Joys of EA Abysia

[Xietor]

Agreed. It is a point of pride with me not to take 3order 2 misfortune. Certainly cannot argue against it from a strategic standpoint.

Why take a bless? Because it is FUN! And you can get some magic diversity easy enough with indy mages. Especially with nature(early on before pretender breaks free) and death. I typically find a wolf tribe shamen and make them until i get one with death magic.

You need to focus on mercenaries and hire the mages that have air or other paths you lack.

Besides you do not need many Burning Ones to win key battles. Why not take a bless? Your best mages are sacred as well. The Earth Bless means they can cast all day. So the main bless, the 10 earth, is for your mages. You add 4 nature for your Burning ones, plus it gives you magical diversity in nature. 4n also means you can slap a shroud on your old diseased mages and they will not die(regeneration).

In any event, I am sure there are much better Pretender set ups than the one I devised. Mine was primarily for sp and I used it for 2 blitz games. Much thought would have to go into it if I decided to play the race in a big mp game. Especially since without a d/f combo, you cannot get your national summons or make one of the fire boosters.

In addition to blood sacrifice, you also have level 3 priests for dominion raising, and strong income scales for building temples(guarded by insane pd).

But it is an enjoyable race to play. Especially if you like to play with matches.

[Tifone]

Originally Posted by Xietor

Why take a bless? Because it is FUN!

This is the only very important thing, being this a game, I like ppl who play for fun my humble considerations were just to enter a bit a minmaxing way of thinking, but the "let's have fun" attitude is the one I use the most too

Originally Posted by Xietor

Besides you do not need many Burning Ones to win key battles. Why not take a bless?

I only find un-funny to have to rely on so slow, capital only troops. With that bless they will be durable, true, but to replace some it will take a long time for you, and not sure how worthy it would be not to skip their long travel and just recruit some tough axe/morningstar wielders in a border fortress.

Originally Posted by Xietor

Your best mages are sacred as well. The Earth Bless means they can cast all day. So the main bless, the 10 earth, is for your mages.

But they have even higher Fire magic than they usually need for spells, access to Phoenix Power and lots of F gems, so they can usually greatly reduce their casting fatigue with that
Also E10 seems a bit of an overkill compared to E9, you get 1 point of reinvig on troops and 1 of prot on your pretender for 56 points.. You could instead buy 1 more point of Growth for less problems of old age on your expensive mages and more bloodhuntable (lol) provinces, and still have something left Or one more Magic and your mages will fatigue 10% less, which is usually more than 1 fatigue point.

Originally Posted by Xietor

4n also means you can slap a shroud on your old diseased mages and they will not die(regeneration).

That's a very nice idea

Originally Posted by Xietor

But it is an enjoyable race to play. Especially if you like to play with matches.

Agreed. I'm also a naturally warm guy so it comes natural to play them

[Xietor]

Actually the 10e may be overkill. And if i used the extra points, it would be to give my cyclops air magic.

One thing about Air magic sites is they can all be found with just 2a. That is not true of many magic paths. In fact with Earth, Death, and others, you are wasting many gems not to do level 3 searches. But not air. I think there may be 1 or 2 air sites that take 3a to find, and they are rare.

Cyclops has only 1 eye. Bummer that(: One air he can cast air shield, resist lighting, and forge a key artifacts rainbow armor(air/nature combo) as well as robes missile protection.

If i was not playing sp, or a blitz on a small map, almost certainly the Cyclops would have to have at least 1 air, and I would empower him to 2 as soon as possible for cloud trapeze after he awoke.

About the 2 drain. Lightless lanterns are easy to make. Also since EA Abysia is not an Astral race, that extra mr from the drain scale is useful. I do not mind giving up 1 research point for 80 design points and gaining a free mr point for my mages against mind hunts etc.

I typically take 2 drain when playing MA Pangaea in mp games, and just resign myself going in to being dead last in research and working my strategy around the lower level spells. EA Abysia is better off than MA Pangaea because of the lanterns.