abysia strategies
Many posters say Abysia is a top-5 race. However, I'd never had any success with Abysia. So either I was doing something wrong, or the posters here are cheese-eating surrender monkeys.
I decided to experiment. I ran some test games with a Phoenix pretender with Air-4, Fire-4, whom I named Crispy Chicken. I researched Alteration-1 for Aim, and used Crispy as fire support behind my main army. At the same time, I tried to get my blood economy rolling.
Crispy was a huge success at fire support. The blood economy was incredibly easy to get started. I built soul contracts and the devils poured in. However, I had no way to get dwarven hammers or ice devils. Plus I was reminded once again that castles suck.
I tried a new approach. My pretender was a Great Warlock, whom I named Evil Todd. I took Order-3, Prod-3, Heat-3, Misfortune-2, Watchtower, Dominion 7. Evil Todd had 4 Air (for SoS and easy access to Air Queens), 3 Earth (hammers), 3 Water and 3 Blood (Ice Devils). The plan was to research Construction-2, Blood-5, Alteration-2, Construction-4, Blood 6, Construction-6, etc.
Holy bleeping bleep.
Abysia may be slow to get started, but once they do get going they are awesome. It is almost criminal how fast they can get a blood economy going. Devils are quite potent in large numbers, and their mobility is terrifying. Which is good, because the Abysian HI are dangerously slow.
I built about 6 soul contracts during my current game. I put them on scouts. One scout got attacked 4 times by Lesser Horrors. He was unequipped and had no bodyguards, and yet he won every single time. Fear my l33t Dom2 skillz! (or fear the Bad VCR Header error I got when I tried to view the battles...)
I got my first ice devil on turn 15, but only sent him out on turn 19 once I got him equipped. I've never had ice devils with less than ideal equipment, so I was nervous about losing him to stupidity.
Equipment for the Ice Devils/Arch Devils/Air Queens mostly consisted of the following: Blood Thorn, Lucky Shield, Horror Helm, Red Dragon Scale Mail (later Jade Armor when I got someone with 1W 1E), Winged Shoes or Boots of Quickness, Antimagic Amulet and Ring of Regeneration.
My pretender spent most of his time site searching or summoning Ice Devils (and later Air Queens).
I tried Send Horror for the first time. Again, holy bleeping bleep. Armies just vanish when attacked by a Horror. I cast 2 on Ulm's capital, and my army walked in to an undefended province. For Abysia, 4S 3B is not hard to get at all.
Okay, now to my questions for the Abysian gurus:
1. Soul Contracts: how should I defend my scouts, if at all? Because of the Soul Contract, the scouts can have up to 10 undead under their control, so perhaps 5 Devils as bodyguards would be good. How many Soul Contracts are recommended?
2. Blood Harvesting: how many provinces should be dedicated to blood harvesting early in the game? I tried 3 provinces each with 3 hunters.
3. Research: from early to mid-game, should Abysia research anything but Alt-2, Constr-4, and Blood Magic? In other words, am I missing anything?
4. Blood Summons: other than Ice Devils and Arch Devils, which blood summons are worth casting? I just summoned a Father Illearth in my current game, but haven't yet tried Fallen Angels, Demon Lords or Heliophagus (Heliphagi?).
Any comments or thoughts on my approach would be most appreciated.
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