Tuatha Race

[Keir Maxwell]

The Sidhe are dear to my heart - my central character in Ultima Online was a Sidhe. So I've been keen to get something going with the race and while I'm not convinced I can't do better with Van here goes what I'm playing with right now.
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"The Quick or the Dead"

Blue Dragon, Water 9. Dominion 6.
Sloth 1, luck 1, magic 1.
Fortified City.

The key unit is the Daoine Sidhe warriors who work a treat with quikness and a def of 19 when blessed. The Cu Sidhe make good fast build supporting troops when you have extra gold and few resources - use with care though. For archer bait I use the starting troops plus build more axemen when needed

For early commanders I use my initial Castallien as my prophet and Sidhe Champions and monks. I tried Sidhe Lords but didn't feel I could justify the extra cost.

The Blue Dragon researches up to alteration 2 for quikness and then heads off to help the expansion. Might be better sometimes to head straight out but its seems tidier to get quickness first.

Difficult to get a good feel for the expansion rate as I'm still getting the hang of minimising casualties and what exactly you have to be afraid of. You can beat some normally hard to beat provinces but are vunerable to high attack troops and Xbow. My cleanest expansion saw me well ahead of the +1 province per turn by the 10th turn (indies 5) but with a pitiful gold income due to starting in the wastes at the bottom of the Aran map. As a consequence I didn't have enough gold to buy defenses to discourage the AI from attacking and got lured into an early war.

Overall the race looks fairly promising though the troops require great care early and the right magic support later to get the best out of them - anti-archery is important and the race has rthe right paths. A race than can get a decent start, has access to air magic, and has magic scale +1 can't be all bad.

One alternative is to run sloth2, order1, and make more use of the Cu Sidhe.

Cheers

Keir

[ November 26, 2003, 04:41: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Jasper]

I tried something similar and didn't really get much mileage out of it.

Blue Dragon, Water 9, Dominion 4.
Order 2, Luck 1, Magic 1
Fortress

I'd prefer the castle, but it left me with Order 1 and 24 pts left over.

Dominion is a bit low for mass producing sacred troops. I was hoping cheap temples would help here, plus Dominion is expensive for Pretenders starting with 1. Perhaps I'd be better off tweaking to get higher dominion.

I had several general problems. The Sidhe warriors are great at staying alive, but not very potent! They're also fairly vulnerable to missiles, without anything really stellar to use as missile bait.

I had better sucess in a short test using the Red Dragon instead. The sidhe were still fairly surviveable, but now had some potency. The Red dragon also worked better for expansion, due to a combination of a strong Fire Shield, and not missing attacks. The Blue dragon finished off it's opponents too slow, and thus got hurt more often.

The magic scale isn't really stellar as Tuatha's cheapest mage is 140. Plus I felt compelled to take Order, which minimizes any benefit from luck. My main fear with this race is that it's a little income poor, and while it's troops can be effective against independents and AI, it feels like it has weaknesses that real opponents would capitolize on. It also doesn't really have good troops outside of the Sidhe.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by Jasper:
I tried something similar and didn't really get much mileage out of it.

A very different race to play I suspect despite some similarities.

The big difference between our races is the dominion - dom4 is just too low for my liking and unable to meaningfully use the Cu Sidhe so significantly slower than Dom6. Don't underestimate the extra speed the Cu Sidhe (1 resource!) give you if you can grab some decent gold producing provinces early. Also with dom 4 you will only be able to build 4 Sidhe a turn - thats not enough. I'm not sure 6 is enough in the long term.

I was actually very impressed with the kill speed of the quickened Sidhe and in my tests tried walking straight on into HC provinces early with decent success. I suspect it could be a critical mass for the job question. Obviously fireweapons etc is quicker at killing but producing so few each turn I want to try and keep them alive as much as possible. I'm not saying the Red Dragon is not a good idea its just doesn't fit my view of Sidhe.

