Joys of EA Abysia
 

While I typically only play MA(my theory being that the game is too complex to effectively learn all 3 eras and be the best mp possible with limited time), and I am way too competitive to play at less than full throttle, I am on self imposed exile from MP to check out many of the mods and some of the races that interest me outside of the middle era.

Having fought EA Abysia in Kingmaker, I was intrigued by their pd, which i found to be INSANE. And I saw some interesting possibilities with their sacred troops and mages as well.

So I have played a sp game and a couple of blitz mp games with an imprisoned Cyclops,
and a e10 n4 3o 3p 3h 1growth 2 drain 5 dominion with impressive results. One issue I do see with my set up is my troops fight too much in cold provinces with the weak 5 dominion.

But when you are invading, even with a strong dominion, you likely are going to be fighting in hostile dominion anyway. The Anointed Rhuax, properly equipped, is not a bad thug.

I do see issues on a larger map. 1s mages will not cut it, and lack of travel power will hurt as your empire expands. If you can conquer an astral or air nation early, by the time your Cyclops breaks free you can empower him with air.

Or if you conquer an astral nation early you may find find a good mage to empower to give you gateway and lead communions.

In any event they are a fun race to play if you like BURN things!:D:D

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Why do you want a bless as Abysia, it's not like you'll be buying many burning ones? I believe that their heat aura and insane pd are enough to deter a rush. I'd rather go with a rainbow instead.

I agree on other points.

Edit: You can blood sacrifice, so strong dominion isn't a must.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Yay, I also would go for good scales instead of a bless. You won't have many burning ones anyway (even with full scales you can't fill all the spots usually unless with extremely good capitol placement and/or the global which boosts the resources), and your normal troops are very good anyway. I won't go with drain either, the mages are good and you need to climb the evo/thaum/constr/blood trees fast with an already unexceptional research ability.
Also, you will probably need a rainbow to help with the poor diversity or the top blood summons/rituals.
PD is so good you can get some points going with misfortune IMHO too, the PD mage can fireball teh barbarianz!! :eek:
A good dominion is IMHO needed to get the most from your high Heat scale in battle (makes heat aura and some spells/summons somewhat more effective, and cold nations sad)

But that's just my opinion, and you know, if that works for you, it's ok :)

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Yes, with such good pd misfortune is a must. With the cyclops build above I would swap drain 2 for magic 1 and add misfortune 2 and lower production to 2. But, I wouldn't take such a build in the first place.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Me too, I don't feel the need of an SC Pretender chassis for Abysia, surely not in the early game (good starting army and durable units)... And instead of an imprisoned one, you could go for blood instead and have no problems summoning those nice infernal thugs and royalties (you could decide to go for higher growth so, not very thematic but it would help both your heavy blood hunting and your old mages, wink-wink ;) )
Well, looks like the abundance of ways dom3 nations can be played strikes again :happy:

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Agreed. It is a point of pride with me not to take 3order 2 misfortune. Certainly cannot argue against it from a strategic standpoint.

Why take a bless? Because it is FUN! And you can get some magic diversity easy enough with indy mages. Especially with nature(early on before pretender breaks free) and death. I typically find a wolf tribe shamen and make them until i get one with death magic.

You need to focus on mercenaries and hire the mages that have air or other paths you lack.

Besides you do not need many Burning Ones to win key battles. Why not take a bless? Your best mages are sacred as well. The Earth Bless means they can cast all day. So the main bless, the 10 earth, is for your mages. You add 4 nature for your Burning ones, plus it gives you magical diversity in nature. 4n also means you can slap a shroud on your old diseased mages and they will not die(regeneration).

In any event, I am sure there are much better Pretender set ups than the one I devised. Mine was primarily for sp and I used it for 2 blitz games. Much thought would have to go into it if I decided to play the race in a big mp game. Especially since without a d/f combo, you cannot get your national summons or make one of the fire boosters.

In addition to blood sacrifice, you also have level 3 priests for dominion raising, and strong income scales for building temples(guarded by insane pd).

But it is an enjoyable race to play. Especially if you like to play with matches.:eek:

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

This is the only very important thing, being this a game, I like ppl who play for fun ;) my humble considerations were just to enter a bit a minmaxing way of thinking, but the "let's have fun" attitude is the one I use the most too :)

I only find un-funny to have to rely on so slow, capital only troops. :( With that bless they will be durable, true, but to replace some it will take a long time for you, and not sure how worthy it would be not to skip their long travel and just recruit some tough axe/morningstar wielders in a border fortress.

