Tir na n'Og
 

I just took part in a game on a small random map as Tir na n'Og (with 5 land nations and 3 water nations). First time ever I played with them (althugh I've tried Eriu against the AI). They seemed to have very nice sacred troops and very nice thugs (bless, barkskin, mistform, resist lightning, attack x1, cast spells (counting on the AI to shockwave), so I took an imprisoned pretender (ie I didn't expect to see him in the game, as things get hectic on a small map :) ) with E9 W4 N4 and decent scales. I thought I would walz around as a king.

Well, I really did think so. Instead I got totally pwned (as they say in the world of MMO's).

First I got into a war with Yomi. Lost all my six thugs in first battle next to my capital. The freezing a-oni stunned my thugs, and they were then burned by the flamecasting troops. My prophet with the sacred troops were barely able to hold their own, but I decided to attack Yomi capital in the hopes of turning their main army from my capital. Alas, that did not happen.

In a desperate attempt to save my capital I recruited massed slingers from my second fort and recruited the elephant mercs. In a battle of massive losses (the elephants killed lots of Yomi when they rushed forwards, and they killed lots of Tirs when they rushed backwards...) I succeeded to push Yomi army out from my capital, but they were heading in with another one. It did look as I was toast.

Then Pangaea attacked and gave me the coup de grace. The minotaurs ran down my sacred army and put my second fort under siege (damn sneakers...). With no army and with forts about to fall I went AI.


Now, what did I do wrong? I wasn't double-teamed until I had already lost to Yomi basically, and I have to say I have not been that impressed with Yomi before. Surely Tir can't be worse than Yomi, so it must have something that I did totally wrong :( Also, what is the Tir weapon against tramplers?


EDIT: To clarify, Yomi and Pangaea were AI in this game.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

I never thought Yomi is bad, actually. And Tir is almost as bad as Eriu, in my opinion. :)

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Well, throwing non-resistant thugs against elemental attacks is obviously a pretty large mistake, and false fetters should do a number on most tramplers.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Good points, thanks!

Once I noticed I am next to Yomi I should have recruited massed slingers, they actually did a very good job (mostly because the flames were targeted at the phants I guess, but still) and keep my thugs well behind the lines casting long range spells.

As I had succeeded to kill my A2 thugs I didn't think of false feathers against the minotaurs (and I had my battle-morale pretty much decimated by then :re: ). Even though there were nearly 200 ( :eek: Pans must have got a really nice random event(s) for extra money) minotaurs trampling on in two armies, false feathers would have surely ripped their ranks apart and make it easier to take care of them.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Tir na n'Og have Tuatha Sorceress - very powerful cap-only air mages(A3N2 by default, 1/4 will have A4, and even A5 is possible), so instead of thugs I would recruit one each turn and go straight for Thunderstrike(they have good research too). Good synergy with earth bless and national reinvigorating spell songs. Several of them behind a Firbolg screen would solve most of your problems, I think. You do not have any archers, so Storm will work perfectly for them later on. They are also sacred, stealthy, have glamour, darkvision, forest survival, earth and water randoms and do not age. They cost 360 gold, so you will probably want to avoid very bad scales.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

As your thugs need time to buff themselves, they tend to be very vulnerable to fliers, so storm can be handy in this case too.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

you still have the save from the battle with yomi?
i would like to see those demons to use.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

No I don't. As we were playing with direct IP server I don't have any e-mail, and thus the battle has been wiped away several times already from my computer (and while the host is in my garage I don't have it taking backups of the turns; it's slow as it is already (generating the random map took 32 minutes :D )). Didn't occur to me to save my total humiliation :p

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Your thugs have nature magic. The spell to cast is Elemental Fortitude combined with items like the frost brand.

The frost demons are called Ao-Oni. They a recruitables for the nation of Yomi, so seeing them is a matter of starting a new game with the nation and pressing 'r'. These units become summons in later ages.

In regards to Yomi being a pushover or not, the truth is that any nation can be a challenge with the right player set behind it. All nations have tools to deal with any other nation, and if they don't, well that is what pretenders are for. A pretender can always lend any nation things they do not naturally have, thus give them new advantages. Sure some nations have natural advantages over several others, and some nations are just easier to conquer with (looking at you skinshifters), but all nations have a chance to 'pwn'.

