Lady of Springs

[Fal]

yes it's a strategy covered in Baalz's Eriu guide.

I'm writing a Tir na n'Og guide atm, yes Ri & Sidhe lords are excellent thugs, you only need Construction 4 + some Alternation & Enchantment to make them effective.

I'm not a big fan of double 9 blessing, because the lack of Astral and death makes Tir/Eriu weak in late games, and for Ri earth 9 bless really isn't necessary, earth 6 would be enough, but water 6 bless comes very handy. In fact all you need is to get their defense over 30, protection isn't needed in most cases as you will most likely case mistform. I disagree with Baalz's guide as I think nature is an utterly useless blessing.

They do kill fast, to deal with a large group of enemy, use:

Air Shield (always cast this as mirror image doesn't provide protection against arrows)
Bless
Mistform
Resist lightning
wait
Cast (in all my previous tests, Ri cast shock wave, try it out, you'd be even more impressed).

So standard outfits would be:

Frostbrand
Main Gauche of Parrying (an extra 4 defense)
Horror Helmet (if you have death) or a cheap black steel helmet
Chain Mail of Displacement (3 extra defense) or Rainbow Armor (3 extra reinvigoration)
Amulet of Resilience (5 reinvigoration)
Bracer of protection (protection + defense)

But do bear in mind that Ri/Sidhe lords are very bad when fighting troops with magic weapons (F9/D9 bless, Atlantis, Caelum etc). They aren't overpowered, and they aren't that effective in MP games (especially in later stage) either.

To recap, I'd take W6E6S4D4 for my pretender, Astral and death paths are too important for Tir/Eriu to take double 9 blessing.

[thejeff]

I played around with Baalz's version.
E9N6 bless, with just Vine Shield and Frost Brand.
Casting bless, Mistform and Barkskin.

The first time it worked fine until R'lyeh attacked me. One Illithid in PD was enough to take out the Sidhe Lord about half the time. I was adjusting to that, giving them Rainbow armor to boost MR and working in pairs, but then Abyssia joined in and with the fire vulnerability from Barkskin (or the lack of protection without it) that was the end.

The second time it was well into the second year before I found a water gem source and could start forging Frost brands. That would be my worry planning on this strategy in MP. (Though using the Lady of Springs would help with that problem)

[thejeff]

The big advantage of the Baalz version over what you describe is cost.
Yours are tougher, sure, but you're putting 40 gems into them . The other version is just 10. Yours are a poor attempt at SCs, which will still die to scripted mages or just to chance. His are disposable raiders and there will be 2-3 times as many.

Taking the Main Gauche instead of a Shield is also why you need Air Shield.

[Zenzei]

I found they don't kill fast enough that way. If you want to pursue them as a main strategy, it's more than possible, it's powerful, so I feel I must add it to their arsenal. And they can keep up with the reinvig with +7-10, which is cheap to obtain. The only time to really need to "worry" - hah! - is when one of them gets Heroic Quickness as their ability... which no less than THREE of them actually got, as you can see from the picture above! And this is all very early in the game, as soon as you can research Alteration 3 and Construction 4, it's on! Then of course Enchantment 4 for Cloud Trapeze.

Oh, I don't doubt the ***-kicking capabilities of your thugs.
I'm merely suggesting you might get better overall result if you opted for 80% of the power for 50% of the cost.

Your current lords need at least 25 gems worth of equipment(frostbrand, rainbow armor & vine shield) to be usable in combat. For the same 25 gems you could equip one E9N4 lord with frostbrand+vine shield and two E9N4 lords with frostbrands and use them together as a team, they certainly kill stuff faster than any W9E9N4 lord. Or alternatively they can raid three diffrent provinces simultaneously thus gaining three times more land than single W9E9N4 lord. You even have more money to build sidhe lords with E9N4 because of the better scales. Of course these weaker thugs may die a bit more often but they are so cheap to equip it doesn't really matter.

Before joining these forums I used a lesser version of this tactic Baalz covered in his Eriu guide, with vanjarls and single E9 bless(so no regen or nature buffs) and they only had firebrands for equipment. The games were SP but them jarls worked great.

[JimMorrison]

Except if you are opting out of the armor, you are not freeing up 10 water to use for 2 more frostbrands, but rather 5 air and 5 nature. I am hard pressed to think what you would actually do with those 10 gems to get a better return.

[Baalz]

Yes, indeed the primary idea on my build was "what's the cheapest way I can field something capable of taking out most PD?". Consequently (as I mention in that thread) everything they've got is necessary for this role - including regeneration if you're focusing on cost and not fully outfitting every one. This also includes their mistform, which means they are poorly suited to go up against anything with magic weapons in their PD. R'yleh is a very poor target for this as you noticed, as is a typically fire blessed Mictlan with PD over 20. Most other nations though you can take out an arbitrary amount of PD with just a frost brand and vine shield. WRT getting water gems initially you could certainly get unlucky, but sending a few of your water mages site searching early on should get you the small income you need.

When the game progresses and you start wanting more SCs than thug raiders you probably want to focus more on the Tuatha than the Sidhe Lords (after all, how many can you afford to equip with all that?). Depending on their randoms they can cast iron will/iron skin or quicken self/breath of winter (get more reinvig if you're quickening). Rainbow armor I found works very well at this stage, the protection is sufficient and reinvig/MR are both critical. Properly outfitted and with the right buffs for the specific job, Tuatha start hitting real SC levels.

[Baalz]

JimMorrison said:
Except if you are opting out of the armor, you are not freeing up 10 water to use for 2 more frostbrands, but rather 5 air and 5 nature. I am hard pressed to think what you would actually do with those 10 gems to get a better return.

Nature gems go into vine shields. This is generally the limiting factor in how many raiders you can field.

Air gems go into: clout trapeze, seeking arrows (at the guys trying to kill your raiders), later on fog warriors, storm, wrathful skies, etc.


Honestly, nature and air are the two highest demand gems for Eriu.

[JimMorrison]

Baalz said:
Nature gems go into vine shields. This is generally the limiting factor in how many raiders you can field.

Air gems go into: clout trapeze, seeking arrows (at the guys trying to kill your raiders), later on fog warriors, storm, wrathful skies, etc.


Honestly, nature and air are the two highest demand gems for Eriu.

Right right, but Zenzei said you could get more power to the ground if you didn't do the rainbow armor, but rather 2 more frostbrands (putting them on 2 more Sidhe). I was curious how you make 2 frostbrands out of 5 nature and 5 air gems.

[Zenzei]

I was curious how you make 2 frostbrands out of 5 nature and 5 air gems.

It's magic! [img]/threads/images/Graemlins/icon40.gif[/img]

Rainbow armor doesn't obviously convert into 2 frostbrands but the swords are only 5 gems a piece so getting enough water income for making several ones doesn't seem unreasonable to me and if playing MP, trading for water gems becomes a possibility.

[moderation]

Zenzei said:
When using sidhe lords as thugs, water 9 bless isn't that good because it adds need for more reinvigoration. Try E9N4-6 instead, you will find out that sidhe lords perform equally well with this bless and E9N4-6 is massively cheaper bless to get as well.

Hmm, how much a water 9 bless increase the need for reinvigoration? Does attacking roughly 1.5 times a turn mean you incur 1.5 times more fatigue with quickness?