[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Mardagg

The whole point of soul contracts is to get them as early as possible,many of them.Since Abysia is so well suited for contracts,i really dont see it as a side-strat here,involving waiting for empowerment/waiting for the right paths on your warlock/waiting for Constr 6 and the boosters/and being lucky or unlucky with old age on your warlocks .
With an awake blood fountain,you can get 1-2 already within the first year..of course you have to blood hunt your capital 1 or 2 times to achieve this,but dont forget that you get a slave income per turn with the fountain on CBM mod,too.
Its the fastest way to get a contract factory going,by far.
Later on,you can then empower/equip a warlock to be able to build contracts,so that your pretender gets better things to do.

Never Heard of sloth with Abysia`s resource-needing troops.
So you are using Humanbreds mainly to expand then for the early game?
What are you doing,if you meet another Human early,that attacks you?
Looks to me very risky here,to put all eggs in one basket.
Humanbreds can very easily be countered and depending on starting position/strong indies it can take some time to get a 2nd or 3rd castle going.
I think you need at least Prod 0 to be more flexible,and if you plan to rush your opponents(for which Lava Warriors are definately very well suited,even though i agree it might be their only good use) you need more.

Furthermore,you need money like crazy early on and for most good Abysia setups,something along O3 G3 and like P1 or P2 is a good choice,simply for the money bonus.

Here's the big secret: MA Aby's troops aren't *that* good. They will not save you from a sacred rush. Lava warriors are crap, seriously, and you don't want a bless that's going to be big enough to turn the steaming pile of crap they are into something almost useful (if such a state of affairs is even possible).

Regular abyssian troops, even with P3, are hard to mass, and not much more effective than humanbred tbh.

So yes, you hang your expansion on humanbred. Its not even that hard. P3 is such a waste of points since you aren't going to care after year 1. At all.

Key to surviving year 1:
-Diplomacy. Talk to neighbors. Abysia isn't exactly considered an easy rush target. Make peace.
-Thaumaturgy. If there must be war, get the fire prison spells. Hoses any bless rush.
-Awake rainbow - fast research is fast.
-Bloodhunt early and often (NOT YOUR CAPITAL!). Do some early blood research. Spinedevils are actually pretty nice, for example.

Besides possible low level thaum/blood research, you're going to be bum rushing construction to at least 6 and probably 8. You're going to dump every F gem you see on lanterns when you hit constr 6.

Anyway, by the time you can forge enough blood boosters to get a warlock making contracts, you may be behind *two* contracts. To which i say: whatever. You saved a few *hundred* pretender points not doing it on your pretender.