[Valerius]

Ok, once llamabeast gets the server straightened out I'll end the game. I'm glad everyone enjoyed it. Here's my thoughts on Abysia.

I chose Abysia for this game because I figured fire immunity and decent armor would give a chance to stand up to a possible fire bless rush. Though I didn't make much use of fire magic in battle (probably a mistake) I liked having an elemental immunity to protect my mages from remote attacks, etc.

I made a mistake on my pretender as well: I have an utterly useless B4 fountain of blood. I can't even get him out of my capitol to spread dominion in other areas. My idea was just to get excellent scales and I chose a pretender that would achieve that cheaply. But I would have been much better off choosing a sphinx and getting enough astral to cast the high level spells that are out of reach of my warlocks. It also occurs to me that an awake pretender might have been a good idea.

I thought my troops, with help from indie archers, could do a good job with expansion and I was pretty happy with them. But I had no confidence in them when it came to fighting other nations. As things headed towards war with Pythium I was desperate to get enough of a blood economy going to cast ritual of the five gates. I felt that would give me some quality troops as well as ice and lightning attacks. But the trogs were great because I now had tough troops to soak up damage in the middle while my frost/storm demons acted as artillery.

This was my first time playing a nation with astral and a nation in which blood was a focus of the strategy. I really enjoyed the way astral let me move my mages and armies around. And I really liked the remote attacks blood offered as well as the summons. I didn't do much with SCs (only one at the end of the game) but I made a lot of use of ritual of the five gates in the mid-game. Based on its troops Abysia is a slow nation but once I got some research going it didn't feel that way. They actually seemed very flexible and well suited to raiding.

What I really liked about Abysia though was their mages. Demonbreds are very nice but the warlocks are excellent. Aside from the benefits of blood and astral I really liked the astral/earth and blood/earth combined paths. Warlocks with an earth random were able to forge crystal shields, etc, which helped to take advantage of my excellent indie mages, and blood stones (I made enough to get a little more earth income and boost my mages to cast army of gold/lead).

I didn't find the micromanagement of a blood economy to be that bad. Using Shift-Z made the process of pooling blood slaves relatively painless. The only time it was hassle was when Machaka cast the kindly ones and I decided to keep blood slaves on every blood mage so they could cast life for a life if attacked.

Another thought: when I was trying to prevent Machaka's dominion from spreading I tried blood sacrifices. I used jade knives and found this to be a very powerful way to spread dominion. I mistakenly thought H2 demonbreds (because they have blood magic) would need to do this, but actually the H3 anathemant dragons could have done it even more effectively.

One final comment about my luck. I didn't really want to fight Pythium yet but it was good I did. I don't think I would have had a chance against him if the war had started ten turns later. I kept that lesson in mind when Machaka defeated Pangaea and his gem income was going off the charts and so I attacked immediately. With both Pythium and Marignon defeated it put me in the unexpected position of being the most powerful astral nation left and I think that was a definite advantage.

Overall, I think Abysia is a good nation. Unless they have an awake pretender they seem most vulnerable to me early on, before they have a blood economy going. I thought their mid game was very good. Late game they also seem strong (demon summons, infernal prison, life for a life, etc). I do wonder though how well they would deal with really strong astral nation like Arco, nevermind Pythium or R'lyeh. One drawback is that they don't have non-capitol blood mages. Then there's the old age thing... I basically included a pair of boots of youth in my cost for a warlock but it did make me disinclined to purchase many fire mages to help with research and I just used indie mages for that.

I do have one question, though: who had the Chalice? That was one item I really wanted.