Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

i just had a weird post idea... but lets try it. Everyone should just post a Nation (with era) and then 5-10 things to do with them in mp. Ok ill start so you all know whats the deal...

EA Ermor
-skelly spam
-body ethereal´d troops
-killing sc´s with vengeance of the dead
-evocation spam (astral fires, bane fire, shadow bolt)
-soul slay & paralyze
-thugging bane&ether lords
-tartarians
-scouts with bane venom charm

i think this could help to get some own ideas going. lets get every nation !

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

MA Man
-Mass longbowmen + Wind Guide
-Thugging Sleepers
-Cloud trapezing Crones for re-enforcements
-Using Spell songs, Re-invigoration, Moral boost
-Battlefield Air Magic (Fog Warriors)
-Thunder Bolt and Thunder Strike spamming
-Trying to survive the lack of Death and Astral Magic for late game...
-Seeking arrows spam (Can stop army movement I think)
-Using bards as Stealthy Production Shutdown Spies

I might lack a bit of MP experience

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

EA mictlan:

-Dual or triple blessed sacred rush
-make your dominion horrible and don't spread it
-use moon priests with call lesser horror to help early expansion
-summon Tlahuelpuchi and use them for a monthly bind bone fiends. Cast darkness and mass protection on them and your demon troops.
-blood hunt with Tlahuelpuchi who are upkeep free
-empower or boost tlahuelpuchi and spam rain of toads.
- summon up a vampire lord and a bunch of vampires and blood sacrifice into enemy dominion so they can go there.
- script tlahuelpuchi with some blood slaves and assassinate invaders with life-for-life or hellbind heart
-put black hearts on vampire lords for recyclable assassins
-put boots of youth on your old commanders
-use swarm to distract archers

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

EA Agartha

1. Summon magma children
2. Umbrals + Iron Warriors
3. Troglodyte Lord thugs w/ Black Steel armor + Midget Masher
4. F4N4 recruitable-anywhere sacreds
5. Summon Earth Elementals in combat
6. Abuse Petrify, Magma Eruption, and Earth Attack
7. ???
8. Profit!

-Max

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Sauromatia

1. Massed Androfang archers
2. Massed archers with hydras + foul vapors
3. E9 blessed warrior sorceress thugs
4. Shadow blast communion/sabbath squads
5. Gorgon pretender chassis
6. Easy tartarian access
7. Clamming

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Trog lord + midget masher? If its smaller than him he'll trample it, and if its bigger/same size the midget masher is pointless.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

MA C'tis:
1. Skelli spam (and Relief)
2. Quagmire
3. casting Gift of Health very early
4. Panic AND Terror
5. spamming ethereal/luck/protection with Shamans
6. reverse communion for Soul Slaying Shamans
7. Swarm + Mossbody

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

EA Kailasa:
be aggressive, but choose targets weak to your strengths (you might even rush)!
attack someone who makes Air a big part of their strat!
Mossbody Markatas are fun!!!

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MA Abysia:

1. Manually search for earth and astral ASAP to diversify from fire
2. Develop earth stone economy as quickly as you can. Late game weapons of sharpness
3. Build several soul contracts by end year 2 - demonbreds with devils are a potent raiding force and add mobility to otherwise very slow armies
4. Focus on blood research after early levels in schools are done
5. Rain fire evocs with devil + abysian troops armies
6. Spread dominion as much as possible, esp before a war, to get your heat across
7. Aim to get decent death in mid to late game (vampire counts probably) for Darkness
8. Leverage astral/blood mages to use horrors en masse as required
9. Target air nations early, or make them your allies. If forced to fight them later allies are good. Your best option against them 1:1 is through assassination (disease demons, mind hunt), battlefield spells (heat from hell, firestorm), prec 100 spells (incinerate, pillar of fire) with shock pretended mages. Your troops will get thrashed by shock evocs, standard infantry with falling fires support will get murdered..
10. Your PD is strong, use it if taking misfortunate scales or against weak raiders.
11. Take a Magic 1 scale and/or rush for lightless lanterns early. Demonbreds are ok researchers but your non-cap mages suck for it.
12. Protect important mages with Boots of Youth. Worth considering N4 bless to shroud diseased warlocks

