Abysia, Age and Death: a suggestion

[Chris_Byler]

It seems to me that since Dom 1, Abysia has been balanced around their 240 free points: they prefer heat-3, and they're immune to (what used to be) the most important effect of death scale, reduced supply. So they turn their dominion into a hellish wasteland where others suffer but they don't, and get the points to afford Order-3 Prod-3 for their expensive high resource troops.

This was fine for Dom 1 and 2. Now it doesn't work so well, and if you play Abysia with classic Abysian scales you'll quickly see why: old age. Old age is an interesting addition to the game and I don't intend to suggest that it should be removed altogether, or even that Abysians shouldn't suffer from it. They're a nation full of old mages with no nature or death magic; that's not necessarily bad, so long as they have compensating strengths.

What I am suggesting is that Abysians shouldn't suffer *more* from it if they take the death scale that their nation was apparently intended to have. Why should the fact that they're living in a burning, hellish wasteland make them more likely to get afflictions? They *like* burning, hellish wastelands. It's unthematic and unbalanced to push them to take growth to stay alive.

Please consider making Abysians (the race, not the nation; indies and mercs would still be affected) ignore death scales for purposes of old age afflictions - that is, they get age afflictions as if the scale were death-0 rather than what it actually is. If they only aged and died at normal rates rather than at quadruple rates (or whatever it is, it's pretty severe though), then they could be played close to the way they used to instead of shelling out 120+ points (relative to Dom 1/2 Abysia) to get a scale that will keep your old guys alive a little longer.

As it is now, Abysia has gone from being immune to the strongest effect of death scales to being super-vulnerable to the *new* strongest effect of death scales, and immune to one of the now-secondary effects. That's a huge swing for a nation that relied on those points (and the doubly-hostile dominion for invaders) to stay even close to competitive.

[Jazzepi]

This has come up before, and it's quite silly. If you want to go D3 there's no reason you can't. You access to two mages that allow you to overcome D3, both of which don't have old age to begin with.

A B1 mage that's a great blood hunter. And you have a F2 mage that can cast phoenix pyre and be just as good a nuker as the F3 mage.

You have to research construction 6, I think, before you can build the boots of youth, but they're quite cheap at only 10 blood slaves apiece. You also desperately need to get to construction 6 so that you can pump out the lightless lanterns because all your researchers suck.

Jazzepi

[Meglobob]

I have been playing around with MA Abysia and all there mages have old age, even the demonbred is old 50% of the time. Late winter is a terrible month for this nation.

I think Chris makes some good points. Ma Abysia has to take growth which is very unthematic for this nation. Death scale upto 3 should be treated as death 0 with regards to age for Abysia. All other effects remain the same, this means blood hunting will have diminishing returns the longer the game goes on still and they will still be more effected by old age than virtually any other nation, instead of totally crippled, should they take death 3 now.

I would also like to see demonbreds and warlock apprentices taken out of the old age range all together. The demon part of the demonbred should enable them to not be old as soon as you recruit them and as for warlock apprentices, do any actually become warlocks? Most of mine die/feebleminded/mute etc... from old age long before they become warlocks.

Also well I am moaning, shouldn't the warlock apprentice be recruitable at every castle? Or made so...

[Sombre]

I'd be happier if they just had a few more non old mages. Like the apprentice level mages and demonbreds were never old (not even close). This might tempt some people to take a bit of death. Death 3 is a bit extreme, but being able to take 1 or 2, or simply not take growth would be nice for them.

[Jazzepi]

Meglobob said:
I have been playing around with MA Abysia and all there mages have old age, even the demonbred is old 50% of the time. Late winter is a terrible month for this nation.

I think Chris makes some good points. Ma Abysia has to take growth which is very unthematic for this nation. Death scale upto 3 should be treated as death 0 with regards to age for Abysia. All other effects remain the same, this means blood hunting will have diminishing returns the longer the game goes on still and they will still be more effected by old age than virtually any other nation, instead of totally crippled, should they take death 3 now.

I would also like to see demonbreds and warlock apprentices taken out of the old age range all together. The demon part of the demonbred should enable them to not be old as soon as you recruit them and as for warlock apprentices, do any actually become warlocks? Most of mine die/feebleminded/mute etc... from old age long before they become warlocks.

Also well I am moaning, shouldn't the warlock apprentice be recruitable at every castle? Or made so...

Sorry, I was speaking from experience playing EA Abysia.

I do think they need more non-capital mages. I can't believe you can only recruit the S/B mage, demonbred, AND your anointed from the capital. It's a very frustrating bottleneck. I think the anointed should be the only capital only.

Jazzepi

[DrPraetorious]

Or give them national spells to compensate.

Personally, I think new national spells are the best way to fiddle with national mechanics in this way.

A national version of wight mage that cost fire gems - and Abysia gets some other unit # out of the deal that is more thematic (and perhaps not undead.) I can't mod this myself, since I can't change what Wight Mage gets on a national basis.
A fire version of Transformation would also work; again, maybe a different list of unit ids. Can't do this either.

Stuff I can mod myself:
* 1 Fire Gem to reduce your age by 5 years, Abysia only. Could have side-effects like T'ien Ch'i internal alchemy.
* Fire-based Mummification. This would only help for units in the HoF.

[DigitalSin]

Another interesting idea would be to give them something like "Reborn in Fire", something along the lines of turning it into a younger, more powerful mage for a moderate cost.