Quote:
Originally Posted by Alpine Joe
Looking at Themiskra, I agree that their sacreds seem a little ridiculous. However the other mod nations in this game all have some pretty effective strategies as well. i say leave them as is, but everyone be aware of how strong they can be.
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Since I'm the author of two of these mod nations that have "effective stragedies", I've decided to level the playground and help the players in this game by telling something about them.
You see, both of my nations (Dwarfs and Alugra) are pretty oddball and play out a lot different than most dom3 nations. If you try to use "conventional" tricks against them, you might be suprised.
Dwarfs
This is the nations second MP game, so there might be some balance issues. However, my feedback in the thread has mostly been about improving them somehow, so I'm quite confident that they are fine (if they are not, gangbang always works) . Dwarf military is likely best in the game, but cost a lot of gold and resources. All of their castles also cost 1200gold and take 4 turns to build. It is in essence, a slow nation to get rolling and is likely to play defensively, especially considering their good PD.
They have mages with forgebonus (gee, what a shocker), but only medicore diversity and only really strong magic in earth. Also, their most powerful mages have casting encumberance of 13!, limiting the magic support they can give to their troops. This is not a nation that throws fireballs around in the battlefield. You should note though that they have very heavy artilley unit at enchantment 7, "Anvil of Doom" that can do all sorts of crazy stuff. Be prepared to counter it if you think that the dwarfs have access to it!
If you face dwarfs, you should use shielded chaff troops to negate the effectiveness of their excellent crossbow archers (and ranger throwing axes!) and kill the melee forces with appropiate selection of magic. Anything that does AN/AP damage will do fine (poison, combustion, star fire/stellar cascades, numbness, gifts from heaven, fireball, lightning spells), try to avoid mr-negates effects due to their high mr and drain dominion. Be careful when using thugs or big sized troops against them, since they excellent counter to those in the form of slayers (who are weak to archery, try fire largest to target them since they have some extra hp when compared to other infantry).
In conclusion: To fight against dwarfs you need to switch gears to deal with a low number of extremely elite troops, instead of the chaff with mage support most nations wield.
Alugra
Alugra is another oddball. At the moment, it has gone through 3 MP games, facing slight nerfs after each one. IMO it is balanced at the moment. It has sucky national mages, but it has 7 different types of cap-only "gifted" troops who come with magic picks. The nation also comes with a national GoR spell that costs 7 astral gems.
Their regular non-cap forces are pretty meh, but the afromentioned gifted troops are superb and fill many roles, allowing Alugra to wield a wild smorgasbord of battlefield tactics. GoR'red gifted are also good thug chassises and this fact is only improved by their good selection of national self buffing spells.
If you face Alugra, you should be prepared to deal with gifted thugs and troops. Note that gifted are magical beings ("Control", "Moonblade" and "Opposition" ring any bells?). Also, being human(oid?), they have low hitpoints considering their big gold costs so AP/AN stuff works well. Scouting is also very important when fighting Alugra, learning their troop composition allows you to abuse the weak points of many gifted troops (poison with watchmen, lightining for Smiths, mr-stuff vs workers).
One of the oddest stragedies that Alugra can wiled is something called "Thug Communion". Alugra's single non-cap mage, "Manifest", is a guarantied S1 and has pretty good stats and equipment. Sometimes they are communioned en masse with leaders casting self-buffs and finishing the deal with "Use the Leylines". It is a national spell that clears 100 fatigue and blinks the caster. If casted by a leader, it affects all slaves too.
It's nasty.
You have been warned
