How to fight EA Abysia?
 

The title is quite self explantory, :)

Any way: its a well developped game, the abysian has a very good gem income and a roboust kingdom - army

I play Sauromantia and I'm the second most advanced player in the game.

I am scared mostly by:
assassins
huge fire snake brigades combined with fire mages batteries

I can counter lot of androphag arcehers, skellyspam, witch-sorceress cavalery, huge amount of nether darts mages

ps I am not a very skilled player, so I would prefer simple suggestions if possible

thx guys

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

You've got mages that can get a W random. If you've researched Construction 6 you can forge a Water Bracelet for W2 mages.

And those can cast Rain that makes casting fire spells harder as well as reduces heat auras.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Abysia troops are slow,
If you have earth magic use destruction in combination with archers.
Use Enarie for poison cloud.
Leech against Burning Ones if you have enough blood 1 mages.
Reverse communion with light of the northren star for soul slay.
luck+body etherial on Behemots or Hydras,
swarm to slow him down since you surly have more powerful mages, Enraes are possibly the best mages in the game.
Life after death + rigor mortis, if you feel a bit suicidal.
There are a number of thing you can use.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Well I am also quite expanded:

I have water mages level 1, 2, 3, 4.
I have and can recruit blood, water, and erath mages level 1
I have many eaneries

the rain trick is quite self explantory: good idea and thx for it

for the following ones some more detaild wiil be very apreciated:

If you have earth magic use destruction in combination with archers.


Reverse communion with light of the northren star for soul slay.

Life after death + rigor mortis, if you feel a bit suicidal.

comunions are a bit difficult for me to manage; usually I got my mages killed :)
eanaries are N level 1, did I missed something? Poison cloud is N3.....

Finally: thx for the help

regards

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Androphag archers.

You will mass androphag archers far faster than he will mass... well.. anything.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

"Desturction" is a spell to get rid of Abysians armor. You will need E3 to cast it, but only with E2 you can also cast Summon Earth Power to reach the level.

I do think Sauromatia has very good mages. Just field enough mages and ensure the rain is up, they will not screw it up even you do not script them at all. If your opponent has well diversified his path things will not be so easy, but that should be another story.

To counter assassins: skellyspam itself is a decent trick widely used in assassining, so your witch kings should not fear the competitors too much. Should be a bad decision to assassin Sauromatian.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

I can think of a couple things. You say you have access to E1 mages. With three gems, an E1 mage can do <Summon Earthpower, Iron Bane>, which gives all the Abysians on the field rusty armor. Unlike Destruction it doesn't work with archery--you actually need to hit them in melee to destroy their armor--but combine it with your elite Sauromatian cavalry or even enough chaffy militia and you should do serious damage in melee. Abysians have lousy defense, they rely only on their Prot, so by making it rusty you remove their only real defense except for their heat aura, which takes time to work.

Also, you have strong national access to death. Cloud of Death is a beautiful spell against heavy infantry, since it does 9+ points of damage in an area and ignores armor. Skelly spam (Raise Skeletons/Raise Dead) is also good, since the Abysian infantry have high encumbrance. They'll beat down the first few waves of skellies/zombies but after a few waves they'll start to tire. If you can get up to Alt-8 every single D2 mage you have can spam Disintegrate, which is cheap and nasty.

There must be some fun things you can do with communions and Nature/Water magic on your national mages, but I can't think of them offhand. Do cast Will of the Fates during battle if you can, and your Nether Dart spam idea sounds good. Do fear Flames From the Sky if he builds up enough fire gems--you may want to keep your armies dispersed so he can't hit them all with the same spell.

Don't fear assassins, just give your most important mages a couple of guards each. Mages usually do quite well against assassins anyway, especially death mages who can cast Raise Skeleton.

-Max

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Androphags, shadow blast, nether darts, skelly spam to delay and fatigue them. Rain is definitely worthwhile

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Thx evrybady, it's vey apreciated.

@ Max I think you have forgot to state the name of the spell I should use with my E1 mages. :)

Further, thx to your and BesucherXia comments I realised that I can forge earth boots, tahn adding the booster spell (Summon Earth power) I could rrive to E3 and cast destruction........;)

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Il Magno--you're right, I put it inside of angle brackets instead of square brackets, so the forum software thought it was an HTML tag and omitted it. [Summon Earthpower, Iron Bane] is what I wrote.

-Max

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

You don't need no stinking Ironbane. Nor rusting mist... nothing. Androphags is all you need.

