EA arcosephele - bless strategy?

[Jazzepi]

Agema said:
Have you run the tests multiple times? Results can vary a lot from trial to trial.

In contrast, in an EA MP game I had 5 points Agarthan PD rout a force of 3 Niefel giants (N9F4?? bless), plus priest leader (Skratti?). They got lucky, nailed one Nief and injured another on the second round of melee, the giants routed off.

I think you got pretty lucky.

A N9F4 bless sounds awful though. I would definitely go some form of E9N4-6. Generally you don't even care about those giants swinging. If they can't hit the broad side of a barn, their cold aura, which stacks, kills everything around them through fatigue anyways. Honestly, what you really want to have happen is that you get swarmed by a bunch of guys in waves. They start to fatigue from the cold, and then they fatigue down to the point where they pass out. What happens then is that you have these big nasty giants, mostly surrounded by units that are asleep, and who are slowly dying to the cold aura. Then the guys who first came up to attack the giants die off, opening up a 3 unit square next to the giant which is quickly filled in.

Once this starts happening your giants are mostly immune to meele damage.

Jazzepi

[MaxWilson]

Kuritza said:
Rephaelite costs more than two Palankashas, but doesnt have as much offense as two Palankashas (or staying power, for that matter). Also, their summons are inferior to Lanka's (with the exception of Gregori), and their mages arent as good for research and crafting equipment.

IIRC Palankashas have 1 Falchion attack at 12 and 1 defense at 13, and 30 HP. A Rephaelite has 1 Dawn Sword attack at 15 and a horn attack at 12. The Dawn Sword does 30-odd damage and the horn does 22. Palankasha falchions do 26 (this is all IIRC). It looks to me like Rephaelites have at least as much attack as Palankashas. Staying-power-wise, they have as many hit points as two Palankashas, probably worse Enc, a higher defense by 3 but a larger size (which means worse defense than 2 Palankashas against swarms). They also regenerate twice as fast. There are ways in which Palankashas are superior (cost) but Rephaelite <=> Palankasha is IMHO a fair analogy.

When I get home I'll try Wick's heavy-inf rule-of-thumb test and see if the Palankashas can beat more heavy inf and/or Steel Maidens than the Rephaelite.

-Max

[MaxWilson]

Agema said:
Have you run the tests multiple times? Results can vary a lot from trial to trial.

Wick ran it multiple times. I didn't because 1.) I was sanity-checking the methodology, not the units, 2.) luck didn't appear to play a huge part in any of the battles I examined. The Helhirdlings didn't get hit once with a lucky hit and then rout, they gradually degraded under infantry pressure. The Wind Riders died one or two each round and then routed--maybe they would have killed slightly more HI in a different run but it was pretty obvious they weren't going to do as well as Niefelheim. Niefelheim, of course, just needs to survive one or two rounds of combat and then everybody around freezes solid.
Obviously you would be more rigorous if you were trying to make a decision whether to take a bless strategy for a certain kind of unit. You'd want to check vs. heavy infantry, units with multiple attacks (Ulm's Steel Maidens or C'tis' Elite Warriors), cavalry (Helheim's Mounted Hirdmen), other blessed units (F9W9 Jaguar Warriors), archers, etc. I didn't.

-Max

[JimMorrison]

Gregstrom said:
There is a bit of an issue with Greek summons, isn't there?

Satyrs and Maenads went off to form their own nation, Hydras belong to someone else, Kithaironic Lions are open access (if they're Greek - they sound like the lion Hercules killed), so are the Furies...

Most of the Greek myths have been incorporated into other nations, sure. Does this preclude Arco from summoning them? Of particular interest are things such as the gorgon and cyclops. Being able to summon versions of these creatures seems only fair, really. If they are made comparable to other higher end summons, and cost similar amounts of gems, they won't confer any distinct advantage, but would hopefully be summonable by national mages, with a bit of boosting.

Honestly, I think that's one of the things that would most improve this game, more plentiful national summons. Many of them wouldn't even need to be completely exotic, but for example Caelum could get a "Giant Ice Drake" at Conj6 that had enhanced power. Pangaea might have a "Minotaur of the Maze" who is larger, and angrier than the ones that they can recruit. Obviously it would lose some of the point if ALL of them were just bigger versions of already available creatures, but there's a lot of room for creative additions.

[Baalz]

Kuritza said:

I'm really qurious where are strengths of EA Arco btw. Sure, research is there. But their troops are simply bad, and mages, while nice in their own way, have no endgame paths (weak astral, no death, no blood). And no national summons... Of all things, ancient Greece has no summons - its just not fair in my opinion.

