Nations that seem strong/weak

[PDF]

There's really a problem with Aby "aged" Warlocks and Anathemants, they die like flies and, given that Warlocks are capitol-only I can't even conceive how you can start a Blood economy with them.
In my test game, even with Growth-1 I had 3 mages diseased by turn 13...OTOH with Shinuyama and Death-1 scale I had only 1 Sorc out of 8 diseased by turn 20 ! Looks like a problem with "old age" at a low value 35.
IMHO in these conditions Aby isn't playable competitively at all and even in SP it's not fun
And don't tell me "yeah, just cast GoH and make boots", Aby isn't supposed to cast GoH, and boots don't cure disease !

[Nerfix]

Yeah, the problem is their low old age cap.

[calmon]

PDF said:
There's really a problem with Aby "aged" Warlocks and Anathemants, they die like flies and, given that Warlocks are capitol-only I can't even conceive how you can start a Blood economy with them.
In my test game, even with Growth-1 I had 3 mages diseased by turn 13...OTOH with Shinuyama and Death-1 scale I had only 1 Sorc out of 8 diseased by turn 20 ! Looks like a problem with "old age" at a low value 35.
IMHO in these conditions Aby isn't playable competitively at all and even in SP it's not fun
And don't tell me "yeah, just cast GoH and make boots", Aby isn't supposed to cast GoH, and boots don't cure disease !

Hmm, maybe there is a bug. I play a Arco Testgame and i've plenty of old Philosophers. Its late Fall in year 3 now and only 2 are diseased and 1 died. I think this is acceptable. Growth 3 here.

[Graeme Dice]

dirtywick said:
You're neglecting to include that both blood hunting and patrolling kill population, so it'll be signifcantly sooner that you kill the population below whatever level you find acceptable to blood hunt, plus it'll never grow back as long as it's in your dominion. IMO Death is bad for any blood nation.

Blood hunting only removes as many people as the blood slaves you capture. Patrolling doesn't kill anybody in blood hunting provinces because you shouldn't patrol blood hunting provinces. The check on unrest to see if it's too high for blood hunting to succeed happens before patrolling. This means that with many hunters, they'll drive unrest up, cause blood hunts to fail, then the patrollers will kill large numbers of your population. You end up spending a bunch of gold to kill your population faster, then having to move your hunters out of their provinces with a castle and a lab to new provinces.

But, you know, at least we agree Growth is probably a better choice.

I would never take a growth scale in any game unless I knew beforehand that the game was going to last for at least 100 turns. Otherwise the benefit is miniscule.

What you get for imprisoning your pretender is good scales and a good bless.

Order 3, production 3, heat 3, death 3, drain 3 with a dominion 10, fire 8 Moloch will expand even faster, and still has good scales. Then you can be capturing three provinces per turn if there's room.

Good scales will get you gold too and you'll probably be better off in the long run. It's two different ways of accomplishing the same thing.

The pretender posted above _has_ good scales for Abysia.

Magic 3 adds up research quickly btw, you'd notice it when you have a couple of mages.

Sure, but the problem is that you won't have spells researched that will change the course of battles till turn 20 even with a magic scale, by which point the game will be mostly decided.

Yup, nearly double hp.

50% more hitpoints than a normal human is _not_ nearly double. It's 50% more.

The Emerald Guard also has lower strength, a weapon that does less damage than most of the Abysian infantry, higher encumberance, a lower MR, half of Abysians have a higher battlefield movement, and EG costs more in both gold and resources (except when compared to Lava Warriors which are even more superior anyway), doesn't radiate heat and is vunerable to fire.

The emerald guard has a strength of 12, compared to abysia's 13. The broadsword has a damage of 6, compared to the axe which is 7 but drops the unit's attack down to 9. Battlefield movement is completely irrelevant to infantry units, and the cost difference arises because the emerald guard is a better unit than abysian heavy infantry.

Lava Warriors are universally better.

Lava warriors are also capital only. The emerald guard is recruitable everywhere. Of course, you don't need the emerald guard to beat abysian heavy infantry. Principes by themselves with standards mixed in are more than sufficient.

Just for comparison's sake, Abysia can do it on Indy 7 and sometimes 8 without even adding a mage or priest. Their starting army is really good. Most nations start out with a handful of ranged units and some of their weaker infantry and take a huge loss their first attack unless you beef it up a bit or send your pretender or a mage or something.

