Suggestions for fighting against Yomi

[Antpile]

I have had trouble vs yomi as of late. Me and my friend frequently do hotseat games and I normally win pretty handidly. However, my friend discovered that he likes Yomi and has since proceeded to beat me in almost every single early game matchup we have.

Yomi's troops, for the most part, are not very resource dependant. They are also insanely easy to use and mass huge numbers of that I just can not fight against. My only chance against him is to get to him quickly and deprive him of income, or if we throw a computer player in, hope the computer player messes with him enough that I stand a chance.

So, to discover why I am getting trounced so badly, I played a SP game as Yomi myself, and holy crap are they Dom3 on easy mode. Doing as my friend does in an attempt to find the strats weakness I totally ignore bandits and goblins and go straight to recruiting nothing but Ao-Oni's right from the start. He normally sends that starting army that is entirely stealth straight out to try and find me and begin herassing undefended provinces. It takes two or three turns to get yourself 40-50 Ao-Oni's, but once you do that army can very easily conquer all provinces surrounding your home province. While these units are doing said conquering and taking almost no losses, I can begin recruiting a bunch of Aka-Oni's for a second army. Get a few of those and with about 10 or so Kuro-Oni's, set em all to fire with no specific targets, and proceed to own pretty much all indepent spots between you and your opponent taking almost no losses due to your units semi-immortality.

Anyway, in a MP game vs him, I have to get to him before he conquers too many provinces and gets too much income (as resources are of minor importance to the mass recruitment of demons.) Soon he'll have a second castle and be marching on me with a demon army 250 units strong of all very difficult to kill units chucking fire and poison at me (which seems to be more effective than my archers are.) We may engage in a large battle at some point, and unless I win it will be something like 300 units lost while killing like 28 of his, due again to that immortality of their's. The game is now over as he will add another 200 or so demons to that army while I try and rebuild what I just lost as he marches over everything I own.

Just to add insult to injury, none of his demonic units eat, so he can eventually just get an insane stack of units marching around killing everything and not even have to worry about supply. This also allows him to defend a castle almost indefinitely, but I rarely get a chance to put him on the defense like that.

I've tried everything I can think of. None of the demons have very good protection and none wear shields, but my arrows stop working as soon as half of his weenie units he places in the front become ethereal ghosts. I've tried using a mass banishment strategy, but all of his units have around 15 MR base which makes it rather ineffective. Also, He usually has the game pretty wrapped up before I can get any sort of magic based strat going due to never losing any units to independants. By the time I have the spell combo I was going for his income is just insane and he's probably pushed me back to my home province.

The only race I can do decently well against him with is Caelum, both due to their bountiful use of magic ice weapons (which hit those damn ghosts) and my ability to find him very quickly and begin herassing his provinces/income. I've tried with Pangaea, but by the time I've located him and got a stealth army over there he has the money to start dropping province defense all over the place.

So my question is two fold. First, am I the only one that feels Yomi is entirely too good of a nation right now? Secondly, how do I fight against these demons without resorting to using Caelum and rushing him hardcore. I'd really like to be able to use Agartha vs him, as I'm on an Agartha binge lately.. but they just get freeking rolled every time I play him.

[mac5732]

I beat Yomi early era with the pale ones, however, the pale ones cheap grunt troops suck against a decent unit, I beat him with magna units and Loads and Loads of Bemeaths at least 30-60 in each of my armies. Beameths don't route and trample even demon into powder. So I would suggest, that when you fight him, I would take a Fire or Death Race and give your Pretender high death and Fire magic. Be sure to give pretender high enough to start getting Bemeaths as soon as you research it. in the mean time, enpower some of your mages so they in turn, are level enough to also throw bemeths. If you have 5-6 that can trhow it and have enough gems Your on your way. Put the bemeaths all along the front with your other troops on the far flanks in narrow lines.
good luck, This is just what I've used to beat another human player who also took Yomi, have fun, good luck

[Wish]

play abysia, who will laugh at the fire.

or... the demons, despite being semi immortal have low low protection, and all you need is magic weapons to rip them apart. caelum comes to mind, for ice weapons that can easily hit the spirit form of the oni. so what you do is have a horde of caelum archers turning them into spirits, followed by ice blade wielding guys (situate towards the back to avoid their fire, and they fly so a hold and attack will put them right where you want them fairly quickly.

