Blood Hunting as MA Abyssia?

[Jazzepi]

Originally Posted by vfb

Blindness can be great early on against SC rushes. It's just Alt-2 and any of your non-cap mages can cast it, and I don't think FR helps. MR resists of course, but if you have 5 casters, one will probably get lucky. It's really short range so you need troops protecting your mages -- but you need the troops anyway to kill of the SC once its attack and def drops to zero.

I was gushing at Ballz about blindness early. I think it's one of those sleeper spells people just look over. 90% of even late game thugs/SCs can have huge problems when their attack, AND defense drop to 0. Makes it much easier for units to land critical strikes, and makes it much harder for that SC to drop units swarming it. It's nearly as good a paralyze, and every one of your mages can spam it easily.

Jazzepi

[Dragar]

nice thing is at level 2 you can just switch research to it if a need arises, no advance planning required. Of course that's just CBM, way harder in vanilla

[vfb]

Doh! Forgot the CBM disclaimer. Thanks, Dragar.

[FrankE62]

[quote=Baalz;682603]

Originally Posted by Dragar

I don't know that I agree with that. To be sure, I'm not for a second arguing that demonbred are not excellent units, nor that a reasonable person couldn't decide they're the way to go over warlocks for some situations, but I think warlocks are very, very useful early on and just get better as the game goes on. Now, I can't really argue with Micah's general plan of not recruiting them heavily until const-6 is researched, but if you bite the bullet and accept a couple losses from old age they contribute mightily from very early.

Consider where you're at around the end of the first year. Your heavy infantry is tough enough to ward off most threats, but there are a couple things you're vulnerable to if you don't have mage support.

I'd argue that demonbreds work even better in that situation. It's easy to have 9 or 10 Demonbreds and blood 3 researched by the end of the first year. So you have casters that can cast Summon Imps, Blood Boil, Agony and summon devils. With a bit more research, you'll have Hellfire if you think you need it. Facing an elephant rush? Vector in a dozen demonbred to chain cast summon imp and fatigue them out in your heat 3 dominion. Facing ethereal opponents, bloodboil will kill singes, hellfire can wipe out whole groups. Facing someone with Glamour troops? Agony has a nice big area of affect for a cheap damage spell that ignores armor/defense. Facing an early SC, I don't think there are any out there (early game) that could stand up to a swarm of 20 devils.

As someone mentioned earlier in this thread, the advantage of demonbreds is their versitility and movement. They can switch from blood hunting to researchers to combat mages to devil factory to raiding (with a couple of devils) as you need them. Warlocks can do a lot of those things too (sometimes better), but you can't mass them for combat nearly as fast since they'll probably be scattered doing blood hunting.

[Dragar]

There is something a bit messed up with the quoting there, those were Baalz's comments

I agree with the sentiment about demonbreds and the efficacy of the tactics you describe, but it isn't feasibly that achievable that quickly. Abysia isn't exactly a research powerhouse. Unless perhaps you have a high research rainbow awake and hitting the books straight away, with all of your demonbreds either blood hunting or casting blood spells, and even then..

20 devils = 140 blood and 20 casting turns. Summon imp costs a slave, and you won't be casting much hellfire/agony/bloodboil without a heap of slaves for fatigue. Remember also that demonbreds have awful precision, so a lot of these spells don't work well early when you are only fighting against small armies and have no way to boost precision. They are only really combat effective with the later blood spells, and in casting battlefield wide spells like blood lust and blood rain.

I believe that blood is the key for MA abysia in the mid game and onwards, but in the early game you need your mages researching and site searching a bit, and using non-blood casting in combat support. Thaumaturgy, evoc, constr all get a look in before I start on blood, which then becomes the driver. You will need to rely on your excellent infantry through the 1st year minimum unless you have to pull something out against an early SC or trample rush.

In terms of blood summons I don't think summoning devils is worth it, I only grab them through soul contracts. Even demon knights are a bit iffy for a mage's turn, you will be really struggling to keep up the research. Only the higher level blood summons are really worth it except in emergencies.

