How to Play the Abysian Race?

[Joe Backwards]

Someone write hints for this! Please? Hints on how to play Abysians... Us newbies would really appreciate hints on how to play the different races. I'm personally interested in Abysia. Or is there a guide someplace I'm missing?

What's an ideal army? What commanders do you put with each troops? What Pretender seems best fitted to Abysia? What are Abysia's strengths and weaknesses vs. other races? Help!

[Endoperez]

Humanbreds should only be used when you need lots of fire resistant troops but haven't researched Fire Fend at Ecnhantment level, umm, 5. (The Grimoire is great help!)
True-blooded abysians are much, much better.

Great spells to look for are Phoenix Power and Summer Lions at Conjuration and many spells at Evocation. Also, if you can research Alteration for Phoenix Pyre.
Your mages have good hitpoints, so you can put them forth. And you should, because they have hard time hitting anything... Incinerate is a great spell if you fight against small elite armies, and if your enemy uses big fodder armies your mages can hit something. Also, with Flame Eruption researched your mages are awesome even in close combat.
And use Slayers those Slayers! Some good items you might want to give to them are: Sceptre of Authority or dragon helmet (both shoots fire bolts) for beginning and those nasty staves casting Incinerate and Fireball later if you have the gems and/ or Dwarven Hammers. Other good items are those two Contracts, other gives imps in battle and other free Devils for your armies.
In short: research Conjuration and Summer lions for stronger armies, Evocation for more firepower ( ) to help your armies and Construction for goodies. Alteration is optional, but there are some spells that really help you out. If you are playing against humans you need protecting Domes, and for that research Enchantment. Also, if you for some reason want to use Astral magic of your Warlocks research Thaumaturgy. One of the reasons for that would be a SC with not-so-good magic resistance.

Propably osmeone else has posted something better by now, but anyway, here you go...

[Truper]

Well, as always, there are no perfect answers to these sorts of questions in Dominions. Style enters, as does people's differing estimations of what is optimal. But here are some tips on the way I like to play Abysia:

First off, the most obvious strength of the race is that the troops are all fire-immune, and many of them have a heat-aura. So fire magic is going to be of interest - you can bLast away without fear of friendly-fire losses. Which is a very good thing, as Abysian mages are notoriously imprecise. Its worth noting that declaring a mage your prophet increases his precision noticeably. So I like to buy an Anathement Dragon on turn 1, and make him my prophet on turn 2. On turn 3, he leads out the 1st army.

Something that I like about Abysia is that the troops don't really require a lot of subtlety They're all fairly well protected, well armed, and skilled. Just put 'em all in a big mass up front. Place your Anathement prophet somewhat behind them, with a script of Divine Blessing, Flare (which you have pre-researched as Abysia), Smite (because as well as being imprecise Abysian mages are also heavily encumbered, and Flare is a high fatigue spell), Fanaticism, Fanaticism.

I like the Abysian Infantry with morningstars as the core of my armies. They have shields, heat-auras, and deal out good damage. They are also 30 resources apiece, which means they are hard to produce en-masse, so I also buy Humanbred to help make up the numbers. I like the ones with spears. Lava Warriors are wonderful troops, although both gold and resource intensive. I do try to add them to the army mix, and they are the reason I like to have a Divine Blessing in my Anathement's script.

As for a pretender, I personally like the Lord of the Desert Sun. He's fire-immune, comes with both fire and nature magic, and gets free Great Lions at the start of battle. He has fairly high inherent precision, and nature magic allows him to cast Eagle Eyes, boosing that precision up to a really accurate level. I use him as a combat support mage rather than as a supercombattant, but later on he's big enough and has enough skills and item slots that you can turn him into an SC if you feel the need.

Here's how I like to design him: 4 fire (decent bless effect on the Lava Warriors) 3 nature (I'd go higher, but I don't want my sacred mages berserking). 1 order, 2 prod, 3 heat, 3 luck, 1 growth, 1 magic. You can deifinately adjust these scales to taste, but I *enjoy* luck, so I like 3, and I find Abysia needs resources almost more than gold, so prod is higher than order (and order also conflicts with luck).

My 1st research goal is Alteration 1, for Eagle Eyes for my pretender. Once I have it, he joins the main army, set somewhat back and off to the side (to prevent burning up those free lions for as long as possible). He casts Eagle Eyes, Flare, Flare, Flare, Flare.

Your starting scout is an assassin. Don't ignore the possibility of using him to take provinces. If an indie province is left without leaders, all the troops rout if the province is attacked. In fact, I like to spend turn 1 forging a Fire Sword for my assassin. While I'm not sure its worth it, it does seem to give him just that little edge that means he is sucsessful in his first assassination attempts more often than not. So I send him out on turn 2, fire sword in hand, and let him start killing indie commanders in whatever province I think my army would get to Last. Have him keep assassinating until you don't get a message for him - that means he's killed all the commanders, and then you can order him to attack the province, and watch in glee as all the troops run away from your solitary assassin.

I realize I've gone on at some length, and I haven't even gotten into Blood magic, Warloks, and other later-game stuff - maybe next time

Hope this was helpful.

[Yossar]

There's also blood magic, of course. If you choose to use it that's where most of your flying troops will come from. Demonbreds can use Summon devil at blood 3 and you get Horde from Hell at Blood 5. You can use scouts to collect blood slaves and to hold them in battle so they don't burn up.

[Tuna-Fish]

IMHO (In My Holy Opinion )
Base abysia is the best blood nation. Take a good combat pretender (that wont be fried by your +3 heat dominion in combat = is heat resistant) and use him and a couple of abysians to initially carve yourself a nice kingdom. Then start blood hunting asap.

