MA Abysia: The Burninator Flies Again

[KissBlade]

It's true Darkness isn't a great answer to archers but darkness is a great support spell for demons of any sort.

[Baalz]

That doesn't seem right to me, but I'm not going to run a bunch of tests to prove/disprove your hypothesis. Without the storm the archers would have had a precision of 2 instead of 1 and half the arrows wouldn't have been negated. The precision difference would have been pretty much insignificant so the archers would be about twice as effective without the storm. Twice of very ineffective is still pretty ineffective.

Is darkness an effective archer counter if you're marching a block of 500 militia at the archers? Of course not. Is it effective if you've got 50 heavy guys spread into 4 groups? Indisputably - a *lot* of the arrows hit empty ground even from relatively close range. If we're not under a storm it's even more stark because fliers instantly spread out all around trying to attack rearmost/archers. If you're engaged in melee, friendly fire will be as bad or worse than offensive fire.

With mages its pretty stark as well. Watch a mage trying to hit a clump of vamps with blade wind as they're trying to get through his bodyguards a few squares away. Invariably lots of dead vamps. Watch the same mage try it under darkness. Very few vamps will get hit by more than one blade and lots of the blades will hit dirt. Same is true of most spell, it's just most noticeable with the large number that come out with that spell.

[Dragar]

well, without the storm the devils will fly in to melee first turn and wreak havoc, so the issue is really only if darkness helps when your opponent lays down a storm.

[Hoplosternum]

I agree you need storm in there otherwise the devils simply fly in to wreck havok. And originally we were assuming storm was cast by your opponent. It's cast to stop the devils flying even at the cost of halving missle effectiveness.

But CPs other point is that you would normally have blockers. Who at that stage is going to use archers against you with no blockers? Especially if they are using Storm themselves to stop the devils flying!

Because your blockers may/should have decent shields then they are likely to take less damage from friendly fire archery than the unshielded devils even under darkness induced archer inaccuracy.

And if storm has been cast defensively then he can also cast Wind Guide to buff his archers.

I am not sure blockers would overcome the other points Baalz made - Storm Demons, Horrors etc. But I think it would be fair to assume they would be there and storm (Storm Demons aside) counteracts the flying to mean they have to be fought.

[Baalz]

I think you're missing the point of my example. At a range of about 10 squares (how close do you suppose the devils are engaging your blockers?) 95% of the archers missed under storm and darkness. Is arrow fend a poor archery counter because it only blocks 80%? Does storm + darkness + devils mean you win every fight against any conceivable opposition? Uh...no. Are devils easily countered by putting storm up? Uh...no.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Baalz

I think you're missing the point of my example. At a range of about 10 squares (how close do you suppose the devils are engaging your blockers?) 95% of the archers missed under storm and darkness. Is arrow fend a poor archery counter because it only blocks 80%? Does storm + darkness + devils mean you win every fight against any conceivable opposition? Uh...no. Are devils easily countered by putting storm up? Uh...no.

You missed my point, baalz.

Darkness is unnecessary. It only marginally increases the effectiveness of the tactic. You should have better use for such a mage. bonegrinding, wail of death - whatever.

Again, a line of blockers backed by a line of archers will be virtualy unaffected by the loss of precision.

As for 'how close do you expect your devils to engage...' 10 is WAY too high.
If the archers are at range 3 - the MAXIMUM deviation is 3.75. But this is a bell curve distribution - and the median miss is 1 square. Which is *most likely* occupied.
And this assumes a precision of 1.

If the archers get windguide (or any kind of significant boost to precision) - the variance at up to range 9 or so is: 1.

5 * 1.25/6 = 1.xx.

Put it another way: archers are MUCH less affected by darkness than melee troops, in mass combats.

Put it a third way, so you get my point: If you are fighting large masses of melee troops - sure darkness is great. Fighting undeadblockers and archers .. I'd use a different spell.

