Talk about this God....

Use an Earth Mother to get to Earth/Nature 9.

This information might help you.

It was in another thread I believe, so the credit goes to them for pointing it out.

Every level of magic in a path that is not the inital cost, costs a certain number of DPoints.

8, 16, 24, 32, 40, 48, 56, 64 etc.

So the higher your initial rating of magic (Like a Titan's 3 Air, or a Moloch Fire 2, or a Cyclops with Earth 3, cost less points to get to 9 in that path by quite a bit.

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by cpbeller:
Abysia (default theme)

Moloch (Fire-9, Air-1, Blood-4)

Turmoil - 3
Productivity - 3
Heat - 3
Fortune - 2
Dominion Str. 3

Thanks for messaging me CP - I didn't spot this post.

I haven't tried Main Theme Abyssia much in Dom2 - it was my first and most loved in Dom1 so I've been looking more at new options.

Bits and Bobs:

Order3/misfortune3 is good for Abysia - an overly regimented land where even the cockroaches have bad luck due to all the demons wondering around practising curses. Order3 helps pay for those expensive mages.

High productivity is good.

Death 3 was a serious option in Dom1 and should be tested seriously - though not for a bless effects race as you need your home province. Chris Byler convinced me that death 3 was the way to go with Abysia in Dom1.

Dominion strength has to climb, way, way , up. Nine is good, ten better - your troops need the heat and it sure buggers up the opponent. The extra heat spreading dominion is also well worth trying out and all this increases the speed at which you get maximum income out of conquered provinces due to their scale moving to heat3.

Beware nature sending your mage/priests berserk! As The Lava Warriors are already berserkers I would give nature a miss unless you are planning to not use many sacred mages on the battlefield.

The crucial question?

How are you planning to win? What really defines your race?

At present it seems you are planning to utilise bless effects and Lava Warriors. I have tried this and posted up as in a thread "DomII not to do" on the Goggle group. I think I used the Cyclops with earth9 as this is great for all the sacred mages.

The problem with a Lava Warior based race design is that you are relying on berserk snails - 1mp strategic. I wouldn't recommmend doing this in Multiplayer. Personally I'm going to stay away from basing race designs around 1 move troops that can only be built in my capital - high mobility is important.

If you do a search on the Google Strategy group on Abysia you should find the thread where Chris and I came up with what I named as the "Hell on Earth race." This race is based around killing off everyone and replacing them with demons - hell on earth.

Key features of "Hell on Earth" are high dominion, death3, order3, prod3, and using the HI with 18prot and an axe for a rapid low casualty expansion with either the 40res castle or the wizards tower - you need to expand your production base fast enough that the death doesn't kick in to early. At this point in time my mind is blank regarding pretender options but something the helps the start is good and the other big thing to consider is what other blood summons you want access to. Alternatives to Fire magic is also a biggy.

I would recommmend in general not to build non-Abysian troops, except for specific jobs, as they tend to get burnt up when you make an oversight in deployment. If you really like archers shortbow can work alright as the infantry have good enough armour to be largely immune. I like to keep upkeep costs to the minimum with this race.

Look forward to seeing some more of your Abysian ideas.

Cheers

Keir

[MythicalMino]

ok, was messing around with the God design (it was 4:30 in the morning), here is what I came up with...think I am going to try this one out a bit....

(I even named it thanks for that personalizational touch, Keir!!)

"The Blood of Magic"

Abyssia

Fountain of Blood (9 Blood, 2 in every other path EXCEPT for Astral, which has 0)

- Desert Sun Theme
- 40 Admin Castle (for building my mages mostly)
- Order 3
- Productivity 3
- Heat 3 (comes with Desert Sun of course)
- Death 3 (going to probably rely mostly on Demon summons)
- Misfortune (don't really need any heroes, don't want the upkeep due to death being so high, right? or do heroes not use upkeep?)
- Drain 3 (for the points, but, is this a good idea, since I am going to be relying on Blood Magic ALOT in the game?)

Dominion Str. 9

If you don't take any Astral your immobile Fountain will never move.

It also will be no good for doing anything other than summoning and forging (which is fine).

With Misfortune don't try to cast any CrossBreeding, as it is affected by the Luck scale.

The only search sites you will get unless you are counting on Indies is Fire/Blood and 1random. You may want to adjust your magic path picks to at least have 3 in Fire (for Summoner Lions) or more.

In that kind of Drain enviroment (Drain 3) you will be looking at slow research, just so you know. Also your mages will fatigue what seems to be almost double normal. To countermand this you may want to at least get some Earth 4+ since it gives Blessed units Reinvigoration. Which the only one you have access too on your base mages is the spell Reinvigoration which requires 1 Blood slave per cast.

Those are the only real points I'd inform you of without saying "This is this, and this doesn't do this and that."

Please note the Path 9 special affect of Blood is "Death Curse" which means when one of your Lava Warriors die; the unit that dealt the finishing blow will be cursed (to my knowledge). Whether it is a supercombatant or a militia.

With the survivability of a Lava Warrior you may want to deploy them differently than you would otherwise.

[ November 27, 2003, 09:35: Message edited by: Zen ]

[Keir Maxwell]

Originally posted by cpbeller:

"The Blood of Magic"

Abyssia

Fountain of Blood (9 Blood, 2 in every other path EXCEPT for Astral, which has 0)

- Desert Sun Theme
- 40 Admin Castle (for building my mages mostly)
- Order 3
- Productivity 3
- Heat 3 (comes with Desert Sun of course)
- Death 3 (going to probably rely mostly on Demon summons)
- Misfortune (don't really need any heroes, don't want the upkeep due to death being so high, right? or do heroes not use upkeep?)
- Drain 3 (for the points, but, is this a good idea, since I am going to be relying on Blood Magic ALOT in the game?)

Dominion Str. 9

I like the name , dominon strength, theme, all the scales bar perhaps magic. However on the magic scale I would say that with an immobile pretender researching you will still do ok for quite along time. Remember you need construction 4 for sanguine dousing rods and construction also gives you the two contracts which are fun - nothing like selling your soul.

You may find the Fountain of Blood to be a tricky choice. My understanding is the ability to move is a bug that will be removed so you'll be staying in one place. Given the death scale I'm not sure you want to blood hunt in your home province early.

If you want to use the Fountain I would go for less paths and either higher magic level for the non-blood and/or a better magic scale. If you want Ice Devils (not great in a heat dominion - use them outside your dominion) water can be good and 9 gives your mages and Lava Warriors quickness while Earth 4 or better will provide reinvigoration to keep everyone going that much longer plus Father Illearth if you get that far. Earth 9 makes the Lava warriors really hard to kill - especially when they go berserk and get the extra prot that provides. Blood probably doesn't need to go too high unless you are really keen on blood hunting like mad mid game - which is worth experimenting with.

Let us know how it goes.

Have fun in the Abyss!

Keir

ps. I might have given the impression earlier that Lava Warriors plus bless effects arn't that good which is not the case - they are just not a great center piece to a race design. See the thread Zen started on air vs nature.

[ November 27, 2003, 11:07: Message edited by: Keir Maxwell ]

[Graeme Dice]

Originally posted by Zen:
[QB] If you don't take any Astral your immobile Fountain will never move.

It will never move anyways now that immobile pretenders have been made truly immobile.