Efficiency is key for abysian mages, and to compete you have to maximise your mage turns, so:
- alchemising fire gems early if you need it to keep producing a good mage each turn
- soul contracts to build up some good troops without taking heaps of turns
- lanterns for efficient research
- SDRs for efficient blood hunting
- using indy commanders to ferry your infantry around to the front lines

The ideal is to find a nice indy site with good research mages, which can turn your game around, but that's complete luck and with your limited paths for site searching don't bet on it!

[FrankE62]

Originally Posted by Dragar

There is something a bit messed up with the quoting there, those were Baalz's comments

I agree with the sentiment about demonbreds and the efficacy of the tactics you describe, but it isn't feasibly that achievable that quickly. Abysia isn't exactly a research powerhouse. Unless perhaps you have a high research rainbow awake and hitting the books straight away, with all of your demonbreds either blood hunting or casting blood spells, and even then..

It's feasable to get Blood 3 by the end of the first year w/o a pretender, but yeah, you won't have any blood slaves in reserve because your mages will have spent the first year researching, not bloodhunting.

My perspective is somewhat biased by the pretender choices. I prefer either an awake enchantress or a dormant lich (either of them with at least 5 magic paths). I want to be able to leverage the late game blood summons to give me my magic diversity.

Originally Posted by Dragar

20 devils = 140 blood and 20 casting turns. Summon imp costs a slave, and you won't be casting much hellfire/agony/bloodboil without a heap of slaves for fatigue. Remember also that demonbreds have awful precision, so a lot of these spells don't work well early when you are only fighting against small armies and have no way to boost precision. They are only really combat effective with the later blood spells, and in casting battlefield wide spells like blood lust and blood rain.

6 demonbred blood hunting my first 3 captured provinces seem to average about 120 blood slaves by the end of the first hear. It admittedly comes at a heavy price in terms of gold income but it adds up to a nice reserve. I don't have to turn them into devils or use the slaves for combat magic but it's nice to know they're available if I need them. Converting those slaves into Devils would only take 2 turns. Also, demonbred, unlike warlocks, tend to start the fight with blood slaves because if I have to commit them to combat then they probably just flew over from their blood hunting province and have a load of slaves on them.

Originally Posted by Dragar

I believe that blood is the key for MA abysia in the mid game and onwards, but in the early game you need your mages researching and site searching a bit, and using non-blood casting in combat support.

If we were talking about EA Abysia, I'd agree with you but I'm not convinced that that's true in MA. I seem to be having the best results when I start my research with Blood 3 then Construction 4 (for SDRs).

Originally Posted by Dragar

In terms of blood summons I don't think summoning devils is worth it, I only grab them through soul contracts. Even demon knights are a bit iffy for a mage's turn, you will be really struggling to keep up the research. Only the higher level blood summons are really worth it except in emergencies.

The operative words there being 'except in emergencies'. It isn't worth summoning devils if you're just building a standing army, but if I've been recruiting Demonbreds instead of warlocks then I have the option to summon devils if that emergency arises. But you need a critical mass of demonbred to make that possible.

I do think you underestimate the sinergy between devils and demonbred. Devils alone aren't that useful but combine them with a flying commander....

Maybe I just need to tune my early game better for Warlocks but right now I just can't make them work as well as the demonbreds even if they are better researchers.

[Dragar]

Oh I get the synergy between demonbreds and devils I tailor my pretender to get soul contracts happening as quickly as possible to build them up that way, otherwise the cost in demonbred actions is too high.

Bloodhunting your first 3 provinces surely leaves you absolutely destitute? What do you expand with?

[FrankE62]

Originally Posted by Dragar

Oh I get the synergy between demonbreds and devils I tailor my pretender to get soul contracts happening as quickly as possible to build them up that way, otherwise the cost in demonbred actions is too high.

Bloodhunting your first 3 provinces surely leaves you absolutely destitute? What do you expand with?

You probably won't be hunting your first 3 provinces all the time (intially) since you don't have the blood hunters for it. By the start of turn 6 you should have 3 provinces, 2 taken with your starting army and 1 taken by your prophetized slayer. Without SDRs, you can run 3 bloodhunters per province so it takes you 9 turns of demonbred summoning to get set up in 3 bloodhunt provinces.

You won't have the money to build a 2nd castle anytime soon or to buy a lot of salamanders but as long as you stick to buying demonbred and infantry, money shouldn't be a problem.