Re: Militia Vs. Militia
I'm thinking low level magic stuff, along with troop placement and tactics. Things that most any Nation should be able to mostly just take advantage of, rather than needing to carefully construct an entire strategy around.
Here's an (untested) example of a possible early game strategy. Please keep in mind that it hasn't been tested.
Consider Early C'Tis, since it's the first Nation that comes to mind: They've got excellent access to Nature, Astral, Water, and Death magic. They've also got the Runner, a cheap, fast, poison resistant, double attack unit with higher than average Hp, and a little Prot.
Their militia unit is better than average in a lot of ways, having 11 hp and poison resistance, and a respectable 12 magic resistance, but suffering from low morale and low protection, like most any other militia. If you happen to get "gifted" by a horde of regular human militia, the story is pretty much the same--low protection, low morale. Those penalties can, and should, be overcome by spells. Flagellants are better, but not much, and can still benefit from the tactics addressed here-perhaps even more so, depending on your Bless situation.
So what spells are C'Tis likely to go for?
C'Tis is pretty likely to research Alteration fairly early in the game. It gives them a lot of goodies both early, and late. So they have a decent chance of learning Protection, Berserkers, and Mossbody, sooner or later.
To be honest, I'm not 100% certain Mossbody actually does poison damage. It may just do 1 AN damage, period, but the description says poison cloud, so we'll go with that. If it turns out I'm wrong about that, no worries, just pay more attention to the section on ghoul summoning, atleast for C'tis.
If you're not playing C'tis, and you still have access to Nature and Water, 1 AN damage over Area 4 is great by itself, and it's usually not that hard to add poison damage for many Nations, via one method or another. Plus, it has a chance of offering amazing Prot (from 10-20) to any unit it's cast on.
Mossbody has great synergy with Runners, who have less to worry from the poison damage than other units, and the 1 AN damage won't kill them by itself. Spam Mossbody on a group of Runners, and suddenly you've got a bunch of durable, expendable poison (?) bombs just waiting to go off in the middle of the enemy. You can also cast Mossbody on the hordes of militia chaff you'll get naturally with high Luck.
So what you can do is send large groups of free chaff militia directly at the enemy to buy yourself some time, while your Runners in two groups at the far right and far left of the militia are set to Hold, Attack Rear. In the meantime, your N, W mages can cast Mossbody, and any mages that only have Nature can spam Berserkers and Protection at everything (but mages ofcourse) that moves.
The great thing here is that both groups can benefit from all three spells. The Runners get the most out of the Protection and Mossbody, which means you'll tend to lose less of them in combat than you will the militia--which, by the way, is great, because the more militia that die, the less you have to pay the survivors. The Militia, however, get the most benefit (atleast to you) from the Berserkers spell, since their pitiful morale is now no longer a concern.
The Militia should be able to hold the enemy in place, atleast for a while, while your Runners flank them, and possibly even get past them, and on to the enemy archers/casters/leadership, who should have a harder than average time of things, due to the 2 attacks (one of which is a longer reach spear).
Once you hit Alt 4, you get access to Dragonflies via the Swarm spell. This is an expensive spell (1 Nature gem), but the nice thing about it is that you can, once again, cast all three spells on the Dragonflies, and they'll all work together for your benefit. Mossbody does a good job of killing the enemy, but the Berserkers spell will make the dragonflies strong enough to hurt the enemy with their bite attack, and the Protection is really nice, because not only does it raise their Prot from 0 to 10, it can also be cast long-distance, helping to assure that every single dragonfly is benefited.
You'll also get access to Ghouls, via Arouse Hunger. Ghouls are expensive at 5 Death gems, but that gives you atleast 9 high morale units with poison claw attacks. It probably isn't worth it to buy too many of these, but occasionally you'll get them for free, and they give you direct poison damage at the infantry level.
Naturally, all that extra havoc you're causing is only improved by the Curse spam your shamans can lay down.
While your militia, runners, and possibly dragonflies/ghouls are out there duking it out with the enemy, and while your mages are casting all these wonderful spells, your archers are free to rain down death on both friend (expendable militia) and foe. Your real troops get a break, being set to Hold, and then Attack.
A smallish group of Elite warriors and Lizard Chariots should be able to roll up the weakened enemy fairly easily. For that matter, you could choose to salt a few Elite warriors in with your militia, since they'll have a better chance of surviving archer fire, while giving the militia stronger staying power, and a bigger punch.
All of this, or just parts of it, can be done by pretty much any C'tis player, pretty much every game, with a minimum of additional expenditure of gold, gems, research time, or resources.
It's not meant to get you through the Late Game, but it is meant to make you more of a threat in the Early Game. The best benefit is against Independents, but with some tweaking or just good fortune, could do some damage against a human opponent as well.
Cheap militia is a key element here, and rather than burdening you with a bunch of units you don't need, should actually make your Nation more of a threat.
There's a lot you could do to improve on it, though (keeping in mind that this is all untested), if you wanted to further incorporate your militia into an overall strategy, but the idea here is to keep things simple and flexible. It probably won't remain effective against a human player for very long, but should easily roll over most independents, and work well enough against most rushes. It may not kill elephants though, but it should atleast cause them damage that can be furthered by Curse spam.
Now let's consider a Nation that at first glance would seem to have little use for chaff militia, namely Niefelheim. Niefelheim militia is big and dumb and fairly useless, but they do have a powerful attack, and a shield, which is important. They're also immune to cold, meaning that you can allow them to interact not only with Niefels and Breath of Winter mages, but also with Banes and other undead, and they're almost as fast as Runners.
So what to do with them? The most obvious tactic is to spam Quickness on large groups of them. It gives them double attacks, as well as a bonus to Att and Def. It's going to be a while until you get it, though, at Alt 4, and it still doesn't really improve them that much.
A better tactic might be to combine them with undead chaff, and use them as a reserve. A single skull talisman (5 death gems, but no research requirements) turns any commander into a skelly spammer. Keeping those militia and skeletons in the back of your army allows you to send them in when your Niefels need them, after they're starting to become fatigued. Against weakened, tired, and frozen units, the Jotun militia and cold/fatigue immune skeletons suddenly become considerably more dangerous, and have less to worry about being surrounded, since they're on the offense, instead of the defense.
One spell that will really help here is Slime. On top of the problems your enemies are already suffering, it halves Att, Def, and action points in a 1 Area effect, it's easy for Niefelheim to cast at Evo 1 (important, because you don't want to distract Niefel too much from buff spells), and it doesn't cost any gems.
By setting your militia and your single skelly-spammer at the very back of the battlefield, you can cause them to arrive in the thick of things (if all goes well) towards end of the battle, and just in the nick of time, with a constant reinforcing of skeletons.
An advanced tactic would be to send your militia in waves. By placing a group of Jotun militia back with your mages, and a second group at the rear of the battlefield, you better your chances of reinforcements arriving when they're needed, while reducing the exposure of your reserves to harm and fatigue by half.
Ofcourse, Niefelheim also has decent access to Nature, Astral, and Water, so they can follow the same practice of casting Mossbody, Protection, Berserkers, but with much greater focus on Slime than Curse.
The simplest way to increase the effectiveness of this kind of setup would be to add skelly spammers, which, as free and synergetic troops, should retain their effectiveness well into the mid-game. The high value of Death gems for Niefel has to be considered, however, but an additional purpose for the Jotun militia would be to simply hold off incoming attackers long enough for your skelly spammers to create a large enough force of skeletons to replace them, which could then be bolstered by fully buffed Niefels and Jarls.
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