Abysia and magic research
 

How can you keep up with other nations? Not only are the researchers you have available poor or capital only, but you need to deploy your mages to cast battle magic (Fireball, Falling Fires) the moment you get into a war since your troops are so expensive. You need to take advantage of their fire resistance to win against a real enemy.

Also there is the need for Warlock Apprentices for blood hunting and Demonbreds for devil summoning.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

Ligthless Lanterns are your best friend.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

And all this time tequila has been lying to me about that.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

lightless lanterns are fine, but const 6? So along with needing to (likely) get some into evo and blood you need to run to const 6...

20 turns? 30 turns? Unless you take a research pretender, how far behind are you already by then?

Abyssia would really run more smoothly if you could at least get some blood on a non cap mage.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

Evo 2 is sufficient to begin. At Const 4 make Lifelong Protections with B4 Warlocks, Wild Fire wands with your F3s, and Shrouds if you have an N4 bless. You don't need Blood initially (unless your are using CBM, then Blood 1 gives Call Lesser Horror). A research pretender is a good idea, and since you don't have gold-efficient research anyway, you may as well go with an awake Great Sage and Drain-2.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

What qualifies as gold-efficient research?

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

comparatively ok RP/g

aby's mages are expensive for the research you get... so vfb gives one plausible way around it - use the great sage to get to lanterns in a reasonable amount of time

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

So, you are spending 250 points to get an Awake pretender, whose sole purpose of being Awake is to justify gaining 120 points? ;)

Have him Dormant, and you are Magic1 instead of Drain2, and you have 30 extra points to spend.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

But then I can't expand using Call Lesser Horror starting turn 3! (CBM)

In year in my Warlock Apprentices were all out in the field either blood hunting, casting Body Eth on salamanders, or casting Call Lesser Horror on indies.

It's a functional alternative to normality, that's all.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

Walt: Generally speaking, you can find a 'good' RP/gold ratio by looking at known good researchers and then extrapolating.

Before Golden Era Arco, I believe the 'most efficient' researcher in Dom2 was the Daughter of Avalon, who had a base gold/research ratio of 20, with a per-turn after that of 2.7 or so.

In Dominions 3, I think a gold/research ratio of 20 or less is 'good'. So 111 for 90 mages (e.g., Seithkona) are 'good' (18). Warlock Apprentices for Abysia are at 30, I think. (150g for 5 research base, right?) If they're Sacred, then you can take that into account.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

Anathemant Salamander = 160g = 4RP = 40g/RP
Anathemant Dragon = 320g = 5RP = 64g/RP

Cap Only:

Warlock Apprentice = 130g = 5RP = 26g/RP
Warlock = 270g = 8RP = 33.75g/RP
Demonbred = 260g = 6RP = 43.33g/RP

All but the Demonbred are Old Age. With Magic1, the Salamander is still 32g/RP, but it IS sacred, so it ultimately starts to look like a relatively decent researcher if you avoid taking Drain, but you really have to mass produce them (which is just a good idea all around). With Magic1 the Salamander is about 1g/1RP for upkeep, but as the Apprentice is not sacred, he is around 1.4g/RP in upkeep - and as he is capital only, and is your premier Blood Hunter, it is unlikely you'll have a big mess of them sitting around. Plus once you can afford Boots of Youth, you'll likely switch to Warlocks unless you need more hunters.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

I'd go demonbred over apprentices for blood hunting if at all possible, as they aren't old and have a second point of blood for the same upkeep...early on this means you're protecting your cap-only units and nearly doubling your blood hunting efficiency before you can make SDRs, and later it means you save a pair of boots of youth, an SDR, and a couple mage turns in exchange for 130 gold up-front. Since so much of MA Aby's power comes from warlocks you also really want to make sure you aren't losing any blood hunters that you don't have to be via early old age deaths. Plus they fly.

My recommendation would be snagging a few warlocks early to site search for S and E and then making demonbreds til you get to boots of youth, then swapping over to Warlocks for the rest of the game, possibly filling in with demonbreds if you need to up your blood hunting, although using spare warlocks for blood hunters isn't terrible either, as it gives you more of a chance at getting good random paths.

Obviously this varies based on map size and indy mage finds, but when I played aby I had a lot of territory and had trouble getting enough hunters to cover it, plus my warlocks had to do all of the heavy magical lifting for the nation.

Re: Abysia and magic research
 

MA Apprentices are S1B2 (hope that's not CBM playing tricks on me!). Otherwise you're right, the Demonbreds would be better. I do hire Demonbreds, but I am heavier on apprentices.

I went with Evo-2 for arcane probing, and alchemising fire to get the first few pearls. Evo-2 also gives Fire Blast. Searching E etc is up to my rainbow god after he gets Const-6.