Thoughts on EA Abyssia (guide)

[kasnavada]

To chrispedersen :

The only pretender with base astral for EA abyssia are :
- sphinx (3),
- solar disc (2),
- great sage and great enchanteress (1)

I also need you to explain a bit more about abysia not being affected by death scales ?

On ths subject of astral magic, the +4 to MR is pretty good since most of your mages can be blessed actually, but it works only in battle unless you equip them all the time with a shroud of the battle saint. That equipment costs as much as the amulet of antimagic, so in my opinion it's good (different spot so they add up) but not worth 100 extra points (with the sphinx : 120 points to 8, 224 to 10).

Twist fate is quite good too even for 50 extra points since it protects you from spells like flying arrow (again, with the shroud).

[Dragar]

Am trying a modified build - changed sphinx to Divine Glyph, dropped Astral to 9 and Grabbed Fire 4. So F4E4S9B4. Had to drop one scale to do it. It looks like a goer in the early game at least, +2 attack is useful

[JimMorrison]

Dragar said:
Am trying a modified build - changed sphinx to Divine Glyph, dropped Astral to 9 and Grabbed Fire 4. So F4E4S9B4. Had to drop one scale to do it. It looks like a goer in the early game at least, +2 attack is useful

That's quite a bless, Imprisoned I take it?

I just assembled an E6/S9 Sphinx with O3/P1/H3/L1/M3..... It looks pretty hot, so to speak. I kind of like the ability to reach M3 for them, especially with an S9 pretender, you could potentially do well by shooting straight up Evo, Probing everything you own the whole way. Maybe take a brief pit stop just to get Augury, and try to alchemize into as many extra paths as possible, to prepare for Strands.

[Endoperez]

chrispedersen said:
As I recall, all the pretenders with the highest natural sorcery rating, get to be something like 'mind master'
and if I remember right (and it wasn't just limited to Dom 2, or was it 1?) the benefits were significant.

Third, niche usefulness for nations such as ashdod mentioned, or agatha - where the sacreds can't hit the broad side of a barn = and +5 makes them 14 - which is a significant boost. Worth the points probably not - but some nations have no use for the points.

"Astral King" was a DomII term that was used when Magic Duel was different. Astral 9-10 pretender teleporting around and around and around and killing EVERYTHING and ANYTHING with ANY Astral levels was just insane. No Astral mages, or nations, survived against that. No matter what you did, your mages would always lose. Then it was discovered that the mage who cast Magic duel got something like +9999 bonus to his Astral, the bug was fixed and the Astral Kings were only almost, not totally invulnerable.



Niche uses for level 10 blesses exist, but not for all the paths. Fire 9 vs fire 10 is +1 attack, which isn't important. Earth 9 vs earth 10 is +1 reinvigoration, which can mean the difference between effective encumberance of 1 or 0, and that can be VERY important in long fights, especially against strong undead. Extra regeneration from Nature might also be worth it in very spesific cases.

kasnavada said:
I also need you to explain a bit more about abysia not being affected by death scales ?

Abysia is immune to the supply effects of Death scale. They aren't immune to the effects of Death scale on population or the new-in-Dom3 effect on probability of old age afflictions.

This effectively means that Death scale affects them worse than other nations even if they ignore its least important effect.

It'd be much better if Abysian dominion protected Abysian mages from old age afflictions. Or perhaps Heat scale would be enough, since that spreads farther than their actual dominion. If Abysia was immune to both supply and old age effects of Death scale, they might actually be able to take it instead of Growth.

[dirtywick]

Yes, death scales are bad for old age and excessive blood hunting, and income for that matter. They really need all of that. Once you can forge boots it's less of an issue, but the gold and pop loss from blood hunting would make high death scales potentially an issue. Their mages aren't exactly cheap, and neither are their troops for that matter.

[MaxWilson]

For Abysia, the "immunity" to death is less of a free-points like Niefelheim's cold affinity (or Abysia's own heat affinity) and more of a thematic flavoring with the minor perk that you can invade other people's Death dominion without as much problem.

-Max

[chrispedersen]

Dragar: I think that the B4 on the Glyph is superfluous. If you are going to take that build, I believe the Fountain of Blood might be cheaper.

But that wouldn't be my primary objection: Waiting three years for a 4 blood mage probably isn't a worthwhile return.

And the +2 str for sacreds ... isn't necessary.

[Dragar]

its more a case of a bunch of the good blood summons are combination astral/blood, I was thinking there was no rush for the blood magic as I'd need time to accumulate that many slaves anyway? Especially with a lot of my early hunting going towards Boots of Youth

In terms of the +2 Str, early to mid game I'm relying on Lava warriors (MA), who use flails and have two attacks, I figured they'd get good use out of the bless? Especially when against high prot targets. What would you advise as an alternate minor bless?

I'll check out the Fountain to see if its cheaper, cheers.

D

[JimMorrison]

Well S/B may be a worthwhile combination, but the 4B is 112 points, which is 2 Dom and 2 scales (if you left it at Dom4, which the math suggests you might have). I think the idea is that 2 scales and extra early capacity on your sacreds could be leveraged into affording more bloodhunting, affording you the ability to empower in B as much as you feel necessary.

[Dragar]

My entire build so far is:

Imprisoned Divine Glyph F4E4S9B4
Dominion:7 (glyph starts at 4)
Scales: Order 3 Production 3 Growth 1 Misfortune 3 Magic 1

In test runs I have found that the limitation on building Lava Warriors is not dominion but resources. Even at 7 dominion I can rarely cap out due to resource limitation, but want it at least that high as obviously spreading heat is important for Abysia.

If I removed Blood 4 the biggest thing I could improve on would be Luck, the misfortune is painful early until I have decent PD in most provs to handle the barbarian hordes than invariably invade. So I could drop Misfortune to 1, and maybe have enough left over to get Dom 8? In return I lose the +2 str bless on all my Lava Warriors and require a chunk of blood and several turns to empower my glyph when he finally gets outs... One could also argue to drop the growth and eliminate misfortunate altogether, especially as I am to rush Constr 6 and get Boots of Youth before training any old age mages

I'm not sure, in my mind that strength bonus is worth it for my double-hit sacreds, I could be wrong though.

Note that blood/earth give some useful combinations too. As the glyph isn't going to be used for personal combat (unless I'm attacked at capital or have fanciful ideas about teleporting around with a poor combat chassis) pretty much anything useful its going to do besides research will take a lot of gems, hence I'm happy to keep him imprisoned and plan to have some decent supplies for forging and rituals when he's out.