AAR: EA Alchera (from Tourmaline)

[the Vanishag]

I promised rdonj that I'd do this a long time ago. Possibly even before things started going downhill for me. I definitely waited too long to write this, but I'm going to put in everything I can remember. I apologize in any resulting errrors. This is also going to be the closest thing to a strategy guide for EA Alchera that I'm going to get done anytime soon.

I started with the Kupe Tohaitou pretender, and I think he's balanced: Water 2, Air 2, Nature 2 base makes it easy to give him several high magic scores / blesses, though I think that only the water bless is particularly helpful for Alchera's recruit able sacreds. High-level summonable sacreds might benefit from a regen bless, but the Yowie and the Rainbow Serpent are better casters than SCs. That's one of Alchera's weaknesses: a lot of EA nations have high-HP units, but they're stuck with human HP (I did up the Dreamhunter's HP, to help balance him against EA recruitable thugs).

I took a w9/a9 bless, and the Air was (as Trumanator and other players suggested) a waste. Alchera's sacreds are etherial and have good Def., so air shield is mostly redundant. I'd thought to use their any-city sacreds (who have a very weak attack) to screen more vulnerable units, but that scenario never really played out. Mainly, I took the Air bless for the 75% shock resistance, intending to combine it with Wrath of Tawhiri (Storm + Random Lightning + kills caster), but the Alchera don't have enough HP for 75% shock resistance to be enough. I may yet give their sacreds 25% shock resist in order to enable this strategy. I didn't research Wrath of Tawhiri in time for it to help me, but a few experiments with Shock Wave convinced me that 75% resistance meant that my blessed units still died in one hit most of the time.

Looking over the other mod nations before the start of the game, I almost despaired. Almost all of them had magic-weapon wielding basic units. Some had magic attacks on almost all of their units, completely negating the advantage of my etherial troops. I started fast out the gate – my sacreds did just fine against independents, and my regular troops, mainly Possum Warriors supported by Alchera's superior Maohi Javelineers, were also quite effective. I almost cheered when I discovered that I shared a border with the Ogres.

Why? Because they were the only (or almost-only) faction in Tourmaline game without magic weapons. Plus, they had lots of HP and Strength but only so-so Attack. My Dreamtime Warriors would destroy them – I hoped. The short version: against basic Bulls or comparable numbers of more powerful Ogres, I would win with few casualties. If I was outnumbered, I'd get slaughtered. And that was with my capital-only Dreamtime Warriors. My lesser sacreds couldn't penetrate their armor. Mawtribe Ogres were a different problem: they lacked armor, but it took about four good hits to kill these sacred, regenerating berserkers, not counting the aforementioned regeneration.

I made a crucial mistake at this point in the game: I spent a lot of my accumulated gold on province defense: a Def of about 30 would take out a few Mawtribes before succumbing, wearing statttis's stacks down and helping my achieve the roughly-equal numbers of sacreds I needed to win. But the math didn't work: for some reason, I had it in my head that the new threat had to be a capital-only sacred. It took me a few turns to get around to checking and seeing that they were summoned a dozen at a time with a 3rd Level Blood magic spell. I then used up my gem supply to equip my Dreamhunter assassins so I could go after his Butchers (blood hunters) and dry up the supply. The results were mixed: Dreamhunters are powerful assassins, but the Tourmaline version suffered (intentionally) from old age, which stripped out too much of their initial power. Also, their strength was low (12 or 13, then take one or two off for old age), so a single Earth Meld could leave them helpless for several rounds.

In other mistakes, I spent up my nature gems and plenty of mage-turns summoning Maeros (immortal chaff), then carelessly sent them into their first battle outside my dominion and lost them all.

It wasn't all disasters, however: I sent my best-equipped Hunter to statttis's capital, leading to my greatest coup-counting of the game: I assassinated his pretender (Fountatin of Blood). Twice.

I think those assassinations made my offer of peace attractive, because my now-depleted coffers of gold and gems were telling me something: I might be able to cripple the Ogres, but I couldn't beat them.

It was at about this point that Arga Dis went under. Stygia began encroaching on the Ogres from the West, and the Tomb Kings swept in from the NW. For a moment it looked like Alugra would descend from the north, but he was, apparently occupied elsewhere. Trumanator's Tomb Lords advance was a mix of high-MR undead units “Avatar” SCs, equipped with AoE weapons (Flame Whip, etc.). I had a lot of Elders, and, unlike Banish, Solar Rays does damage to undead regardless of MR (smaller AoE and AP instead of AN, but hey...). The Avatars were the real problem: sometimes combined with fireball-casting magicians, revealed the achilies heel of my sacreds: good Def & MR + etherial against AoE spells and attacks = toast.

With nothing else ready, I threw my sacreds into the breach, and they got ground into kibble.

I threw all of my research into Thaumatury, and before I was ousted, I took out several Avatars with spammed Soul Slay. That was my only revenge upon Trumanator, because I never came up with a counter to his next wave: 20+ necromancers spamming undead, plus the aforementioned fire mages (mostly casting bane fire now – I was by this point fatally behind on research).

Alchera has a lot of mage-priests, and I was able to hold about even against his skele-spam, but Solar Rays inevitably targeted the skele-spam, and Soul Slay wasn't effective against this many high-MR targets. My mages died in fire, became unconscious from fatigue or fled. I had tried assassinating his mages, but my Dreamhunters killed about two skele-spam per round, to the five/round conjured by the target, so they were overwhelmed and killed. If I had had the gems and foresight to equip them with dual frostbrands, maybe things would have been different.

