[Baalz]

Another thing you might want to consider in light of your strong dominion pushed up into enemy territory is globals which benefit from a strong dominion. Purgatory and Looming Hell are obvious choices (if appropriate), but Wrath of God and Gift of Health (50+ hp devils and sweet, sweet relief from old age) are also generally in reach with boosters and indie mages and can give an extra vector your opponent needs to worry about once they’ve got that whole fire immune thing down. If you manage to swing it Dark Skies amplifies the effectiveness of horrors to such a degree that there’s practically no PD that stands a chance where you’ve pushed your dominion, no matter how much money is dumped into it. Finally, empowering a vamp lord into air using gems you didn’t have much other use for gives you wailing winds (with cloud trapeze) with immortalness protecting that investment. With a little bit of work you can eventually leverage this into robes of the magi & infernal tempest so it’s a good long term goal as well.

Scorpion men are fun little units which fit very well into your fear generating strategy here. Their ranged attack is essentially the “terror” spell only with a range of 40 along with a disease bow which seems to be pretty effective at handing out diseases even to shielded SCs, and they radiate fear as well as well as being fairly tough in their own right. What a great way to spend an amazing earth income! You’ll probably luck into a couple warlocks with the paths to cast this and with solid earth and fire site searching there’s a good chance you’ll land some E/F indie mages who can crank them out. As a final option, you *do* have an obscene earth income, so consider empowering a guy or two to crank them out. As you’ve pulled into late game you’ve upgraded to infernal crusade so swarms of demon knights with supporting scorpion men fighting under blood rain with devils/vampires/horrors flying in to conquer escape routes sounds like my idea of fun, and it works even if you’re fighting guys buffed with army of lead/mistform/will of the fates/anti magic/mass regen….and even if your opponent gets fed up and casts growing fury. The combined fear stacked up along with the range on the scorpion men’s fear attack will run everybody but the front row off before they ever get hit to trigger the berzerking. Your overlapping fear stacks immediately overwhelm anything with less than 30 morale, and 30 morale SCs who think they can handle it have their arses sent to hell. It’s almost always going to be overkill, but you can also summon a couple horrors to further push the fear past the front ranks if it makes sense. Really the only thing that can even try to fight is swarms of mindless units, and I can’t really think of many of those that demon knights with weapons of sharpness + bloodlust can’t carve through almost as fast as they can walk up. I pity the fool who tries to do something silly like march 5000 undead at late game Abysia, did I mention demon knights and scorpion men are 100% fire immune? Phoenix power then flame storm is available from every one of your recruit everywhere Anthemant Dragons with no boosters at all for just 2 fire gems – which starts being a lot more effective when you haven’t been conditioning your opponent to expect heavy fire magic every fight. If something like mechanical men are trying to put up a fight drop darkness and see how often they can hit those demon knights who start with a 17 defense and rack up stars scary fast. Use that A empowered vamp lord and drop mist with the darkness and then safely pantomime the broad side of a barn to the enemy mages.

A handful of ice demons and quite a few storm demons (courtesy of your A vamp lord) keeps any fire immune opponents in check and you’ve got swarms of vamps doing kamikaze runs under darkness and army of lead while you’re pushing your dominion straight down everyone’s throat. Infernal prison and life for a life teleporting guys are just itching to pop any SCs that think they’re cute. Your demon knight/scorpion man domination squads are gatewaying to the four corners and it’s almost impossible to find anyone who will even try to fight them. You’re swimming in bloodstones Scrooge McDuck style blasting earth attacks (troll kings), disease demons (warlocks/vamp lords), manifestations (vamp lords), & mind hunts (warlocks) to clear out whatever was hoping to help the poor PD keep the horrors from running them off – you won’t have too much trouble capitalizing on making people run away nor popping a cap in whoever thought they were going to be casting undead mastery on your vamps. If you’ve had rough luck and don’t have a strong astral income, 50 E gems is a low bar for you and you’ve added regular astral travel to the nightmare that your opponent is having. Your recruitable troops are fighting under heat from hell & inner furnace not to mention weapons of sharpness & rush of strength – they dominate most other line troops, even heavily buffed ones. You’ve got an immortal pretender who can drop anything from infernal prison to bloodletting to undead mastery to bone grinding to just wading in and kicking everybody’s arse by hand with a dominion push that lets her go just about anywhere.

Does this sound like a nation that is weak, inflexible, slow, and easy to counter with poor magic diversity?