Suggestions for fighting against Yomi

[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.

[FAJ]

Yomi get no sacred troops, no high armor and have expensive casters. Aside from bandits, the average armor is 4 on them; they have average skills and cost a lot of gold.

AoE damage spells and massed archers put down oni in droves. You can try banishment, but I have never seen it do any real damage. Flaming arrows isnt necasarry, but it will solve all your Oni problems until he can cast arrow fend.

Wither bones is nice too, it can wipe out the oni spirits.

[Shovah32]

Get a big bunch of priests behind a meatshield that can atleast take on some goblins/bandits and you SHOULD be good to go.

[KissBlade]

Yomi does well against the AI when they have no clue how to fight oni's. Human players unfortunately do. In which case, Onis = easiest way to spend gold to ravaging spells. Or F9 bless. Or heck ... nations who can expand a lot faster than using subpar troops and expensive mages.

[Antpile]

I find mass banishment hardly phases Oni at all. I've tried throwing 10 priests all spamming banish at him before and they do very little. Oni's demons have good MR and pretty high HP.

I used Kailasa once and went for a flaming arrows/wind guide master lich build and it worked out okay, but I still lost because he just had too much income by the time I had flaming arrows. It may have worked in a ffa where he could have been distracted from attacking me so quickly. The flaming arrows did a nice bit of damage to him though I must admit.

With Mictlan I can hold my own a bit better since I play the miccis with a F9 bless strat. I think Yomi would be better if those ghosts were easier to banish. Everyone can get access to priests, so then there'd be no issues. It's not killing their units the first time that is causing the problem, it's killing them once they are ethereal and sit there soaking up attacks and arrows shots while laughing at my pathetic banish damage that gets me.

Anyway, I'll give it a few more tries. My goal right now is to figure out a way to fight them using Agartha. If anyone can spam blade wind, it's early age Agartha.

[Micah]

EA agartha without fire bless for the attack skill is asking to lose anyway, so you don't even have to invest too much more to get to flaming weapons.

Oh, and their seal guards have magic weapons by default anyhow if you're playing a larger game and don't want to sink that many points into flaming weapons (Ancient ones hit plenty hard already, so the points may be better spent on other things, like a nature or earth bless for regen/reinvig). One on one go for the flaming weapons though, seal guards are slow and expensive and cap-only, so if you know you'll want all of your armies with magic weapons they're a bit clunky.