Edit: Also, I would not rely on the AI to cast spells that you want. I would also not buff a thug and then set them to cast spells at all. You buff a thug so that they can wade through melee. Casting spells yields too much fatigue in the end and will cause your units to die. Fatigue lowers attack and defense skill, it also allows for a greater chance of critical hits, making your units armor nearly worthless. Instead you should have ordered your units to: buff, buff, buff, hold, hold, attack. Holding allows your thugs to recover fatigue from the buffs. Either script your units to cast evocations and the like on the enemy before they reach you, or cast buffs and attack. A mix of the two will generally get you killed.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

With so many players starting so closely together I would have started with an awake SC... probably the cyclops.

The only other variable which you may or may not have utilized is diplomacy with your neighbors. My rule is to always find at least one ally before moving into war with another player.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

There's nothing wrong with a Tuatha buffing up some mistform and resistance, then letting loose with a bunch of shockwaves, especially if he's got some nice gear like a vine shield and rainbow armor, and an EN bless. He'll rout any non-100%SR army long before turn 50, and will average 5 fatigue all battle. You do have to hope that he doesn't fire off a barkskin if there are enemy F mages in the PD (or Yomi Aka Oni, or Fire Drakes, etc).

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Yomi is pretty solid. It's just that some other EA nations are so uber it overshadows Yomi's strength. That and most people think Yomi is just Niefel-lite (which IMO is more Fomoria since Yomi has their own individual strength ...). The main weakness of most thugs tend to be artillery mages which Yomi is happy to supply anyway not counting the hardhitting oni troops with fire/ice/psn ranged.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Lot's of good advice here. I'd say the key points are (According to descending priority).
1. Awake SC god with nice bless. E6N4 Cyclops or E4 Wyrm. Too crowded for sleep/imprisoned.
2. Intel+Adaptation. See what they have coming at you. Quickly change your game plan. Elemental attacks on low prot demons hah?- how about holding spells+banish/shock artillery and thugs with CR 50% (elemental fort.)
3. Attack is best defense. Your stealthy thugs should rarely be used in direct battle. They should raidX3.

And last but probably most important ;) - dubbed 0 b/c ppl (myself included ) tend to forget it time and again.
0. Whatever you do, make sure *not* to underestimate your enemy!

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Yeah make sure you don't get hit in the face with a fireball after you've buffed barkskin.......

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

[quote=vfb;712523]There are exceptions, and your right, it is reasonable to do such a thing, provided that shockwave is scripted. Go back the original post and note that he 'hoped' shockwave would be cast after 4 rounds of buffing, 1 round of attacking, and scripting 'cast spells'. I can't abide by trusting the AI to cast the spells I want.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

[quote=AreaOfEffect;712568]
Just did this in a game, and if you have troops within range the AI always casts shockwave. At least it always did for me.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Tir has the advantages of Eriu but less of the downsides. Unlike Eriu it is not totally capital dependent (apart from Sidhe Lords, Eriu doesn't really have much to recruit outside the capital - troops or leaders). You have a decent reserach mage recruitable anywhere and decent glamoured Infantry at all castles unlike Eriu. So playing on a small crowded map negates their main advantage over their MA brothers - Eriu and some of the very capital dependent Early Age powers.

The Ri (Tuathans are Eriu) and Sidhe Lords are well worth a nature/earth bless so they can be Thugged. But this bless is not much use on their sacred glamoured infantry. At 50 gold each I don't think they are worth it especially as they are capital only and fairly high resources. Tir is a recruitable Thug nation and you don't want to waste the bless on those sacreds. Save the bless for your Thugs and expand with the none sacred glamoured troops (25 gold each and less resources). With the cheaper none glamoured troops as missile shields.

The Ri is weaker than Eriu's Tuatha, having one less Air. But he is still a great Thug with 2A2N and 110% AWEN. So glamour, high defence, masses of buffs, cloud trapeze etc. And at 330 he is only 50 more than a Sidhe Lord and a much more flexible Thug chassis. He is capital only along with the Tuathan Sorceress and the unusual 2A Assassin Tir have.

