S&A strats?

[KissBlade]

Heh really? I actually think S&A is a different beast than mictlan since it doesn't actually rely on sacreds. for EA, S&A has GOOD troops if you really look at them. Nobles and horsemen are actually among the strongest troops IMO while archers can wither most indies away. Their biggest weakness (and strength ironically enough) is probably their mages. Considering they're capital only, it's extremely hard to mass them compared to others while the old age of celestials makes it even worse. (not to mention the weakness to astral duel of course)

[Boron]

The horseman is only so-so imho, as is the noble.
The problem with the noble is the huge gold cost, so it does decrease your research speed. And 45 resources !!!

Mictlan has solid troops in early era too. Ok that might be an exageration . But with a single bless like w9 their sacreds already rock. And you can even take an SC god and no bless if you want. The slingers can expand vs. weak indies just fine and they also are somewhat useful at swarming humans.

[Shovah32]

Today (after reading this) i tried a f9w9(though i usually dont like big blesses) imprisoned mother of rivers with drain 1 (i went for few big mages), sloth 3, misfortune 1 or 2 and some order and growth+dominion 6. I took my starter army, added 12 warriors of the 5 elements (and recruited 6 more per turn which i occasionally added to the army) and cut through lvl7 indies like a hot knife through butter.

The warriors get very high attack, 19 defence and 50% quickness combined with 2 base attacks and flaming weapons. With them just behind the starting infantry and my archers set to target archers (and my prophetised noble casting divine blessing and smite) it felt almost too easy (after conquering 6 provinces i had lost 4 pikemen and 1 warrior of the 5 elements...) so, after meeting my enemy i established a border and withdrew this army.

I searched all my provinces with a combination of remote searching spells and CMs and quickly made a good amount of raiders (CM's with a few cheap boosters/reinvig items leading celestial hounds) that i didnt use right away (doing so ell felt like cheating)and while building them my pretender emerged. After making around 6 squads of 1 CM and 10 hounds each i flew into enemy lands, destroying all the temples i could find and the hitting his high income provinces (turning tax's to 200 i had a huge income). Eventually i felt the need for SC's(would have went for them earlier in mp obviousy) so had my pretender summon a fire king who was quickly kitted out and sent into battle, destroying all in his path.

This was only against hard ai's but, it seems S&A is very strong with cheap, 2 attack, high defence sacreds and powerful mages and cavalry. The only weakness i can really see for them is, unless your pretender has good paths getting decent Thugs/SC's could be hard without some empowerment.

[Endoperez]

Drain 2 shouldn't be any worse than Drain 1, so you could've had one more scale somewhere. There's at least one report of Drain being bugged, however.

[Shovah32]

The only reason i didnt want drain 2 was because i didnt want my mages passing out after their second spell

[KissBlade]

S&A's weakness lies in the Celestial Masters. old age, capital only and a weakness to astral duel.

[Corwin]

Endoperez said:
Drain 2 shouldn't be any worse than Drain 1, so you could've had one more scale somewhere. There's at least one report of Drain being bugged, however.

Really? How is it bugged?

[Endoperez]

There's one report of Drain 2 lowering research by two. I haven't been able to reproduce it yet.

[Shovah32]

I havnt noticed that any time ive taken drain 2 either. Its only (non-buggy) problem is tiring your mages out faster (and with your bes mages being so old that can be a problem)