Baalz' guides

[Squirrelloid]

I'd rush Thaum 2-3 over evo for early magic as abysia. Bonds of Fire/Prison of Fire is much better than fireballs, and even works against FR enemies. And you pick up your remote search spell as a bonus.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

Baalz I'm surprised you think conj3 is necessary, aren't you always pointing out that an e2 can use earth gems in a pinch? Plenty of nations with plenty of earth gems to do that.

Anyhow, You're not going to be able to blood hunt, and research, and use mages for combat, and get a head start on the blood uniques.

Lightning evocs are still a disaster.

Salamanders I didn't find cost effective unless I added body ethereal, and that's out at alt 3 where you don't want to go if you are rushing blood.

You can play a reasonable mid game and even late game if you're allowed to diversify by leveraging blood and your pretender, I just don't think you'll get there, and even if you do you're just a weak blood nation.

I haven't even mentioned the difficulty you have in dealing with (some types of) raiding.

Sorry Baalz but this nation is a dog. Stick with their sexier older sister, ma aby.

There's a big, big, big difference between passing out gems to cast a couple critical spells at...say elephants rushing you, and trying to spam a short range spell like destruction at guys mostly content to pelt you with superior artillery from across the battlefield if it comes to it. Trying to close in under a barrage of fireballs and indie archers with your mages to get the range right for destruction while you're burning gems and the Aby player varies how far back his troops, baits the destruction with indie light infantry and generally doesn't just stick a bunch of heavy infantry in the front line as tempting targets doesn't sound anything like domination to me - nor exceptionally hard for Aby to pull off. Toss in just a couple indie cavalry to flank in on the mages trying to get close enough and sounds to me like a very bad day for guys bringing nothing but destruction fueled by gems.

As to getting ahead on the research for the blood uniques...you do realize anyone you're competing with for them needs to put resources towards bloodhunting to? As well as a using some stuff from their castles to lead and bless their sacreds? Its also not like you need to use your mages to clear indies - your infantry is fully capable of doing that just fine at a very economical rate allowing you to castle up relatively quickly. You've got a pretty good head start with a focus on that research few will match and a pretender specifically designed to help with it. Not a guarantee obviously, but it seems like a pretty good shot to me and even if somebody else is focussed that way you're virtually guaranteed to get some of them.

Raiding problems? I think you're looking at the wrong nation man...and lightning is no more of a problem than it is for anybody else who's best units are heavy infantry. Just like with plenty of nations you've just got to play to your strengths and plan from the beginning to mitigate your gaping weaknesses.

[Trumanator]

Lol, perhaps you need to just collect your posts together and edit them into a guide

[Benjamin]

Well empirical data from the HOF seems to support me.

But:

Fine, so maybe you spend 200 more rp and get summon earthpower. That's still going to happen before aby hits blood 6.

Rereading your original post, you use the pretender to site search. That means you can't also use it to research.

Have you actually tried using indy archers? What happens is this: enemy routes, archers charge forward and catch on fire. It's not great.

A player using fire immune/mistform/shockwave oreiads or thunderstriking/orb lightning eagle kings would seem to be a real pain to deal with raiding wise. Just as examples.

And even after you make it to a solid blood economy, your only blood cross paths are death on vampires, whatever you have on your pretender, and then a smidgen of astral on the warlocks. I wouldn't base a strategy on counting on getting poseidon.

That's like what I get with mictlan, except worse in every way. And oh by the way enjoy putting up with rain of toads. Want to attack me in retaliation? My beast bats are going to be too tough for you (thinking f9w4b4 bless + bloodlust). You add salamanders, I add slingers.

If the EA aby toolbox is basically its pretender, its cap only blood hunter, its firemages, and its heavy infantry, that's just a lot less than a lot of other nations.

Anyhow baalz you're in some ways a victim of your own success... you've written plenty of other EA guides; the second I read a new guide, I'm imagining facing off against nations you've already written guides for.

[Squirrelloid]

Benjamin:
Having run EA Caelum with mistform/shockwave, let me tell you - EA Abysia is about the last person you want to be raiding. Burning ones, even unblessed burning ones, are going to cut through mistform like it was butter, and won't die easily to shockwave. Even Aby PD is going to hold up reasonably well with high damage infantry. That's just bad news for EKs.

I can't imagine the Oreiad has it any better, in fact I'd imagine it has it worse. And requires more research to get going!

Also, assuming you snagged evo, fire magic is great for popping mistform from range. But if you go with Thau instead like I recommended, you get Bonds of Fire, which totally owns thuggery like you're suggesting. 0 defense + high strength attacks = dead thugs. And your PD mage can cast it on his own!

With great PD and a great early rush counter in fire with low thaum, I wouldn't consider EA Aby especially rushable by anyone. I can't think of a single rush that high damage troops and bonds of fire doesn't stop cold.

[Benjamin]

I agree with you but why would I raid a province that had anything but pd in it? Or, ok shockwave is a no go but what then orb lightning? That I KNOW trashes abyssian pd and burning ones.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Benjamin

I agree with you but why would I raid a province that had anything but pd in it? Or, ok shockwave is a no go but what then orb lightning? That I KNOW trashes abyssian pd and burning ones.

How early are we talking here? Are we talking Caelum or Arco?

I'm pretty sure either is defendable, especially given you're not going to have good scouting early enough to make defending an interesting guessing game. I mean, we're talking EA. Your odds at an indie scout province in year 1 is like 10%. And your fort time is too valuable for scouts.

[Baalz]

I'm not sure what in the world this has to do with Aby. Just so we're straight, your critique is that unsupported PD can be raided by appropriately outfitted and buffed thugs? And your other critique is that Mictlan can cast rain of toads and has strong units? Don't really think I want to argue with that.

I will say I think that beast bats with a primary fire bless aren't what I'd lay up at night worrying about with EA Aby, though I suspect you picked that as a pretender who would potentially beat you out for the devil lords rather than a bless Mictlan would ever actually take in a game. Mictlan just seldom has top notch research at the beginning of the game -they don't need it and there's too many things they want their mages doing. I also agree with Squirrelloid that Bonds of Fire is definitely the goto spell against plenty of units, though I don't know that I'd take it over fireball just in general because of the range. When you're sporting a long range artillery spell like fireball it means you can often force the enemy to close with you rather than having to run into stuff like destruction.

[Squirrelloid]

Agree with Baalz. F9W4B4, wtf kind of Mictlan bless is that?

[chrispedersen]

EA is absolutely a dog.
Dragar plays it about as well as anyone and even his concludsion is the same.

Salamanders work alright so long as you don't use them against archers.

There are a couple of interesting builds you can make using the blood fountain, in CBM.

For example B8N2-4, Luck 3, Growth 3. Blood hunt in your capitol, and research blood. Horror spam to expand.

Now blood rain will make repels work but....