels as well, with the Seraph is a Level 4 priest in addition to its formiddible magic (I want to say four of air, fire, and astral). Bottom line is you'll always have somebody to cast Divine Blessings.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Thanks for the observations. I wonder if this is one of those rare situations where an Air bless would be worth the points (for Flagellants). Probably not without some synergies with Air magic.

-Max

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Just a 40% air shield (which is cheap) means roughly that at least 40% of the flagellants will join close combat. It is worth it in my eyes. An air shield of 80% too much, those points can be used on another bless instead, one that makes those 40% that survives the arrows do some damage.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

I just can't see an air bless worth taking past 6 if at all. It'd be alright for a lot of nations, but it always seems like the points would be better spent somewhere else.

Or you could always just try to scout out enemy armies before they get to you, then decide whether or not to send the flagellants in. maybe do a little scripting magic to try and not get targeted by arrow fire immediatly.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Maybe an Air Bless is a better solution then Twist Fate (though that provides some protection for melee), but at the end of the day I think Flaggies need some kind of offensive Bless to really be worth it.

Another possibility that occurs to me is higher income and Dominion Scales, thus making a lot more of them combined with at least some bless. Like I said, when Blessed these guys rarely broke from the battle despite taking heavy damage and casualties from misile fire. So, I'm thinking maybe build enough of them to simply overwhelm enemy defensives. However, you should be thinking in the back of your head about Knights of the Chalice. They are Sacred and can be blessed as well, and in doing so become quite formidible. I should go look up some of the stats from that game.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

You have to balance the benefits of the bless with the benefits of the corresponding magic path.

A4 on your pretender is stone-cold awesome to have - it lets you forge air boost items - 1/4 of those mage guys have A1 - boost that to A2 with an item and they can cast Wind Guide and Arrow Fend. Schweet. The 30% air shield is sheer gravy.

A really effective bless strategy don't just take advantage of the blessing - it ALSO benefits from the magic paths themselves. This is what makes the difference between bless-rushers who merely make their immediate neighbours miserable, and bless rushers who actually win, IMO, in MP.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

As usual, DrP is spot on.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

I really like the Air Shield idea for Marignon, it's a great addition for the Flagellants and very handy for dodging friendly Fire Arrows too.

Unfortunately it's not easy to build an efficient Pretender supporting both F9 and A5-6 plus good order/production/dominion for recruiting a fair number of Knights Of The Chalice and Flagellants per turn.

The most optimal Pretender build I got supporting this idea, from my humble point of view, is an Imprisoned Baphomet with F9A5S2, Dominion 6, Order & Production 3, Drain 2 and neutral scales for Heat/Luck/Growth.
Death scales are not recommended since our best mages/priests are old and prone to disease.

I found Baphomet surprisingly good for any build requiring F9 and dominion!! Even better than Phoenix who already has A1F1 and no additional paths required!

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Any particular reason for going Order-3 Luck-0 instead of Order-3 Misfortune-3? The latter seems to be fairly popular because Order-3 cancels out most of Misfortune-3, leaving only a 39% increased probability of negative events (which is very much worth 120 points and which I haven't found to be noticeable in my limited experience). Unless you just hate random events so much that you want them all to disappear...

You could spend the extra points on Growth-3, if you like.

-Max

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Well, in fact I'm not very lucky in real life so I didn't want to spread this misfortune to my computer gaming too... http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif

Honestly I have much less experience than thou and I haven't tried this Order/Misfortune setup yet.
Taking into account your comments, yes, the risk is quite low and there's plenty of investment opportunities with those extra 120 points (increasing A6, Dom 7 and Growth 1, for instance).

Thanks for sharing your wisdom!

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Based on my studies, I strongly recommend Order-3/Misfortune-2.

Misfortune-2 does seem to be a relatively minor penalty - but Misfortune-3 does *not*, you get a lot more of the really bad events than with Misfortune-2. So (if you have order-3), misfortune-2 seems to be worth it for 80 points, but misfortune-3 for 40 on top of that is not a good buy.

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

Dr. P,

Can you quantify what you mean by "a lot more... bad events"? Even subjectively? Twice as many barbarian attacks? Two vampire count attacks within 10 turns? I love Order-3 but I hate paying points for it, and I haven't felt like luck was a major factor in any of my handful of games so far. Bad luck hasn't even really been an irritant, actually. Large maps, generally 180+ provinces and 4-8 AIs, and I always take Growth scales. (There was one quick little test game where I took Turmoil-3, Death-3, Misfortune-3 and had half my population killed off on turn two. That's the only event I've ever had that I'd feel it was worth spending points to avoid.)

-Max

Re: What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Aby
 

I believe that you get about twice as many of the "very bad" events with misfortune-3 as with misfortune-2 - but that's just a guess, the thing I was checking was total money.

For whatever reason - lost income, killed population, unrest from barbarian invasions - you make less money on average (a few %, I did enough samples to get to statistical significance) as misfortune-3/order-3 than you do as misfortune-2/order-3/death-1, at least over the medium haul.

I just ran it again to make sure I had the magnitude right:
setting, pop after 10, money after 10,notes
o3d1m2, 29540, 3740
o3d1m2, 29670, 4585, militia
o3d1m2, 28090, 3892
o3d1m2, 29110, 4129

o3m3, 25780, 4164, no lab
o3m3, 24430, 4077, +death gems
o3m3, 29560, 3686, militia
o3m3, 29410, 4073

That's 345 gold less you get on average - or ~8%, which is a bit larger than the value I got before.

I did a larger sample at one point and got about the same result (but statistically significant, 95% confidence interval of 1-11%, IIRC, but can't find my notes). This isn't a perfect methodology (it was better before, had same armies for everyone) - once I have the kinks worked out I'll post something more comprehensive. I only used nations with temperate preference.

This is from setting your initial army on patrol and hosting for 10 turns with autotax. Without the patrollers the effect is presumably more pronounced, since most of the money lost to misfortune is from increased unrest.

This also ignores the semi-logarithmic effect of fortune/misfortune. The number of events you get doesn't scale linearly with empire size. On very large maps, misfortune-3 is therefore more worth it.

Anyway, the risk of losing your temple with misfortune-3 seems to be significant; with misfortune-2, negligible. If you're a high-roller and inclined to take risks, obviously misfortune 3 would be more appealing on that basis as well.