[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Huzurdaddi:
1) spam a lot of castles. The cheaper the better.

Castle-spamming is synergistic with my strategies, because I tend to defend against attack with teleporting or flying SCs, and need to protect my temples against point 3.

2) Death summons rock the house. Make a lot of those ( weirdly I see you playing a lot of caelum ... I don't really get it but it may be due to #3 )

Death Summons are indeed very nice. Bane Lords are excellent pocket-SCs, and Behemoths are an excellent unit for stomping most normal troops, albeit Caelum does not really need this option.

I play a lot of Caelum in part because of #3, and because Caelum has excellent point-defense capability in the form of their flying Seraphs...and wrathful sky. If I can't be bothered to dispatch an SC to the scene of another disturbance, a Seraph Wrathing/Horror Spamming squad can clean out most normal armies just fine, for they are flammable and conduct electricity: The only thing that gives you problems is stuff that moves really fast, and you alleviate this by throwing something beefy in front to absorb the brunt of the charge....such as lightning immune SCs and thugs.

3) Raid your balls off. Province defence ain't worth jack. If you see a temple somewhere burn it down and take the province defence with it and then move.

A sound plan. A temple that isn't protected by a castle is a temple that is asking to be torched.

4) But this is from other players, blood summons rock as well in particular devils.

Blood summons own hard. It's for this reason I am very fond of Mictlan as well, and often incorporate blood into my game plan for Caelum.

What I do not know is how you expand versus strong indeps without a SC pretender at the start of the game ... ahem if you want to devulge that information I would really appreciate it.

Nations with hard-hitting, low-attrition troop options are best here: Caelumian mammoths do a good job against anything-that-isn't-knights, able to smash most independents with minimal losses...although it does always hurt if you lose a mammoth: Those things are expensive. Their excellent archers can help whittle down opponents as well.

Mictlan, while its national troops are abysmally awful, has the excellent and quite hard-hitting Fiends of Darkness starting spell, which can easily take out most provinces with a mere handful, say, 5-8. With a few more, even clearing out knights is a possibility: The fiends do a very good job at eviscerating the offending leaders, causing the enemies to rout instantly.

Vanheim has excellent national units as well, in the Vans, and a party of Vans can easily clear out anything that doesn't contain an undue number of knights or crossbowmans without any losses whatsoever. With a strong blessing, even taking on knights is within easy reach.

What I tend to avoid are high-attrition rate troops: Having to constantly replace slackers that regularly die on you is annoying and expensive....and it just underscores the annoying uselessness of those troops, that they keep DYING on you. Miserable weaklings. Pah.