Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy ?

[smu666ler]

When I decided to apply for my first MP game I said myself not to cry for help right from the start but since I rolled a race I don't know how to play (and kinda dislike what I read about yomi MP ability here on forums in the Corwin's thorough analysis - which was awesome btw) I could definitely use a tip or two, especially on the matter of pretender design, magic choice, what to research early on and maybe what army to use early on. It will be a large EA game with around 225 provinces and 15 players.

I will not tell you what I personally have in mind for the pretender god since I wouldn't like it if someone from the game could read it here and find out about my strategy for good, but still I am grateful for any advice or suggestion you are willing to give me

Thanks a lot !

[FAJ]

Master lich is nice.

4-5 death on him would keep you from having to raise your DaiOni's death skill to cast darkness. New patch fixed darkness (afaik) so it doesn't affect the oni, so it is a good spell to keep in mind. The Lich is a possibility for enetering water as well.

Also keep in mind, Yomi doesn't get sacred troops so don't bother going too high in any one path of magic.
You get a lot of death 2+ casters, and oni spirits are undead, so shadow blast is nice, albiet expensive to use.

Massing cheap bakemono archers early on usually works, then switch to oni once you have the economy to support it.

Earth magic would be a good pick for pretender too. If you go air as well, you will be able to get a contact kohonus tengu or even a dai tengu. The Dai Tengu is nice because he can cast arrow fend for your low protection Oni.

Dai Oni make decent SCs if you can replace their high encumberance armor. Something with low encumberance will be fine because they can cast invunerability on themselves. give them the elixer of life and smile when your enemies have to kill them 3 times over.

[Potatoman]

The Earth bless is pretty nice for Yomi, because Dai Oni are sacred and can make good use of both the bonus protection and the reinvigoration granted by the bless.

[KissBlade]

I generally prefer a 4earth/4nature green dragon (safer for particularly aggressive games as a dragon does tend to deter early wars simply because they're a hassle to track down) or maybe even a master druid with 4nature/4earth/1 astral. Note that you do NOT start with astral though so heavily consider at least one point of it on your pretender because the ability to make luck pendants make a HUGE difference later on for your dai oni's.

Scales you can run are order 3, sloth 3, misfortune 1 (I normally take 2 points of misfortune, but new players generally have a harder time dealing with bad events), magic 3. You might also consider a heat scale simply for your hannayas and death scales as well depending on your use of sorcerers (who are actually very cost effective if you don't take death or end up taking growth). Do NOT recruit many oni troops, they are not that great beyond tanking for some indies. If worse comes to worse, they do provide a decent gold sink if you need to troop flood (in which case, I recommend the fireball onis as well as the ones that can split poison + throw flames). Make sure those onis are near the fornt of the battle field with "fire closest". For the most part your army should consist of mass bakemono archers with perhaps a few bandits to give some morale mixed. If you're going bless, I heavily recommend prophetizing one of your starting commanders and recruiting an oni general straight off the bat to "tank" by using /him/ as a decoy and scripting for fire closest. To be honest, the manual's "recommended strategy" is not written too poorly so it's not a bad choice to follow it. For research purposes, I recommend going enchantment heavy till you reach enchantment 4 (flaming arrows). Your hannayas can cast it with 2 fire gems if I recall and it's a very very deadly spell with your archers. Speaking of hannayas, they're great in battle as both raise skeletons spammers or fireball/falling fires off phoenix power casters. For your "meat" I recommend either getting a second fort and literally spamming oni generals out of it or using indies for heavies.

[FAJ]

Over the last two patches, the oni have gotten a considerable boost. I wouldn't write them off right away. Bakemono are flaky because they die so easily and can make your Commander auto-rout. That, and one pesky mage with arrow-fend and those bakemono are worthless.

[KissBlade]

I didn't write them off. I said, don't recruit /many/. I actually use them every so and often now. Also bakemono's may be "flakey" but they are cheap as heck and easy to mass up for early game. You, yourself even mentioned that. Most exp. players will get arrow fend to counter you anyway since they'll expect it coming but generally the vast amount of projectiles just being flung is still menacing.

[smu666ler]

Hey, thanks for all the advice. I didn't expect this much input on such short notice!

To be honest I wasn't very far in my test SP last night from what KissBlade and (to some extent) FAJ are suggesting. I did a druid (kinda like the stealthy pretender and it's rainbow capability) with W4/N4/E4 and also threw in 2F and 2A just because, with being close to a rainbow mage, I could search for all the sites of gems I will need more easily - with just my pretender. The initial pick is 10 anyway so it's no big deal. I did 3 order/3 sloth/ 1 misfortune also (what a coincidence) but took just 1 research to have 5 candles and the 2 in fire and astral, I'm not sure if that was worth it ... I did the bakemono at start with some mercs and some cold oni and some fire oni. I built a Dai Oni on second turn (to make him my prophet next turn) so he could be the only one casting divine bless instead of all the dai onis doing it for themselves .... et cetera et cetera it turned out very good against the AI in the end actually. Altho my Dai Onis which I trained every 3 turns started getting afflictions from all the fighting. Which equipement would help them stay more resistant? I did give them lighter armor and helmets like FAJ suggested ...