Regarding arrow catching I deploy the army a bit back from the start point (varies according to range of missiles opponent has) with Axe on hold and attack in the middle and Sidhe on attack on one or both flank - both catches attackers better and keeps them away from the Axemen. I have found this approach satisfactory as long as I leave behind the big Xbow provinces!

140pt researchers who bring in 5 points are decent - ~30pts per research. And then what happens if you find sages? Even if you don't find sages you are sure to find some independent mages who research well and free up the Sidhe for war. The key is that you have a decent starting speed and the ongoing power that comes with the bless effect on the Sidhe without having taken a serious drain scale. This means good things in the long term compared to many races which arn't much faster earlier.

Did you research quickness for the Blue Dragon when you tried it Jasper? I haven't had an affliction yet with the Dragon and as its always operating with Sidhe, and often taking out archers etc at the back, its not a high risk pretender strategy - though there obviously is a risk.

The biggest thing I found with this race is that you really need to practice hard to get a good feel of what independants to attack when. Get this right and I believe this race could be competitive.

cheers

Keir

[LordArioch]

Oh master race designers ...what's this about using 5 research mages for 140...why not just build bards instead? They're only 75 and get 4 research...their upkeep isn't halved by sacred, but they're nice for early research and some simple protection spells on your sidhe do wonders, raising their protection up to a very respectable 20. Also the bard is a spy and a standard of course...you lose the air magic and the upkeep is the same, but early bards leave a lot more money for sidhe.

I seemed to be doing decently with my tuatha, even though I had a light bless and relied mainly on longbows for growth. And then all three adjacent AI players attacked over a period of three turns and the game went downhill rather quickly. My armies can't stand that long against joint enemy strikes on every border province.

[ November 26, 2003, 06:58: Message edited by: LordArioch ]

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
Oh master race designers ...what's this about using 5 research mages for 140...why not just build bards instead?

They're only 75 and get 4 research...their upkeep isn't halved by sacred, but they're nice for early research and some simple protection spells on your sidhe do wonders, raising their protection up to a very respectable 20. Also the bard is a spy and a standard of course...you lose the air magic and the upkeep is the same, but early bards leave a lot more money for sidhe.

The Bards are indeed very cute and I would build them early except they can neither bless nor lead an army and the barrier on building Sidhe is resources early not gold - sloth1 or 2 are what I've tried. While Sidhe Champions cost in resources they are better value than Daoine Sidhe per resource. You would not have had to worry about this so much relying longbows.

Building one commmander a turn early its a monk for bless plus moving a few troops around or a Sidhe Champion for leading armies and fighting. If the golds coming in nicely the Champion helps research quickness while they wait for a new army to assemble. Another bonus to building Sidhe Champions early is they quickly get into the hall of fame and get a heroic ability.

However you have made a very good point I overlooked - if you don't find Sages early build Bards when it comes time to invest in a real research program research - say sometime after turn 10. This is particularily strong with an even higher magic scale and I can see why you love Bards. The fact that I can't find room to build them early is one of the sacrifices in my present design.

I seemed to be doing decently with my tuatha, even though I had a light bless and relied mainly on longbows for growth.

I'm not of the opinion that Tuatha need powerful bless effects and as you say in time you can turn the Daoine Sidhe into super troops with magic. I'm just having fun with bless effects right now because they weren't in Dom1.

If only Man got the Lady of Fortune as a pretender! With the enforced luck on the Tuatha theme its sorta sad we can't try and maximise the return from luck plus get the added security of extra fortune in our home province. She would also be a great bless effect pretender. I haven't yet discovered the appeal of the Mother of the Tuathas who is perhaps why Man don't get the Lady of Fortune. I wish the Mother of Tuathas was not so good and more affordable as Tuatha doesn't have alot of room to move when it comes to design points.

cheers

Keir

[ November 26, 2003, 08:55: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Jasper]

Originally posted by LordArioch:
Oh master race designers ...what's this about using 5 research mages for 140...why not just build bards instead?

D'oh! I had it lodged in my mind that the Bards were for the default theme only. This definitely improves the value of magic, although as Keir says you're still better off with Champions early on when you have just one fort.