Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design

[earwicker7]

So here's my final one, which will get single player testing, followed by any tweaking necessary.

Great Warlock, Awake, Dom5, Prod1, Growth2, Heat3, Magic all 2 except for E4.

[CthulhuDreams]

Why do you want an awake pretender? Abyssia has good expanding troops at start. If you make him dormant you get him in time for good forging etc

With your proposed build you could add order 3 for 120 points giving you great income to build more mages AND boost his dominion. Personally I'd then take out one point of growth to take Luck 1 as well, because the events are significantly better if you have luck 1 over luck 0.

Edit: You don't really want fire or blood on your pretender either, as you have great options for that already.

Edit2: for example, you could get a dormant great druid with O2, P1, H3, G1, L1, M1 with A4, W2, E4, S2, D2 (or, your original magic line with E4 and +1 to another school)

[ExHeretic]

If i take air for rainbow pretender i usually take it up to 4. That gives him access to air boosters and maybe to elemental staff too. Those low fire and blood are not very usefull but they are not that expencive either. Gives bit more reseach too.

Starting dormant gives points for better scales or more magic. Awake pretender can do lot of research or site searching in the first year. Which is better depends on your early game strategy.

Abysia is one of the few nations that can play with dominions strenght 5. Good priests and blood sacrifice. You still need to keep an eye out on those candels all the time. Its maybe bit experts only strategy. For beginners i would suggest atleast 6-7.

Good luck on your game... and im not talking about the scales

[thejeff]

Actually, for Abysia, a little Fire, along with the more useful Death, gives you Flaming Skulls, which will also let you get the F4 booster. Access to primary path boosters is worth a few pretender point. You can get the Helmet using a RoW too, which this build will give you.
I'd agree with the blood. If there's anything else you can trade that for I would.

[Squirrelloid]

First of all, Great Warlock is not a good pretender for Abysia. It doesn't give you anything you really need.

Second of all, ew.

Ok, assuming Pr1 is a minimum... if i was going to use that pretender, i'd change the scales as following: T0->T3, L0->L3, see if I can't get points for G3 out of dropping some magic somewhere.

... Is this CBM or vanilla? In CBM i get everything you claimed with G3 and 10 points remaining. Take T3 and L3 (even point swap). Drop F2 to F1 which allows A3. (Air boosters with Ring of wizardry, which you should have no trouble forging with national mages + astral boosters).

Note, since you don't need astral or blood on your pretender for *any* reason, the master druid is a far better pretender choice for you - it'll make E4 relatively cheaper, and allow you to avoid investing in magic paths your pretender doesn't need to provide.

[P3D]

If you don't want to go with a Blood Fountain (mobility/booster reasons) and you still want a Soul Contract-forger, the warlock is the best option - and also has some dousing bonus.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by P3D

If you don't want to go with a Blood Fountain (mobility/booster reasons) and you still want a Soul Contract-forger, the warlock is the best option - and also has some dousing bonus.

Or you can just, i dunno, use one of your B3F1 warlocks with some blood boosters? You can even empower him to B4 if you need to, because blood is cheap.

Warlock is never a good option for abysia - why spend pretender points for things that are cheap to get with national units?

[Mardagg]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

Or you can just, i dunno, use one of your B3F1 warlocks with some blood boosters? You can even empower him to B4 if you need to, because blood is cheap.

Warlock is never a good option for abysia - why spend pretender points for things that are cheap to get with national units?

The whole point of soul contracts is to get them as early as possible,many of them.Since Abysia is so well suited for contracts,i really dont see it as a side-strat here,involving waiting for empowerment/waiting for the right paths on your warlock/waiting for Constr 6 and the boosters/and being lucky or unlucky with old age on your warlocks .
With an awake blood fountain,you can get 1-2 already within the first year..of course you have to blood hunt your capital 1 or 2 times to achieve this,but dont forget that you get a slave income per turn with the fountain on CBM mod,too.
Its the fastest way to get a contract factory going,by far.
Later on,you can then empower/equip a warlock to be able to build contracts,so that your pretender gets better things to do.

Never Heard of sloth with Abysia`s resource-needing troops.
So you are using Humanbreds mainly to expand then for the early game?
What are you doing,if you meet another Human early,that attacks you?
Looks to me very risky here,to put all eggs in one basket.
Humanbreds can very easily be countered and depending on starting position/strong indies it can take some time to get a 2nd or 3rd castle going.
I think you need at least Prod 0 to be more flexible,and if you plan to rush your opponents(for which Lava Warriors are definately very well suited,even though i agree it might be their only good use) you need more.

Furthermore,you need money like crazy early on and for most good Abysia setups,something along O3 G3 and like P1 or P2 is a good choice,simply for the money bonus.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by earwicker7

So here's my final one, which will get single player testing, followed by any tweaking necessary.

Great Warlock, Awake, Dom5, Prod1, Growth2, Heat3, Magic all 2 except for E4.

Okay, your big problem here is that you don't seem to have a clear direction...

Scales work better in combination...

Production is worthless if you don't have Order 3
I agree with whoever said Magic 1 is almost necessary for Abysia.
I personally think Growth is not worth the points for Abysia, but if you want to try it, Growth 3 is a must, as it has synergy with itself
Luck synergises well together with Death or Turmoil, Death 3 is very playable with Abysia. (this does hurt though)
Sloth is very doable as Abysia if you are willing to use a humanbred / salamander mix (don't underestimate this combo, at about 2 salamanders per 10 humanbred, it works _very_ well if you mix them in... DO NOT use the salamanders as a seperate unit)

You also need a clearer direction with paths.

Fire 1 is almost a necessity, allows you to forge both flaming skulls and soul contracts. It is possible to empower this, but unlike a lot of other nations, you _always_ have good uses for fire gems.
Air 2 is hard to leverage, Air 4 is much better, 3 is workable with a ring of wizardry.
I'm not sure you get much value out of water, unless you want it for something specific.
Earth 4 is a nice bless for your national mages and provides access to earth boots to boost warlocks.
Astral, take it at 5 or 6, for stuff out of reach of your warlocks, or not at all.
Death 1 is almost a necessity, the other half of the requirement for flaming skulls, I'd go Death 3, as it will give you access to boosters and easy diversification into death mages.
Nature 4 is a nice bless for national mages, works well with pheonix pyre to reduce afflictions, and allows you to use shrouds on mages with disease. Also gives you access to boosters for the many varieties of N1 indy mages, which will allow them to site search. If your using Magic 1 most of these guys are better options than salamanders for research recruiting.
Blood, for the same reason as astral take it at 5 or 6 or not at all, 6 is needed for soul contracts, 5 is workable because an armour of souls is a good enough item in it's own right to justify a slight delay in soul contracts.

[earwicker7]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

Okay, your big problem here is that you don't seem to have a clear direction...

I know, but this is only my third game; I finished the tutorial, and I'm currently in a multiplayer game.

Until I get a firm grip on the game mechanics, I think my best bet is to play a game, see what works and what doesn't work, then slightly change things and see if I can make it work better.

If I'm using a radically different pretender from what I used the last time, even if it wasn't the best design, I don't think I'll really get a grip on what the values have changed. That's why I'm keeping a Great Warlock. Blood has been a disaster, so I'm planning on keeping it secondary and focusing on other stuff.

BTW, for anyone who has asked, I'm not using any mods. I want to know the system before I start playing with mods.