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Ulm Black Forest :
1°) don't focus on vampires to early
2°) with magic +1 fortunes tellers are GREAT ! look for S+D and S+S combinaisons (paralyse and nether darts)
3°) Iron Blizzard is really powerful (summon earth power + Iron Blizzard *4)
4°) use Tempering the will when you have some Demons
5°) Infantery of Ulm and a ton of rangers are effective for expansion
6°) Illuminates One are spy and stealthy, + 1S : can't be mind hunt
7°) Wolfherd for patrolling squad
8°) Vampires and summon lammasthas : good for raiding
9°) the vampire hero with blood 3, flying, with life leech, regenerating and immortal (and prophet !) is a really good SC !
10°) Black priest : (if empower with blood : forge blood stone / bind demon knight), magma eruption, rain of stones, iron blizzard, army of gold / lead, (if empower with 1D, blight), Enliven Gargoyle. They are your main dommage dealer.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

EA Pangaea

-living maenads+buff=awesome
-dead maenads+Air=death gems
-sleeping maenads=great castle defenders
-Blood stone
-Pan+vine shield+snake bladder+earth power+iron skin+resistant poison+stregnth of gaia+regen=thug
-Pan+leech/life4life=hunter of sc-raiders
-Pan+penetration items=deadly forests
-Rush:Call of the wild
-Raid:Bless+Sacred centaurs
-Intelligence & gem transporters:Harpy
-mother oak+gift of health+any other nature GEs if slots still available.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

my comments:

MA Man:
-> Take rainbow mage if you want any chance for end game. Take E4F4D4S4 at the least. It makes for a nice bless and opens up lots of options in end game.
-> Rush to Air Queens

EA mictlan:
-> I say don't trash your scales. Take single major bless and maybe a couple of minors. F9E4S4 can work quite well.

Sauromatia:
-> I tried lot's of variations on blessed WS thugs. I agree E9 helps them considerably but IMO they are still not worth the investment.
I found they were too brittle and had higher than acceptable attrition rate.
It works, but not worth the investment IMO. E6 is good enough for your sacred mages.

MA C'tis:
-> Rush to tartarians (nobrainner)
-> Take E4 and above bless for your communions (helps greatly in cold dominion)
-> Set your assassins to use swarm against light weight targets (not SCs).
-> Cast Life after death (or whatever the name is) and kill your own priests to get free reanimators (thank you ano for reminding me of this old trick)

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Some more comments:
MA Abysia:
-> Another nations with lots to gain from a rainbow pretender
-> Do take the D3 but don't trash Order

EA Pangaea:
-> What's that about?
"-dead maenads+Air=death gems
-sleeping maenads=great castle defenders
"
-> Gorgon SC
-> Pan+MR penet. => charm traps 4 SCs.
-> Strategy: raid your enemy and never meet his armies on his terms. feign weakness and then bring a ton of unexpected stealthy help.
Don't go for glorious battles. If he is weaker than you swallow him. If he is stronger than you - bleed him to death.


I really like this thread :heart:
I'll do Pyth, Patala, Jotun & Caelum if no one beats me to them :)

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Dead Maenads:
Get a two indy commanders and pack them full with maenads (110 if they have a star). Position the commanders at back rank. Send in the maenads, preferably against lots of archers. Repeat a few times. Cast raven feast (or what ever it was called again) to the province -> loads of death gems. Works best with an ally who can provide the archers against whome your maenads rush.

