Quote:
Originally Posted by konming
Berserking Baal means no buffing. Without buff, are you going to survive against 4 hydras? I do not think so.
Arrow fend is a good counter to Sauromatia, but at Ench6, which is not something you research first, it is hardly an early game counter. Blade wind, you could very well hit the skeletons instead of poison archers.
Yes, with research scale up and in the late second year, Hinnom can start to counter effectively, but an early war will put Hinnom in disadvantage, even 1:1. Remember if you expand too fast, you also make a lot of enemies.
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Nah, I actually played this matchup as Hinnom vs Sauro - though granted it was late year 2 after my research had a chance to mature and I was already much larger than my opponent (scarcely a rare occurrence wit Hinnom), but I'm pretty confident I could have smashed him with much less resources. Flesheater axe gives you berzerk, but not "gone berzerk", so you can buff just fine and the first time you get hit you go berzerk (works great for SCs as the berzerk gives you more protection as well!). If you're having trouble getting this to work for some reason (cons-4 not researched? Arrows tending to hit you before you finish buffing?) you could also forego the teleportation and have one of your N2 mages (with a tower shield) stand around waiting for you do finish buffing before berzerking you and retreating. Have to say though that I had no trouble at all slaughtering groups of 8+ hydras using nothing but cons-4 gear and alt-3 buffs on a single Baal. Didn't really notice the Androphag archers because I already had SCs at that point, but if they had tried to rush me (how in the world you rush tramplers with mostly archers I've yet to see) it wouldn't have been much of a stretch to stall him with counter-raids. Following my strategy guide you're pumping out two expansion/raiding parties per turn from just your capital while leveraging your fast expansion and awesome scales to plop up cheap castles from which come more raiding parties/mages while at your suggestion Sauromatia has taken a bless and possibly an awake pretender so it's impossible for them to match Hinnom's troop output with cap only troops.
Again, I played this matchup, and not only did I attack Sauro in a crushing invasion late year 2/early year 3, I simultaneously declared war on all the remaining nations (Sauro plus Neifelheim, Lanka, and TC with none of them fighting each other) just to try and give them a fighting chance - FWIW nobody could even put up a convincing speedbump. That's in early year 3 - scarcely left alone to grow in power forever.