Fomoria - Where is your God now? (AKA - The Other Giant Meat)

[Agema]

You could forgo Morrigans and just raid with a Nemedian champion leading 10 Nemedians, which should chew through light to middling PD comfortably. Even better, you can seed your enemy's territory with them before you declare war. Losing half a dozen provinces on the first turn of warfare is pretty depressing. For that matter, a Nemedian champion could make a standalone thug with careful item use. The biggest downside is only A1, so they'd need a gem for mistform or some other way of fending off attacks.

Although I do appreciate the point that fighting a stealth war might be more of a niche tactic when you assault your opponent directly with the existing Fomorian troops.

[WraithLord]

I enjoyed reading this guide. Very nice

[Aezeal]

hmmm and wouldn't the standard giant bless of E9N6 be nice too?

[DonCorazon]

Just a word of warning: I'm in an MP game now leading in provinces, probably around 40, with a non-astral nation that I am playing for the first time and I went with the conventional strategy/pretender for this specific nation that left me with no access to S. From the start of the game, I have searched extensively with what paths I have, hired Dagan the S1 sage for probably around 7 Arcane Probings so far, and I have yet to find a single recruitable Astral caster - Lizard Shaman or otherwise - and my S income from sites I have found with my non-S casters is a whopping +2. Basically my late game chances are slim to none, with no access to amulets of anti-magic, no protection against mind hunts, no RoW/RoS to get those often critical boosts that help bootstrap other key magic paths, etc. Now this might be an outlier and truly bad luck (though I even have luck scales), but I would never play this nation like this again.

I think a national strategy should prepare you for the endgame, not rely on luck or indies to cover a nation's weakness. I think magical diversity is critical as there are so many permutations of who you might end up fighting in the endgame of a competitive MP game, you had better be prepared for anything.

Also, interesting that a big W bless is chosen here. I would have thought an E bless would have been optimal for enhanced evocatory devastation and more late game usage. I'd think having at least E4 would be almost mandatory as otherwise you are really lacking in 2 critical paths. That seems like really rolling the dice on your strategy.

[pyg]

Nice guide! Thanks for doing this.

In SP I usually take a E9/10 bless and sometimes N. Even with an E10 bless unmarked will still accumulate fatigue. Anyway I was wondering how you fight battles w/unmarked when you are vastly outnumbered or will otherwise have a long battle? Isn't the success of the W9 bless dependent on short battles where the numbers are more evenly matched? I admit that I have never tried the W9 bless (but will soon!) so I don't have a context of experience, just conjecture. This question also applies to Kings as thugs although you can equip gear on King.

[Wrana]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

Just a word of warning: I'm in an MP game now leading in provinces, probably around 40, with a non-astral nation that I am playing for the first time and I went with the conventional strategy/pretender for this specific nation that left me with no access to S. From the start of the game, I have searched extensively with what paths I have, hired Dagan the S1 sage for probably around 7 Arcane Probings so far, and I have yet to find a single recruitable Astral caster - Lizard Shaman or otherwise ...

One word - Spectres. They will boost any Death nation into Astral, with other types just contributing to research or raiding enemies.

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

Also, interesting that a big W bless is chosen here. I would have thought an E bless would have been optimal for enhanced evocatory devastation and more late game usage. I'd think having at least E4 would be almost mandatory as otherwise you are really lacking in 2 critical paths. That seems like really rolling the dice on your strategy.

He got E4. But I agree that high Earth bless is VERY good for any nation with large sacred casters. High Water is also very good, though. Personally, I'd prefer Earth, but Morrigans... I wonder whether it's possible to get both without awful scales. Maybe if we take different chassis and drop Nature...

About Nemedians vs Morrigans - yes, Nemedians are good by themselves - but Jim mentioned Winged Boots - which means Flying Squad...

Though, of course, I'm theoretical here: my closest aquintance with Fomoria was when I rushed them in my 2nd MP and they crumbled - they used Fomorians of various ilks, too and by the time they started to use Nemedians the only thing they retained was their capital...

[Baalz]

Well, the thing with a W bless is it fatigues you out quicker, but you do still get the same number of attacks as you would otherwise (assuming no reinvig). So, if you've got giants who deal enough damage to reasonably expect to kill their targets every other hit or so they can still chew through 5-10 times their own number before fatigue is a real problem, no different than without the W bless. For the kings, the ratio is much, much higher assuming you equip, say a frost brand and boots of the messenger. Even if the reinvig doesn't match the encumbrance, you can still comfortably chew up scores of PD singlehandledly and hang in big battles for the first dozen turns. True, you're not going to be able to go into those situations which drag into turn 40 of combat, but this doesn't limit you as much as you might think - you just have to make sure your damage outlay is sufficient to keep things from dragging on.

[WraithLord]

My tests and experience indicate that W9 bless on high (say >4) encumb. sacreds is sub optimal at best. Its worse when they auto buff -- even two-three rounds of the usual buffing will have it start the battle at fatigue anywhere between 30-50, and its down hill from there. This means the tougher indies may kill you or afflict you. This means that a human opponent in MP will use the fatigue weakness against you in many a ways.

I have found the W9E4N4 or W9E6 to perform better in cases where high def and double speed on sacred is critical (which is usually not the case for the giant sacreds). That and a plan to quickly equip with reinvig. items like BotM. For Fomoria I'd venture that E>6 + N>6 bless would be more than enough to get a good kick out of the sacreds -- as is the case for all the giant sacreds IMO.

[Baalz]

I have to say I'm not generally a big fan of a major W bless, but I do think it fits well with this strategy. It's justified in no small part by the Morrigans - high defense, glamour, 0 enc, life drain...they're pretty much the ideal candidate for a W bless (and hella nasty if you haven't seen them in action). In this case you're trying to balance a bless against 3 totally different goals - Morrigans, unmarked, and thugs/casters. Sure an E bless helps the thugs/casters and to a lesser extent the unmarked but it doesn't help the Morrigans at all. W blessing is at the other end of the spectrum, though it's far from useless to anti-thugs. I've no doubt a classic E/N giant bless would also be effective (and probably moreso if you only consider the sacred giants), but wouldn't really do much at all for the Morrigans. Morrigans provide an *excellent* diversity when your opponent was gearing up to take down tough giants you're dropping flying, glamoured, uber defense troops all over which require completely different counters.

[WraithLord]

Makes perfect sense