Eriu guide

[Bwaha]

oops

[Epaminondas]

Originally Posted by Zeldor

Yes, retreting PD can force whole army to retreat.

That sucks ***.

How often does this occur?

[Lingchih]

Originally Posted by Baalz

All I know is it was a lot of arrows. Yeah, I'll do several things differently if I do this one again. My assertion was really about unafflicted and fully equipped Sidhe Lords, I figured out pretty quick that the lack of a vine shield greatly reduced their survivability because the hits rack up faster than the regen can balance. So much so that I stopped sending them out without them despite the fact I was sitting on a bunch of frost brands and unused Sidhe Lords (well, they were pitifully researching). As I said, I found that this build has exactly what it needs and no more. Remove vine shield, they die. Remove regen, they die. Remove frost brand (or some other AOE weapon) they'll often end up retreating. Remove mistform, they die. Remove barkskin, they die against some PDs- though this can be necessary if you need 100% FR. Put it all together though while stealthily dancing around the real defenders and you'll cause much teeth gnashing while only being out a couple hundred gold and a handful of gems when you miscalculate.

So, what you are saying in effect, is, Eriu really does suck?

[JimMorrison]

Originally Posted by Epaminondas

That sucks ***.

How often does this occur?

It's because of the 75% HP rule. If 3/4 of all HP worth of units are killed or routed, your "lines break", and the rest autoroute.

[HoneyBadger]

If I might point out a certain...thing...that struck me, reading this-what if you sent out all those Sidhe lords you're sitting on, en masse? Surely numbers would compensate for lack of a vine shield, until such time as you can rectify the omission?

[Baalz]

Yes, in a desperation situation you can certainly send out Sidhe with just their base equipment and after they buff they'll do ok, but there's a big difference between having a 99% chance and having a 90% chance. The properly equipped guy is almost infinitely reusable unless you hit a mage supported defense, while the lightly equipped guy will probably take out a couple provinces but he'll very likely pick up an affliction here or there and shortly get one which makes him useless as a raider if he survives the fight. Also, your opponent can counter him with sufficient PD whereas the vine shield guy can take pretty much an unlimited amount of PD. Plus, lets be honest, you're not really gonna rectify the omission, that's just something you tell him. There's always another Sidhe popping out the castle to give the vine shield you just made to.

[HoneyBadger]

I didn't mean to send them out one at a time, though. I meant instead of lining up 9 of them that you don't have equipment for, sending those 9 guys out in a group, let them chew up some territory, and then whichever of them gets the most experience/nicest heroic ability, or just fails to lose an eye, send a scout or something out to give that one the proper equipment, as you make it.

At the very least, that way you're doing some decentralization of your power base, since you've got a pretty powerful force roaming out there that, if your perfectly equipped Sidhe run into problems, or you get an unexpected threat attacking you, you can draw from that pool.

Does that make sense?

I'm always using scouts as couriers to equip a Niefel Jarl or a Prophet or something, that I've used to expand with, before I was able to forge a ring of regeneration or a frost brand, or whatever. And in any case, wouldn't Eriu eventually be aiming for Fairy Queens to get some healing going for those afflicted Sidhe?

[Starshine_Monarch]

As I've been looking at Eriu for a bit, I'm bumping this thread from who knows how many pages back.

Aside from the necessary blessing Baalz talked about, I was wondering if there were any suggested pretender designs to work with, particularly in the area of scales.

I'm mostly working with CBM, so my observations will be biased in that direction, but here's what I've gathered as far as scales are concerned. Note these are really just my uneducated observations with only a little play time to really back up anything here:

Order/Turmoil: What you take here obviously influences your choice of Luck scale. With what Eriu seems to need, signs seem to point towards Order for more reliable income in order to put up forts to recruit Shide Lords from as well as giving us more money to bring more Fir Bolg troops to the table.

However, since we also want Gems, we have room to think about Turmoil/Luck. Turmoil/Luck also gives us a good number of extra Gold events which might make up for the lower steady income, but depending on your own luck, it might not. Since Misfortune is likely a bad idea anyway, Turmoil/Luck will also save you some Design Points that you can put to use elsewhere. Personally, I tend to favor Order over Turmoil/Luck.

Production/Sloth: Fir Bolg don't need many resources, so Sloth is probably a good idea here.

Heat/Cold: You want to keep your income high, keep this as close to neutral as you can. Since the temperature tends to fluctuate anyway though, giving this a slight nudge one way or the other shouldn't kill you if you need the points.

Growth/Death: Baalz mentioned that since we lack access to some paths that would help us win in the late game, we need to be strong and aggressive in the early game. Should it come to the late game and we haven't already pretty much won, then we'd be in some trouble. Combine that with the fact that our troops and commanders pretty much never grow old anyway, this nudges us more in the direction of a Death scale. Don't overdo it though, as Death 3 is a pretty bad idea for anyone aside from LA Ermor. Death 1 or 2 should likely be tolerable for you and will get you some extra points.

Luck/Misfortune: I don't like Misfortune at all, especially if you're considering Death. Try to keep this neutral unless you're going for Turmoil/Luck. You really shouldn't be going further than Misfortune 1 if you're taking Order.

Magic/Drain: If you want that solid early game, you need to get your buffs and gear for your Shide Lords quicker. Magic 1 is likely all you need here.


Well that's all I have so far. I'd love it if someone might expand a bit more on that. Maybe suggest a few pretender designs, or explain if you think it can work a different way.

[Gregstrom]

Hmm. CBM favours Turmoil/Luck more than vanilla, however...

Order/Luck isn't an intuitive mix, but in CBM you can afford a Dom7 imprisoned E9N6 Forest Lord with O2S2H1D1L3M1. You get +events, +good events and you don't get Turmoil's income penalty.

[JimMorrison]

I really like O1/L3, with whatever else. I'd generally prefer to put the extra scale into Growth, rather than doing O2/L3. I just find that the "feel" of the balance between # events and baseline income, is optimized at O1. This is not a statistical analysis, just a gut feeling from observing many experiments with different combos.