I think Tir is not going to shine in a really cramped map. They need the buffs to make the Thugs pay although the Firbolg infantry has decent stats for light infantry (high attack) and the none sacred glamoured infantry can be massed easily. And if the Thugs are likely to be swarmed by stuff that can actually hurt them (cold blasts freezing them) you could operate them with armies (!) While they buff the Yomi demons would waste their freezes and throw flames on your troops after which the buffed Thugs ride down the flanks to rout the demons....

While Tir don't suffer as Eriu does in research in the mid/late game as they have decent mages at all castles they still lack any easy way in to Death, Astral or Blood, including on their Pretender who is needed for a nature/earth bless. Nor do they have any recruitable clammers, fetish or blood stone makers. So the end game could be painful unless you have made that strong mid game of theirs pay.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

That's right Alpine Joe, my poor PDs were the victim of your thug! Thanks for the lessons in shockwave. :D

I think a couple of events had pushed it up to 40 in a couple of provinces, and Marignon PD is nothing to sneeze at (unless you are a buffed Tuatha casting shockwave!)

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

A W2 bean sidhe can forge clams with a single water booster, making clamming easy (but requiring Constr 6 - of course, you wanted that anyway for Staff of Storms).

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

The assassin (Baobhan Sidhe) is recruitable anywhere. Still quite useless, IMO, because it is almost always better to hire a Bean Sidhe or a Sidhe Lord.

I still think that Tir is a wrong nation for a strong bless/bad scales setup, except on small maps, maybe. You can expand well with Firbolgs, and I would always get a Tuatha Sorceress instead of Ri it capital. Thugs are important, but not absolutely central to them like they are to Eriu.

Concerning the late game, clams/late game astral were a good solution before the clam nerf in CBM 1.6, and right now I do not really know what to do with these guys.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

I thank you all for helping Jarkko on this issue, but as regards MP specific advice, he should perhaps have remembered to note that the game had only two human players and then AIs (on the mighty setting, I believe) filling in the rest of the map.

Thus when he got up to fighting with Yomi and Pangaea, both AI, there was no diplomatic solution to his woes, and when Pangaea had a huge army it wasn't because of lucky gold events, as he suggested earlier in the thread might have been the case, it was because he had set up the AIs to have a very real and significant gold advantage - knowing Jarkko, he plain forgot this detail and just wondered how get got stomped so flat so fast.

It was a very cramped map - Jarkko's Tir and 5 AIs on one land mass with 69 provinces, my Atlantis and 2 AIs in the one sea with 11 provinces. Given the facts of the situation (AI players, income bonus, idiotic AI play) I find that relying on an imprisoned pretender rather than an awake or, at worst, dormant SC was a really silly idea.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Whoa... I'm surprised water provinces were even used since 95% of land AI opponents have zero programming and skill for moving into water provinces. Any human players which start in the water have a massive advantage over the majority of AI land opponents.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

I thought I mentioned Yomi and Pangaea were AI, and the reason I felt so humiliated was exactly because I got stomped by a single AI nation (Yomi) and was then finally annihilated by another AI nation; I really thought I am a better player than that :( Anyway, re-reading my first post of the thread I see that I didn't mention that Yomi and Pan were AI clearly anywhere, edited in now.


Peter, even with the AI money bonus of mighty AI, it is simply impossible Pangaea would have been able to recruit 200+ minotaurs plus the assorted troops plus the Pans. And notice, those were just the troops against me. So I still believe the AI must have got a few gold events :)


AreaOfEffect, in my experience the AI always casts shockwave if it is in melee contact and able to shockwave, except if it sees undead or imps and the thug is able to cast Banish. Apparently Banish does more damage to them rather than shockwaving the melee targets.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

My distrust in the AI is apparently overwhelming my judgment.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

It's quite possible to pull off a dormant SC with decent scales and an e9n4 bless.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

AreaofEffect/Jarkko, regarding shockwave:

Having played around with EA Caelum shockwave opening, its a little more complicated than 'always casts shockwave if there are melee units around'. There seems to be some minimum number of units near the caster for it to want to cast shockwave (otherwise the EK defaults to attack). That minimum isn't especially high, but the necessary proximity of that minimum is rather close. (So i've seen sequences like: attack, shockwave, attack, shockwave, shockwave, attack, attack, shockwave, ... - where terminal shockwaves killed off sufficiently many adjacent units that it took time for the AI to surround sufficiently again, and thus the EK refused to shockwave despite some adjacent units, and sometimes the forward unit would get sufficiently thinned that the EK just attacked until unit two moved into melee).

