Any Good Non-Bless Strategy Nations

[Sokar]

Hi everyone, I've beening playing this great game for about a week now, and browsed the boards a bit and saw a lot of bless strats and tried them out with a couple of nations. They are so good that they really turned me off. I'm wondering if there are any good nations that are non-bless based, as it seems that most nations work much better with a bless strat, even with horrible scales. I already tried MA Ulm, which sucked due to its lack of magic. Is there any other good non-bless nations? I usually play random large maps, with 4 AI or less, everything default, if that makes any difference. Also, is F9W9 the holy grail of bless combos? Thanks for your help.

[Teraswaerto]

MA Ulm is probably the weakest nation of the game.


A few that come to mind:

Pythium is good. Great national troops, powerful mages with Astral and Air, and easy access to communion.

C'tis (particularly EA) is also good. Cheap, powerful death mages recruitable everywhere, and slave lizards are great against indies.

They wont be able to defend against an early rush of heavily blessed Vanir, but no one can really.

[Ironhawk]

There are plenty of non-bless strat nations. Particularly in your game, with such large maps, bless strats are overall weaker anyway. Except that I guess you are playing AI which cant compensate for that at all.

Why dont you try a really strong magic nation and try that out? Play Arco, Caelum, Pythium, or even Tien Chi. All of them have very good magic and not very good sacreds. See how the game plays when you are dependent on your mages for domination.

[Epaminondas]

Teraswaerto said:
MA Ulm is probably the weakest nation of the game.


A few that come to mind:

Pythium is good. Great national troops, powerful mages with Astral and Air, and easy access to communion.

Agree with both points. Ulm truly is crap and is in need of more help than just about any other nation.

[Gandalf Parker]

Isnt bless-strategy best as a rush strategy? Small maps?
All the bless troops in the world wont be much good without the priests.
I would think that you could create an anti strategy around Mictlans titan/assassin god.

[alexti]

EA Ermor and Caelum are good nations for non-bless strategies and non-bless strategies are arguably better for them than bless ones.

[Meglobob]

LA Agartha is a good non-bless nation. Go for really good scales order 3, prod 3, luck 3. There massed crossbows behind heavy protection infantry backed with death/fire/earth/astral magic the nation has, makes for a powerful nation with lots of options. There national spell are excellent as well.

This nation is kind of like Ulm with heavy armoured units but backed with some serious magical power.

There only drawback is there slow movement but you can grind enemies to dust...

[PvK]

Hey, I like MA Ulm... but then, I like a challenge... and if you think MA Ulm stinks, you might not agree with my other opinions.

I agree with the previous two though, and would add that if you're trying to have fun against the AI, maybe just look for nations that look like you'd enjoy playing or trying their style, and focus on that.

PvK

[Sokar]

Thanks for the responses. I tried EA Tien Chi and EA Arco, I thought they had good bless troops, maybe you are talking about different era? I distinctly remember EA Arco having godly bless troops, or maybe I'm just off with my memory. And doesn't Tien Chi have good sacred summons? Anyways, I'll try C'Tis and Pythium.

Also, yeah, I don't play multi-player at all. I'm more of a single player person. I'v been playing mostly city builders, got bored and wanted to try something new. I'm Chinese so I like Tien Chi a lot, I like the Journey to the West summons, though I don't get why Sandy is a higher level summon than Pigsy. Pigsy should be higher! And where is my Monkey King!

[Shovah32]

Even the nations who work well with blesses can be fun without them, the added bonus is that by playing them you stop someone else bless-rushing you with them