Blood Hunting as MA Abyssia?

[Dragar]

I almost never recruit anything in my capital other than demonbred or warlocks, and the former most of the time. They are the best thing about MA abysia due to their versatility. There is an argument for apprentices purely from a blood hunting perspective, but you can use the demonbreds for so many more reasons, I reckon it's bordering on crazy to recruit an apprentice unless really, really strapped for cash.

In term of death scale, I also tend to growth 1. Not just for old age, but to stop pop decline, especially when blood hunting a lot. MA Abysia isn't a great rapid expander, and the mages are expensive. I really hurt when taking death. If you go death, plan to expand rapidly and extensively.

Surprisingly production is the optional one for me. Yes production rocks early, and it is hard to expand fast without it, but past the early game your infantry don't do that much for you other than act as chaff - they are too slow. Where they remain great is in soaking damage and being fire resistant, and the lower resource humanbreds can do that. It is your mages and blood summons you have to rely on more if you are to do well, which growth supports better than production.

In terms of pretender, cyclops can be ok, but I've tended away. All he does is make your strengths a little stronger, enabling your sacred infantry and mages to fatigue more slowly, he doesn't do anything to address your weaknesses. I've used a rainbow in a few games, for site searching, early research and diversification, which works ok. Fountain of blood is another option that is cheap, affords high dominion (important for abysia), and can quite cheaply get you the paths for soul contracts & bloodstones, which can both be very powerful for you. And he rocks as a blood hunter, enabling high production early while maintaining decent research. An awake cyclops I don't think is giving you enough for the cost.

Vanmpire lords would be sweet, they are just hard to get into, unless you take death on your pretender. There is merit in that, helps your mages a lot, I've not done it in a while but it is certainly viable.

[DonCorazon]

I pretty much consider Dragar the world's expert on Abysia. I think he's played them in every game to the point when I see them, I just assume its Dragar.

[Baalz]

Demonbred are very, very good, but I have to say warlocks are one of my favorite mages of any nation. I generally recruit a few demonbred here and there for specific roles but primarily crank warlocks nonstop from my capital. Put a lab where they're bloodhunting and any of them can easily contribute forgings/rituals as needed while bloodhunting by default rather than researching. Here's what I see with the different random warlocks:

Blood - These are some of the best blood hunters in the game. With a sanguine rod these guys are pulling in 3-5 more blood slaves apiece vs a b1 hunter with a rod which is quite significant (say, a "free" hoard from hell per turn once you've set up a few bloodhunting provinces). Stick a blood booster on them and you've not only upped the blood output again, you've equipped a battery of disease demon spammers. You're also dropping ritual of the five gates and hoard from hell (stockpile your blood slaves over a few turns then swap the blood boosters over to non-B random warlocks to drop 10 or so in a round for a ridiculously effective *side* strategy to whatever else you were doing). Starshine caps and you've got a bunch of teleporting blood rain/bloodletting casters.

Astral - second best horror spam in the game (after Hinnom), easy gateways for those map move 1 troops, and teleporting support before you hit const-6 for those early elephant aggressors.

Earth - Bloodstones baby! And demon knights. Bloodstone + earth boots + crystal shield + earthpower = E5. Slap a starshine cap on for teleporting heavy earth support which is *oh* so tasty for Abysian heavy infantry.

Fire - well, these guys are probably inferior to the demonbred, but they do bring some nice niche uses to the table. Teleporting banish to inferno, soul contracts, and astral fires are all solid in their own niche.

After you hit const-6 the old age thing isn't an issue, it's trivial to slap boots of youth on your one per turn warlock recruitment.

All in all, demonbred is not who I think of when I think versatility and MA Abysia. I also think it's a very good idea to stick labs under your warlock bloodhunters and use them as heavy lab mages as well as bloodhunters, something you can't do with scout bloodslave-shuttles. It's really nice to be able to drop 15 lesser horrors/disease demons/hoard from hells on a turn's notice.

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by vfb

Apprentices don't get randoms, just Warlocks do.

Damn me for not checking. Had them confused with the EA Warlocks. Been awhile since I messed with em, but I was working on an EA strat last. Bah.

[Micah]

My usual strat is opening with a few warlocks to get a couple of E randoms to go manually site search, then demonbred blood hunters until cons 6, then pure warlock recruitment from then on. They're very obviously the best way out of the 1-path wonder that is Abysia's non-cap mages, offering astral and blood magic, which you'll need to counter anything with a 3-gem fire resist ring and decent protection.

[Dragar]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

I pretty much consider Dragar the world's expert on Abysia. I think he's played them in every game to the point when I see them, I just assume its Dragar.

Don't think that makes me an expert until I actually win a game or two. Until then i'm just a try-hard

Baalz - agree on the usefulness of warlocks, and getting a couple with E is critical (i just scored a natural E2 in one game ) with bloodstones an early must. However, most of their uses are late game.

