Air 9 bless: useless?

[Peter Ebbesen]

Originally posted by Sandman:
Well, you could always use indy archers without piercing bows, and take fire 9 instead to deal with heavy foes. Although if the air shield works on flaming arrows (which it probably does) then that method does sound interesting. But is it really 'exceedingly' strong?

For nations with sacred heavy troops, yes. Until the enemy starts putting up "arrow fend", that is. The ability to use the nastiest and most damaging archers/crossbowmen against all enemies on the battlefield without killing off your own heavy troops is a very, very, strong combination. And, of course, it also stops the most common counter to the heavy troops as it prevents your opponent from shooting them as well.

The latter is not so much an issue against the AI as against human players, I must admit, as the AI never uses enough archers/crossbowmen.

I suppose my problem is that the air blessings require subtlety, whereas most of the other blessings are in-your-face badassness.

Sounds likely. I will freely admit that I find the Fire-9 blessing the easiest to apply to a multitude of situations (so long as I have sacred troops able to survive for more than a round in combat ). Water-9 is also easy to like, especially for sacred-mage nations but everybody can use the effect. Earth-9 is really only for specialists (T'ien C'hi are probably the ones that benefit the most), and Air-9 is good for those who either fear other peoples archers, their own archers, other peoples air magic, or their own air magic

Death-9 is for the dead or the living who want to stick around (and have undead leadership). Nature-9 is for those without sacred mages and whose sacred troops are better off dead than alive [hence the Death-9/Nature-9 combination that is occasionally seen], Astral-9 is for those who really fear being mind dueled and thinks everybody sacred ought to have a second chance - once, and Blood-9 is the most useless blessing of them all (so, the unit that killed you got cursed - who cares?)

With such a list I am sure you will agree that air-9 is far from useless