I love yomi as well, but mostly because they have a recruitable SC chasis, who, with earth boots or a little empowerment, can cast invulnerability and soul vortex on themselves. (and bless themselves) before jumping into hand to hand.

though lanka's mandaha blood summons are much better chasis, they can't invuln themselves, but they can cloud trapeze, mirror image, and mistform themselves before jumping into combat. so a little armor goes a long way with those guys. I guess thats more a late game strat though.

[Antpile]

Well, I said I can beat him using caelum. I have considered Abysia, but I don't want to get pigeon-holed into playing a certain race in order to beat yomi. Should any race have the ability to beat them?

From my searches I see that they used to suck. Perhaps they were buffed before i started playing the game or perhaps i'm missing something because they sure do seem to roll me pretty easy. Playing as them seems pretty easy too. I've seriously cleared whole maps of independants losing almost no units with an early game army, it is just wrong.

[Sandman]

If you're having trouble with their ethereal forms, fire blessed sacred troops might be handy.

[Mind Elemental]

The change in Yomi was actually not that significant - it was a smallish price drop for their demonic troops. Good, but hardly far enough.

I suffered very, very badly from banishments against Mictlan, though I ended up winning that war anyway by using mass bakemono archers and hannya - both nifty units, but again, not gamebreakers. In a fair fight indy archers work as well as bakemono, though they're not stealthy; and massed bakemono are counterable by the same tactics that work against any other massed ranged unit. All oni are vulnerable in melee thanks to their piss-poor armour, and Yomi is far from the only nation that can easily stomp indies with skilfully used nations. Their national spells are too high-level to be THAT useful (by then you can field the excellent dai-oni SCs), and End of Culture would also negate oni mages.

I actually saw an excellent post on another forum on Yomi's weaknesses; I'm asking for the author's permission to quote it.

[Nick_K]

I've now got my copy of Doms3 and I've played two SP games with Yomi as one of the AIs. Both with all AIs on difficult, the second also had all set to standard mentality, Aran and Eye maps.
On both games Yomi has done extremely well comppared to most of the other AIs. In the first Yomi ended up taking over most of the map and actually beat me )it turns out I suck with Mictlan, and I forgot to recruit priests). In the second the map ended up split into three between me (abysia), Yomi and Lanka. I've beaten Yomi, but it wasn't easy even with the fire-9 blessing and lots of battlemages.
I don't know about MP, but it seems that the powerful demon troops with their ethereal second forms making attrition low are very good for the AI and the nation does well in early age SP.
I don't play MP, but I'd take claims that Yomi is underpowered with a pinch of salt, although I can see that there are some obvious counters to them.

As for beating them, have you tried the flaming arrows spell? I believe it adds magic damage to your archers.

[Manuk]

Flaming arrows it's not needed. Just priests casting banishment to the demons will overcome etheriality.

[Edi]

Against AI, even EA Ulm will absolutely own Yomi. A decent screen of shield maidens (about 50 or so) set on hold and attack, an equal number of archers and then just put warrior smiths in a row with Earth Boots. The first round you hear hat *crump* *crump* *crump* sound of them all casting Earth Power and then the Oni army starts vanishing under a massive barrage of blade winds and magma bolts. I'd typically annihilate armies five times larger than mine with just the shield maidens and the fodder stack in front of them taking losses. Add in priests and banishment...

If your friend is relying mainly on the brute force of the oni, killing him will not be too difficult.

Edi

[Baalz]

Another thing to consider if you'd like to try a variety of nations, it seems one of your difficulties is that you're playing 1 on 1 and you get rushed before you can get any kind of sophistocated magic or defense. Several EA nations have pretty effective bless strategies which give you pretty stout armies from turn one. Mictlan, Vanheim/Helhiem, and Jotunhiem come to mind and if you use a fire or death(I think) bless then they can hit the ethereal units.