If you *really* feel compelled to get fancy:

Androphags + earthmeld.
Androphags + quagmire.
Androphags + curse of stones.


And if by chance you have progresses to W4: Wolven Winter.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Androphag archers are quite impressive--easily-massed and quite deadly. However, poison arrows take a while to kill, in my experience. Iron Bane or Destruction may be helpful for finishing off enemy formations, weakened and thinned out by poison arrows, BEFORE they hit your lines like a ton of bricks.

-Max

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Well I have many-many androphags and Oriopatas.......

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

In a current MP game as EA Abysia I recently fought Sauro and androphags, and they were very troublesome, and that was against my E9W9 burning ones, who didn't feel much of the normal damage and could close into combat much faster than normal. Basically it was a question of how much damage he could do before my troops closed in, as once they were in melee it was over very quickly. Even when I won the battles I often lost more than he did in cost terms, and abysian troops are very slow to reinforce. You need to have enough firepower in each battle relative to his army to do heavy damage before he arrives. If you can only kill a small portion of his force before he closes you are in trouble.

I've often considered playing EA abysia with E9A9 to handle range threats and lightning spam, but it doesn't give you enough benefit against other opponents for the cost, which is why I went with water - useful for closing quickly and for dishing out melee damage faster.

I ended up prevailing but that was largely due to an ally who was very effective against the sauromatian armies, I don't think I would have gotten there alone.

The abysian will be trying to get into close combat before his top troops are decimated by the androphags, so be wary of chaff screens and the like. If he has a means of casting storm or arrow fend start to be worried, otherwise just make sure you have some kind of decent physical barrier to protect your androphags for long enough if the infantry manage to close in. Skelly spam could potentially do the job nicely.

Also if you happen to be approaching high research be wary of fire storm, it’s the kind of spell that will take out your archers very quickly.


Oh, and obviously look for fire resistance wherever possible, it really takes the heat out of EA abysia in particular. I forget if its Alt or Ench that has the good nature magic area effect elemental resistance spells?

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Quagmire + Rain + Androphag Archers.

All sorts of snares (you have access to a ton of cheap N mages to cast tangle vines) are your friends.

Send in waves of imps, they are immune to the heat, and they will delay the heavy Abysian infantry (and the heavy infantry will get more and more exhausted).

If you can, summon some earth elementals for the battle. They'll trample the Abysian infantry. Yeah, the elementals will faint from exhaustion too, but they will still take some beating even when unconcious, during which time your Androphag Archers keep on peppering.

Ie anything that will make your androphag archers shoot for as long as possible is good for you.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Don't forget to leverage your nice PD as well. Androphags firing from behind moderate PD means he has to close, then kill you PD, then close, *then* kill your Androphags, taking poison damage the whole time. Add in some skellispam, which has a chance to build up critical mass while he's chewing through your PD, and he'll take very heavy casualties before he can inflict a single one to you. Don't want to repeat what others have said, but the name of the game is delaying him, and you've got tons of options.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Thx guys

just an additional question, what is better: skellyspam, nether darts bombing or a good mix?

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Depends on paths--D1 skelly spamming with "Raise Skeleton" isn't nearly as good, so D1S1 should do Nether Darts or Ghost Grip--but I would usually take skelly spamming.

In practice, though, I'd test both before trusting the "gut feel" of someone from the forums. Shift + U during the battle replay may be useful.

-Max

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Yeah, also keep in mind that both those strategies really need critical mass to be effective, and benefit greatly from a communion. A reverse communion is pretty safe and will immensely increase the effectiveness of either of those tactics. Check my guide for more details, but here's the cliff's notes:

Assuming you've got several S1 D1 mages together for critical mass, script all but one to communtion slave then a mix of raise skeletons and nether darts. The last one (the one most bottom of the commander list when you're giving orders) script to communion master, power of the spheres. Now, for double extra super bonus points add a blood mage in also towards the bottom of the commander list, and script sabbath master, reinvigoration, hold, hold, reinvigoration, retreat.

