Repulsion strategies

[DrPraetorious]

This thread is meant as a clearing house for advice on how to repulse the various double-bless scared-unit rush strategies, with at least a 40% chance of success. I'm getting sick of all the whining.

It's assumed that these rush strategies know how to repulse eachother (see violence, extreme). I will start by listing the sacred unit rush strategies that exist. Let me know if I missed some. I'll write a brief blurb on how to counter each when I get around to it - but obviously I haven't played every nation so anyone who wants to contribute advice, please do so.

Question - I have conflicting reports on the 9D blessing, and having tried it myself, I can't say for sure how it works either. It seems to do more than 2 pts of damage, though. Anyone know for sure how it actually works?

Type I - EA Abyssia - 9E9N.
The idea is that you have extremely tough (prot 24 when berserk) units with a fire shield. This is my favorite. There is no counter - grab your ankles, *****es.
Well, actually, there are counters.
Counters: Disintegrate, Quagmire, Mind Burn, Banefire. Trampling units if you can get fire immunity on them. Fire immune thugs or supercombatants with armor piercing weapons (surprisingly easy to make for another fire nation.)

Type II - EA Vanheim, EA Helheim, MA Vanheim or LA Vanheim - 9W9X(4-6Z). X can profitably be F or N, E or S is a possibility. Z, which is optional, can be A or B.
This is the most popular and feared. Idea is, you have a very high defense, a decent shield and glamour. In conventional combat, such a baddie is very difficult to defeat.
Counters: Tramplers - set chariot archers to "shoot and fire" at enemy archers, they'll shoot the archers for a bit and then bulldoze through the van to reach the archers.
Cloud spells (fire cloud, sulfur, etc.) Hydras.
You will have to be willing to lose screening troops - but if you can pin the van down long enough to get them poisoned or on fire, the van are so expensive that you can trade militia 5:1 and come out ahead.

Type III - EA Niefelheim, EA Agartha, ME Machaka or ME Agartha - 9N9X. X can profitably be W or F, E or S is a possibility.
The idea here is that you have sacred units with large hit point totals and they regenerate. The Machaka sacreds turn into such units when their riders die, which is going to happen sooner or later you might as well face it.
To counter these you want swarms of units. Swarms of archers, swarms of melle units.
They're big targets, but not numerous, so all of the counters listed to type I still apply, and you don't have to worry about the fire shield.

Type IV - ME Ermor - 9S9W(4-6X), dom 10. X, which is optional, can profitably be A or B.
Idea here is that you have a very high defense rating, you're ethereal, and the first time someone does somehow manage to hit you, it doesn't take.
The best counter to this is archers+flaming arrows. That really ruins my day.
Archery in general is probably your best bet - these shadow girls are numerous, are fragile if you can hit them at all.

Anyone wanna help me fill out the list? LE Ulm, ME Marignon, some of the monkeys, Mictlan can also do good sacred unit rushes, but I don't play those nations myself so I can't provide commentary on how the sacred builds are done (though I've fought against them.)

And yes, please feel free to contribute your own strategic suggestions.

[Endoperez]

There's also EA Abysia with D9 and some supplementary path, perhaps N4-9, perhaps Earth, perhaps some Fire or Air. Fire Shield seems to give afflictions as well...

Death Weapons probably gives 2 points random damage. The result could be from -3 (or no damage) to 7 or more. The Afflictions are the real juice of Death blessing; D9 just lets you use it on those pesky Ethereal creatures, or perhaps those heavily armor sacred units.

[Meglobob]

I joined 7 MP games, I have not played a bless strategy in any of them. In 6 MP games I am powerful, 3 a out and out superpower, only in 1 did I get destroyed by Dr Praetorious EA Abyssia 9E9N bless strategy who attacked me with Sauromatia, who went with a overwhealming horde strategy.

My conclusion bless strategys are seriously overratted...

My starting strategys were:-

3 positions where I am a superpower:-
MA Man - Dragon/9 dominion/good scales.
MA Man - Exactly same.
LA Argatha - Rainbow sage (1 of every magic path), good scales.

3 positions where I am powerful:-
Atlantis - Huge Kraken/good scales.
EA Niefelheim - sneaking wolf/good scales.
LA Caelum - Destroyer of worlds/good scales.

Basically in the long run, good scales is a better strategy than a bless strategy, couple this with high dominion and a powerful early supercombatant for rapid expansion. Bless strategy runs out of steam in the mid/end game and does not encourage you to diversify your forces.

Bless strategys are excellent however for quick games/blitzs but I do not like playing them.

[Agrajag]

In theory, D9 would also be a useful counter to SCs, Afflictions can bring down the best of them, and the AN damage makes obscene protection SCs pretty useless. And of course magical attacks overcome "regular" etherality. Which still leaves high defense. For which F9 is superior because IIRC flaming weapons are still considered magical, and the extra attack can come in handy.

As for counters, my best bet would be anything with AOE, to make sure they can't escape it, that they die in large numbers (supposedly they should come in small numbers because they are usually harder to mass then regular units), and because its fun
Anything Evocation is usually good, I like the falling clouds of fire and of ice, thunderstrikes can work nicely, and if you can get Astral Fires against the right guys, its a lot of fun (I actually haven't been able to cast Astral Fires by any substantial amount in unmodded Dom3, only with the Sar Elad mod. Then again I haven't really tried)

[Teraswaerto]

Meglobob said:
I am powerful:-
Atlantis - Huge Kraken/good scales.

Aren't you getting butchered by a bless-heavy Oceania?

[Ironhawk]

For the record, there are plenty of strategies to defeat a blessed nation that does not require the use of a bless.

[Shovah32]

I agree with ironhawk here, why dont you(Praetorious) also list what nations you find have the most trouble vrs bless's and lets see if we cant come up with a counter that will also work vrs other nations. You also forgot to mention mictlan who has very strong sacreds for their cost.

[Agrajag]

Ironhawk said:
For the record, there are plenty of strategies to defeat a blessed nation that does not require the use of a bless.

The point of this thread is to list such strategies, so why don't you write them down instead of merely informing us of their existence?

[Migaaresno]

Teraswaerto said:

Aren't you getting butchered by a bless-heavy Oceania?

Tripple bless whit good scales. FTW!

-Migaares, Truth God of Oceania.

[Foodstamp]

DrPraetorious,
When so many people comment on these strategies and so many veteran players play them in blitz games and even large maps with staggering success, it is unfair and insulting to say people are whining.

That being said, this game is so vast there are probably ways to counter them beyond ganging up on the nation in larger multiplayer games and using a counter bless strategy in smaller blitz games.

These threads do good to churn out such strategies that may be able to counter these uber blesses, so it will be interesting to see what people come up with