Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Hi all,

I'm a NOOB and am having a hard time finding a nation to play with what the forum members consider units worthy of a bless strategy.

I thought Pythium would be alright--I figured a good Water bless would make their sacred units very difficult to hit and counterbalance their lack of armour--but have read guides that say they're not good enough to be focused on. I was playing with C'tis using a high water bless on their sacred serpents and that seemed pretty effective early-game, but again read conflicting strategy guides.

Can someone give some examples of GOOD bless strategies? I'd like to play a nation that doesn't use blook magic as I want to keep things simple, and I like the idea of a pretender who is mobile but am happy to make them dormant.

Cheers,

Eben

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

No mictlan/lanka, eh? Then take your pick of Niefel, Ashdod, Tir Na N'og or Gath. If Niefel or TNN, take an E9/N4+ bless. If one of the others, take E10/n4+. Or if you want to try something other than an E/x bless, try say, ma Ermor. Shadow Vestals bless nicely with something like w9/s9. Or Kailasa, s9/a9/N-or-E4 (/gets blasted for this last one :D), or... yeah, any of these should work.

Btw, sacred serpents are a terrible sacred. They are just way too hard to keep alive. Taking a strong bless for those is a waste of points. They are better for keeping your morale up than anything else. If you want a bless as c'tis, consider primarily what you might like on your sacred summons.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Earth bless E4 or something is good for Pythium. I've had a lot of luck keeping acolytes alive with E8 or 10 while in communion. The sacred unit isn't worth a bless, but the communion mages are.

Take Mictlan with a sleeping Moloch or Smoking Mirror with F9(or10!)D9. While berserking is tempting with the PD, all your best mages are sacred so don't do it. If MA Mictlan... Can you still get Moloch? Same thing works, mass your hire everywhere sacreds and send them with a blesser into battle. They will kick some serious butt. Typical is f9w9 but D9 is cheaper and I think better.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Ummm, F9D9 is about the dumbest bless you can take. For Mictlan the best bless is probably something like S9F9, S9W9, or W9F9

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Why S9? S4 maxes out the Jag fiends MR as far as bless goes. It might be nice to have on the pretender though. It's alot to pay for twist fate. I could see it possibly for preventing death do to archers... but you can just use slaves or x-breeds for that.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

IMO, mictlan really screams triple bless. Personally were I playing them, I would probably play something along the lines of W9F9N4+, or W9F9B4+, depending on how many giant nations were in the game. I'd have to play around a bit first though, I'm not a mictlan player so I don't know how the points work out. I've seen similar blesses used against me though, quite effectively I might add.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

It's for the twist fate. It's not super-awesome for early game, but against late game evocations twist fate is exceedingly useful. And in the meantime it does reduce casualties to archer fire.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

S9 means it will take at minimum 3 hits to kill every jag. It also does wonders in lessening you losses in early game to that one lucky arrow that hits your priest. Also, S9 is one of the best late game pretenders to have. If EA had the Oracle it'd be even more of a no-brainer.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

I guess what I should have asked was: "what nation has good sacred melee units that make blessing a good strategy". I get why it's good to have an air or earth bless for mages but it seems a waste to have sacred melee units that aren't worth blessing...

I thought pythium's sacred units would be worth a high water bless--then the only concern would be their vulnerability to arrows--but I'm guessing Pythium's mages would benifit more from an earth bless.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

If you have a sacred mages its nice to have even a little E4.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

All of the blesses I mentioned were for the sacred recruitables. Niefelheim, ashdod, and gath expand typically with a single e9n4+ giant, or a giant and 1 or 2 of the sacred giant troops if you want a really tough force. To fight the armies of other nations, you bring several of these expansion groups to one place and kill everything.

TNN is a bit different, but personally I use the tuatha warriors for expansion. Later, you switch to self-blessing sidhe thugs with mistform, air shield, a brand and a shield. Boom, you've beaten the AI. In fact, you don't even need gear to kill the AI. It certainly makes it much easier though.

Kailasa is expanding with the sword and buckler yavana, or whatever they're called. The troops, not the mages. Someone came up with a strategy guide for expanding with kailasa's recruitable commanders. That's not where I was going with my bless. Anyway, you recruit the sacred troops and expand with those, and it's not a bad idea to recruit a small amount of chaff to entice arrow fire to take fewer casualties from arrows. Eventually you will get celestial music in enchantment which will let you cast quickness on all your sacreds. You start doing this for big battles. With a little alt your sacred commanders are pretty decent thugs, able to cast nice buffs.