But they have even higher Fire magic than they usually need for spells, access to Phoenix Power and lots of F gems, so they can usually greatly reduce their casting fatigue with that ;)
Also E10 seems a bit of an overkill compared to E9, you get 1 point of reinvig on troops and 1 of prot on your pretender for 56 points.. You could instead buy 1 more point of Growth for less problems of old age on your expensive mages and more bloodhuntable (lol) provinces, and still have something left :p Or one more Magic and your mages will fatigue 10% less, which is usually more than 1 fatigue point.

That's a very nice idea :)

Agreed. I'm also a naturally warm guy so it comes natural to play them :mean:

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Actually the 10e may be overkill. And if i used the extra points, it would be to give my cyclops air magic.

One thing about Air magic sites is they can all be found with just 2a. That is not true of many magic paths. In fact with Earth, Death, and others, you are wasting many gems not to do level 3 searches. But not air. I think there may be 1 or 2 air sites that take 3a to find, and they are rare.

Cyclops has only 1 eye. Bummer that(: One air he can cast air shield, resist lighting, and forge a key artifacts rainbow armor(air/nature combo) as well as robes missile protection.

If i was not playing sp, or a blitz on a small map, almost certainly the Cyclops would have to have at least 1 air, and I would empower him to 2 as soon as possible for cloud trapeze after he awoke.

About the 2 drain. Lightless lanterns are easy to make. Also since EA Abysia is not an Astral race, that extra mr from the drain scale is useful. I do not mind giving up 1 research point for 80 design points and gaining a free mr point for my mages against mind hunts etc.

I typically take 2 drain when playing MA Pangaea in mp games, and just resign myself going in to being dead last in research and working my strategy around the lower level spells. EA Abysia is better off than MA Pangaea because of the lanterns.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Yes, lanterns are great, Abysia should be forging those in abundance, but even so I wouldn't take drain with them. I always think of taking drain 2 as of giving up 2 research points, because everyone else will take magic 1. Being last in research with Pangaea is less bad than with Abysia, because Pangaea has some anti-SC capability. Against Abysia you just slap a ring of fire resistance on your guy and he's untouchable.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Lightless lanterns aren't so fast to reach at constr-6 imho... Maybe with your build you can do a lot without mages in battles, so you don't need to rush up evoc and thaum, and you can afford that drain-2 with which your mages fatigue 20% more in battlefield spells :) But if you went to evo-5 instead, you would have had mages casting Flares and Fireballs and Fire Clouds and Falling Fires on enemies and around your fire-immune troops soon :p

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

At drain 2 it's a long way to Construction 6 for lanterns. Especially if you want anything else along the way.



Edit: As Tifone just said with more detail

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Tell that to my morningstars and axes lol :D (j/k, I get what you say, still Abysia has some Astral too ;) )

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Warlock are capital only and old. You won't have them running around. They will be busy researching, casting horrors, etc.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Yes, but with just a S3 one in an army you already horror mark the guy up to 10 times before passing out, and then "casting horrors" means you can have him attacked by let's say 3 lesser horrors at once, maybe not killed but surely further horror marking, then he'll meet the hunter of heroes and bye bye :) (also researching with Warlocks isn't cost effective, IMHO, they aren't sacred so higher upkeep; I'd use them to blood hunt instead ;) )

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

I defer to the guys that have played mp games with EA Abysia.

That said, 100 percent fr does not mean you win. I lost a banelord with 100 fr, boot quickness and ring regen(also had firebrand and vine shield and dragon helm) in Kingmaker to EA Abysia pd. It was about 40 pd, but those flails add up.

My thoughts(flawed perhaps) was go evoc 2 conj 3 then const 6.

You get a fast start with your blessed troops. hopefully you can buy about 5 per turn after you take all the provinces around your capital. You have decent evoc, phoenix fire, and summon lesser fire ele., you also have summon fire drake.

That may tide you over to constr 6. at constr 4 the annoited ones become a force to be reckoned with properly outfitted. But without ever having played a large mp game with them, it is all speculation on my part.

The most comparable race i have played successfully in large mp games with 2 drain is ma pangaea, and as someone pointed out, the fit may not be perfect. You do have communion capability and mind burn/solar rays for some anti thug capability at the lower level.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Tifone: That's 2 S boosters, plus the AI doesn't usually keep casting horror marks after the script runs out. Not a great strat IMO.

EA's S and B access are pretty marginal, and the Anointed are a much better choice for that cap-only slot. I'd play them with an E9 bless for sure for the Anointed and Burning Ones, since their usefulness transitions pretty well. One of Aby's best answers to SCs is gonna be a handful of Anointed dual-wielding fire brands (or some other nice AP weapon) after dropping Pyre...they'll take some afflictions, but should be pretty much impossible to kill, since they won't end up in melee with > 100 fatigue by necessity, since they can't run in while unconscious, and ironskin should keep them reasonably safe from any PD or chaff. The reinvig from the bless (and optional additional armor) is pretty much amazing for that strat.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

@ Xietor: you missed a support mage casting body ethereal and luck on the bane.