They've got good recruitable thugs (Onead <sp> with natural awe + mistform + personal regeneration properly outfitted is a threat to most anything) and they're the communion posterchildren with some of the best research in the game to power some of the best communion mages in the game (mystics). Their troops are decent for what they should be used for - meat shields while the damage is laid down from mages. True, nations with weak astral, blood and death (of which Arco is hardly alone) can have a hard time in the end game if you don't plan ahead (starting with pretender design), but Arco is a very solid nation in all eras.

[Kuritza]

Give me a break. Onead, good thug? With 10 hp, attack and defense, 9 str, capitol-only and 400 g. cost? Ouch.

Communion is nice, but with astral 1, it just asks for a few magic duels. Had it done against me by Kailasa recently. Astral 2 monkeys vs Astral 1 mystics - 16 mages lost by Arco, 6 mages lost by Kailasa.

>> True, nations with weak astral, blood and death.
Its worse. Asco is a nation with weak astral, NO blood and NO death.

As for troops, SO many troops are much better at being meat shields AND still deal damage, I think it may be safely commented that EA Arco's troops are bad.

Regarding summons, Greek myths have one peculiarity that can be speculated upon - they had loads of demigods walking the earth. Perhaps if they are so plentiful, they can make a good and unique summon, hmm?
'Awaken divine blood'
Unlocks the dormant powers of God's ichor in a worthy individual's blood, improving his stats and giving him (random) abilities and spell paths.
Maybe several spells of this type - starting with awakening the dormant Blood and ending up with summoning epic heroes who are almost gods themselves.

[Zenzei]

Give me a break. Onead, good thug? With 10 hp, attack and defense, 9 str, capitol-only and 400 g. cost? Ouch.

This is what I thought too so I went and tested it a bit. My test oreaid had frostbrand, vine shield, rainbow armor and no bless of any kind. Buff sequence was summon earthpower+ironskin+mistform+personal regen+air shield+attack. I then pitted her against blocks of 40-100 troops of varying difficulty, probably around 500 units in total. The oreaid won all fights easily, in fact I think she won most fights without taking even a single point of damage. Awe +5 combined with ability to self buff into stratosphere is a massive defensive barrier, which does make oreaid a good thug.

Of course mages will kill oreaid thug easily enough but that is the fate of any thug really.

Also, I think EA Arco is good enough in astral magic without help from pretender because they can forge crystal coins. S2 mystic empowered once into S3(45 gems)+coin+skullcap->RoS->RoW is pretty much all the astral nation needs. For combat astral magic, communions are the key.

[Kuritza]

That makes her a raider. Thug (in my opinion anyway) should be able to kill things in major battles too, like a Sea troll king, for example.

But thanks for a tip, thats rather interesting.

[Baalz]

Kuritza said:
That makes her a raider. Thug (in my opinion anyway) should be able to kill things in major battles too, like a Sea troll king, for example.

But thanks for a tip, thats rather interesting.

Right....a sea troll king is better. Zenzei touched on how effective she is, but didn't get into her versatility:

resist elements, resist poison, resist lighting - with just a frost brand and fire helm (*cheap*) plus MR boosting items they can be effectively immune most mages. Swapping out your buffs/equipment to fit what you're fighting and there's not much you can't walk over.

cloud trapeze + stealth - you pick your fights. Just think about that in combination with the point above.

Holy - reinvig/regen/air shield/lighting resist/MR boost - whatever you've got. Nothing she can't self buff in other ways, but frees up a slot or two for more buffs if you've got a priest nearby.

seduction/assassination - as if everything else wasn't enough, this army killing thug can *assassinate*! If you can't beat the army, just kill all the commanders. You'll probably even seduce a couple...

Heck, 99% of the time I'd take one Onead over 10 Sea Kings.

[sector24]

Greek mythological creatures are pretty well covered in dominions. The problem is that most of the creatures not used are thematically at the pretender level rather than the summon level. Cyclopes and titans are at the pretender level, so a summon like the Hecatonchires wouldn't really make sense (unless it was banished to tartarus, in which case it is already in the game).

Not saying it couldn't happen, but it might be problematic. The only thing I can think of that isn't covered is something like stymphalian birds. In game terms they'd be flying mechanical men I guess. Also, you could further split nymphs into their classifications:

Melissae
Nephelae
Oceanids
Nereids
etc.

Hard to say exactly how they'd be different from each other though.