Sleeping Maenads:
Have a few pans with a few hundred maenads inside a castle. Will take *ages* for the fort to fall when under siege, and when it is about to fall, sneak the pans out.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

:lol: that's one nasty trick.
Watch out for firestorm and all the bad evoc. nasties.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Pythium (my favorite :heart:):
-> Comminions! Read Baalz's guide.
-> Don't waste your A. theurgs time. They should forge, cast artillery and summon....
-> Angels. All the types you get have their uses and are *awesome*. You should probably slap 4S4F on your pretender for easy access to the choir.
-> Your regular troops are great. You should choose great scales and make lot's of armies. Principes, Emerald guards are ridiculously good.
Use hydras for plan B and for stopping them tramplers.
-> Astral Fires, paralyze, soul slay, enslave, falling frost, fog warriors, thunder strike etc
-> N4 on pretender and growth scales for old mages.
-> BE troops. Later anti-magic, WotF, Master Enslave.

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Patala:
-> Take a sleeping semi rainbow/semi SC pretender. Some four armed E4F4D4B4 pretender for example.
He gets an unexpected forge bonus what with those four arms. He'll make an awesome SC, will complement your magic paths and will allow you good scales.
E4 (and above) is for your all around sacred mages.
-> Blood hunt and get into blood ASAP. Get them blood stones early on.
-> Your Nagarishis are awesome battle mages. They can cast Aog, AoL, GftH, falling frost and much more.
-> They are also great summoners. Build squads of them for EA batches. Cast 10-15 EAs on enemy armies and later laugh all you can.
-> The stealthy nagasomething are good raiding thugs. Some of them come with S1 so can't be MHed.
-> Markatas make good chaff. They have nice def and are small. With some buffs they can hold the enemy long enough for your evocers to present a stream og gifts from the heavens.
-> Bandar warriors are your workhorse. They don't die easily to remote evoc. spells.
-> With Nagas and access to W you can be an UW force
-> Clams (duh)
-> Early rush with elephants. Switch quickly to normal armies once the other nations do some research. Normally you have enough time to choke the life out of one neighbor.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Raiding SCs tend to have very high MR(25+), so charm is not so effecive against them, sometimes even a bad idea because you have to run risk of losing your items. I prefer to use groups of pans using Leech / Life for Life to hunt them down - Blood magic are so good against single target, almost a guaranteed death for him. Charming thugs seem to be an attractive idea anyway.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

That is the whole point with sleeping maenads. It will take a damn long time to break the castle defences with all the naked women repairing the fort, and when you finally break it, there is nothing worthwhile left in there anymore (and with any luck the enemy kills a few own troops with battlefield spells like Fire Storm ;) ).

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

doesn't really matter. Pans spawn every turn. I love it if you firestorm.. you're wasting gems better off spent elsewhere.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Ahmm. good points WRT firestorm.
Perhaps earth attacking the Pans could be more effective, though this or any other possible counter doesn't take anything off this beautiful trick.

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If it's already done, I apologize. I didn't read the thread. :p

LA Ulm
1) Blood Hunter rankings: Vampire Count-B1 Fortunetellers-Members of the Second Tier.
2) Members of the First and Second Tiers=Stealthy Communionable Death.
3) Communion, Communion, Communion and Communion some more. With communions, you can reach practically any battlefield spell you want (except water or some fusions). Just put a fortuneteller or a crystal-matrixed air/fire black priest (or a fire randomed Second Tier) or an astral random black priest and throw in masses of easily accessible communion slaves.
4) Iron Blizzard Spam is devastating.
5) Villains have +1 MR and are more useful against LA R'lyeh then Rangers (RoF>AP in this case), with Sermons of Courage to bump up that horrid morale.
6) Wolfherds summon wolves: which are much more mobile then mapmove 1 thralls.
6) Halberdiers are great during seiges, and sneak in vampire counts and wolfherds to provide chaff to repair the walls. If need be, sneak them out.
7) Throw vampire hordes at anyone in your dominion; with the proper buffs. Darkness, Rush of Strength, Army of Lead/Gold, Anti-magic, Will of the Fates, etc.
8) Black Heart a Vampire Count/Lord. Voila! A deadly, immortal assassin that can really annoy opponents in your dominion.
9) You have great national troops that can steamroll most indys with decent numbers.
10) Did I mention slapping on a Scepter of Authority and Crown of Command on a Ranger Captain and throwing an army of rangers raiding, with some First Tiers for anti-mindhunt?

