Abysya Help Request.

[Cohen]

I'd like a lot Abysya, default theme.
But I'm not able to play them in a winning manner.

I explain there my problems:

They've expensive HI, 20 gold and about 30 Resources (I know they've superior stats but they're slow, very slow and cumbersome, even if they've a superior strenght they get exausthed soon), and this means that even with Productivity 3 (and you're forced to take Prod 3 unless you don't want to have even less money and to produce almost nothing) you can recruit a few of them/turn. And they're not so superior in taking out Indies, and are common sword fodder for mid-late game ... mmm not very common due to their cost.
Humanbred Militia are useless since they got arrowed and escape even before reaching the enemy.

So I've big expences to buy troops to conquer indies, with a not so successful gain if I compare what can a MI/Xbow Marignon or HI Ulm can do.

Another real problem is the research/blood hunt.
Default Abysya can recruit blood hunters only in Capitol. Abysya can recruit effective researchers only in capitol, since the Anthemats (useful to aid conquering indies, but if you buy them you don't research and/or blood hunt) are very costy for their research income.
Even taking Magic3 you find out-researched when you send a fair amount of Warlock Apprentices to blood hunt. And your researchers aren't sacred (right) so they cost a lot of Unkeep that slow down you more. But Abysya should rely on blood heavily...

Someone told me to use Assassins to take out Indies, but this could work only in maps with chokepoints, and this is a slow way, not very secure, and research penalizing, to take out indies.

Your pretender have to take a good admin castle, to build troops.
You have 120 points from heat scale, but its difficult even with desert sun to have in all provinces Heat 3 (well I have in some games provinces with dominion 8-10 and Heat 1 or 2 ... capitol included in 1 ... and this means 5% or 10% income less!)

The heat aura of the troops isn't a thing you can count on ... rarely I've seen enemy troops set afire by that stuff.
You can't really play on bless effect ... the Lava Warriors are nice, but resource expensive, capitol only, easily arrowable. If you go for battle mages Anthemaths, you can try an earth or air bless ... but usually it doesn't worth the pretender cost.


So on ... who can explain me how to play properly default Abysya.
I've tried many pretenders but all of them not worked very well (I've to retest Virtue however, since in the game I used her even if she killed a Divine Emperor soon she got diseased on turn 6 or 7 around ... crippling her definitively)