Yomi - Oni Kings analysis. Developers please read

[KissBlade]

Archonsod said:
I've never had a problem with the Oni Kings. Usually, keeping a mass of Dai Oni together throwing fireballs & poison at approaching troops keeps them out of combat (the enemy tend to retreat before they reach the demons).
Priests could be problematic, but again you can mix in non demonic troops (such as a bunch of bandits scripted to fire at the rear, hopefully killing the priest quite quickly).
One possibility would be to use stealth armies of bandits scripted to loose off a few volleys towards the enemies' rear and retreat. You could then ambush priest heavy armies and try to remove the priests, before delivering the killing blow with the demons.

A nice trick you described. Which suggests to me that you've never actually even bothered attempting it since there's no such thing as "fire rear".

[Cainehill]

Eh, may I point out that there definately _IS_ such a thing as fire rear? Albeit it seems that only commander archers get that option.

[Archonsod]

Commander archers get fire rear. Normal archers don't, but can fire archers which appears to default to fire rear if there are no archers present (and is equal to fire rear if there are, since the AI never alters it's deployment).

Never tried it with Yomi, like I said, I've never had any problems with a Dai Oni army.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

After reading the analysis, I thought I'd try these Yomi in Early Era. I must admit, I kind of like them.

Since the troops for Yomi is so cheap on resources, Sloth 3 + Order 3 seemed a good choice. Having heard of their poor research skills, I took Magic 3 to compensate, and also a single luck for more gold. A bit of heat for points, and 3 earth, air and astral for various protection raising troop buffs completed my (sleeping, I think) pretender.

In the beginning, I found the little devils mixed with the little archers quite efficient. The death generals can lead an impressive number of these, and the classic "stay back+fire(none) + guard commander was as effective as ever for most indies. For archers, I placed the archers all the way to the front, placed the meeleers right beside them with attack and this work pretty well too.

For research I went for the obvious F3 Flame arrows, which turns those little archers into killing machines, and for all those easy-to-get mass buffs (legions of steel, strength of giants, wind guide) My plan was to use my pretender for anti-magic besides the wind guide, but I never found any astral gems, so that plan didn't work out very well. Still, the massed (60-80 seemed to work well) squads of flaming archers were extremely effective. At one point I had a fire immune Dai Oni SC in the front working with those archers... that work extremely well. He'd go in, smack a few enemies, and then watch them all die in a hail of flaming arrows.

I found death summons quite effective... reanimating, skelespamming, behemoths.. that kind of stuff. That also served to dilute those banishment, which are definitely the weak side for early Yomi. Small squads of crushers and behemoths made for some good shock troops, though the attrition rate was higher than I'd liked.

Things to improve: The luck scale was definitely a bad thing. I found that the game still had the "lucky" events "56 useless light infantry" and the (since I had no bless worth mentioning) equally useless flagellants. I used a lot of indie commanders to scoop these up and use for arrow wards and sacrifices, mixing them in with devils for better morale. The astral was a mistake... I'm not yet quite sure how to deal with the priests. And I should, as always, create more SC, though I still think that those are quite silly

Please note that I quite suck in this game, so probably, the above guide is what *not* to do .o)

P.S: Completely offtopic... but why the spell check button? Doesn't every browser under the sun a spell check built in for forms? (But I suppose it doesn't hurt)

[Fate]

I like the idea of retreating ghosts. Maybe a new "orderly route" attribute that causes them to retreat to a province containing a commander who can lead them (or to retreat normally if none is available).

[Agrajag]

Better yet, make it so that when retreating by command (like fire and flee, or a commander scripted to retreate) everyone automatically chooses the province they attacked from as their choice of flight route (and if it is occupied - then they scatter), and make it so the ghosts retreate by commad.

[Corwin]

Esben Mose Hansen said:
After reading the analysis, I thought I'd try these Yomi in Early Era. I must admit, I kind of like them.

......

Yes, it's a good strategy, and quite similar to what I did in my 3 games with Oni. In SP Oni are fine, but that's because AI doesn't understand how to counter them with priests, or how to deal with SCs. The problem with Oni is in MP.

Anopther thing for Oni in SP btw - with invulnerability/sould vortex, armor of dispacement, and bracers of protection plus luck, Dai Oni can kill pretty uch any AI army, unless it has mages with nasty spells, without suffering any loses. I;ve destroed nations almost as powerful as my (on very large map) in 3 turns during the late game, by doing "Market Garden" with flying Dai Oni on all uncastled provinces, and than blocking all castles on turn2 with same Dai Oni-s.

Anyway, I am glad that my little analysis has motivate you to play Oni Kings though.

[Esben Mose Hansen]

Does lots of cheap mages spamming skeletons help with the banning? Also, I suppose you could dilute the small archers with bandits/indys to reduce the effectiveness of the banishment there. You'd still need some shock troops... maybe summons?

Anyway, I have trouble playing on the medium maps with just 4 normal AI's... too often, they overrun me before I can establish a defense So I'll sure get a rough treatment in human MP

[Archonsod]

In my experience so far banishment isn't a problem from the AI (it usually wastes about 3 turns blessing and buffing before it even gets around to trying banishment). Obviously it would be slightly more dangerous with a player scripting specifically for it, but one thing Yomi has which Ermor doesn't is the ability to switch to non-demonic troops (rendering those armies of priests pretty useless).
The main danger I've found from the AI is resistant or immune to fire units, though that's probably down to my propensity to fireworks . That thrown fire might not be accurate, but the old saying "everything counts in large amounts" holds true here (especially when combined with the poison spit). You can back this up with bladewinds or similar and crush entire armies before they can even close.

[Ming]

This thread is nearly 2 years old. Does it mean that Yomi is in for an imminent upgrade?

I really like KO's idea of reducing costs and having the ghosts flee the battlefield. Not only would this fit the description of "near immortal" better, but it would allow players to try and come up with innovative strategies and make Yomi play very differently than other nations. I think this would add a new twist to EA Dom as other players would need to adjust when playing Yomi.

The cost reduction would still need to be substantial though. FWIW I could think of interesting possibilities if they are reduced to the following:

Ko-oni: 6 gold and the summoned version (MA) would be 10 for 5 gems.
Ao-oni: 16 gold
Aka-oni: 20 gold
Oni: 30 gold
Kuro-oni: 40 gold

At these prices they might be too hot for the AI to handle, but a human player will adjust and concentrate on banishing them rather than engaging in a fair fight.