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Great tread :) Also, I think there is nothing wrong with having several posts about same nation - after all, everyone has their own ideas.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

A Pan set with swarm, swarm, swarm, swarm, swarm - let alone other combinations.. will defeat earth attack, and spend less gems than you spent in the summoning.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

You're right of course but usually what happens is that first turn you throw a bunch of EAs at someone he'll be caught unprepared and the earth elementals will kill his Pans.
2nd time around he will be prepared so you come with something else. For example, casting 3EAs on the same Pan will kill him unless you put 15 or more N gems on him (scripted as you described). But its possible to defend against that as well of course - Its like a game of chess in which each side tries to best guess the other's plans and then counter them.

The rule thumb is everything can be assassinated. The question is what's the cost of the assassination?- Is it worth the price or not?- clearly that depends on the context.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

The beauty with sleeping maenads is that there does not need to be any commanders present, altough supply may become a problem. But then again, it is just maenads who get diseased, and they still keep on repairing the walls until they starve to death. The maenads just keep on repairing the walls. Of course they will rout the first thing when the castle is stormed (with no commanders present) but who cares?

OTOH, if the opponent is able to take a fort with 400 maenads inside, without having to siege it for 10+ turns, you are screwed anyway :) And the opponent can't just leave the fort with a screening force, because you might have sneaking pans around (even tough there were none to be found by your assassin last turn, it doesn't mean there are not 15 pans there this turn), and a few hundred berserk maenads with proper buffs will rip apart any unprepared forces (like say, a few dozen indy chaff), and then the opponent has to start the process from start again.

The sleeping maenads are not a winning tool. They are a tool to drive your opponent nuts while also buying you time :)

And now I think it will be best to stop with this (or start another thread) before derailing this totally to pans :) Incidently, does anybody have any neat strategies for EA C'tis (in addition to the usual smiters + skelly spammers = profit)? I could use new ideas, and pretty fast too ;)

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

PANGAEA:
Nice thing about Maenads is that it frees you to build stealth armies. Stealth leaders, stealth infantry, stealth archers, stealth priests, stealth mages. Not to mention flying stealth scouts. The ability to place a large army soon in the game at the perimeter of a warzone watching for a weakness. Perferably on the far side away from your real position. Take a province, sink lots of PD into it, start building it up (be sure to re-hide the main force). If he does invest in retaking it then he isnt investing near you. If he doesnt retake it then you can get builders there to create a powerful secondary position. Keep your stealth armies moving, taking, hiding. Never use them in holding. If it looks like it will get retaiken right away then tax it to death while you can. Force him to invest more in PD than he normally would.

Carrion Dragon surrounded by maenads can be powerful. Take at least 2 death and 3 nature to make use the the national spells. Add blood to be able to create Black Hearts for those kickass Pan assassin/converters. Taking 4 death isnt a bad idea since causing 100% afflictions works well with hit-n-run tactics. Not to mention giving your Carrion Dragon Fear+12

Lord of the Wild with same magics. Personally I like 4d/4n/4b. Remember you can get away with going turmoil and sloth. Quickly get to Awaken Sleeper in order to move your huge armies.

Gandalf Parker
--
There once was a cocky guy
thought Pangaea would be fun to try
He amassed quite a force
and marched them all forth
but half of them stealthed and watched the rest die

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Or they're an Earth Heavy nation and can crumble/siege golem spam. :p

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

There once was a cockier guy
Who Pangaeia decided to try
He flew them all out
led by Harpy and Scout
but half of them stealthed -- the rest died!