Result - all your slaves will be S2 D2 and able to cast the D2 summon skeletons as well as getting the penetration boost to nether darts. They will reinvigorated by the master and able to raise 2-3 times as many skeletons as a regular D2 mage (probably 20 times as many as a regular D1 mage) *and* you've got a communion master who can drop big spells like rigormortis, or will of the fates, or darkness, or doom, etc. It's very unlikely a single master can over fatigue several slaves with the same paths, it should be next to impossible to kill off your own slaves doing a maneuver like this. If you wanted to be fancy (a bit more risky, but do-able if you script reinvigoration cleverly) you could even use one of the witch kings as your sabaath master and drop everything from grip of winter to foul vapors - which makes fighting through that skellispam *so* much more fun.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

It's Sauromatia, so he'll be using S1/D2/N1 Enaries. Boosting them to D3 makes them fairly capable skelly spammers en mass, even without the Reinvig.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Agree with Jim - PoTS with one mage, skel spam with the others. Will last way long enough for the androphags to do their thing.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Use Wolven winter if possible on his capital to reduce income. Also use it on any prospective battlefields.

Properly equipped thugs like banelords with eye shields and 100 fr can mow through any of their castle bought troops.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

But not Burning Ones, those bastards are hard to kill.
I tested an Air Queen for one game with, eye shield, frost brend, fear helmet, marble armor, lucky pendant and fire ring and still they kicked the shhh... out of her.
However leech worked like a charm.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

My banelords killed burning ones double 9 blessed in the big game. Give them ring regen, luck, boots quickness, eye shield, fire brand(been months since i played dom III think that is name of ap 50 fr sword), dragon helm, some good light armor.

I usually sent them in pairs or even in a group of 3. Mage support is good, but not essential.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

yep leech is a killer against Burning Ones :( thanks executor for teaching me that lesson. You really want to be killing them with magic or ranged attacks wherever possible, up close they are lethal. Only thing that ever gave me great pause in melee using them was a well armoured cyclops

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Leech is absurdly effective, and should be any blood nations first thought against anything but chaff.

But Dragar, have you tried summoning imps... (continuously?) your imps should shield your burning ones from leech.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

EA Abysia doesn't have a lot of blood - very wimpy warlocks (S1B2) who are cap only and have old age. Competing against the Anointed of Rhuax I tend to get enough of them only for searching astral and hunting for blood stones.

That's why after the early game when the Burning Ones can dominate I find EA Abysia the weakest of the eras, they are very heavily fire reliant. If they had any kind of non-cap blood mage, even a B1, they'd be a lot better.

So yes, imps might help, but it is tough to have blood support on your armies.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Well, if you find indy N1's you could go with one of my favorites - Swarm!

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

I try now to understand the various suggestions, here what I recognised:

comunions: quite clear; thx a lot for the renvigoration detail, it could be I was failing due to that detail missing. FYI I was very interested by your guide, but failed to feel confident when I tested it

bane lords thugs with eyes hields; ok clear; still I supposed to stay at the back firing everything (including WCs :)) to the Abyssian guys, is it not more safe and effective? Than what does it mean "100 fr"?

I'll have swarm so do you u suggest to add it to the skelly spam tactic?

Leech: I have not that mastery level in blood, and honestly I don't know how the spell works: (as said before I consider my self a rookie :o )

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

100fr - 100% fire resistance. Never close a thug with abysia without it ;)

Only use thugs if you are sure they can survive, which basically means fire resistance and either stupendous defence, or protection, or both. You'll want an AP or AN weapon too as their prot is quite high

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Baalz
As far as I remember, each two levels on top of required give a penetration bonus of 1 so S2D2 mages don't get any bonus. They just throw more darts and get less exhausted.
Reverse communion is in many cases better than usual when you plan to use battle magic spam. E1 mystics casting BladeWind after just "Communion Slave" impressed me greatly.

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

I am having problems with fire snakes, in CBM 1.41 they looks quite too much powerfull, 9 x 9 fire gems are really a business.

I am preparing my self but the combination of a fire snake brigade, followed by massed agarthian troops and the fire spell bombing on my archers lines is a dreadfull nightmere to me

:-(

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

All that fire - thought of using some fire res spells and items?

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Watch MR too. Abysia's top fire mages are also H3 priests. When all your thugs are fire-immune they seem to happily switch to smite spamming (a big surprise the first time I saw it!).

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

I've never used fire snakes on the basis that abysia relies too much on fire already. Get some fire res happening

The smite is useful against thugs and pretenders in the early game, against numbers of troops or anything with decent MR it never does much. I've only ever gotten value out of it once, against a Cyclops whose protection and fire made him otherwise immune to me. I can't see it being a weapon in the mid game onwards, given the cost of the H3 casters

Re: How to fight EA Abysia?
 

Fire snakes have fire and POISON attachs.

Furthere it is not so easy to face (x me) tens of them while the infantry close up and you are bombed with spells.

This is true especially since the attack is on several provinces and to prepare a good counter force take me a lot of efforts :-)