Beset by Stygia as well as Desert, the Ogres went under before I did, but I was driven back into the SW corner of the map, and mostly trapped in besieged citadels. I hung on for some time after losing my capital, somehow, aided by the ability to evacuate my stealthy mages and handfuls of sacreds. My last hope was Summon Yarama Ya-who: I had enough pearls for a few castings and a Elder with enough astral to cast this spell, once I researched it. I attempted to break the siege with 20-30 Yarama Ya-who, but most of them were starving by this point, and they routed before I could tell if I really had a chance. Probably not.

I've made a lot of tweaks to Alchera for the “2.0” version, and anytime someone wants to run another “Tourmaline,” I'm in (for one thing, I shied away from communions this time around... Alchera lacks cheap communion slaves, but a Rainbow Serpent-led communion could accomplish terrifying things).

[Trumanator]

Nice AAR! Actually the main reason I switched to skelly spam was because you'd managed to kill all my regular troops, and once I realized how effective it was I didn't build anymore at all. As for evoc, my main spell for the most part ended up being cloud of death since it had such a great aoe and damage output. Mostly your guys just got overwhelmed by skelly spam though.

As far as your sacreds went, they really scared the **** out of me at first, but they went down well enough to skelly spam since they had fatigue. I really think that it would have been better for you to go F9W9 if you wanted a double bless, or maybe just W9E?

[rdonj]

Nice! I have been waiting for this for a very, very long time. Nice to finally hear some of what was going on down there. It does sound like you did make a few mistakes, but I bet you never make them again . I think your problems with the ogres were probably twofold. On one hand, your sacreds have high encumbrance coupled with the w9 quickness, so they quickly build up fatigue to be easily crittable. Secondly, while the ogres don't have magic weapons, they do almost all have multiple attacks, which helps make up a bit for the ethereality... when you consider that dreamtime warriors are also very lightly armored, it makes for very easy kills when the high strength ogres finally manage to connect. The ogres are a very brutal opponent in the early game, especially with all the nice buffs they can put on their units right from the get go. Probably your best bet against them would have been to do what llamabeast did in warhammerama - research up evocation and spam stellar cascades. There's not a whole lot the ogres can do to fight heavy stellar cascades spam, and with an astral-heavy nation that is a very good option for fighting them. Another idea might have been to hit his blood hunting provinces with unrest spells, to try to deny him the use of his mawtribe ogres.

Unfortunately after your grueling war with the ogres (believe me I know the feeling, I had a very similar experience against them myself) you really never had a chance against nehekara... iirc at the time you guys went to war he was the most well-researched nation in the game, and a real world power, whereas your research at the time was hurting pretty badly from an extended war against an implacable foe. You did quite well though, smashing his armies. That war cost him the research lead, and significantly reduced his potential to achieve victory in the game. And I salute you for taking out his avatars. Not an easy task when so far behind on the research front. I'm not sure you had any better options than the one you took to fighting them.

By the way, I don't know that dual frost brands would have been the best idea. Remember that undead are 100% cold resistant, so the aoe attack from them would be wasted on skele-spam.


Another Tourmaline in the future is a possibility. Currently Baalz is running Blood Red, which is pretty similar but does have some normal nations as well. If I do start another one I'll make sure to let you know. And be more careful about mods I let in By the way, wrath of tawhiri. Is that supposed to be a battlefield enchantment, or a one time deal? Also, I support adding a little shock resist to alcheran sacreds.

[BandarLover]

Isn't Alchera an EA nation? And you were going up against MA nations? Sounds like you held your own quite well to me.

Maybe next game you can try out your MA version of Alchera, the name of which escapes me.

[Squirrelloid]

There's this tendency in mod nations to make magic weapons too readily available. Itza is by far the worst offender (do they have a melee unit that *doesn't* have magic weapons?).

IMO, i'd remove magic weapons from almost all troops of most mod nations. Any nation which has more than a single cap-only troop with magic weapons probably has too many. Ethereal is supposed to be an advantage, after all.

[llamabeast]

There's this tendency in mod nations to make magic weapons too readily available. Itza is by far the worst offender (do they have a melee unit that *doesn't* have magic weapons?).

Do any others do that? That's a feature of Itza, not an accident.

[Frozen Lama]

can we say Caelum? even pd has magic weapons.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Frozen Lama

can we say Caelum? even pd has magic weapons.

Sure, but Caelum's units actually suck. =P

Itza has a lot of things which make them kind of crazy. Magic weapons on everything is just one of them (and their melee units look like they're pretty good too).

[rdonj]

Sure they do. Skinks lack any form of magic weapon

I am having trouble of thinking of other nations in tourmaline that had them. I don't think stygia did, alugra had them but I think only on gamblers throwing weapons, haida gwaii I'm not sure... skaven censor bearers don't have magic weapons, but they do have an effect that'll hit ethereal things. Arga dis doesn't have magic weapons iirc, and the ogres don't. Of course, everyone can have magic weapons if they take a fire bless.

[the Vanishag]

Thanks, everyone. I need to get going on the art for MA Aotearoa (MA ALchera, but Aoteacroa is a Mmori word, reflecting how the MA version is Maori-dominant: LA Alchera will be mostly Australian Aboriginal in character),

Right about the frostbrands, rdonj. Wasn't thinking that one through. Wrath of Tawhiri is (supposed to be) a battlefield enchantment.

Another thought: I might give Dreamwalkers (Alchera's everywhere-sacred) a harder-hitting attack but make it a phantasmal weapon (e.g., MR negates)