EA Arco - uncle moneybags

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Under CBM Cyclops is 125 points, and needs awe to safely expand early. That is 295 points more than the lord of rebirth.

An E9 cyclops does not need awe to expand turn 2. Try it before you claim it doesn't work.

That said, i think awake SCs are the single worst use of points in an MP game. They rarely help cover holes a nation has, and they do little or nothing to set you up for the end-game or even mid-game. And killing a single unit really isn't that hard by early midgame, which means your SC pretender gets relegated to lab duty where he's not very good.

Also, doing really well early tends to get you ganked by experienced players.

So unless you absolutely need the awake SC to cover a really weak expansion game, I'd go with something else. Something that will retain utility all game long, or at least most of it. Burning 150pts for the privilege of awake + points for the chassis + dominion necessary is a lot to pay for a pretender whose job is basically done by the end of year 1, mid year 2 at the latest.

[rdonj]

Originally Posted by aaminoff

I have lost an embarrassing number of Oreiads in my current MP game. (This is the one where I'm using a Virtue Dom10 pretender). Here are some of the ways:

I tried to be cute and combine a shock resist item (or was it Resist Elements?), Ironskin, and Resist Lighting. Somehow the math worked out that I was only 75% shock resistant. This was when I learned that resistance is a % chance to avoid the attack entirely rather than damage reduction. So eventually she killed herself with a shock wave.

Fatigue was occasionally a problem. I really don't understand why she persisted in swinging her frost brand instead of using shockwave when only at 60 or so fatigue.

Ulm's PD and troops are just that good. High enough morale, attack skill, and strength to produce enough 1-pt hits that mistform pops on a 1% per hit chance. This is probably the most common failure mode.

forgetting to script correctly or at all

trying to seduce, failing, losing the assassination battle. Once it was skellyspam, another time I was facing something really big.

As I am thinking back, I just realized something. I was scripting stoneskin, mistform, strength of gaia. The point of Str of Gaia being +nature and +regen. However, does the barkskin effect of Str of Gaia over-ride stoneskin? I don't think I have a recent battle to view to check this. Argh.

All in all, the thing about Oreiad thugs is that they are fiddly. My first ever MP game I was Helheim. I put firebrands & golden shields on Vanjarls and CTd them all over, and I was amazed at how well it worked. Whereas Oreiads I have managed to screw up in multiple ways. So I think an experienced player can make Oreiad thugs work, but newbs should think twice. Also, Vanjarls are recruit anywhere, and cheaper than Oreiads.

They are building up too much fatigue. Try to keep it down to more manageable levels like the 10-20 range or the mistform becomes a LOT easier to pop. If you start getting much past 40, you become ridiculously vulnerable to critical strikes making it only a matter of time before something goes wrong. Also what does the gear look like? How much +reinvig do they have? What sort of shield? Vine or eye shields are probably your best bet. And eye shields should work extremely well on ulm.

Skelly spam *will* eat oreiads alive, though. They will never be able to kill all the skeletons, so they'll never kill the death mage. At best this means a rout.

[Baalz]

[quote=rdonj;750639]

Originally Posted by aaminoff

Skelly spam *will* eat oreiads alive, though. They will never be able to kill all the skeletons, so they'll never kill the death mage. At best this means a rout.

Nah, you can eat them up just fine if you're prepared for it.

Option 1: vine shield + fire brand + thug gear/script and you can chew through skellies all day long until the enemy mage passes out. You just can't count on your awe obviously.

Option 2: Earth boots/random. Summon earth elemental. That's a 1 gem (2 gems if your mage is level 2E) earth attack that'll squishify a fairly arbitrary amount of skellies.

Option 3: No equipment summon air elemental. This one is a bit riskier but can certainly be plenty effective depending on who you're attacking.

Option 4: (depending on your opponent) use some blockers then spells that don't effect undead. Swarm, poison cloud, poison cloud. By the time the undead

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

aaminoff is right in one thing. %reduction vs. %avoid should be really easy to tell. In particular, %reduction would show up small amounts of lightning damage every time you were in the AoE, but %avoid would show no damage most of the time and then *bam* lots of damage.

I just played around with this a little with Eagle Kings modded to 75% SR. They seemed to take more damage than I would expect with 75% resistance, but they also had fatigue most of the time. More importantly, I never saw one in the AoE not take some damage.

I'm sticking with the assumption that resistances are %reduction not %avoid.

[chrispedersen]

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

An E9 cyclops does not need awe to expand turn 2. Try it before you claim it doesn't work.

I have tried it - many times. Teach your mom to suck eggs =P.
There are a *lot* of indies that will gank a cyclops. Ichies, bandits, crossbows, cav, nightmares, awakened vines, air masters, mandragora.... to name a few.

