What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Abysia)

[Sencha]

I started a Dom 3 game this morning with the Abysia, Children of Flame. It was early age, medium map, three other civs. I started in a corner and had some nice prospective provinces to conquer. My pretender was the Solar Disk with maxed out fire magic and heat scale.

Unfortunately, the barbarian independents were strong in the area, and since I was starting out I was going to have to rely on large, cheap armies.

This was my first time using Abysia, and I loved their troop/commander units. But I found their rank and file troops ridiculously expensive. I couldn't afford more than a small hand full. I tried filling out my units with those black winged demons, but they're useless. They flew right into a Barbarian army and died.

I'm interested in using fire spells, especially from the evocation school. But as a relative newcomer to the game, I don't think I'm ready for Abysia yet. Considering their high costs, and the fact that I couldn't even clear away the first couple of independent provinces, I wonder how usable they even are. Although I bet there's a dom3 player (or several) out there that thinks its perfectly easy

So, if I want to do well with fire magic, what Nation/Pretender can I play that isn't from Abysia? Sorry if I could have looked this up myself, but I wanted some player input.

[lch]

You should learn to give orders to your units so that they fight more efficiently. Spending design points on your pretender (like Order when you experience money problems) could make sense, too.

For fire magic, Marignon might be wort a look for you.

[Nick_K]

Abysia are quite hard at first: you need to really take advantage of their fire immunity for them to be worth the cost, and their high resource cost is also a problem. Make sure you take productivity and order. Also, don't hesitate to convert your fire gems into gold with alchemy at the start.
The anointed are amazing battlemages. Script them with summon phoenix power then falling fires / fire cloud / pillar of fire. You can also use anathement salamanders which are recruitable anywhere. The dragon is not so good due to old age.
Abysia are also very good at blood magic.

Other fire nations can suffer a lot from friendly fire, and I don't think anyone has a battlemage like the anointed of rhuax. I think that fire is one of the rarer paths. Perhaps Marignon is the next fire nation after Abysia? I haven't played them in dom3 yet, but in dom2 they had a fire-3 mage.

[MaxWilson]

Yomi has up to F3 on their Dai Oni kings. They're expensive but kind of fun.

Agartha has up to F2 on their Oracles of Subterranean Fires. Since OoSFs also have E3 they can cast Magma Eruption at Evocation-6, which is smaller AoE but longer-range than Flame Eruption and is also a lot of fun. (The other Oracles can go with Blade Wind. Not fire but reasonably destructive vs. EA troops.)

Ermor has fire mages with astral magic, I think, which lets you do Communion to cast more powerful fire spells.

Machaka (MA) has some decent fire mages, IIRC.

None of these nations has fire immunity like Abysia does, so friendly fire becomes more of an issue. I imagine Flame Eruption for Abysia is a real hoot, but I've never tried it yet (still learning the game).

-Max

[DrPraetorious]

Machaka, foo! Recognize!

Of course, you won't be doing fire magic *exclusively*, but 1/4 Black Sorcerer will have F3. You also get the fire/death combo which lets you build flaming skulls.

Try this build:
dormant great sage, F4A4W4S3N4, dominion 5, order 3, prod 2, heat 3, mistfortune 2, magic 1.

He gives a surprisingly powerful blessing to your awesome sacred spider knights, piles of personal research points, and excellent scales. His dominion is somewhat weak.

Anyway, friendly fire is less of a problem when your frontline units regenerate.

[Managarm]

From my little newbie experience with both MA Marignon and Abysia, I'd recommend starting with Marignon, because it plays like a more conventional nation, having plenty of options and answers to (almost) everything

In terms of units, you can fulfill all the battlefield main roles: missile support (Crossbowman), expendable front liners (Flagellants), heavy infantry (Man At Arms) and very good (although expensive) cavalry (Royal Guard/Knights Of The Chalice). On top of that, Marignon also have plenty of priestly/magic powers to unleash and some tactical warheads like Assassins and Spies; although Abysia has got the superior assassins there.
Marignon can also benefit a lot from a good fire bless and dominion: Flagellants are dirty cheap, can be recruited everywhere and combining two attacks plus Flaming Weapons it's pure evil! Knights Of The Chalice also become very nasty with the Flaming Weapons feature, BTW.

In terms of magic, Grand Masters have Fire 3/Astral 2 base plus two additional random paths, and one it's 100%. Recruiting some of them (unfortunately they're capital only) you reach F4 or S3 easily without any empowerment or magic item.
F3 grants you fully access to Evocation gems such as Falling Fires, Flare, Fireball, Fire Cloud and Holy Pyre (National Spell)... You can also cast Flaming Arrows (Enchantment, F3 required) giving an edge to your Crossbowmen/indy archers. Enchantment also gives you the chance to make your troops flame immune thanks to Fire Fend/Warriors of Muspelheim.
Another worth mentioning spells, from Thaumaturgy school, are Raging Hearts (F4) for crippling enemies' economy alongside with Spies, and Soul Slay (S3) a basic anti-SC spell. If you go Astral you can also try some of the outstanding National Summons...

High Inquisitors are level 3 priests capable of Divine Blessing/Smite all day, and they're also very effective at killing enemy dominions

The biggest drawback they've is the ageing problems that the best units suffer (Grand Masters/High Inquisitors)

That's in a nutshell what can Marignon do for you...

[Sencha]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll give Marignon a shot.

[MaxWilson]

Managarm said:
Marignon can also benefit a lot from a good fire bless and dominion: Flagellants are dirty cheap, can be recruited everywhere and combining two attacks plus Flaming Weapons it's pure evil! Knights Of The Chalice also become very nasty with the Flaming Weapons feature, BTW.

