S&A strats?

[KissBlade]

So obviously when I got the game, I end up trying one of my favorite themes in dom II, S&A. However,boy did some of their tricks change a lot. First off, you can no longer defend yourself simply by just conjuring up an army of national summons mixed with body ethereal at will. Archers are very effective since it's early age and everyone has crap for armor. Not to mention nobles are one of the strongest troops in the early game. However, most noticeable is the HUGE variety of sacred troops! From cheapie warriors to those buff demons and celestial soldiers! So what we have is quite interesting, the old turtle and horde strat is a bit weakened in exchange for the potential for a uber bless strat instead. So what're people's strats with this race? Is the dual bless strat really that effective (aka f9/w9 or any new bless combos? n4/w9 for example ...etc)? What's worked for people so far? Especially ye beta folks!

[Nerfix]

How interesting, I just quit a game of S&A for today...

I pulled a sleeping Red Dragon who has Fire 9 Air 4. I've been mostly using national troops backed up with evocations. I've expnaded quite nicely I think.

The shield/spear/linen armor infantry is suprisingly good at the front. Back them up with archers. I put the sacred warriors you can recruit on the sides or a bit back from the spearmen and then blessed them with my prophet. They can dodge, they can hit...but when they are hit they can't take it. Air shield made the more useful again missiles troops though, and their attacks could eath through enemies.

I also used the Noble chariots.

The summons are excelent but I never quite had the gems to mass them. I'm partial to the Celestial Hounds though. Flying, lightning immune, two attacks.

[Boron]

I like the celestial hounds, they make good raid squads together with a cm.

I somehow cannot help myself though and always get the impression that they are just a weaker mictlan.

TC EA is imho almost forced to do a bless strat, but the old age of your CMs prevents somewhat the use of an extreme uberbless strat because it makes growth attractive.

The CMs are the big bottleneck for TC imho, they are so fragile and needed for everything.
CMs are vulnerable to seeking arrow too.

For EA TC is only an averagely strong nation imho.

[KissBlade]

Heh really? I actually think S&A is a different beast than mictlan since it doesn't actually rely on sacreds. for EA, S&A has GOOD troops if you really look at them. Nobles and horsemen are actually among the strongest troops IMO while archers can wither most indies away. Their biggest weakness (and strength ironically enough) is probably their mages. Considering they're capital only, it's extremely hard to mass them compared to others while the old age of celestials makes it even worse. (not to mention the weakness to astral duel of course)

[Boron]

The horseman is only so-so imho, as is the noble.
The problem with the noble is the huge gold cost, so it does decrease your research speed. And 45 resources !!!

Mictlan has solid troops in early era too. Ok that might be an exageration . But with a single bless like w9 their sacreds already rock. And you can even take an SC god and no bless if you want. The slingers can expand vs. weak indies just fine and they also are somewhat useful at swarming humans.

[Shovah32]

Today (after reading this) i tried a f9w9(though i usually dont like big blesses) imprisoned mother of rivers with drain 1 (i went for few big mages), sloth 3, misfortune 1 or 2 and some order and growth+dominion 6. I took my starter army, added 12 warriors of the 5 elements (and recruited 6 more per turn which i occasionally added to the army) and cut through lvl7 indies like a hot knife through butter.

The warriors get very high attack, 19 defence and 50% quickness combined with 2 base attacks and flaming weapons. With them just behind the starting infantry and my archers set to target archers (and my prophetised noble casting divine blessing and smite) it felt almost too easy (after conquering 6 provinces i had lost 4 pikemen and 1 warrior of the 5 elements...) so, after meeting my enemy i established a border and withdrew this army.

I searched all my provinces with a combination of remote searching spells and CMs and quickly made a good amount of raiders (CM's with a few cheap boosters/reinvig items leading celestial hounds) that i didnt use right away (doing so ell felt like cheating)and while building them my pretender emerged. After making around 6 squads of 1 CM and 10 hounds each i flew into enemy lands, destroying all the temples i could find and the hitting his high income provinces (turning tax's to 200 i had a huge income). Eventually i felt the need for SC's(would have went for them earlier in mp obviousy) so had my pretender summon a fire king who was quickly kitted out and sent into battle, destroying all in his path.

This was only against hard ai's but, it seems S&A is very strong with cheap, 2 attack, high defence sacreds and powerful mages and cavalry. The only weakness i can really see for them is, unless your pretender has good paths getting decent Thugs/SC's could be hard without some empowerment.

[Endoperez]

Drain 2 shouldn't be any worse than Drain 1, so you could've had one more scale somewhere. There's at least one report of Drain being bugged, however.

[Shovah32]

The only reason i didnt want drain 2 was because i didnt want my mages passing out after their second spell

[KissBlade]

S&A's weakness lies in the Celestial Masters. old age, capital only and a weakness to astral duel.

[Corwin]

Endoperez said:
Drain 2 shouldn't be any worse than Drain 1, so you could've had one more scale somewhere. There's at least one report of Drain being bugged, however.

Really? How is it bugged?