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Jotunheim:

-> Bless. E10N8, E9N9 or E6N6 if you want a cheaper bless.
-> Skratti rule. With good bless give them the shroud and watch out for low MR - their Achilles heel.
-> Vaettis. Take G3 so that they don't die all over from old age. Very good for various tasks.
-> Gygja thugs.
-> Push strong into blood.
-> Rush. Strong bless advantage diminishes with game progress. Be aggressive early on to utilize it.
As a rule of thumb don't rush strong astral nations. Astral has lot's of counters to small elite armies.
-> cold 3.
-> Communions. Yes, you have both astral and blood and they can be intermixed. Gygja communion masters.
-> Use stealth. You have the Skratti wolf form and all the Vaettis are stealthy. An astral Vaetti can be used to protect from mind hunts.

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MA Caelum:

-> Flying. Its such a huge strategical advantage. Where to start, scouting the globe, getting there or out of there in time, surprise attacks, traps. You don't have to take to battle unless its in your favor.
Tactically, siege battles, get to mages in the back-line, kill SCs before they buff with:
-> Flying thugsable commanders (couple with forge bonus). Equip them as SC killers or chaff dispersers as needed.
-> S4 and above on pretender for Spentas
-> Strong bless is subpar. At most take a few minor blesses but even these are not required.
-> Build lot's of cheap castles. Caelum is mage centric.
-> Mammoths rush. Don't use them after initial phase.
-> Go for sloth. The high resource units aren't worth it. If anything make them in small numbers.
-> Lean heavily on Evoc. and Alter. for all the A/W goodies
-> Air Queens

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

The Storm General really is one of the best, by having lightning and cold resistance at 75%, protection scaling with cold (8-20), and Storm Iimmunity coupled with his flying.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

yes, but only 11 HP : He can be one shot : how do you equip them for increase there survibiability ?

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EA Pangea

rainbow pretender to find sites that permits you to differentiate your combat mages

Sleepers thugs

in cmb1.4 kita lions thugs (I am testing one empowered to water two to quick and breath of winter itself), very gem expensive but its a solo game....

Ivy king casting songs (honly use for the songs is imho with mage-thugs) + fear whip

ivy king with poison stick and flying boots to poison rear postioned enemy mages

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Pangaea: Ahhh such lovelineess....

Carrion Dragon + prophet casting undead buffs = fast expansion
Forts with pans= impossible to take.
Carrion woods or is that ME...
Beeline for mother Oak. Then overwrite GoH if anyone is foolish enough to try to touch your nature income.
Start a blood economy - blood stones
Late: Swarm + Haunted forest = Machine gun undead.
Pan assassins...........

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

For this reason with Utgard, and presumably for Jot, research Evoc 2 first to get astral searching going. Site searching remotes should be your top priorities, then a bit of Alt and finally construction to 4 to start the skrattis rocking :)

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Technically, you can one-shot anything if you have enough damage ;)

Depending on what tools you have, you can use anything from troops with guard commander (most straightforward way) to battlefield enchantment spells such as fog warriors.

Same as with all human thugs, don't sink too many gems into them.
A frost brand or two is good enough.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Pan assassins, I have seen them named many times, I have also tested them according to Mr Gandalf Parker suggestions........till could anybody suggest a magic item good set up for such beast?

thx in advance
:)

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

chris, that`s great pangaea stuff, specially the swarm trick.
You got more dragonflies or ants with the other one... dont remember the spell name. And what about the life after death or the ankh. will it work too?

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Depends on what your target is but I can only suggest that you go for what is cheapest, that is:
Summon Earth Elemental
or
Swarm

Either is a perfect assassination spell, though either can be countered

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

There are two spells, creeping doom and another spell whose name escapes me. And yes the ankh works too.

Yeah... I'm just giving themes.. I'm too lazy to type a full nation guide like Baalz does.

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Wraithcrown + swarm ....

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LA-Ctis

-Try a sleeping Rainbow Master Lich. You really don't need a bless or SC to start you off with. You do need the gems though. You can take an awake rainbow chassis instead but, as a personal preference, I think the Immortality is worth the extra points and time. I think at least 3+ in Earth, Astral and Nature are the paths you need the most and you can add more from there if you like. Incidentally, minor Earth, Death and even Nature are nice blesses to have on your Sauromancers. Not so much for your undead sacreds though.