[13lackGu4rd]

from all your guides this is 1 of my favorite. turning such an obvious fire nation into a blood+astral powerhouse instead. using expensive, non sacred cap only Warlocks as "mere" blood hunters, when each of them is just so much more efficient than those H1B1 Mictlan/Lanka hunters. same thing you did in your Niefelheim guide with the Skratti, just that the Warlocks are cap only while the Skratti aren't.

so in that regard, you're mentioned the Fountain of Blood as a solid choice, but not you're preferred 1. I have to wonder, do you think Abysia really needs the awake Vampire Queen for SC duties? because other than that, and maybe starting soul contracts on year1(assuming you manage to get the research, with most of your cap mages going blood hunting) I really don't see the benefit of the Vampire Queen over the much cheap Fountain of Blood, and also the benefit of having your pretender awake instead of dormant. so I was wondering, what about something like a Dom8(to spread your wonderful yet hot dominion around and into your enemies) B6A4E3F2 dormant Blood Fountain with O3P0H3G1L1M1? here are my reasons for suggesting this pretender:
1. you get luck1 instead of misfortune, which saves you from some but obviously not all lab accidents and other annoying events.
2. you get growth1 to help negate the population loss from blood hunting. fits perfectly into this more gardening blood hunting than Mictlan's or Lanka's scorched earth blood hunting. also helps your old mages survive the winters.
3. you get a superb blood hunter cloud trapeze capable so you don't need to hunt in your capital.
4. with A4 you can forge both air boosters(if you want to empower a warlock or 2 to start pumping out storm demons).
5. a single air booster(only bag of winds fits on the Fountain of Blood) brings you to B6A5, which is enough to forge the Robe of the Magi. this by itself seems to be worth the A4 investment... especially when the only thing you're doing with air gems is empowering Warlocks...
6. with the E4 you also get easy access to Demon Knights, Father Illwinter, Troll King, Hammers and other earth goodies. also, if you're desperate for an Earth combat caster and you didn't find enough air gems to summon a troll king or use hidden in sand, than you can always cloud trapeze your Fountain of Blood to drop Army of Gold(or Lead with a Ring of Wizardy, forgable by some of your Warlocks), Weapons of Sharpness and whatever else you'd want from the Earth line.
7. you still get your soul contracts, and it's not like you could afford a hammer for your Vampire Queen to use, even if you did get E2 you'll need const4 to forge the earth boots, and than use your pretender to search for earth sites. so the loss of the hand slots isn't even costing you.

so unless I'm missing some obvious advantages to the immortal Vampire Queen, or overestimating the Abysian line up than I don't see why the Vampire Queen is such a good choice for Abysia, and why it overshadows the Fountain of Blood, either with my setup or something else, lots of options here...

[Starshine_Monarch]

Baalz likes to make you try your own designs with his strategies, but graciously includes some examples of his own, so it's not that the Vampire Queen is the best for Abysia, but rather it's his own preferred build. Aside from that, he wanted to emphasize that Abysia can be a flexible nation. The Awake Vampire Queen gives you a lot of flexibility that the Blood Fountain can't offer, the biggest difference being that the Vampire Queen is mobile and can fly, and thus isn't restricted by the availability of a Lab to move itself around the map very quickly.

[13lackGu4rd]

if you're going with the Vampire Queen for SC duties than might as well push dom all the way to 9 for that nice awe... yeah turmoil+luck is much more synergistic than order+misfortune when you're pushing your dom into the enemy, and I guess turmoil1 won't be too bad a hit on your income, though compared to order3 it will be pretty significant unless you get lucky with nice income events early on. also, the Blood Fountain with A4 has Cloud Trapeze, which solves its immobility issues, and the main reason I went with A4 on it, Robes of the Magi and all the other goodies were secondary to that.

but well, I guess Abysia's Warlock pretender could also fit very well, a rainbow that can forge hammers, soul contracts, robes of the magi, etc, and actually use the hammer while forging other things compared to the Blood Fountain. however the dom score will have to be lower, probably 6-7 so it'll be harder to spread your dom into your enemies without massive preaching+blood sacrificing with your H3 recruit everywhere priests, which isn't too bad...

[Starshine_Monarch]

Apologies for the false example. For some reason Dominions bugged up and gave me the image of a Vampire Queen while designing that pretender when it was really a Blood Fountain I was creating... The example has been removed.