For blood hunting I prefer the "enviromentalist way", that is, not emptying provinces. To get this, use growth +3, hunt with 2 or 3 of the abysian cheapest blood mages per province and set taxes to 0 when hunting. Best provinces to hunt are the ones with most population = high population not only means that blood hunting has better results, but the growth also replenishes population faster. Research construction-4 asap and forge sanguine dousing rods for all slave hunters. Remember that high dominion is good for eliminating unrest, so some preaching/temples at your slave hunt sites could also be a good idea. Only patrol provinces when you have to, because patrolling kills off population much faster than slave hunting. Start by ferrying slaves home with scouts, but when you get more cash build labs at hunt sites to speed it up. This way you can build a decent blood income that will not vanish over time.

What to do with all that blood then?
3 choises.

1st, turn them directly into devils (blood magic 3 or something), pack them with demonbreds and send them to battle.

2nd, use good blood mages to cast hordes from hell (blood-5 iirc) and use them to take over territory.

3rd, use a pretender with earth-3 and blood-4, forge a dwarven hammer and the item that gives 1 blood magic and give them both to him. Then use him to forge soul contracts (it's the more expensive one, 80 whopping blood slaves, or 60 with the hammer) Give all produced contracts to scouts (only 1/scout to reduce losses to horror attacks). Every soul contract produces a devil every season, at first the production is low, but when you reach 10 contracts you start to get rather many devils every turn. Couple them with demonbreds and send them to the front. if you ever reach 35 contracts, that basically means 1 very powerful (almost) upkeepless army every turn.

random abysian notes:
1: make demonbred as your prophet. This way it flies and moves a lot quicker than normal abysians would, and is still able to cast fanacitism.

2: if indie strenght is very high, use slayers to take the most well defended provinces, it's cheaper. (after you have slain every commander, all the troops will flee even if the province is attacked by a sole slayer)

3: Normal abysian soldiers are better than the stats show, because the heat radiance will seriously harm any troops trying to hit them. In early game mix them with humanbreds to get the best effects.

4. Abysians have no natural archers, but can very easily cast the spell "flaming arrows" that makes even shortbows very effective. Put a castle up in a resource-rich archer-province, and augment your armies with them. Remeber to keep them separate from abysians on the battlefield!

5. Abysians have very good priests, always have one just casting fanacitism in a battle to kee your units from routing.

6. Abysians have abysmal precision , this makes firebaals and such rather ineffective on the battlefield, especially if the mage casting them is on the very rear of the map. Flares and fireballs do have uses, but in most cases the cash spent on the mages casting them would have done better in troops.

7. Abysians are immune to fire, so when using only abysian troops you can use some damn effective fire spells without fear of friendly fire . Fire storm and flame storm jump to mind...

8. Salamanders (not the mage, the beast) suck. Really. Especially if you do blood, money is your prime concern, and salamanders suck any coffers empty in no time. Just dont use them.

When you make a Demonbred your prophet, he also turns into a full fledged demon. Just FYI.

[Teraswaerto]

Spells like Fireball are accurate enough if the mages are positioned close to the front line, though there is a slight danger that they'll get hit by arrows. Also, when positioned close to the front line, the mages can cast Flame Eruption once evocation 6 is researched for some major damage. In one SP game against 3 AIs that Lasted 50ish turns I had 4 Anathemant Dragons in the HoF with over 600 kills each.

[ March 13, 2004, 19:09: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

[tinkthank]

These are all great tips and advice, and I wont repeat this. Odd however because these are not the first things that pop into my head about Abysia, which I like to play. But that's the great thing about DomII.
Obviously, Abysia is a fire race, but I dont play it with strong fire casting. I love its Astral, and its blood.
I often go with an Oracle, a Divine Glyph, or a Phoenix or a Virtue. (On the virtue I slap a fire ring on round 1.) I want Air 4 on my pretender for the bless effect, and I want to be able to forge +air items in case I get a random on my warlocks, which I get a lot of asap, and to forge a staff of storms. Staff of storms is key for me. Abysia doesnt use projectile weapons, and I try to make sure my enemies cant either. Keep those storms coming. So I invest in Construction quite a bit too. Construction will also get you those contracts (btw: its a blood 5 req for Soul Contract, which you get at Constuct 2).
Thaumaturgy is key for me too. I prefer Communion to Sabath master/slave. I love warlocks for mind burn, then soul slay, paralyze, and then later of course mind control. And the most important for me: Gateway. Notice how Abysias great troops are so damn slow? I hate toting them around, so I gateway them with my warlocks.
I like Blood for Send Horrors, which is great. Thats almost about all I use it for, with the occasional summon Storm Demon, Succubus, and Horde. I dont care for the rest of the summons as much as other people do, but thats a style thing again. Do what you like.
Then I invest in some conjuration and some evocation as time permits. Enchantment and Alteration as time permits.
Well thats just a few quick tips from my perspective, which is of course very different from what other like (and what they said here is all good, true stuff), and hopefully different from yours too. Enjoy!

[SelfishGene]

Salamanders rock at times. They killed my trample 20+ prot, trample, 34+ regen, Earth Mother in a PBeM. I would have crushed the Abysian army easily had not their large armor piercing attack ripped right into my Pretender and killed her in about two turns of combat.

[ March 13, 2004, 20:46: Message edited by: SelfishGene ]

[tinkthank]

Yes.
Their upkeep is a real issue however. Thanks to Wauthan (praise be to him), I have made a mini-mod with his help which makes Salamanders a bit more expensive but sacred. I think it is a nice balance. Their upkeep is then tolerable, and it makes for a more varied army.