-For scales, I like O1,H3,L3 as it will help your initial income a lot with both gem and gold events. Since you aren't taking Turmoil, you should still be sitting on a nice stack of cash by the start of year 2 to build forts, temples and labs with. You'll need it, because as far as I've seen, you cannot get any 800 gold forts. Since you can easily forge Skull Mentors and Lightless Lanterns, Magic isn't really needed and Drain 2 might even be an option if you're so inclined, especially if you want to try an awake rather than sleeping pretender. Still, if you've got the points, Magic 1 certainly won't hurt.

-Expansion should consist of mostly Desert Rangers and Tomb Chariots where you can spare them. Your chariots, being skeletons, you should expect to die pretty easily, the consolation being that they'll never break and trample your own units like Elephants and living Chariots.

-Send a Sauromancer, preferably with an Earth random, out to do some manual site searching before your pretender wakes up. If you're lucky, you can possibly have a F1E1S1D3 or F1E1D4 Sauromancer to send out, but don't count on it. Astral can easily be searched remotely with 25% of your Sauromancers using alchemized gems if needed, plus the Sauromancer's H1 should net you a few Ancient Temples that give you Pearls.

-There are quite a few research schools useful to you. Construction of course gets you Skull Mentors and Lightless Lanterns to help you win the research race, as well as giving you all sorts of gear for Bane Lords, Tomb Kings and Tartarians. With Earth on your pretender, try forging a Hammer as soon as you're able. With that, you can easily forge lots of nice equipment for your Bane Lords, Tomb Kings and Tartarians.

-Early on, Enchantment will get you Mound Kings to herd your undead chariots around with, so you can save your Sauromancers and Tomb Priests the trouble. Enchantment also is the way to go if you want to pull off the C'tissian Special, though without the Marshmasters of MA, it's not as easy to pull off. Foul Vapors will really only be castable by your pretender, but an Empoisoner with a Thistle Mace will be able to cast Poison Ward on your Rangers while Poison Slingers and skellispamming Sauromancers back them up. Aside from that, Enchantment can also get you other Death spells such as Reanimate Archers, Life after Death and Lichcraft. Your pretender, depending on your build, might also be able to cast things like Enliven Gargoyle, Forest Dome, even eventually Arcane Nexus.

-Conjuration of course is Ctis's old standby, mostly for Tartarian Gate. Conjuration will also let you summon other mages to help diversify your magic pool once your Preteneder can find the gems to summon them with. Lamia Queens, Naiads, Couatls and Faerie Queens will get you further into Nature, Water, Blood, Astral and Air. A Troll King or two empowered in Blood will eventually get you Blood stones and a few Naiads can easily make clams once water gems start flowing faster. LA Ctis, unlike the previous two ages, is also in a great position to summon Scorpion Men, so later on, summon those with the Earth random Sauromancers that aren't busy with Tartarians.

((I haven't tried this yet, but will a Naiad with a Shroud and an N4 Bless still lose HP if she moves around?)

-Evocation has quite a few nice battle spells for you to use. All your Sauromances, of course, can be spitting out Banefire at level 6, as well as Shadow Blast, which becomes more dangerous with a higher Death level, also cutting back on fatigue (but not gem cost). Magma Eruption can be cast by Earth Sauromancers with Earth Boots and Summon Earth Power, and Nether Darts by any Astral Sauromancers. If you can find an independent air mage, like Crystal Amazons, Eyes of Aiming can easily be forged for these guys. Suffice to say that most anything Agartha can lay down, you can as well.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

EA Arcosphale

1. Uber researchers- sloth 3 and magic 3 turn your philosophers into uber researchers

2. Communions- your mystics are ideal for communinoning up giving you access to all the battlefield FEWS spells

3. Dual blessed wind riders- Flying sacreds with a flying H1 commander to lead and bless them

4. Thuggable Orieads- your orieads make great thugs having access to nice buffs awe and cloud trapeze to put them where you want to be and have stealth to get them out of there