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Hmm, afaik a mage with enemies in melee range will be forced to do strike instead of spellcasting half of the time (something along the lines of opportunity attack in DnD - spellcasting works best from behind).
I guess if that was an issue of targeting/enough troops around the AI would just cast some other spell.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

So, usually a mage in melee just attacks. But shockwave is basically a melee-range spell, so i figured he was attacking because he didn't like the available targets.

He also routinely attacked when there were fewer targets and shockwaved when there were more (basically in an AoE centered on him, since he tended to drop the shockwave on top of himself).

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Casters on 'cast spells' or with a spell scripted that are in melee contact will do a 50/50 between melee and spells. If they can't cast any spells then they'll melee even when they get the 'spell' 50%.

Afaik.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

I disagree. As early as Evoc 2 you've got an assassin that, reliably, kills most units without lightning resistance out of the box.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

But assassination is at best a niche strategy; sure they have a great assassin - but assassination doesn't win MP games - as evidenced by TNN being low in the MP win category.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

I don't think the assassin is why TNN does poorly, but yeah they won't win you the game alone. However, I don't think it's a good reason to ignore them either. An assassin that can cast Cloud Trapeze and reliably kill good units is useful.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

It's true, assassination is not a strategy for winning. It, like so many other things, is a surgical tool. I however would argue that it is invaluable when used correctly. Often it is forgotten when it matters most in the middle and late game as it doesn't seem all that viable in the early game.

Yet even still, try using assassins for defense rather then offense and you will see how fantastic they can be. Particularly mage assassins that can research in their spare time and cast evocation spells like shockwave. Early on an opponent will only use a handful of commanders to siege a castle. Unlike normal battles, assassinating a siege force and then attacking guarantees a rout because the enemy can't recruit PD. Tir na n'Og can follow that up with stealth units who can attack the surrounding provinces directly from their own castle.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Assassination is actually a great tool, but remote spells tend to do it so much better that actually having to move an assassin somewhere, even by cloud trapeze, is pretty inefficient. Basically, cast a spell which assassinates now? Or move/cast a spell to move, assassinate next turn if your opponent hasn't moved, and then have to move again to keep up with opponents army.

Assassins seem best during sieges, either to take the pressure off your defenses or kill defending commanders while you wait for the walls to come down.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

I challenge you to find an assassination spell better than a black hearted skratti scripted to cast claws of kokytos.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

But they are not stealthy, only useful for castle sieges. Belial can do infernal prison. And vampires with life for life are pretty good.

Assassination spell came in late in research and require casters with high paths. TNN's assassins you can use as soon as you have 100 research.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

A Skratti's third form is stealthy.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Can you cloud trapeze into an enemy province stealthily? I didn't think so.

And how do you make the skratti trick work? Go out in wolf form, script Change shape, Claws, change shape? So he shifts back to the stealthy wolf form after battle?

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

No, their isn't a way to teleport stealthily. The best you can do for a teleport-then-assassinate maneuver is with a castle under siege.

I believe stealth is only checked when your going into a province. If you sneak in, change form in combat (or change form before combat) and assassinate, you won't be forced to attack the rest of the province. I'm willing to be wrong about this, but I'm pretty sure this is the case.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

script the skratti change shape, claws.
then in the next turn, he shows up in werewolf form hidden. surley its a bug, but it still works. the werewolf can then move safely out of the prov, or change shape back into the wolf form.

Re: Tir na n'Og
 

Having been on the receiving end of this from Llama, i can tell you it is pretty annoying. On the plus side strong stuff sometimes finds its way out, which is helpful.