Dominion

[Verjigorm]

It's probably border spread if your aerial patrols can't get rid of it. Remember, it's a lot harder to get rid of large numbers black candles with preaching.

After you cleanse your land of your opponent's dominion, you should position your skeptics on territories where your opponent has temples or near them. This will mute the spread of his dominion. A skeptic has a 90% chance of nullifying a point of dominion minus 5% per enemy candle, so in a 5 red candle province, a skeptic still has a 65% chance of nullifying a candle each turn.

You can't really stop blood sacrifice dominion spread easily if he's using it extensively because each sacrifice counts as a temple check, so if he's burning 10 slaves a turn, that's like having 10 temples in that province which means that you would need about 11 skeptics in that province or in the general vicinity to squelch his sacrifice provided the provinces your skeptics occupy have 0-1ish dominion.

If you surround a temple with skeptics, you can nullify it's power in a similar manner to sitting on the temple itself. This is good in cases where, for instance, he has 10 dominion on the temple square (where your skeptics will have only a 40% chance to nullify a candle), and only 3 dominion in surrounding provinces where you'll have a 75% chance to nullify.

Essentially, position your skeptics inside enemy dominion where the enemy dominion is the weakest to exact the greatest loss of candles.

Remember that a temple boosts the power of your preaching, too, by 1 level.

[Graeme Dice]

Originally Posted by Verjigorm

You can't really stop blood sacrifice dominion spread easily if he's using it extensively because each sacrifice counts as a temple check, so if he's burning 10 slaves a turn, that's like having 10 temples in that province which means that you would need about 11 skeptics in that province or in the general vicinity to squelch his sacrifice provided the provinces your skeptics occupy have 0-1ish dominion.

Each slave acts as two temple checks.

[Kheldron]

And the max number you can sacrifice per turn in a given temple is 6 for lvl4 priest equipped with jade knife. No more than one priest can sacrifice in a temple per turn

[chrispedersen]

Check the shape of the dominion spread. If it is more or less symmetrical, you are probably dealing with temple checks.

if not, you are probably dealing with stealthy preachers, belphagor etc.

Generally speaking, mass your sceptics in a border province with little dominion. Your chances of building a firewall are MUCH greater than trying to knock down high enemy dominion.

Beware dominion based globals.

If you are using my typical arco build, you can use melancholia to knock off a couple of crucial dominion points.


Consider casting telistic animations - these are l2 priests as I recall. Which doesn't sound very impressive - however, 2 or three castings a turn can rapdly build up a large number of priests without using your fort builds.

finally if it is blood sacrificing - go after the root cause - blood hunting. Wild hunt can be OK early in the game, so can anything that increases unrest, or decreases population.

[Verjigorm]

I always enjoy Arco as well. They're my favorite nation, but EA is my least favorite version as they have neither astrologers nor heart companions. The Astral/Nature combo Sibyl with her Fortunetelling (15) ability is also a unit I'm quite fond of, though not as much as the Astrologers as 1/4 astrologers can Mind Hunt without a booster whereas Sibyls are 1/4 can hunt with one booster.

I have run many strategy variations with Arco, and they are relatively robust all around. I always find that people playing arco tend to overlook the Myrmidon for some reason. They're incredibly resource intensive (and Arco has very little resources), but Myrmidons are a nasty little swarm of units. They have 12HP, 11 Strength, and 17 protection. The last item being the best part about them. They have an extremely low gold cost which makes them more "cost effective" if you take a less-than-rich arco. Lots of people tend to take arco rich which isn't strictly necessary--granted, it is useful since Orieads and Mystics are not the cheapest mages around (in fact quite the opposite).

It's also not impossible to recruit Wind Riders, either. Wind Riders are very nice troops and I love hiring them and Icarids quite frequently--not because they are necessarily a superior individual unit mind you, but Icarids are VERY fast on the map and in battle. This speed and their low resource cost allows them to swarm archers and back line units easily and their large numbers usually allows for good flanking which tears apart lightly-armored units early on.

I think people give Arcoscephale's units too little credit.

Heart Companion is still my favorite even though they're cap-only. I usually give them either Twist Fate or Flaming Weapons, but don't go for a double/triple bless since they're cap only. Now in LA, I was thinking that, since Sibyl's are sacred, an E9 would be quite appropriate bless for them since the rejuv makes up for the Sibyl's lack of Earth magic relative to the Oriead (even though I would never presume to say that a Sibyl could ever compare to an Oriead), but then again, E4S9 might still be better... and you could still get away with a bit more E like E6 maybe... so many possibilities. I hate to limit myself to just one "standard" build... so boring.

On another note, I've also taken Arco builds that don't incorporate Sloth which reduces the attractiveness of the Philosopher (since Production scales give research penalties) and increases the attractiveness of the Mage Engineer as an early researcher and item forger. You will only end up with just a handful of Mage Engineers since your income should be good enough to get Orieads every turn a bit more quickly for non-sloth arco. It also opens up swarms of Myrmidons, Chariots, and Wind Rider cavalry. This, of course, was an SP game, though I wouldn't be above trying it in MP sometime given the opportunity.

Taking Sloth-1 Magic-1 can also free up production quite a bit and doesn't do too bad on research--though you'll switch to Oriead production asap. Sloth-3 Magic-1 I think is quite common.

[Knai]

EA Arco is my favorite nation personally, even if they aren't hugely powerful. They lack some of the fun parts that MA and LA can pull of easily, but there are some advantages, and some ways to have a lot of fun. Oreid assassination is always entertaining, particularly once you have high Thaum research and just Charm the guy, which works very well against SCs that aren't yet outfitted with all the MR they will be getting later but still good enough to hurt people.

As for Arco builds, I've used no Sloth builds before, some of which work well. The hysapsist is a nice little unit to mass, and in EA there is fun to be had with the Myrmidon, and a high production build might actually be able to use Wind Riders, and they can be useful, though they are overpriced.