No, most nations do _not_ take huge losses on the default of independents 5 unless you don't use their troops correctly. Pangaea does, but that's because their starting troops are the unbelievably crappy satyrs.

[KissBlade]

Graeme, I think you would rather mod those scales to drain 2, misfortune 1. Or perhaps Drain 2, Misfortune 2, Death 2. Otherwise I would take somewhat the same thing save I usually end up taking the PoD, less death magic, dom 10, and skip the whole death scale altogether currently for Abysia. Though death 3 is supposed to be "built" for them, it certainly isn't at the current moment. There's also the old recycled, dom 10 cyclops chassis ...

[dirtywick]

Graeme Dice said:
50% more hitpoints than a normal human is _not_ nearly double. It's 50% more.

And the Lava Warrior is 70%. Close to double. It's semantics anyway, they have more hp by a good margin.

The emerald guard has a strength of 12, compared to abysia's 13. The broadsword has a damage of 6, compared to the axe which is 7 but drops the unit's attack down to 9. Battlefield movement is completely irrelevant to infantry units, and the cost difference arises because the emerald guard is a better unit than abysian heavy infantry.

Weren't you just naming off a bunch of 1 or 2 point differences? And it's not a better unit simply because they have very similar stats but lack radiating heat/fire immunity while costing more, and it's probably the best human heavy infantry for the era. So even if we could agree that the Emerald Guard was a better unit overall than Abysian Infantry, Abysian Infantry is still better than 99% of similar priced HI.

No, most nations do _not_ take huge losses on the default of independents 5 unless you don't use their troops correctly. Pangaea does, but that's because their starting troops are the unbelievably crappy satyrs.

The point is if Abysia's starting army can perform well in 7 or 8 they peform even better in 5. You'll take heavy losses (ETA: on indy 7 or 8 that is), if you even win, on turn 2 with most starting nations armies, but not Abysia. Abysia starts with 30 good heavy infantry and an assassin. Shinuyama, Bandar Log, Tien Chi, Mictlan, Machaka, C'tis, and to a lesser extent Arco, Man, and Vanheim all start worse armies as none of them start with heavy infantry but have ranged units, and most have less than 30 units. The rest of them either start with worse units or less of them, for instance Ulm has comparable units but only starts with 16, Marignon will probably do well too.

For simplicity though, Abysia has a really good starting army, agree or no?

[Graeme Dice]

dirtywick said:
For simplicity though, Abysia has a really good starting army, agree or no?

They have one of the best starting armies. Just don't let Caelum, Bandar Log, or Arcoscephale get near you with elephants.

[Graeme Dice]

KissBlade said:
Otherwise I would take somewhat the same thing save I usually end up taking the PoD, less death magic, dom 10, and skip the whole death scale altogether currently for Abysia.

I love the Moloch because his attack and defense stats become astronomically high once you give half-decent equipment. With Mictlan and construction 6, a F9 Moloch can get his attack and defense into the 30's. He's like an archdevil on speed.

[dirtywick]

Graeme Dice said:

They have one of the best starting armies. Just don't let Caelum, Bandar Log, or Arcoscephale get near you with elephants.

Once I was playing Abysia on the Silent Seas map and had 3 provinces next to me. One was Militia and Elephants, one had a named Sorcoress "that radiates power" with like E3S4, 30 Gnome somethings (little earth elemental things), and some Fall Bears, and the other was Militia and Knights. I thought I had the best chance against the Sorcoress. I was really, really wrong

I'll have to try the Moloch next time I play Abysia, of course I'm going to put him dormant and add growth though.

[Agrajag]

PDF said:
In my test game, even with Growth-1 I had 3 mages diseased by turn 13...

In my test game, with Growth-0 I had 1 mage diseased by the time I managed to forge boots for everyone. And a second mage mute.

Graeme Dice said:
I would never take a growth scale in any game unless I knew beforehand that the game was going to last for at least 100 turns. Otherwise the benefit is miniscule.
...
Order 3, production 3, heat 3, death 3, drain 3 with a dominion 10, fire 8 Moloch will expand even faster, and still has good scales. Then you can be capturing three provinces per turn if there's room.

Maybe here lies the problem, you are too used to dom2's death scale, which was almost a no-brainer.
This here is dom3, a whole different beast.