@KissBlade
When you said "your starting commanders" did you mean one of the 2 stealthy bandit commanders you get at startup? Also I didn't know Oni Generals were very effective, I'll have to try them out.

@FAJ

What boost? I only know that

[KissBlade]

If you gave them lighter armor, script them with bless, summon earthpower, fireshield (change this to soul vortex once you get it) and ironskin (change this to invulnerability when you get it). Plus you can buff them before battle with your pretender if you so choose with luck + body ethereal. Also look into gift of health from the enchantment tree =).

[Jurri]

The Cyclops is an awesome pretender for Yomi (and to any other nation that has it available). E9N4 will give the Cyclops a terrific protection out the gate, the ability to cast summon earthpower to relieve fatigue and Strength of Gaia/Personal Regeneration to regenerate (as well as resist poison, elemental fortitude, iron will if the situation so demands), and provide a blessing that's very useful to the nation's sacred commanders and summons. An awake cyclops like that can even attack the indies from turn 1 if you're willing to risk it; in the Early Age the probability of facing something that can afflict the cyclops is low, but it's always real.

With the blessing mentioned, unequipped Dai Oni in their heavy armor can be scripted to blessing, summon earthpower, fire shield, fire at closest and still have the Oni almost fatigueless when the enemies engage in melee. (Firing missile weapons doesn't cause fatigue.) You should pay careful attention to the dominion in the province, though, since if there's drain you're better off dropping the last two spells.

Thus, early research goals in pursuing this strategy should be conjuration 3 for summon earthpower and enchantment 3 for fire shield and personal regeneration. (Besides thaumaturgy 2 for the site-searching spells, of course, but that's a given with all nations).

These goals are have formidable synergy with other approaches: At conjuration 2 there's the all-important Dark Knowledge and at conjuration 3 there's the Konoha Tengu -summon, which I think is actually rather decent for the cost: 5 sacred fliers with good attacks for 5 gems makes it a very nice spell if you should chance upon air gem sources. Enchantment 3 provides raise skeletons, which is a terrific spell indeed for the hannyas.

As for the early expansion, well, I've had some modicum of success with having a Dai Oni backed by a couple dozen archers cast blessing and then throw flames at the oncoming enemies. It is very durable even without further spells or equipment and can hold the line by itself while the archers deal the majority of the damage: the fear of the Oni make the enemy run soonish I've found, and as long as the hard targets are avoided there should be little chance of losing the Oni, at least for good. A group like that can be further augmented by putting Oni Generals next to the Dai Oni to partake in the blessing and to guard it's flanks: especially fire-random ones are neat since they can cast fire shield once it's available. That's pretty expensive, though, and you might prefer buying sorcerers or hannyas in your secondary castles. (I guess it goes without saying you'll want to start buying a Dai Oni each turn as soon as possible in your capital.)

Later development after the milestones of conjuration 3 and enchantment 3 are done would include:
-Enchantment 4 for flaming arrows. One of the cheapest archers in the game both gold- and resource-wise, and a mage capable of casting this spell recruitable in every castle!
-Alteration 3 for ironskin. Later invulnerability, soul vortex and Phoenix Pyre, but you'll want to equip the Onis by then.
-Construction for lighter armors which will come in handy when you start getting too many spells in your script: soul vortex is harsh to your fatigue even without the added encumberance from armor. Magical weapons and girdles of might won't hurt either.
-Thaumaturgy 3 for Iron Will. I always forget to research this before it's too late, and lose a turn of action just when you need it the most. (You don't want to face Pangaea with Charm without this!)

Some side notes:
-The cyclops will benefit greatly from a weapon, anything will do. A helmet would do good, too. The Dai Oni also reap great rewards from helmets, since they lack one naturally and thus do not get the earth-blessing bonus to the head-protection either without an artificial one.
-The cyclops can forge a thistle mace to give to the hannyas; this will greatly increase your forging possibilities, assuming you have the gem-income. Choice nature items for the Dai Oni are boots of the messenger (only N1 to make), ring of regeneration, amulet of reinvigoration, to name the most important possibilities.
-For scales, Kissblade's ones work nice, although you'll need to cut corners to get the bless. Order 3, sloth 3, heat 1, death 2, misfortune 1, magic 1 leaves you with 5 dominion, which is quite enough. Dominion 9 would of course have synergy with Cyclops's fear, but since you don't have any special reason for high dominion (the cyclops will function just fine even in neutral dominion), it might prove a waste. Dominion 3 would allow to reduce one negative scale, which might be doable since your pretender is awake and thus guarding you from dominion death. Forgoing the N4 would save a lot of points, too.

[Shovah32]

I agree with Jurris E9N4 Cyclops, i have used it myself for Yomi and the dai oni are amazing with it.