Any Good Non-Bless Strategy Nations

[Wish]

EA yomi can be played very very well sans bless strat. (especially since most of their sacred troops are summons.)

like nifelhiem they have a purchasable SC chassis, so you can play to the benefit of that over the benefit of sacred troops.

[Taqwus]

If there are many more opponents (AI or not) and much more space, a bless strategy will likely become less optimal as the game will last long for (a) capital-only sacred units to become a smaller part of your military, and (b) nasty scales like death/misfortune to take effect (while growth and fortune players start accumulating pop and free gems, heroes, et al).

Anything with only slow capital-only sacreds is a particular case of this -- ex. LA Man Rangers are not a particularly great pick in a large map; even though they're stealthy, they're resource-intensive, capital-only, and worst, they're map-move 1, and the Wardens can't bless them unless you make one a prophet. OTOH, your broad selection of well-equipped troops and the fairly wide variety of magic you get (perhaps lessening the need for a rainbow pretender) suggests a scalemonster.

LA Jomon also comes to mind; you have a pretty good selection of skilled, well-equipped troops, and you can go pretty far with a mix of archers, naginatas, cavalry, and some Death summons.

TC... Celestial Soldiers *are* good (I've used them more than I've used the sacred fliers... because I also tend to mass archers whenever possible, and that significantly increases the mortality rate among any fliers), but a scalemonster build seems viable enough if you want to crank out the Imperials.

But there are some nations that seem basically built for bless; so far, I haven't really worked out a good non-bless build for Mictlan. That's a bit of a pity from my perspective as I dislike using ugly scales with living empires for thematic reasons (namely, I -like- prosperity and growth, after I crush the last breath out of all enemies, so I abhor the Order/Misfortune combo and the Death scales).

[Teraswaerto]

Mictlan doesn't need a huge bless, just a leg to stand on until the blood starts really flowing. I'll take devils over jaguar warriors any day.

Of course, you'll always want some kind of bless with them, but it doesn't need to be one that leaves you with catastrophic scales.

[Graeme Dice]

Teraswaerto said:
Mictlan doesn't need a huge bless, just a leg to stand on until the blood starts really flowing. I'll take devils over jaguar warriors any day.

But then, I'd rather have F9/W9 Jaguar Fiends over both devils and Jaguar Warriors.

[Teraswaerto]

That'll work, sure. Probably better than devils. My point was merely that Mictlan can be played without an all-out bless strategy.