Nations that seem strong/weak

[Ironhawk]

Yeah Aby was quite strong in dom2. Good battle magic, good summoning, decent national troops (after CB).

[Teraswaerto]

Ironhawk said:
decent national troops (after CB).

Are you saying Abysian troops were poor before? How's that?

[Agrajag]

Try an Earth-9 bless and beeline to rejuvinate (or the age-stopping boots), and then tell me how weak Abysia is

[Gandalf Parker]

There are winning strategies for everyone, thats the joy of this game. But if you are talking small map fast games, I would have to do some thinking on an abysian strategy. Maybe a strong dominion push to make use of their heat scale?

[Meglobob]

My observations so far on:-

MA Man - This nation is powerful and very easy to play, especially early on. Mass Longbows with a small shield of infantary/cavalry in front of them slices through indie 5 provinces like butter. I often take 0 losses, many times the indie army has routed before its reached my lines, the rain of longbow arrows take a huge toll on any retreating army. Back this up with a awake combat pretender and u will be number 1 for provinces. Add in all the stealth units, powerful air/nature summons, lightning bolts, wind guide etc, etc... u will be a serious power early/mid game. Take good scales to get the most out of yr large empire.

The weaknesses r lack of fire/death/astral/earth magic, which could seriously dent yr endgame.

I would say its overall balanced and a good nation for a beginner to play, just concentrate on yr strengths.

This is based on 2 MP games with MA Man. (turn 16, turn 10).

LA Ermor

Typical for autospawn nations this is hard to gauge. I can't exactly say if Ermor is weak since i didn't play other LA nations yet to compare, however compared to D2 they took a few very hard hits.
Decent priests are quite hard to come by. No more battlefield undead buff spells for every army from turn 5 onward.
The autospawns are among the weakest troops for LA. The good national troops will wipe the floor with them, even without further boost spells.
Banish has been improved greatly.
Ermor is restricted to ashen empire, which is a lot weaker against indeps than ghost gate was because of a) not ethereal and b) no healing.
Ermor can't use a sleeping or imprisoned pretender.
Besides the pretender, the only magic paths are 3 death and up to two random picks on dusk elders. In LA whith standard settings (35% magic sites) every gem counts, and ermor needs to use a rainbow pretender to get some non-death mages summoned. At least in long games.

So, as i see it, ermors strength now lies in mid-game. Early expansion is slower than before and lategame all useful troops have to come from magic gems which are sparse in LA. after getting a few provinces set up with castles+temples and dom 10, and before the other nations have assembled big groups of LA troops with heavy protection and skills, ermor can still grab provinces with frighteningly large armies.

Conclusion: not terribly weak, but weaker than i'm used to. (well, i'm used to slaughtering my unsuspecting buddy with mass castings of ghost riders in games on really large maps )

[PDF]

There's really a problem with Aby "aged" Warlocks and Anathemants, they die like flies and, given that Warlocks are capitol-only I can't even conceive how you can start a Blood economy with them.
In my test game, even with Growth-1 I had 3 mages diseased by turn 13...OTOH with Shinuyama and Death-1 scale I had only 1 Sorc out of 8 diseased by turn 20 ! Looks like a problem with "old age" at a low value 35.
IMHO in these conditions Aby isn't playable competitively at all and even in SP it's not fun
And don't tell me "yeah, just cast GoH and make boots", Aby isn't supposed to cast GoH, and boots don't cure disease !

[HoneyBadger]

I like Abyssia, in Early Age. Sacred troops are very nice, and province defense is quite tough. Salamanders destroy indeps. Fire resistance is easy to counter, admittedly, so it's good to wean your Abyssians off of fire and into blood magic by mid-game. I like to use a jailed enchantress or cyclops with totally trashed scales and 9 death and either 9 fire, astral, or earth. I try to get a good stable of flying demon assasin commanders and then equip them very well. The assasins can be equipped with two blood thorns or a hellsword and shroud of sacredness, which will make them very survivable flying behind the lines. A ring of regeneration is nice if you can afford the nature magic, and an elixer of life is a good insurance policy, especially in late game. With Abyssia, you want to hit the independents hard, and get as many as possible working for you, since Abyssia is pretty much a 1 trick fire pony until you can get the higher up blood summons. The lack of archers for Abyssia is really minimal if you get a good ratio of salamanders and demonic commanders. I don't think the demon soldiers are worth investing in though, except as a good screen for your flying commanders. Even then, they're a waste, in my opinion, atleast after the first few years. All told, Abyssia isn't that great in multi-player if you play it straight, nation against nation, but you have an excellent capacity for getting around that by knocking out independents and holding onto them. Much better, in my opinion, than Niefelheim, with less weaknesses.

[Graeme Dice]

Agrajag said:
Try an Earth-9 bless and beeline to rejuvinate (or the age-stopping boots), and then tell me how weak Abysia is

Most nations don't really have to spend blood slaves that are only huntable with a capital only mage to keep their other capital only mages from dying of old age. Especially not a nation that's supposed to be able to take heat 3 death 3 with little to no downside to offset their use of easily counterable fire magic.

[NickW]

Graeme Dice said:


Most nations don't really have to spend blood slaves that are only huntable with a capital only mage to keep their other capital only mages from dying of old age. Especially not a nation that's supposed to be able to take heat 3 death 3 with little to no downside to offset their use of easily counterable fire magic.

Blood hunting turns up lots of slaves very quickly and the boots are cheap. Besides, Abysia is a blood nation so it's not like they aren't going to have some blood hunters anyway.