[the Vanishag]

I promised rdonj that I'd do this a long time ago. Possibly even before things started going downhill for me. I definitely waited too long to write this, but I'm going to put in everything I can remember. I apologize in any resulting errrors. This is also going to be the closest thing to a strategy guide for EA Alchera that I'm going to get done anytime soon.

I started with the Kupe Tohaitou pretender, and I think he's balanced: Water 2, Air 2, Nature 2 base makes it easy to give him several high magic scores / blesses, though I think that only the water bless is particularly helpful for Alchera's recruit able sacreds. High-level summonable sacreds might benefit from a regen bless, but the Yowie and the Rainbow Serpent are better casters than SCs. That's one of Alchera's weaknesses: a lot of EA nations have high-HP units, but they're stuck with human HP (I did up the Dreamhunter's HP, to help balance him against EA recruitable thugs).

I took a w9/a9 bless, and the Air was (as Trumanator and other players suggested) a waste. Alchera's sacreds are etherial and have good Def., so air shield is mostly redundant. I'd thought to use their any-city sacreds (who have a very weak attack) to screen more vulnerable units, but that scenario never really played out. Mainly, I took the Air bless for the 75% shock resistance, intending to combine it with Wrath of Tawhiri (Storm + Random Lightning + kills caster), but the Alchera don't have enough HP for 75% shock resistance to be enough. I may yet give their sacreds 25% shock resist in order to enable this strategy. I didn't research Wrath of Tawhiri in time for it to help me, but a few experiments with Shock Wave convinced me that 75% resistance meant that my blessed units still died in one hit most of the time.

Looking over the other mod nations before the start of the game, I almost despaired. Almost all of them had magic-weapon wielding basic units. Some had magic attacks on almost all of their units, completely negating the advantage of my etherial troops. I started fast out the gate – my sacreds did just fine against independents, and my regular troops, mainly Possum Warriors supported by Alchera's superior Maohi Javelineers, were also quite effective. I almost cheered when I discovered that I shared a border with the Ogres.

Why? Because they were the only (or almost-only) faction in Tourmaline game without magic weapons. Plus, they had lots of HP and Strength but only so-so Attack. My Dreamtime Warriors would destroy them – I hoped. The short version: against basic Bulls or comparable numbers of more powerful Ogres, I would win with few casualties. If I was outnumbered, I'd get slaughtered. And that was with my capital-only Dreamtime Warriors. My lesser sacreds couldn't penetrate their armor. Mawtribe Ogres were a different problem: they lacked armor, but it took about four good hits to kill these sacred, regenerating berserkers, not counting the aforementioned regeneration.

I made a crucial mistake at this point in the game: I spent a lot of my accumulated gold on province defense: a Def of about 30 would take out a few Mawtribes before succumbing, wearing statttis's stacks down and helping my achieve the roughly-equal numbers of sacreds I needed to win. But the math didn't work: for some reason, I had it in my head that the new threat had to be a capital-only sacred. It took me a few turns to get around to checking and seeing that they were summoned a dozen at a time with a 3rd Level Blood magic spell. I then used up my gem supply to equip my Dreamhunter assassins so I could go after his Butchers (blood hunters) and dry up the supply. The results were mixed: Dreamhunters are powerful assassins, but the Tourmaline version suffered (intentionally) from old age, which stripped out too much of their initial power. Also, their strength was low (12 or 13, then take one or two off for old age), so a single Earth Meld could leave them helpless for several rounds.

In other mistakes, I spent up my nature gems and plenty of mage-turns summoning Maeros (immortal chaff), then carelessly sent them into their first battle outside my dominion and lost them all.

It wasn't all disasters, however: I sent my best-equipped Hunter to statttis's capital, leading to my greatest coup-counting of the game: I assassinated his pretender (Fountatin of Blood). Twice.

I think those assassinations made my offer of peace attractive, because my now-depleted coffers of gold and gems were telling me something: I might be able to cripple the Ogres, but I couldn't beat them.

It was at about this point that Arga Dis went under. Stygia began encroaching on the Ogres from the West, and the Tomb Kings swept in from the NW. For a moment it looked like Alugra would descend from the north, but he was, apparently occupied elsewhere. Trumanator's Tomb Lords advance was a mix of high-MR undead units “Avatar” SCs, equipped with AoE weapons (Flame Whip, etc.). I had a lot of Elders, and, unlike Banish, Solar Rays does damage to undead regardless of MR (smaller AoE and AP instead of AN, but hey...). The Avatars were the real problem: sometimes combined with fireball-casting magicians, revealed the achilies heel of my sacreds: good Def & MR + etherial against AoE spells and attacks = toast.

With nothing else ready, I threw my sacreds into the breach, and they got ground into kibble.

I threw all of my research into Thaumatury, and before I was ousted, I took out several Avatars with spammed Soul Slay. That was my only revenge upon Trumanator, because I never came up with a counter to his next wave: 20+ necromancers spamming undead, plus the aforementioned fire mages (mostly casting bane fire now – I was by this point fatally behind on research).

Alchera has a lot of mage-priests, and I was able to hold about even against his skele-spam, but Solar Rays inevitably targeted the skele-spam, and Soul Slay wasn't effective against this many high-MR targets. My mages died in fire, became unconscious from fatigue or fled. I had tried assassinating his mages, but my Dreamhunters killed about two skele-spam per round, to the five/round conjured by the target, so they were overwhelmed and killed. If I had had the gems and foresight to equip them with dual frostbrands, maybe things would have been different.

Beset by Stygia as well as Desert, the Ogres went under before I did, but I was driven back into the SW corner of the map, and mostly trapped in besieged citadels. I hung on for some time after losing my capital, somehow, aided by the ability to evacuate my stealthy mages and handfuls of sacreds. My last hope was Summon Yarama Ya-who: I had enough pearls for a few castings and a Elder with enough astral to cast this spell, once I researched it. I attempted to break the siege with 20-30 Yarama Ya-who, but most of them were starving by this point, and they routed before I could tell if I really had a chance. Probably not.

I've made a lot of tweaks to Alchera for the “2.0” version, and anytime someone wants to run another “Tourmaline,” I'm in (for one thing, I shied away from communions this time around... Alchera lacks cheap communion slaves, but a Rainbow Serpent-led communion could accomplish terrifying things).