Pythium's sacreds are pretty weak and cap only so yeah, they're not great for a bless strategy. Again, however, you get summonable sacreds. Pythium's angels are pretty awesome. Take a look at them and think about what might work for those while also providing you a bless that will help either your mages or your vestals. Or both. The sacreds I pointed you at are not weak, and any of them should be quite capable.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

I actually find this offensive. Please edit it out of your post, or change it to 'newbie'.

Unless you really expect us to believe you are oblivious to the difference between the two terms?

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

If you're just doing single-player, then a lot of sacreds are worth using. MA Marignon's knights of the chalice are pretty hardcore. I really like E4W9N4 on them. Then, a paladin and 3 of those can take pretty much every indie province forever. The bless is also very useful later on on your summoned angels.

LA Tien Chi has awesome sacred cavalry.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

LA Pan has nice bless strategy for SP in E9N4. Early on a dryad (or indy priest) with with 4 dryad hoplites will take any indy province (pool up two or three such forces to take out knights though, if the knights get lucky with their morale check they might destroy the dryad hoplites on the charge), later on (when you have more income) Black Centaurs will see you through the whole game (and they have the mobility to be brought to frontlines fast); Black Centaurs need a critical mass to be hugelsy succesfull, but once you have a couple dozen on the field, most AI nations will crumble against them (and if you have time to drag some dryad hoplites to the field, so much better, as they are absolutely great heavy infantry to hold the center).

Doesn't work in MP though, as such at least (at the very least needs some serious magical back-up, preferably with some Sleeper and Bane thugs to get you through mid-game until you get the tartarians rolling out). Relying only on capital-only sacreds is not going to see you do that well in a MP, but doesn't make it less fun to see a few ladies absolutely destroy any opposition in the early turns :)

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

To use a bless nation, you need sacreds that you can mass, so capital-only sacreds are usually a bad idea.
Which is why, contrary to what my opening sentence may lead you to believe, I suggest trying EA T'ien Chi with a W9 or W9/S9 bless (minor earth and nature blesses can be useful too).
T'ien Chi has recruitable sacreds, warriors of the 5 elements, who are capital only, look like crap at first glance and always dealt tremendous damage to everything that was thrown at me in all games I played (except Ashdod but then...).
Once you have built enough forts that your capital only sacreds look like they're no longer massable enough, you start summoning your national sacreds: Demons of heavenly rivers, fires, and celestial warriors. Sped up celestial warriors and, even better, fast berserking demons of heavenly rivers that you can summon in every fort (since one out of 5 of your base mages can recruit them) make up for the capital-onliness of your human warriors.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

in your first post you wanted a bless nation that isn't a blood nation. that pretty much excludes all the classic EA bless rushes and their successors: Niefelheim, Vanheim, Helheim, Sauromatia, Lanka and Mictlan. thus for EA you don't have much left, unless you agree to be at least a partial blood nation(which is very good cause you get access to the awsome blood items and some summons too) you should aim at MA/LA instead. MA Mictlan, unlike the other Mictlans is not a blood nation, however its Jaguar Warriors are cap only, unlike the others, so it's weaker for a bless nation but still solid. Marigonon's Knights of the Chalice as mentioned above are a good choice, LA Tien Ch'is Ancestor Vessels are considered to be the best heavy cavalry in the game, so certainly worth a bless as well. there are a few, but a bit weaker alternatives such as Kailasa(EA) or Machaka(MA).

but in all honesty, if you want a bless strategy you should go for EA and at least a partial blood nation...

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

NO.
EA T'ien Chi is a very decent bless nation.
MA Mictlan has recruitable everywhere eagle warriors, who are different from but as effective as, if not more than, jaguar warriors.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Helheim can be played, especially in SP, as a straight bless nation. They've got minimal Blood, but it's usually ignored early on and just provides a few more options in the midgame.

LA Atlantis plays well with a bless, though it's not as overwhelming as the more traditional bless nations. Baalz has a guide for it.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

NO.
EA T'ien Chi is a very decent bless nation.
MA Mictlan has recruitable everywhere eagle warriors, who are different from but as effective as, if not more than, jaguar warriors.[/quote]

yes EA TC can be a bless nation, but it's not a bless rush nation! EA TC's bless is better in the late game than as a rush tactic, as such a rush would be ridiculous against a real bless rush... as for MA Mictlan, Jaguar Warriors>Eagle Warriors as far as bless rushing goes, and Eagle Warriors are harder to use effectively, seeing that the OP is a new player. EA and LA Mictlan can spam Jags like there's no tomorrow from all its forts, MA Mictlan can spam Eagle Warriors instead, which makes it inferior to the other 2 as far as a bless rush goes...