I never played Abysia either, but played against them once. They are too predictable, that is the main problem.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Sure, the initial Phoenix Power+Falling Fires is predictable (and effective in the early game), but after that Aby (even EA) should be diversifying using Blood.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

no i did not. i had a pendant of luck on him, and a support mage cast body ethereal then retreated. He still died.

Banelord: fire brand, vine shield dragon helm luck pend. ring regen boots quickness.

And he had body ethereal(: :eek:

After that I was not feeling lucky so i sent in Ruin with soul vortex and 100 fr as well. that did the trick.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Datum: in my current game, F9 Burning Ones killed many of my E10N6 Ahimans and Adonim, even ones with Body Ethereal. I'm not sure about the gcost efficiency offhand, but with Ashdod's 50 FR I'm pretty sure that it was not the weak "Fire Weapons" effect nor the Heat aura (it was over too quickly for fatigue to rise). Morningstars are painful, moreso when dual-wielded by high-Strength units like Burning Ones with attack 18+. Thunkthunkthunkthunkthunk, I still hear it in my nightmares. :)

Anyway, just wanted to agree with Xietor that Abysia's conventional arms demand respect.

-Max

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

In one of my mp games on the old New Orleans forum I played on prior to katrina, I had my Cyclops lose his only eye. Here is a question for you dominion experts.

What good melee options are there for a Cyclops that has lost his only eye?

There are actually several. :)

I will give one. Boots of the behemoth.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Boots are pretty iffy due to trample fatigue IMO, I'd much prefer an AE weapon.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

The Chalice :)

Or is there anything you can do with 2 magic eyes? He's got nothing to lose now

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Micah with the winner!

Boots are iffy. But you do have summon earthpower, and you can give him revig items. But yeah, Fire Brand is likely his best option.

Plus with zero defense, you hate to trample into the middle of a bunch of enemies that hit hard :eek:. Though I guess you could equip him with a vine and an eye shield to enhance his survivability somewhat.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Fire Brand? If he's already lost his eye, go for the gold - Dimensional Rod. ;)

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

You could also use a 100 precision item like the standard of the damned. Depends who you fight.

So, you had luck and body ethereal. Then it was several lucky hits in succession, it could have happened with a smaller amount of pd as well. Your thug can only get surrounded by a certain number of units.

Vine shield was probably not a good choice, since they are very strong. Gold shield would have done the trick.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

[quote=MaxWilson;659062]Hah! That's right. I had forgotten the thunkthunkthunk noise. I played MA Abysia in one of my first ever MP games, and I fondly remember the fire&blood atmosphere, and especially the 'smoked battlefield' look at the end of battles, but the thunkthunkthunk had faded from my memory. MA sacreds are of course not quite of the same level as the burning ones, but they still mowed through the opposition (admittedly no heavily blessed giant sacreds. ) with enjoyable speed. And noise. Thanks for reminding me. ;)

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

"Vine shield was probably not a good choice, since they are very strong. Gold shield would have done the trick."

Absians have good morale too. And the Burning Ones go berserk, making the gold shield useless. See I have to plan the shields for more than one fight. I had already tried the eye shield(without success). With the flails getting 2 attacks and so many of them, they hit anyway.

Besides ask Admiralzhao about gold shields. He had one on his harbinger(who already has awe), as well as a fear helm, and attacked a handful of my elephants. The theory being, i guess, that the low morale elephants would rout because of the awe/fear combo.

Unfortunately things do not always work out in game play as they do on the chalk board. And none(as in zero) of my elephants routed and they trampled that harbinger to death.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Lol, lately in the forum I've just noticed a growing trend of underestimating elephants because there are so many counters for them on paper... Hope the Admiral's harbinger wasn't an unguilty victim of these ideas :D

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Gold shield would have done the trick against pd. You can always send a scout squire with your bane carrying a change of equipment (i.e. vine shield).

I do things like that sometimes. It can also give you an element of surprise. Your opponent has seen your thug in action, he's got it figured out how to take him down. But, next turn your thug appears in a different outfit and you mess up his plan.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

well, to be fair, the elephants were led by a Sleeper, and they have a nice Standard.:)

That may have countered the fear helmet effects. shrug.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

I death bless my burning ones. The fire aura causing afflictions is just funny. Not to mention your mages are fearsome fire + flees too. Falling fires either kills units or renders them utterly useless.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Death bless is interesting, and certainly has its bonuses, but for my money the Earth 9 bless is a must since your mages are sacred as well. Plus that e9 bless really shines on the burning ones with the 4 extra protection, as well as giving them some recourse against fatigue inducing spells. I have never seen the need to inflict afflictions as most foes die fairly quickly.

