EA arcosephele - bless strategy?

[Ironhawk]

Xanatos said:
ahh...why do death and blood = the best for endgame?

Blood scales better than any other path since your "gems" come from population, not sites. So in the end-game, when your gem income is more or less static, you can still really crank out the blood.

[Rytek]

An awake pretender is the way to go with EA ARCO. The sacreds are too expensive and they have too many weaknesses. Low hits. high encumberance. Low attack skill and low damage. The low damage really hurts because they are so big, they cant cut their way out of a paper bag. even the flying hurts them because when they attack they are all over the place instead of concentrating their attacks.

Try an awake Virtue with Air 5, Death 5. dominion 7. Take order 3, Sloth 3. Research Alteration 3 right away for mistform. Your virtue can take out independants on turn 2. Keep it in the back and script air shield then attack archers. And if it happends to get a bad affliction you can heal it with priestess.

[MaxWilson]

Xanatos said:
i like the idea of e9 but i see w9 as great for them and their attack is just so low - so i went f4, w9 e4 - your thoughts?

W9 will kill them with fatigue. I'd be more likely to try F4W4E9. I would only use W9 with cheap sacreds like Mictlan's or very low-enc ones.

-Max

[Wick]

Xanatos said:
how do you come to that conclusion wick?

I've done a stupid amount of testing of "How many of a vast hoard of heavy infantry (ID 40) can 600g of <unit_type> kill before dying." In a four battle trial the Wind Riders scored a total of 19. The median for recruitable sacred troops (57 types, null blessed) is 63. The Heavy Infantry got 79 against themselves, which was a slightly better then the overall median. Basically, the implication is if you have a strong bless multiplying the Wind Riders 400% then they are as strong as independent infantry.

Certainly, the test is pretty simplistic. It's biased against archers and in favor of tramplers and poison. However, the results tend to be stable and to approximate the conventional wisdom -- which includes, Wind Riders aren't worth a bless strategy.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm, interesting. I just did a quick check myself, and F4W4E9-blessed Wind Riders (5 in number, 625 gp) plus a prophet doing <Divine Bless, Cast> in the background lost handily to 80 Heavy Infantry #40, killing maybe 10 of them before dying/fleeing. I wonder how much of that is due to the unfortunate tendency of fliers to spread themselves too thin and get ganged up on.

In contrast, 7 E9D9 Helhirdlings (630 gp) killed maybe thirty or forty heavy infantry before routing (4 surviving Helhirdlings). 1 E9N6 Niefel Jarl + 1 Niefel Giant (650 gp) killed them all with no losses. 4 E10N6 Ahiman Anakites (600 gp) killed them all but one of them got a limp. 24 F9W9S9N4 Jaguar Warriors (600 gp) killed them all and lost 4 jags.

Altogether, it's an interesting way of evaluating the cost-effectiveness of sacreds. It's a little bit misleading in some cases because some sacreds are more resource-limited or holy-limited than gold-limited, especially depending upon what scales you traded away to get the bless you're using in the test. It also doesn't evaluate non-combat-related stuff like strat move (flying troops are sometimes better for expanding in rough terrain even if you take more casualties). Overall, though... interesting methodology.

-Max

[Frostmourne27]

Wick said:

I've done a stupid amount of testing of "How many of a vast hoard of heavy infantry (ID 40) can 600g of <unit_type> kill before dying." In a four battle trial the Wind Riders scored a total of 19. The median for recruitable sacred troops (57 types, null blessed) is 63. The Heavy Infantry got 79 against themselves, which was a slightly better then the overall median. Basically, the implication is if you have a strong bless multiplying the Wind Riders 400% then they are as strong as independent infantry.

Certainly, the test is pretty simplistic. It's biased against archers and in favor of tramplers and poison. However, the results tend to be stable and to approximate the conventional wisdom -- which includes, Wind Riders aren't worth a bless strategy.

Well, I'm not necessarily going to argue with conventional wisdom, but sacreds are occasionally used against something other than heavy infantry, and some sacreds benefit from blesses more than others do, IMHO. Especially since in the early era, heavy infantry is comparatively less common. I would, however, still agree that EA Arco isn't a bless nation. Just compare Wind Riders to what is established as good sacreds - they aren't terrible, but three of them probably won't beat most indiy provinces.

As a somewhat OT note, what do people think of Hinom's sacred giant? The Melqart is awesome, able to solo most EA poptypes no proeblem, and Hinom can eaven heal it, but what about the units? There doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of point to them...

[MaxWilson]

The Rephaelite is a good unit, equivalent in almost every way that I can see to (a pair of) Palankashas except there's no head armor vulnerability and the resource cost is slightly higher than two Palankashas. The difference is that Lanka is likely to have a good bless because of all their blood sacreds, and Hinnom is perhaps less likely. But the base unit is pretty good--it's just that the Melqart is so much better that the Rephaelite is overshadowed. It's as if you could recruit both Niefel Jarls and Agarthan Seal Guards. Sure you could buy them both, but why would you unless you had extra resources?

-Max

Edited for clarity.

[Kuritza]

Rephaelite costs more than two Palankashas, but doesnt have as much offense as two Palankashas (or staying power, for that matter). Also, their summons are inferior to Lanka's (with the exception of Gregori), and their mages arent as good for research and crafting equipment.

I'm really qurious where are strengths of EA Arco btw. Sure, research is there. But their troops are simply bad, and mages, while nice in their own way, have no endgame paths (weak astral, no death, no blood). And no national summons... Of all things, ancient Greece has no summons - its just not fair in my opinion.

[Agema]

Have you run the tests multiple times? Results can vary a lot from trial to trial.

In contrast, in an EA MP game I had 5 points Agarthan PD rout a force of 3 Niefel giants (N9F4?? bless), plus priest leader (Skratti?). They got lucky, nailed one Nief and injured another on the second round of melee, the giants routed off.

[Gregstrom]

There is a bit of an issue with Greek summons, isn't there?

Satyrs and Maenads went off to form their own nation, Hydras belong to someone else, Kithaironic Lions are open access (if they're Greek - they sound like the lion Hercules killed), so are the Furies...