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Actually for a rush, the Mictlan's are roughly equal. MA Mictlan has Jaguar Warriors from the capital. That's all you need for a rush.
At least as I understand rush. A rush is essentially trying to take out another nation as part of/instead of expansion against indies. A good rush will hit as early as possible, before your enemy has any anti-rush research done. You're not going to have a second castle up and contributing in time. You need to be throwing those resources into offense.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

If I'm having a good game, I'll have a fort or 2 in the works, but yes, they won't be contributing to that force.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Eb,
Perhaps a bit of topic...
A good thing to remember is that blesses become less of a tilt late game. Many blesses become redundant and even superseded by mass battlefield spells (army of lead/gold, fog warriors, mass regeneration, will of fates, reinvig spells, etc.). You are trading that bless off for an early pretender and/or good scales. That's not to say bless strategies are worse than scales/research/rainbow strategies only that you'd better take advantage early with that edge you've purchased so dearly. I remember I had W9/N9 Jotuns which carved most everything till about turn 20ish. However my research sucked and by mid game my armies of blessed Jotuns were flaming pincushions and heat fatigued into oblivion. Lesson is to avoid being a one trick pony. The gold that comes with scales buys forts and researchers and all the later game options. Heavy blesses are fun and viable but have a mid game plan "B".
My $0.02
-ssj

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

I do think E9W9 Lanka is pretty forgiving... research to construction 4 for skull mentors and then up to Blood 6 while mashing faces with your excellent sacred heavy infantry. The Dakini can Cloud Trapeze, are fantastic thugs with snake bladder sticks and vine shields and a few air buffs, and aren't pricey for the damage they cause.

Probably one of the best-rounded nations in the game is MA Ermor. You can learn so much about the game... the power and weaknesses of huge hordes of undead, the strength of communions with lots of holy spells from slaves, and how to move steadily up the Death magic ladder. They also bless nicely with S9... as cap-only troops Shadow Vestals are probably not a good choice for a heavy bless, but Ethereal + Twist Fate will really help your starting expansion, without the need for an SC pretender which can be nerve-wracking for newer players (and me, whenever said pretender is not immortal).

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Well, the OP never mentions rushing.
Then again, you mentioned Lanka. My experience T'ien Chi vs. Lanka goes in favor of T'ien Chi in terms of early warfare.
As for jag warriors > eagle warriors, I disagree. For instance fighting Ashdod, I found eagle warriors far superior because they could hiit adonim before these had buffed themselves and effectively become invulnerable to the jags.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

how does TC vs Lanka go in favour of TC? assuming both go for a bless strategy...? Palashankas>Warriors of the 5 Elements by a lot... as fpr Ashdod, yes that's the unique situation that doesn't say a lot about the whole, not to mention that Ashdod is MA only(Mictlan is all ages) and Ashdod is usually banned anyway because of its OPness... so I find it pretty irrelevant to the discussion, and ridiculous as your only reason to say Eagle Warriors>Jaguar Warriors... also remember that in a rush neither you or your enemy has time to get those critical buffs, and even if so the early buffs(say Alt 3) aren't all that bad(for the rusher that is), especially with a Fire bless(bypasses Ethereal and Mistform).

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Hohoho, you are quite wrong here sir ... F9w9 Warriors destroys Lanka/Niefel

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Unless niefel achieves critical mass of fatigue auras, at which point the TC warriors will destroy them, until they all pass out and are butchered by the niefels. But until that point, F/W W5E are just amazing.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Having witnessed the power of Dual Bless Wot5E on the wrong side (chrispedersen used those in the Magellan game), I can say you don't have a snowballs chance in hell if you don't use some devious evil trick (which will then be nerfed in next version of CBM :p) while also having 10:1 advantage in numbers...

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Warriors of the 5 elements have cold resistance and don't care about the cold aura of Niefelheim.
When I say TC sacred beat Lanka sacreds, I speak out of experience. Just try it.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

I've tried the niefel on TC one before. I used to duel a friend of mine who liked niefel, and would build jarls with bunches of popsicle friends. The problem is that, unless you're 100% cold immune, eventually the fatigue from the jarls will get you. TC definitely wins against relatively small numbers of giants. But once you get 10+ in one province, it is really hard to carve through them before the cold aura knocks everyone unconscious.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

10+ jarls? It will take a lot of time to gather these. Which other early age nation has blessed units that will withstand such a 10-jarl attack? Mictlan jag warriors get frozen after 2 rounds of melee and salughtered, but they can hardly be called a weak sacred unit.
By the time Niefelheim can field 10 sacreds, T'ien Chi will have researched at least one school to level 3, and will be able to field some mage artillery to counter the giants, or have flaming arrows.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

10+ Jarls? Or 10+ Jarls & Neifel Giants together?

The first will be hard, the second is really just 3-4 expansion parties meeting up. Turn 5-6 if you're close enough together.