5. Master assassin- Your oreiads can seduce enemy commanders giving you access to other magic paths and if the seduction fails well it becomes an assassination and a few well placed lightning bolts can take down anything not shock immune

6. Dom Killer- Cheap temples and sceptics combined with a high dom make you an ideal candidate for killing enemy candles bonus points for prophetising and or equipping stone idols to your skeptics

7. Trample to death- Size 4 chariots can carve through anything smaller and are a threat to bigger enemies.

8. Engineering- a Few engineers and or mage engineers make taking enemy forts that much quicker

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Ferrosol - are the wind riders really worth the bless? I would have thought a good high dominion awake SC like wyrm or great bull would be better for arco? particularly as it supports dom kill

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

Many of these points are excellent. However arco does not do well with a double bless. In fact, getting a single w9 bless can often be challenging.

I played a lot with arco recently; I started with a Sloth 3, magic 3 approach: I went with something like an
O3S3-G3Mi2M3, and a Dom 7ish.

However, after playing around a lot the following occured to me.

1. Sloth helps your rp 1:1 whereas Drain2 only hurts you 1 - and gives you 80 design points. I'd even consider drain 3.
2. Save the points on your dominion. If you make your first build a skeptic and pick out where you want your 2nd castle to be, you can move your skeptic there. Your sceptic will prevent your drain scale from asserting. So you get all the benefits of the drain scale (design points) at the cost of a 25pt sceptic build on the first turn.
3. If you pay attention, you can manage your dominion almost as well as mictlan.
4. Your drain scales will hurt enemy mages more than yourself, as you will be using communions to spread fatigue. But I do think with this approach, a few crystal matrixes are invaluable.
5. Sloth really makes chariots impossible to mass.
6. But you are right on the value of skeptics. These suckers are a lot more powerful at killing dominion than people realize.


So, I'd be looking at something like
O3S3H0G3Mi2D3 for a grand total of around -80 pts.
Death3 is also an interesting option.

I'd look at awake pretenders: Baalz wrote up a good guide for the White Bull. I also like the phoenix.
The bull costs you 25? pts, Dom 5, 42 points., leaving you 413 points for magic paths.....

Just realize the lack of awe needs to be compensated for.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

To be honest I would consider relying on dual blessed wind riders somewhat sub optimal given that they are capital only and expensive but that said something like a E9N4 bless that can benefit your oreiads as well has potential to help your wind lords or perhaps giving them a minor death bless to add to the shock from those first strike lances they carry. That said a rather interesting idea has just occurred to me sleeping lady of love Dom 7 O3S3Mis2M3 with W9N5 (N5 to use up a few extra points)which provides you with a nice bless for your wind riders and with a little research down the alt path makes a respectable SC when she wakes up with her inbuilt awe. Haven't really tested this build but it looks like it could work.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

W9N5 looks like a shaky SC to me for a non-immortal pretender. Earth and astral are pretty key for the required self-buffs in my opinion.

I once used W9 on an SC pretender, Son of Niefel for Utgard, as he also has cold power and a cold aura. The synergy was good and I had the smattering of other schools required to make him very tough to kill. I've never really considered it viable for another chassis

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

For what it is worth I agree with you but I was just trying to suggest a pretender that combines good enough scales with a bless and some SC potential. Personally I would probably go with some sort of awake pretender and ignore your sacreds. The question is which awake pretender do you go with? I have a hard time looking past a Prince of Death in that it gives you access to death magic (the one magic path you are really lacking)and makes a decent SC in his own right.

Re: Brainstorming Nation Strategies
 

EA T'ien Ch'i
-W9F9 bless for warriors of the four elements (they can rush).
-Water demon Summons. Berserk, sacred.
-Fire demon Summons. Fly, hurl fire wheels.
-Flying celestial masters casting acid bolts/rains.
-Communions for celestial masters and late game battle spells or reverse communions.
-Use pretender for flaming arrows when he awakens/breaks free.
-Use Internal alchemy to save your best Celestial masters from old age (but beware madness).
-Empower one of your death mages to start ramping up death path to get access to late game death magic.