Another thing you could try is an S9 bless, which almost doubles Flagellants' survivability. The two flail attacks ignore shields so they should already be pretty good at hitting, and if you want a damage boost B6 gives almost as good a damage boost as F9 against anything armored. An unblessed flagellant can expect to do about 5 points of damage per-hit against Prot 10, and either a B6 bless or a F9 bless will boost that to 7.5. (The +4 attack of F9 is non-negligible but you can also just throw an extra flagellant in the fight. 2 more attacks = -4 more to defense. Don't get too attached to the attack bonus.) Of course you could take both F9 *and* the B4 or B6, which lets you forge some nifty items. And Knights of the Chalice benefit a lot from the B6 bless.

Don't get me wrong, the F9 bless is clearly better, but the B6 is a lot cheaper.

-Max


Average per-hit damage for flagellants (2000 runs):
Prot 1 Unblessed dmg 13.11 Fire bless 19.47 B6 bless 16.05
Prot 2 Unblessed dmg 12.09 Fire bless 18.03 B6 bless 15.00
Prot 3 Unblessed dmg 10.91 Fire bless 16.55 B6 bless 13.89
Prot 4 Unblessed dmg 10.06 Fire bless 15.07 B6 bless 13.21
Prot 5 Unblessed dmg 9.19 Fire bless 13.86 B6 bless 11.86
Prot 6 Unblessed dmg 8.17 Fire bless 12.47 B6 bless 10.82
Prot 7 Unblessed dmg 7.44 Fire bless 11.51 B6 bless 10.06
Prot 8 Unblessed dmg 6.48 Fire bless 9.48 B6 bless 9.20
Prot 9 Unblessed dmg 5.58 Fire bless 8.73 B6 bless 8.10
Prot 10 Unblessed dmg 4.77 Fire bless 7.54 B6 bless 7.40
Prot 11 Unblessed dmg 3.99 Fire bless 6.59 B6 bless 6.54
Prot 12 Unblessed dmg 3.28 Fire bless 5.56 B6 bless 5.73
Prot 13 Unblessed dmg 2.82 Fire bless 4.77 B6 bless 4.78
Prot 14 Unblessed dmg 2.13 Fire bless 3.86 B6 bless 4.08
Prot 15 Unblessed dmg 1.70 Fire bless 3.33 B6 bless 3.32
Prot 16 Unblessed dmg 1.35 Fire bless 2.56 B6 bless 2.70
Prot 17 Unblessed dmg 1.11 Fire bless 2.29 B6 bless 2.29
Prot 18 Unblessed dmg 0.80 Fire bless 1.84 B6 bless 1.71
Prot 19 Unblessed dmg 0.59 Fire bless 1.71 B6 bless 1.26
Prot 20 Unblessed dmg 0.46 Fire bless 1.30 B6 bless 0.95

Average per-hit damage for Knights of the Chalice (2000 runs):
Prot 1 Unblessed dmg 16.84 Fire bless 23.57 B6 bless 20.05
Prot 2 Unblessed dmg 15.98 Fire bless 21.62 B6 bless 19.11
Prot 3 Unblessed dmg 15.04 Fire bless 21.01 B6 bless 17.77
Prot 4 Unblessed dmg 14.00 Fire bless 18.72 B6 bless 17.09
Prot 5 Unblessed dmg 13.24 Fire bless 17.77 B6 bless 15.98
Prot 6 Unblessed dmg 12.05 Fire bless 15.70 B6 bless 14.96
Prot 7 Unblessed dmg 11.17 Fire bless 15.06 B6 bless 13.86
Prot 8 Unblessed dmg 10.05 Fire bless 13.63 B6 bless 13.09
Prot 9 Unblessed dmg 9.33 Fire bless 12.47 B6 bless 12.29
Prot 10 Unblessed dmg 8.34 Fire bless 10.76 B6 bless 11.01
Prot 11 Unblessed dmg 7.14 Fire bless 9.99 B6 bless 10.47
Prot 12 Unblessed dmg 6.46 Fire bless 8.65 B6 bless 9.38
Prot 13 Unblessed dmg 5.49 Fire bless 7.68 B6 bless 8.31
Prot 14 Unblessed dmg 4.77 Fire bless 6.59 B6 bless 7.29
Prot 15 Unblessed dmg 3.89 Fire bless 5.54 B6 bless 6.38
Prot 16 Unblessed dmg 3.22 Fire bless 4.56 B6 bless 5.58
Prot 17 Unblessed dmg 2.82 Fire bless 3.95 B6 bless 4.81
Prot 18 Unblessed dmg 2.15 Fire bless 3.12 B6 bless 3.98
Prot 19 Unblessed dmg 1.53 Fire bless 2.56 B6 bless 3.26
Prot 20 Unblessed dmg 1.33 Fire bless 2.08 B6 bless 2.63

[Amhazair]

MaxWilson said:
None of these nations has fire immunity like Abysia does, so friendly fire becomes more of an issue. I imagine Flame Eruption for Abysia is a real hoot, but I've never tried it yet (still learning the game).

-Max

The destructive potential of flame eruption is huge, but it's risky and not very easy to pull off (In my experience at least) as you need to get your mages very close to the frontline, where the survival rate is noticeably lower than safely at the back.

I've tried it a couple of times in important battles, and it has won me the battle on occasion, but never without loosing at least some of my mages, while another time I just got all my mages killed, exept for those who ended up in a bad position where all they did was cast a fireball anywhere.

So to sum it up it's a potentially powerful tactic, but you'd best script everything carefully, and expect losses, so only try it if it's really worth it. (or if one of your mages has upset you of course. )

[PvK]

Good ideas. There are many options that can work. Another thought though is since Marignon's mages already have Fire magic at 4, it might be wise to give the pretender different paths.