EA arcosephele - bless strategy?

[Renojustin]

Really not too bad of an idea because they are particularly fierce sacreds, but with Arco having no Death or Blood, I think it's imperative to have very good scales for endgame, precluding a bless strategy for anything but smaller maps and rush strategies.

[Xanatos]

ahh...why do death and blood = the best for endgame?

it seems such a waste with those pretty flying sacreds

[MaxWilson]

Death because Tartarians make good SCs and let you expand into earth, astral, and air. I admit I'm partial to death's endgame spells like Stygian Paths and Utterdark as well.

I don't understand blood magic as well--I try to stay away from it.

-Max

P.S. You could certainly try an Earth bless on those sacreds, or Earth/Death if you're feeling spendy. Fliers do tend to spend a lot of fatigue on flying.

[Xanatos]

will tartarians continue to dominate end game now that they come 25% insane?

[MaxWilson]

Insanity doesn't hurt their ability to forge items and branch out into new paths, so I expect Tartarians to still remain relevant and important. Air Queens are probably better SCs, for instance, but you need Air to summon them and all they give you is more Air. Tartarians convert Death + Nature -> Earth, Air, Astral, Blood.

-Max

[Wick]

In simple melee cost effectiveness they are the worst recruitable sacreds in the game. (Of the 57 I tested anyway.) Flying makes up for a lot but still... even the independent Pegasus riders are better.

[Xanatos]

how do you come to that conclusion wick?

[Wick]

Xanatos said:
how do you come to that conclusion wick?

I've done a stupid amount of testing of "How many of a vast hoard of heavy infantry (ID 40) can 600g of <unit_type> kill before dying." In a four battle trial the Wind Riders scored a total of 19. The median for recruitable sacred troops (57 types, null blessed) is 63. The Heavy Infantry got 79 against themselves, which was a slightly better then the overall median. Basically, the implication is if you have a strong bless multiplying the Wind Riders 400% then they are as strong as independent infantry.

Certainly, the test is pretty simplistic. It's biased against archers and in favor of tramplers and poison. However, the results tend to be stable and to approximate the conventional wisdom -- which includes, Wind Riders aren't worth a bless strategy.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm, interesting. I just did a quick check myself, and F4W4E9-blessed Wind Riders (5 in number, 625 gp) plus a prophet doing <Divine Bless, Cast> in the background lost handily to 80 Heavy Infantry #40, killing maybe 10 of them before dying/fleeing. I wonder how much of that is due to the unfortunate tendency of fliers to spread themselves too thin and get ganged up on.

In contrast, 7 E9D9 Helhirdlings (630 gp) killed maybe thirty or forty heavy infantry before routing (4 surviving Helhirdlings). 1 E9N6 Niefel Jarl + 1 Niefel Giant (650 gp) killed them all with no losses. 4 E10N6 Ahiman Anakites (600 gp) killed them all but one of them got a limp. 24 F9W9S9N4 Jaguar Warriors (600 gp) killed them all and lost 4 jags.

Altogether, it's an interesting way of evaluating the cost-effectiveness of sacreds. It's a little bit misleading in some cases because some sacreds are more resource-limited or holy-limited than gold-limited, especially depending upon what scales you traded away to get the bless you're using in the test. It also doesn't evaluate non-combat-related stuff like strat move (flying troops are sometimes better for expanding in rough terrain even if you take more casualties). Overall, though... interesting methodology.

-Max

[Agema]

Have you run the tests multiple times? Results can vary a lot from trial to trial.

In contrast, in an EA MP game I had 5 points Agarthan PD rout a force of 3 Niefel giants (N9F4?? bless), plus priest leader (Skratti?). They got lucky, nailed one Nief and injured another on the second round of melee, the giants routed off.