Talk about this God....

[SurvivalistMerc]

He may have meant that his pretender would hope for air sites and forge eyes of aiming for his magi. That is how I interpreted it.

Those eyes of aiming make a huge difference (or at least seem to to me). The problem is that you have to hope to find air gems, which you aren't guaranteed with air 1.

I'm a little worried about his turmoil and fortune scales. But I've never played with scales like that. Some of the Abyssian units that I love to use such as the Dragon and Anathament warlock are very expensive. The dragon, fortunately, is sacred.

If I recall correctly, Abyssian troops are both expensive and resource-intensive. So I think both order and production would benefit the nation, especially since most provinces will already have their income negatively impacted by the heat 3 scale that your troops prefer.

-21% income from turmoil 3
-15% income from heat 3 (but I don't think this affects your starting province...just my supposition) (Also not -30% supplies which I might consider countering with a bit of growth for this race, though it isn't light infantry intensive and can probably stand the decrease in supplies. Nature would also be a nice alternative since you could forge items that would make the supplies unnecessary.)

+6% income from productivity 3
Overall: -30% income compared to base. I hope you strike it rich in terms of luck events. Because although I'm a newb I don't think I could make it work easily with this much of an income hit.

Would change around those dominion effects, but there may be something I as a newb am missing here.

I would consider something like going nature 9 on the pretender for regeneration and poison resistance on the troops (something you don't have...and those abyssians would certainly scare me more if they were to regenerate. Also regeneration would protect your commanders which are quite expensive from battle afflictions). I totally understand the blood 4, which you can probably empower up even more, because abyssia has wonderful access to blood slaves.

I might let one of my warlocks be the air mage and go for only two paths. That savings might let you concentrate more on your dominion effects since new paths are expensive to open for Moloch.

I'm writing this more for criticism of my criticism than anything else. I've never played abyssia past about turn 40 on the demo. (Hope this doesn't appear hypercritical)

[MythicalMino]

oh, no...this is the kind of info i was asking for....there really is an infinite amount of combinations you can put together...something counters something else, while that improves something else, ect, ect...

I am enjoying reading about how things work in this game...

I was thinking if i could pull it off somehow....go Earth 9, Nature 9.....but I am not sure how to get both paths up to 9....Regen plus a higher armor rating sounds good (ok, makes me drool)....but again, not sure that is really what would happen as I am not too sure about all the bless effects.

Thinking about going Archmage or Great Sage for the Earth 9/Nature 9....but, there might be another way to get there

[ November 26, 2003, 23:43: Message edited by: cpbeller ]

Well if you are taking Air for Aim/Eyes of Aiming you may want to go with a Phoenix. They start with the 2 paths you want (Air/Fire) and you can more affordably raise your Fire/Air if you want more than 1 in Air.

If you are going Air for Eyes of Aiming (which is my suggestion) you would be better off to get 3 or 4 in Air to find sites to create them.

Nature gives you Berserk (which stacks with the Lava Warriors Berserk for additional) that gives you +Prot, +Att, +Str, +Morale, -Defense. Plus Regeneration and poison resistance, whereas Fire gives you +4 Att, and Flaming weapons to hit Ethereal beings.

Taking Turmoil is going to hurt your gold income and you are going to have to be able to compensate somehow. Air also gives you quick access to Patrollers via Call of the Wind. For better blood hunting.

All in all; it's how you play the game. Though personally I wouldn't focus on bless effects before I knew how to play the race without using bless effects.

My suggestion to you would be to play Abysian with a low power pretender and high scales and see how to compose the quickest most viable armies and what those armies weaknesses are. Then you can make your pretender to fill in those gaps.

Use an Earth Mother to get to Earth/Nature 9.

This information might help you.

It was in another thread I believe, so the credit goes to them for pointing it out.

Every level of magic in a path that is not the inital cost, costs a certain number of DPoints.

8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64 etc.

So the higher your initial rating of magic (Like a Titan's 3 Air, or a Moloch Fire 2, or a Cyclops with Earth 3, cost less points to get to 9 in that path by quite a bit.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by cpbeller:
Abysia (default theme)

Moloch (Fire-9, Air-1, Blood-4)

Turmoil - 3
Productivity - 3
Heat - 3
Fortune - 2
Dominion Str. 3

Thanks for messaging me CP - I didn't spot this post.

I haven't tried Main Theme Abyssia much in Dom2 - it was my first and most loved in Dom1 so I've been looking more at new options.

Bits and Bobs:

Order3/misfortune3 is good for Abysia - an overly regimented land where even the cockroaches have bad luck due to all the demons wondering around practising curses. Order3 helps pay for those expensive mages.

High productivity is good.

Death 3 was a serious option in Dom1 and should be tested seriously - though not for a bless effects race as you need your home province. Chris Byler convinced me that death 3 was the way to go with Abysia in Dom1.

Dominion strength has to climb, way, way , up. Nine is good, ten better - your troops need the heat and it sure buggers up the opponent. The extra heat spreading dominion is also well worth trying out and all this increases the speed at which you get maximum income out of conquered provinces due to their scale moving to heat3.

Beware nature sending your mage/priests berserk! As The Lava Warriors are already berserkers I would give nature a miss unless you are planning to not use many sacred mages on the battlefield.

The crucial question?

How are you planning to win? What really defines your race?

At present it seems you are planning to utilise bless effects and Lava Warriors. I have tried this and posted up as in a thread "DomII not to do" on the Goggle group. I think I used the Cyclops with earth9 as this is great for all the sacred mages.

The problem with a Lava Warior based race design is that you are relying on berserk snails - 1mp strategic. I wouldn't recommmend doing this in Multiplayer. Personally I'm going to stay away from basing race designs around 1 move troops that can only be built in my capital - high mobility is important.

If you do a search on the Google Strategy group on Abysia you should find the thread where Chris and I came up with what I named as the "Hell on Earth race." This race is based around killing off everyone and replacing them with demons - hell on earth.

Key features of "Hell on Earth" are high dominion, death3, order3, prod3, and using the HI with 18prot and an axe for a rapid low casualty expansion with either the 40res castle or the wizards tower - you need to expand your production base fast enough that the death doesn't kick in to early. At this point in time my mind is blank regarding pretender options but something the helps the start is good and the other big thing to consider is what other blood summons you want access to. Alternatives to Fire magic is also a biggy.

I would recommmend in general not to build non-Abysian troops, except for specific jobs, as they tend to get burnt up when you make an oversight in deployment. If you really like archers shortbow can work alright as the infantry have good enough armour to be largely immune. I like to keep upkeep costs to the minimum with this race.

Look forward to seeing some more of your Abysian ideas.

Cheers

Keir

[MythicalMino]

ok, was messing around with the God design (it was 4:30 in the morning), here is what I came up with...think I am going to try this one out a bit....

(I even named it thanks for that personalizational touch, Keir!!)

"The Blood of Magic"

Abyssia

Fountain of Blood (9 Blood, 2 in every other path EXCEPT for Astral, which has 0)

- Desert Sun Theme
- 40 Admin Castle (for building my mages mostly)
- Order 3
- Productivity 3
- Heat 3 (comes with Desert Sun of course)
- Death 3 (going to probably rely mostly on Demon summons)
- Misfortune (don't really need any heroes, don't want the upkeep due to death being so high, right? or do heroes not use upkeep?)
- Drain 3 (for the points, but, is this a good idea, since I am going to be relying on Blood Magic ALOT in the game?)

Dominion Str. 9