Of course the d9 bless would be handy against thugs and sc's, but so is being able to cast longer and having less fatigue in melee.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

The earth bless is good too. Like I said, the death bless is more of a fun thing to toss around.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

I rarely believe in fires from afar, seeking arrow, etc.
However, it is easier to make a case for it with Abysia with a death bless.

Also, abysia has many spells that do small amounts of damage, and yet have large area of effect or large numbers of effects.. conflagration for example....

A scorched earth strategy with abysia... with a death bless can be .. like 3rd degree burns....

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

I would just like to add a thought that I had a long time ago about Abysia:

Shouldn't they all have poison immunity? or at least resistance? I mean, come on! They have freakin' LAVA for blood!

Not sure if this would be unbalanced or not, but I just wanted to put it out there...

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Always thought the same :D

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

most diseases are killed with an increase in temperature. But maybe there are special diseases that inflict lava creatures. But if you get too thematic and they are poison and disease resistant, they may lean towards unbalanced.

Though it could give them a huge edge over a couple of races that may use poison(Sauromatia). Or water race troops with poison spears etc.

And being slow moving it would take poison cloud/dragon breath out of the already limited arsenal of the nature races. Ctis uses Foul Vapors.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Logic long ago gave way to game balance.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Good point, and anyways I suppose a living thing having lava for blood already defies logic...

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

No way, death scale is free points for EA Aby. You don't suffer the supply penalty, your best capital mage and your best non-capital research mage are not old, and you've got a blood economy to slap boots of youth on the relatively small number of old guys you do recruit, and easy shrouds with a nature bless for those that get diseased before you can leverage that. Plus, death 3 + heat 3 makes it murder for invading armies....

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Death is not as good to me as 2 drain for 2 reasons:

1. 2 drain is free points once i hit constr 6, and I like the extra point of mr,

2. Death does hurt your income, and it also affects your ability to blood hunt. Blood hunting kills people in the provinces, and with a 3 death scale, you are going to take a double hit to income and blood hunting being less optimal. Unless you get lucky and have tons provinces around your capital area with lots of population.

I also like to think that when players invade my lands feeding their armies is the least of their worries.

That does not make me right, and Baalz wrong. just a matter of personal preference. Baalz knows what he is about.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Well, I tend to disagree with you about drain because your most cost effective researchers are the salamanders @ 130 gold with holy upkeep. They have 4 RP, but really we're talking about 3 (drain 2) or 5 (magic 1). That's almost a doubling of your research and even if you do make a B line to const-6 you'll get there nearly twice as fast! You're certainly not going to be recruiting exclusively the ruinously expensive Anoninteds for your early game (the part where you're trying to scrabble up to const-6), so you're gonna be relying overwhelmingly on the poor little 3 RP guys spinning their wheels..or dumping an obscene amount of gold for a small bump up in research with your expensive mages.

At any rate, magic and growth scales are not really tied together so it's a separate decision. I don't really think you get hit all that hard on the bloodhunting, because lets face it with your only blood mages being capital only and competing with the Anointed for recruit turns you're not going to be doing massive amounts of bloodhunting. You only need a few provinces to hunt in, I find its not hard at all to balance a death scale with a modest blood economy.

But, as you say its all a matter of preference, that's just my opinion. I wouldn't discount the synergy of starving armies and blood magic though, hostile dominion + starving + blood rain = big problems even for high moral troops as soon as the agonies start dropping. :) Horrors are also greatly more effective and your heat aura keeps them from really doing much if they turn on you.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

I have just started playing ea abysia. cost effective or not, I do use the expensive mages. With 3 order, 3 production 1 growth, and converting fire gems to gold, you can do it. But I also use the warlocks who at 140 gold still give 4 research with drain 2.

But I would be fearful of going straight to constr 6. likely go evoc 2, conj 3, then constr 6.

At constr 4 you can thug out the anointed ones and they are pretty tough with the e9n4 bless.

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

Excuse me...
why the stop at conj3?
You don't really need more firepower to cast evoc2 battlespells with your mages imho. :)
You can of course use it but if you really feel rushed to get to constr 6 I'd rather suggest to take that stop after const-6 or even after evoc-4 (for the firepower needed for fire cloud and then falling fires at evo5)
I'd rather suggest thau-2 before taking const, - you can actually start remote site searching so you don't need to stop your expensive armies for the search, but just a salamander in the cap (iirc), so you can alchemize more and have more gems for when you reach const-4/6 :)

Re: Joys of EA Abysia
 

because if you castle is under siege you can summon fire drakes at conj 2, and in battle, at times, summon lesser fire elemental is necessary.


fire drakes are also good to put on flanks to intercept enemy cavalry trying to kill your casters.