[Verjigorm]

I've tried the standard SC's. The Cyclops is a weak choice for EA Arcoscephale. They already have significant earth power and Earth mages do not stand in as much need of an Earth blessing.

Cyclops' paths cost too much to make him useful in diversifying magic, and even if you still want the Earth blessing, you can take the Master Druid and get a dual bless with nature cheaper than you ever could with the Cyclops and he allows better magical diversity, even though you don't really need it for anything besides Death which you could do nicely using the Lord of Rebirth who, in CBM, will provide you with an excellent additional gem supply in exchange for the points and costs slightly less. In Vanilla, I doubt he's worth the 125 cost.

I prefer Immortals (especially Phoenix for early expansion), Rainbows (for site searches and easy access to all paths), and Big Astral--I found that a Sphinx with Death magic like this one (CBM) can make for interesting late game strategies.

Sphinx (Body 159, 500 hits)
Magic: Earth 6 Astral 10 Death 6
Dominion 5
Scales: Order 3 Sloth 2
Imprisoned

You want Thaum-8 or better by the time he escapes so he can teleport.

Stygian Paths to your enemies capitol and supply him with gems. He just casts a lot of Thaumaturgy spells:

Master Enslave
Undead Mastery
Soul Drain
Wither Bones
Burden of Time (if you plan to go with this strategy, of course, you'd want to take neutral or production scales, magic 1 or 3 and not get too many Philosophers, and I've never tried using BoT with Arco, but Orieads are relatively resistant to BoT)

You also get Charm on your Orieads which is one of the things they're great for, and access to the very useful Gale Gate, Imprint Souls, etc...

[Verjigorm]

Taking a step costs 15 death gems and 250 gold if you have to build a lab, but the Sphinx is definitely not easy to destroy especially in its own dominion.

Parking it inside a castle is a most excellent defense. Bing! 30 million tons of Astral Malevolence is now guarding your province... and no one can see it until they break down the doors and find their souls ripped out by a massive stone God.

There is one thing you should avoid, however...

The Sphinx cannot tear down a castle wall by itself, nor can it build a lab in a province with a castle. Therefore, if you teleport the Sphinx onto a castle, you need to be sure that the army that it brings along with it can tear down that castle AND storm it successfully as the Sphinx itself cannot do either of these things. Your best bet is to park the Sphinx in a province adjacent to the target castle and then use Gateway to transport in troops to siege and conquer the castle.

There are so many nifty things to do with the Sphinx in EA Arco.... I have played a bit, but haven't fully explored it's awesomeness. One thing is sure, though, I don't take the fountain anymore--The only immobile I select is the Sphinx. I have tried the Statue, and she's quite nice, but not as nice as interesting as Sphinxy. Teleporting the fountain into battle is very dangerous. It says the fountain is difficult to destroy in the description, but it's not that tough and it can't run away.

I've never encountered the "50-turn rout" problem with Sphinx... Not sure what happens, but I bet it's not good on the offense. Fortunately, his offensive movements are few and far between since he usually attacks opportunistically and then defends his landing spot from whatever might come there. If you can predict the path of your opponent's march (bridge provinces) you can set dastardly traps.

Sphinx is my favorite Late Game Astral pretender. Indestructible lovliness.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

I have tried it - many times. Teach your mom to suck eggs =P.
There are a *lot* of indies that will gank a cyclops. Ichies, bandits, crossbows, cav, nightmares, awakened vines, air masters, mandragora.... to name a few.

Almost all of which you'll see coming. (The small numbers of crossbows or HC that occasionally avoid showing up in scout reports won't end you). And most of which are rare. Are there even crossbow indies in the EA? I mean, most awake SCs have things they can't handle, just don't attack those things.

And those air masters will end just about any standard expansion party or SC. So dying to them is kind of par for the course.

[chrispedersen]

Sure squirrel. But not only do you get awe with dom9, you get much better hitpoints -and therefore MUCH lower chance of a crippling affliction which ends your usage as an SC.

Anyway, we agree he isn't worth the points.

Verji, I don't think in MP play people are going to allow you to get away with an imprisoned pretender. Arco tends to get jumped...

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by chrispedersen

Verji, I don't think in MP play people are going to allow you to get away with an imprisoned pretender. Arco tends to get jumped...

I honestly don't understand this emphasis on pretenders to defend against rushes. I defend rushes with national mages and troops all the time. Now, my EA Arco experience is pretty limited, but you have earth magic and good research, it can't possibly be that bad.

You know, i think i feel a general strategy post coming on...