Making Hard Choices

[Shangrila00]

Patala is pretty much the ideal target for a missile nation. No access to air magic, no shield bigger than a buckler, and only troops with heavy armor worth recruiting are your cap only sacreds which happen to be cold blooded. And you can forget recruiting those if you don't take high production, which is such a waste considering how awful the rest of their heavy troops are. Basically there are only 2 national non sacreds worth recruiting: the light bandar apes, and the markata, and both only get good once you get buff and support spells, and both have easy counters. The longbows have poor precision and double the price of other archers, and elephants are entirely hit and miss, especially without good high morale troops to hold them like Arco has.

Patala is like a weak EA nation that somehow made it into the LA. You are so capital dependent you are done if someone locks it down, since your best noncap mages that can keep up with your armies are just S1. And those Nagarishis look a lot better than they actually are. No good crosspath spells once rust mist stops being great, so all those different scattered paths don't actually make them much better in battle than a mage half their price with most their magic in just one path. Patala's got pretty much one thing going for it, and one end game strategy. They have heroes with blood, and good blood summons, including the Dakini which can blood hunt.

[shatner]

I don't mean to put a stopper on peoples fun, but the player who was contesting Legowarrior's spot as Shinuyama has decided to go as Machaka instead. If Legowarrior wants it, he is now free to play as Shinuyama and bakemono it up.

EDIT: And while I'm posting here, I should say the game (here and here) has room for another one to three players. Just saying...

[Shangrila00]

Heh, I do suggest someone take Eriu. Looking at that nation list, there aren't any other thug or stealth nations which are always good to shake things up.

Originally Posted by legowarrior

Anyone have a guide for the Erui that is up to date?

So here's my CBM Eriu guide.

Eriu has the best E/N bless chasis in the game in the Lord of the Forest. They are a bulldozer with E9N6, and following Baalz's guide works quite well. However, I find they can do almost as well without sacrificing diversity. I like the Archdruid, sleeping, dom 7 and +3 scales. He doesn't have feet, which is incredibly annoying on a rainbow, and doesn't have the 3 miscellaneous slots of the archmage, but the free nature gem he generates mostly makes up for that. Luck 3 since you have awesome heroes, Heat 3 gives you points and makes Hidden in Sand more efficient, and your research is bad enough that you really must take Magic 1. Your troops have modest resource cost, and you have cheap spammable forts everywhere, so you can get away with sloth 3.

Your basic expansion army is a single tuatha, 1 indy commander, and a dozen or so troops with shields. Your own longspears would work if you find nothing better. Place the long spears forward set to guard commander, which is the indy commander placed in the back corner. Script the tuatha to cast bless, air shield, attack closest, placed on the opposite side from the indy commander, behind the longspears. Basically, the idea is that without buffs, the tuatha lives and dies by its glamour, so you need something to draw off missile fire, which is the job of the shields and indy commander. Once the AI locks onto the shields, I find all missile fire will be directed on them, while your tuatha slaughters the melee fighters, then moves on to the archers. Without an E9 bless, the tuatha aren't fatigue neutral. For stronger indies, you may need to combine more than one expansion group. To be honest, this is a bit more luck based than I like. If a really lucky hit strips the tuatha's glamour early, it will go down fast, and that's a pretty serious setback. But think of it like Bogus hitting your capital early or your lab burning down. 9 times out of 10, you shouldn't have any problems as long as you look before you attack.

Initial research goals are alt 3, conj 3, and evo 2, mix and match based on your exact circumstances. This gives you summon earthpower, which solves the fatigue problem for E2 tuatha, summon Cu Sidhe, bark/stone/ironskin, mistform, and resist lightning + shockwave. At this point your guys are ready for serious thugging. You are relatively strongest in this period, consider attacking someone. Exploit your stealth for a devastating alpha strike.

Eriu battlemagic isn't the greatest. Storm plus thunder strike from every Tuatha and Sidhe lord can get the job done though. Indy shamans can be very useful here, since they are more cost effective researchers than your nationals, and in battle, they can spam soothing song to reinvigorate your battle casters. But for all those nations much better than you at battlemagic, you have an answer in 2 national mist spells. One's research 0, and the other is Enchantment 5, and both can be cast by Tuatha. On top of storm, precision is seriously down the drain, and the more advanced version will keep spawning chaff as well. It's pretty much the answer to big communions, as well as archer heavy armies.

Fit construction magic in as best you can. Obviously, your thugs get much better with equipment, especially those not fatigue neutral. The Bean Sidhe now has a minor forge bonus, which can be applied to girdles of might and rainbow armor. As mentioned, recruit shamans to boost up your rather anemic research. Some 4 gem owl quills early might not be a bad investment. If the map lacks reasonable access to wastelands, consider taking cold 3, and massing 8 gem bottles of living water.

As for diversification, that's why I take the archdruid over the more powerful Lord of the Forest. It can forge both fire boosters, and summon Lammia Queens for death access even without your death heroes. It can cast Hidden in Sand, and your scales, while not ideal for hidden in sand which is made more efficient by Order/Heat/Magic, are still reasonable. Bid high for any astral mercenaries. You don't need tons of astral, but you have to have some for luck and anti-magic pendants. The Lammia Queens also get you blood, so you can potentially have all magic for the endgame.

[Shangrila00]

Edit: Oops, missed the Archdruid's paths, F4A2E4D2N4.

[Amhazair]

Originally Posted by legowarrior

Piggy backing on my last question, what's the best way to get access to any paths, starting only with your pretender? What I mean is, how do I get access to air magic or nature magic if I don't have national access to it? Death is pretty easy, as long as you have 3 death, you can summon spell casters. Earth magic has the Troll king, which for 2 earth and earth boots is a done deal.

The thread is slightly dated, (as it doesn't include the new 'EDM' summons, but those are usually not your best bet for diversication anyway) but most of your diversification questions can still be answered here.