OTOH even 10 Neifel Giants is 1500 gold. 1500 gold worth of W5E or even Jaguars with FW bless will do a lot of damage before they freeze up.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Yeah, not just jarls but jarls and giants. It's certainly a very expensive army, but since W5E are cap only, there's a point at which, with enough giants gathered in one place, you can never kill them with JUST W5E. That is all I am saying. Niefels will lose any sane matchup on a gold to gold basis, but on a basis of maximum production vs maximum production, they will win by fatiguing everyone out within 2-3 turns.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Considering both Niefel and W5E are cap-only, after a few turns expanding and earning lots of gold, the limiting factor becomes the dominion value, which limits the number of sacreds. I tested such setups this afternoon, and W5E tend to freeze after 4 or 5 rounds, whereas jag warriors freeze after 2 rounds. The thing is, to assemble Niefel army, I had to spend all my money, whereas TC or Mictlan both had much more money left to spend on whatever they liked. Mostly wizards for research in the case of TC, and you could probably buy enough archers to make them painful enough for the giants (although I had picked E9N6 bless for the Niefel, so arrows wouldn't really be an issue unless flaming).
I thought the W5E would do better because I know they can shrug heat auras from Abysia fairly easily, but Niefel's cold is much stronger.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

If you're relying on capital only sacreds, you've probably gone for a high dominion, maybe not 9-10, but at least 7-8. Likely higher for TC than Neifel since it's going to be longer than a few turns before you have the gold to max out Neifel production.

With either Mictlan or TC you'll probably be maxed out from the beginning, or at worst after taking 1-2 provinces. Only 250 gold/turn if you went for 10 dominion and you have cheap mage-priests to lead them.

You won't be maxing out on Neifel giants for a long time. Even 7 giants and a Jotun Jarl to lead them is over 1000 gold a turn. That's a lot more than a few turns expanding. The gold cost is the main limitation for most of the first year.

I haven't experimented with actual W5E/Niefel Giant battles, but I'd expect them to do a lot of damage in those 4-5 rounds. If you've got 3-1 odds, which isn't unlikely given the 6-1 cost ratio, do they really freeze up before dropping giants?

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

At 3-1 odds, they freeze because there are 3 man-sized warriors per tile against 1 giant, so they're all frozen fast as they are all in the cold aura from the start. At 6-1, they'd fare better. It also depends on the exact bless you pick. For instance, W9S9 isn't very effective against Niefel, whereas W9F9 is. Minor earth bless helps too.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Yep, oblivious. I think I saw a sticky on it--I'll go read up.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Cheers, mate. In the end I went with Pythium MA and played my first "real" game. Took an E9/F5 forge lord and have waded through the enemy pretty easily on normal difficulty. Stacking up communicants with Theurgs and pumping out Thunder Strikes is lots of fun, although in hindsight I think the Earth bless may be redundant with Communicant Slave/Master spells--I haven't really done the math.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

So I found a pretty lengthy thread here debating this topic. My experience of "NOOB" (at work, mostly) is as a slightly derogatory term for someone who doesn't know what they're doing and new to a particular field or endeavour, mostly related to IT.

To be frank, I find it pretty funny that this should be so hotly debated or found offensive by anyone. This is the Internet, after all.

I won't be editing my original post, mainly because I refer to myself as a NOOB, not anyone else. It's humour, and self-deprecating.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Did you accidentally type 'funny' instead of 'normal', perhaps?

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

You could try Helheim. Start out with an F4W9 bless or some such, and later on when you get the research transition to Svartalfs leading Ironskinned Behemoths. Is this for SP or MP?

-Max

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Uh, I'm oblivious to the difference except inasmuch as one of them is t crippled haxor spk tht u see poepl use on tHe internet bcuz they cant type. Is the short version more offensive, or is it because it's capitalized?

-Max

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

wait, are we really complaining about how the op called himself?
neither i know the difference between "noob" and "newbie", i always thought they were they same, just in 2 different languages.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Yes, we were. Now we have something new to complain about, though.

See, you typed "op" when you clearly should have typed "OP" - I know some posters don't respect themselves well enough to demand proper treatment, but let's not abuse this N00B simply because some of us have a problem with the term he uses to describe himself. Demand CAPS!

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

never! caps are just a bunch of symbols with too much ego

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

How about a NOOB nation mod, where all recuitables are capital only?

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Happy to call myself DROOLING MORON if that makes it easier for you guys...

"Phylis" also works for me.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Got scads of self-respect, thanks--I simply don't care.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Single player. I'll check out Helheim--cheers.

Re: Bless nation recommendation, please
 

Then check out Baalz Helheim guide, a very fun way to play them.