How do you defend against an Abysian devil rush?

[ioticus]

I've discovered in a PBEM game that it's easy for Abysia to produce at least 6 devils before turn 20. (In my game it was around turn 15.) Those devils, especially when mixed with Lava warriors and Abysian infantry, can take on almost anything at this early stage of the game. I doubt many home provinces could defend against a bee line rush from such a force. Can any other nation equal such a formidable force so early in the game? How do you counter the Abysian devil rush?

[quantum_mechani]

ioticus said:
I've discovered in a PBEM game that it's easy for Abysia to produce at least 6 devils before turn 20. (In my game it was around turn 15.) Those devils, especially when mixed with Lava warriors and Abysian infantry, can take on almost anything at this early stage of the game. I doubt many home provinces could defend against a bee line rush from such a force. Can any other nation equal such a formidable force so early in the game? How do you counter the Abysian devil rush?

Any nation with air magic should be able toast them without to much trouble with lighting bolt. Other than you mostly have to hope your pretender is up to it (also the H3 spell banish demon does not hurt). As for formidable early forces, they have nothing on a van W9F9 bless or a niefel N9 bless rush.

[Saber Cherry]

Jotunheim can counter them. Rain, Jotun Spearmen, and imps do a good job... Devils and lava warriors have no shields, so xbows work well on them too. Atlantis and Tien Chi might find cold bolts effective, once the devils are at close range, and the mages are surrounded by a shell of infantry. Atlantis can also use poisoned armor to their advantage against devils, imps, and fiends that attack with claws. Ulm troops can probably fight devils OK, since their armor is hard to penetrate with no weapons... and any Death-2 nation should be able to overwhelm them with undead.

Staff of Storms prevents flight, casts lightning bolts, and in general is very good against devils... preventing them from slipping behind your lines and killing commanders and archers.

What nation were you having trouble with? I can't think of any that are utterly defenseless against 6 devils by turn 15, unless you were unlucky in the initial expansion, or took drain on a difficult-reasearch map, or something... I find mid-game devils powered by soul contracts to be much more worrisome.

I'm not saying devils are weak - quite the opposite; I think they (along with fiends of darkness) are way overpowered for their research level, magic level, and cost. But if you expect them, there are some ways to deal with them... though it's not usually national infantry, aside from Jotunheim and Atlantis. And Ryleh, of course.

[Endoperez]

Saber Cherry said:
Atlantis can also use poisoned armor to their advantage against devils, imps, and fiends that attack with claws. Ulm troops can probably fight devils OK, since their armor is hard to penetrate with no weapons...

Devils do have Trident, which is dam-7 IIRC, and long enough to negate the poison armor.

[Saber Cherry]

Endoperez said:

Devils do have Trident, which is dam-7 IIRC, and long enough to negate the poison armor.

Ah... right. I was thinking of fiends and imps, forgot Devils didn't use claws. My bad That makes it more difficult...

I will say that Vaettir are good at overcoming Devil's high defense, though, which is their biggest problem... Vaettir are cheap, strong enough to hurt devils, and form cute little squares of 6: 6 attacks, with the last one at a -5 defense penalty, if the devil is only attacked by a single group of them. Ulm is in trouble, I guess, though flails and arbalests might work, at high resource cost. Atlantis... with the right blessing, Mother Guards are pretty good, but otherwise you'd just want to throw cold bolts, I suppose.

You can always model some things in the sim, to decide which melee type at your disposal is best against devils, and use them as a shield to protect your mages or xbows. Or, with things like centaur warriors, just kill the devils with them.

As a last resort, you can make a totem shield or two, which will preferentially curse the devils, since they're big. Then they can even be taken out by normal infantry or archers. A few commanders with eye shields should work too... and if they're mounted, and you give also them other things like (main gauche / sword of swiftness), (pendant of luck / bracers of defense / cat charm), (chain mail of displacement), then they might even survive But that's increasing the cost quite a bit, for a slim chance of survival.

This is all theoretical, by the way, except for the Jotun stuff. Be sure to tell me if it works

[baruk]

Endoperez said:

Devils do have Trident, which is dam-7 IIRC, and long enough to negate the poison armor.

Devils have a tail attack also, length zero, which gets them poisoned.

[Ironhawk]

The cheapest defense vs any high-defense unit is just a wack of archers. Devils have only 8 prot so even a normal short bow will wound them (tho admittedly it will take several arrows to bring down a single devil). So just buy hordes of indy archers. Expect the player controlling the devils to attack your archers and just split them up or have enough to manage.

[ioticus]

Saber Cherry said:

What nation were you having trouble with? I can't think of any that are utterly defenseless against 6 devils by turn 15, unless you were unlucky in the initial expansion, or took drain on a difficult-reasearch map, or something... I find mid-game devils powered by soul contracts to be much more worrisome.

I'm playing Caelum, the Raptors theme. I really don't have anything to counter the Devils and Abysian infantry.

[quantum_mechani]

ioticus said:

I'm playing Caelum, the Raptors theme. I really don't have anything to counter the Devils and Abysian infantry.

Just get a few of your best mages casting lightning bolt while something holds off devils for a few turns (undead, heavy infantry, your pretender).

[FrankTrollman]

I'm assuming you are talking Spine Devils, rather than "devils", because I don't think there is any way for Abyssia to get together 480 blood slaves by turn 15 (or even 20 earth gems and 360 blood slaves, which if they have a god with 3 earth).

In any case, with Caelum you can smite these bad boys down even as the Raptors. Get yourself some Staves of Storms and learn Orb Lightning. A pile of Orb Lgihtning firing Harabs with a nondescript blob of Corpse Constructs in front will tie up the Spine Devils virtually forever while you shred them to nasty pieces. Putting out Blizzard Warriors in groups of one out there to soak damage while the lightning does its work helps too.

-Frank