Once I have a few different warlocks, esp E ones, demonbred are btter in earlier days because they :
- won't get diseased on me
- are sacred therefore better researchers
- less powerful but faster/cheaper hunters
- mobile
- have high leadership
- can give combat support early and fly away if in trouble
- Have holy 2
- Lastly, they are very good devil carriers

After a couple of years I'll tend to hire more warlocks due to their capacity with rituals, availability of blood slaves and blood research and great value of astral against thugs, whereas fire is an easy option against troops early in the game

[Baalz]

[quote=Dragar;682587]

Originally Posted by DonCorazon

Baalz - agree on the usefulness of warlocks, and getting a couple with E is critical (i just scored a natural E2 in one game ) with bloodstones an early must. However, most of their uses are late game.

I don't know that I agree with that. To be sure, I'm not for a second arguing that demonbred are not excellent units, nor that a reasonable person couldn't decide they're the way to go over warlocks for some situations, but I think warlocks are very, very useful early on and just get better as the game goes on. Now, I can't really argue with Micah's general plan of not recruiting them heavily until const-6 is researched, but if you bite the bullet and accept a couple losses from old age they contribute mightily from very early.

Consider where you're at around the end of the first year. Your heavy infantry is tough enough to ward off most threats, but there are a couple things you're vulnerable to if you don't have mage support. Elephants and thugs/SC pretenders who are fire immune are the most likely threats and astral mages are the most obvious answer. An early thaum research along with around a dozen warlocks gives you on average a couple guys who can teleport in and spam paralyze (soul slay) which transforms you from a one trick slow pony into a very mobile and flexible threat who nobody can really even easily conquer your PD. Level 4 research is not exactly late game, and that opens up everything (depending on your early direction) from bloodstones and soul contracts to demon knights and blood rain. A single level 5 could also arguably be grouped into the early game and that's hoarde from hell, bloodletting & send lesser horror - all of which are *wickedly* effective early on fueled by a blood economy jumpstarted by powerful blood mages. To my mind it's just got a wonderful synergy, your warlocks (ignoring cost effectiveness) are the absolute best choice to get your blood economy jumpstarted, while also being the absolute best choice for casting rituals, and the absolute best choice for combat. The more you recruit, the more likely you are to have a couple with the random you really want earlier. You sacrifice a bit of cost efficiency, particularly before you can forge boots of youth, but cost efficiency is not generally the top concern when considering capital only mages. I guess that's the big part of my feeling about recruiting warlocks, if you recruit 12 warlocks in year one, then the chances are good you've got a couple E randoms to site search, a couple S randoms to teleport around, and couple B randoms to supercharge your bloodhunting and forge your boosters. Having less warlocks means you're much more likely to have a run of bad luck and not have landed the guys you really want by the time you need them. It's not *that* uncommon to go 10 rounds of recruiting without getting ie an earth random to prime the pump with site searching....

[Micah]

The reason for my preference for demonbred over warlocks early isn't due to cost, but due to maximizing your capital slot use. Pumping out enough blood hunters while still leaving enough warlocks around to do warlocky things can be a challenge depending on the map, and I favor the demonbred merely so that you don't end up losing any potential blood hunters. They also do work well early when you have less gold to play with, and since they'll be pretty much exclusively blood hunting you do save on upkeep as well. If you find recruitable blood hunters early on I would likely swap to warlocks immediately.

I'm not at all a fan of labbing blood provinces, since it provides any attackers with a nice prize on top of taking out your blood hunters, and it also greatly adds to the expense of your operations. If I was labbing I would be more tempted to get warlocks as well to leverage their diversity, but I'm quite content having 10 demonbred out in the countryside doing their thing with shuttles so I don't waste any cap recruitment turns by having disease deaths.

[Dragar]

yeah i only use labs in the field if I have mages there I want to cast rituals with, which is unusual. There is some value if you get unexpectedly high unrest for a turn, due to a random or great hunting turn - you can then switch your mages to research briefly

I think a lot of the preference is situational, we all agree both units are good. Certainly, if facing an early SC or trample threat, hitting up thaumaturgy and warlocks is king (although bonds of fire isn't bad). And if i don't get an early warlock with Earth I'll keep recruiting them. But I always almost find that after 2 years I have probably 2 demonbreds for each warlock - cash is an issue for abysia early, massed warlocks are too expensive in upkeep and disease loss.

One other note on blood items like Boots and sanguine rods. While they appear very cheap, especially with hammers, you won't have a lot of hammers, if any, to go around, and it still takes a mage's action. Forging a SDR costs you the 8 or so slaves that would have been hunted with that caster, or the 10 rp. I tend to make boots earlyish only for the special warlocks, with E1 or 2 or S4. It is of course to kit them all up over time, but there are often competing interests for slaves. Naturally a nature less alleviates the risk, but I find that nature rarely makes it on to my pretender for MA aby.

[vfb]

Blindness can be great early on against SC rushes. It's just Alt-2 and any of your non-cap mages can cast it, and I don't think FR helps. MR resists of course, but if you have 5 casters, one will probably get lucky. It's really short range so you need troops protecting your mages -- but you need the troops anyway to kill of the SC once its attack and def drops to zero.