Yomi Pretender design and general MP Strategy ?

smu666ler · #1 February 28th, 2007, 07:53 PM

When I decided to apply for my first MP game I said myself not to cry for help right from the start

but since I rolled a race I don't know how to play (and kinda dislike what I read about yomi MP ability here on forums in the Corwin's thorough analysis - which was awesome btw) I could definitely use a tip or two, especially on the matter of pretender design, magic choice, what to research early on and maybe what army to use early on. It will be a large EA game with around 225 provinces and 15 players.

I will not tell you what I personally have in mind for the pretender god since I wouldn't like it if someone from the game could read it here and find out about my strategy for good, but still I am grateful for any advice or suggestion you are willing to give me

Thanks a lot !

FAJ · #2 February 28th, 2007, 08:14 PM

Master lich is nice.

4-5 death on him would keep you from having to raise your DaiOni's death skill to cast darkness. New patch fixed darkness (afaik) so it doesn't affect the oni, so it is a good spell to keep in mind. The Lich is a possibility for enetering water as well.

Also keep in mind, Yomi doesn't get sacred troops so don't bother going too high in any one path of magic.
You get a lot of death 2+ casters, and oni spirits are undead, so shadow blast is nice, albiet expensive to use.

Massing cheap bakemono archers early on usually works, then switch to oni once you have the economy to support it.

Earth magic would be a good pick for pretender too. If you go air as well, you will be able to get a contact kohonus tengu or even a dai tengu. The Dai Tengu is nice because he can cast arrow fend for your low protection Oni.

Dai Oni make decent SCs if you can replace their high encumberance armor. Something with low encumberance will be fine because they can cast invunerability on themselves. give them the elixer of life and smile when your enemies have to kill them 3 times over.

Potatoman · #3 February 28th, 2007, 11:24 PM

The Earth bless is pretty nice for Yomi, because Dai Oni are sacred and can make good use of both the bonus protection and the reinvigoration granted by the bless.

KissBlade · #4 March 1st, 2007, 02:13 AM

I generally prefer a 4earth/4nature green dragon (safer for particularly aggressive games as a dragon does tend to deter early wars simply because they're a hassle to track down) or maybe even a master druid with 4nature/4earth/1 astral. Note that you do NOT start with astral though so heavily consider at least one point of it on your pretender because the ability to make luck pendants make a HUGE difference later on for your dai oni's.

Scales you can run are order 3, sloth 3, misfortune 1 (I normally take 2 points of misfortune, but new players generally have a harder time dealing with bad events), magic 3. You might also consider a heat scale simply for your hannayas and death scales as well depending on your use of sorcerers (who are actually very cost effective if you don't take death or end up taking growth). Do NOT recruit many oni troops, they are not that great beyond tanking for some indies. If worse comes to worse, they do provide a decent gold sink if you need to troop flood (in which case, I recommend the fireball onis as well as the ones that can split poison + throw flames). Make sure those onis are near the fornt of the battle field with "fire closest". For the most part your army should consist of mass bakemono archers with perhaps a few bandits to give some morale mixed. If you're going bless, I heavily recommend prophetizing one of your starting commanders and recruiting an oni general straight off the bat to "tank" by using /him/ as a decoy and scripting for fire closest. To be honest, the manual's "recommended strategy" is not written too poorly so it's not a bad choice to follow it. For research purposes, I recommend going enchantment heavy till you reach enchantment 4 (flaming arrows). Your hannayas can cast it with 2 fire gems if I recall and it's a very very deadly spell with your archers. Speaking of hannayas, they're great in battle as both raise skeletons spammers or fireball/falling fires off phoenix power casters. For your "meat" I recommend either getting a second fort and literally spamming oni generals out of it or using indies for heavies.

FAJ · #5 March 1st, 2007, 11:06 AM

Over the last two patches, the oni have gotten a considerable boost. I wouldn't write them off right away. Bakemono are flaky because they die so easily and can make your Commander auto-rout. That, and one pesky mage with arrow-fend and those bakemono are worthless.

KissBlade · #6 March 1st, 2007, 12:56 PM

I didn't write them off. I said, don't recruit /many/. I actually use them every so and often now. Also bakemono's may be "flakey" but they are cheap as heck and easy to mass up for early game. You, yourself even mentioned that. Most exp. players will get arrow fend to counter you anyway since they'll expect it coming but generally the vast amount of projectiles just being flung is still menacing.

smu666ler · #7 March 1st, 2007, 01:00 PM

Hey, thanks for all the advice. I didn't expect this much input on such short notice!

To be honest I wasn't very far in my test SP last night from what KissBlade and (to some extent) FAJ are suggesting. I did a druid (kinda like the stealthy pretender and it's rainbow capability) with W4/N4/E4 and also threw in 2F and 2A just because, with being close to a rainbow mage, I could search for all the sites of gems I will need more easily - with just my pretender. The initial pick is 10 anyway so it's no big deal. I did 3 order/3 sloth/ 1 misfortune also (what a coincidence) but took just 1 research to have 5 candles and the 2 in fire and astral, I'm not sure if that was worth it ... I did the bakemono at start with some mercs and some cold oni and some fire oni. I built a Dai Oni on second turn (to make him my prophet next turn) so he could be the only one casting divine bless instead of all the dai onis doing it for themselves .... et cetera et cetera it turned out very good against the AI in the end actually. Altho my Dai Onis which I trained every 3 turns started getting afflictions from all the fighting. Which equipement would help them stay more resistant? I did give them lighter armor and helmets like FAJ suggested ...

@KissBlade
When you said "your starting commanders" did you mean one of the 2 stealthy bandit commanders you get at startup? Also I didn't know Oni Generals were very effective, I'll have to try them out.

@FAJ

What boost? I only know that