Quote:
Mark the Merciful said:
Quote:
Boron said:
but that are the "only" exeptions . AND call of the wilds is AIR magic too so this is not such a good argument imho .
so stormbinder is still true :
harpies/black hawks win against a single seraph wow .
now if the seraph only takes with him 5 caelum troops on guard commander though i think he wins again against EVERY pd of about 20 and even some black hawks mixed in or something similiar don't beat him .
what makes this almost unique is that caelum can do this early midgame ( turn 20-30 ) to 5-10 of your provinces .
arryn your attack strat won't work .
you as any other nation can effectively attack 2-3 provinces , caelum can attack 5-10 low protected with the seraphs combo storm mentioned and attack 1-2 with their main army ( e.g. several high seraphs , staff of storms etc . , mammuts + archers , later air queens and lots of good other choices ) .
so you almost can't win in the late earlygame or in midgame against a good caelum player .
you can't castle your whole mainland earlygame and if you do you waste too much resources for this .
even if you castle it doesn't really help the caelumplayer just has to turn taxes to 200% and economically bleed you out .
furthermore caelum has stealth preachers + flying scouts .
so they always know where your anti raid army/armies is/are and can attack all the other provinces .
losing 1-2 seraphs is no big loss too .
so caelum can do 2 things better than ANY other nation from turn ~15-40 :
- prepare battles of encirclement and annihilation
- raid large
furthermore you can afford easy e.g. a vq which adds further strength to caelum . caelum is the only nation where even pd has a good chance to kill a vq all other nations have trouble earlygame vs vq .
vq is ideal for caelum too :
-cold 3 scale , additional free points , stronger breath of winter
-vq can be a good start for a blood economy , provides caelum death + blood magic to make them even stronger
-stealth preachers , together with raiding / temple killing this way you have good chances pushing your dominion into the enemy
-atleration 6 = false horror + invulnerability (alt5) and soul vortex for the vq
a pod should work almost as well too and save you 100-200 points but as caelum you can afford the vq too .
edit : typos 
|
Anyone who can build a blood economy and cast Bind Fiends can raise an army of flying stealthy things that can not only raid as well as Caelum, but are rock solid in battle (and cost NO gold or maintenance). Both BF Ulm and Abysia can put together the same sort of raiding/surrounding conquest strategy in the same time-frame that you're talking about for Caelum. Probably Mictlan can as well, though I'm less clear what they'd use to lead the sneaky flying armies (Abysia uses Demondbred and BF Ulm uses Vampire Counts).
Dusk Elders are sneaky, ethereal and can beat most PD by spamming Raise Skeletons/Raise Dead. Give them boots of flying and they too can be super raiders. Again, no gold and no upkeep.
I don't think Caelum has any claim to uniqueness in this area.
What's more, the ability to raid behind the "front line" is very nice, but it's no way to conquer and hold territory permanently. If your opponent has a solid army, you are going to have to beat it at some point or he will take all that territory back very quickly.
Mark
|
nice attempt .
and who leads the fiends of darkness and is stealthy ?
there is no item to make a leader stealthy .
mictlan + abysia don't have stealthy leaders who can fly .
furthermore the mictlan scout has 0 ldrship
the abysian slayer has 0 stealth too .
of course abysia has flying armies with the demonbred .
but they are not stealthy
that is true of course for caelum too but they have stealthy flying scouts + stealthy preachers so this is a big advantage .
the main difference between abysia + caelum :
caelums mages are not capitol only .
furthermore summoning fiends with blood earlygame is time consuming : only 1 per mage summonable .
so your research suffers and you can only use your capitolonly mages for that as abysia .
so abysia has to spend a demonbred per flying army + use blood for this
caelum has only to spend a cheap mage who is not capitol only .
so who can do this easier earlygame ?
abysia can field midgame 2 or 3 scary devil flying armies but only 2 or 3 .
caelum can midgame attack every low protected province with stormbinders mentioned combo .
sure the 1 mage attack doesn't hold the territory . but that is not his purpose .
as long as that forces your opponent to keep significant amounts of garrison/countertroops at home it is a big success already .
furthermore you just need to tax every this way captured province to 200%.
repeat that a few times and your enemy is economically broken
prevents recruiting , taxing and bloodhunting .
so only the gemincome is left
and the knowlegde that caelum can do this forces caelums neighbors to madcastle + keep significant defense forces at home .
the only other races which can do similiar things are the ones with spies so ulm + marignon + tien chi with the unrest command .
the caelum way to do this is though better because as long as you build up your mageforce you can use them for research/forging .