MA Abysia: The Burninator Flies Again

[ano]

Did anyone ever try a demonbred/fire elemental/infantry/salamander rush? I'd say it is one of the hardest to counter rushes in the game because of mobility and ability to summon elems whenever you need them and because any PD that doesn't have archers has absolutely no chance against them.
Also, elems are your best defense early on that noone (when combined with slamanders) will be able to pass through.
So, depending on overall situation, I would research conj first.
Also, I totally agree that humanbred are the most useful Aby unit and, combined with indy infantry should be used early on for the most tasks.
But what I disagree with is no magic diversity but that's probably a matter of personal preference. I'd rather start forging contracts later (not much because at const 4 warlocks easily make 2 boosters) but take something that allowed me better magic/forging/site searching versatility. And nature is a must for saving those precious diseased warlocks you don't want to lose.

[ano]

Sombre
Yes, it is not very efficient but remember that in MA there're nearly no blood nations and Aby is probably the best of them (in terms of bloodhunting). As some test showed, B3 mages don't really need a rod to hunt effectively and though they're capital only you will definitely have a good slave income. Not terrific but solid and stable.

[ano]

Here's probably what I'd take (not exactly, of course, because it requires testing):

Abysia, Middle Era
Master Lich (Body 180, 5 hits)
Magic: Air 4 Water 3 Death 5 Nature 4
Dominion 7
Scales: Order 3 Productivity 1 Heat 3 Misfortune 2 Magic 3
Dormant

Versatile immortal archmage that will find most sites you can't find and forge most things you can't forge. Thistle maces on indy shamans that you need a lot will allow to cast Haruspex. OTOH, good scales and Magic 3 turns your salamanders into good researchers and makes indy tribe shamans very effective in that.
Regular archmage is also an option, of course.

Taking an awake pretender means spending 150 design points. I understand when they are invested into heavy expansion or some strategic advantage but I don't understand spending 150 points on some particular strategy (that may or may not work well - remember Highlander game?) while sacrificing most other things. That's my vision.

[ano]

Forgot an important detail about the rush I described above. Fire Drakes are important part of it, of course. And in CBM they're cheaper so even more usable. The idea is fast conj researching and sending an army of about 4-5 demonbreds with gems, infantry, possibly salamanders and 4-5 fire drakes. This is extremely hard to stop for a regular nation by the end of year one, believe me. One possible counter is "fire fliers" though

[Baalz]

Yes, your blood income is going to be more modest than one of the real blood powerhouses. You've got an awake vamp queen with B6 to help you get off the floor, and later on vamp lords, helophagi and demon lords are going to give you a handful more blood hunters when they're not doing other stuff, but by and large you'll be limited to less than one warlock a turn to bloodhunt and you're not going to be able to use all of them for blood hunting. That's OK though because not only do warlocks make excellent bloodhunters you don't need nearly the same amount of blood slaves as one of the nations who are really reliant on dumping large amounts of slaves every turn into summons. Lets take a look at some numbers.

Your vamp queen is going to have limited usefulness helping with early expansion before you have any buffs researched so its a good idea to have her help with some blood hunting. Lets say that in year one you manage to task 6 warlocks with bloodhunting. 6 warlocks over 3 provinces with a vamp queen supplementing will, lets say conservatively pull about 35 blood slaves per turn starting turn 6 (it'll start off slower, but the vamp queen will be doing more blood hunting as well). This is just ballpark numbers, but 30 bloodslaves per turn puts you at 450 blood slaves over the next 15 turns hitting my benchmark of 7 soul contracts inside year 2 with some slaves left over for blood sacrificing. I think this is a fairly reasonable minimum, its not hard to see how you could do better if you focused on bloodhunting and had reasonable luck.

If you manage to add another 6 bloodhunters in year two this will put you at 70 slaves per turn, roughly hitting my target of cranking out a soul contract every turn. Take a couple turns off of soul contracts in year 3 to pop out a bunch of boots of youth, and a you shouldn't have much trouble scaring up a handful more for a few demon knights.

As your soul contracts start hitting critical mass (15-20) you'll phase them out of your assembly line with hopefully about 100 slaves per turn to play with for the other things I suggested as your vamp queen hits the front lines full time. The really nice thing is all those devils generating each turn require no upkeep and no more blood slaves so you can use your slaves for more exotic things than standard troops. You really only need to pick 1-2 per turn out of empowering, summoning arch devils, vamp lords, wide spread horror air raids, etc.

Now, you could maybe do better than this, maybe do worse but it's the right ballpark. My strategy also calls for very modest research in the early part of the game, really nothing that can't be handled almost completely by mages from secondary forts. You need constr-2 for the soul contracts, and....well, that's pretty much it aside from whatever you decide would be easy and helpful in whatever early wars you find yourself in with maybe a bit of alt research to transform your pretender into a real terror. Over year two you pick up augury and get your fire income pumping while setting up a couple more secondary castles and chugging steadily along construction research. Your gold income is modest, but so is your outlay. You're leaning heavily on your free (well, gold free) devils so most of your income goes to mages and getting castles set up. It's a slow process to get to constr-6, and you're very likely going to be in the bottom half of the research charts...but that's OK because what you have (devils & flaming infantry with fireball/prison of fire/paralyze/smite/etc.) is quite effective enough at this stage of the game.

Once you start cranking out the lightless lanterns your research will pick up a bit, and before long you'll have vamp lords and the D gems will start trickling in if you want to supplement this with skull mentors. You are generally going to be trailing a bit on research regardless, but that's totally OK because you have such awesome efficient leverage. Fire immune recruitable troops with strong fire immune free spawn with strong flying maneuverability with very good early combat spells means you can do a whole lot with not much research. As the game progresses a modest amount of force multipliers goes a long way given the troops you've got, so just dropping blood lust blood lust on some devils is more than enough to contend with most nations dropping much more advanced buffs. You don't need to blaze up the conjuration/blood research tree fast to get good summons - you've got them popping out your capital for free each turn early in year one. To be sure, research is important, but you can be extremely competitive against somebody who is leading you in research by a significant amount.

[Baalz]

Originally Posted by fantasma

You center many strategies around capital only commanders, so if I'm against you, the topmost priority would be to shut down capital recruitment. What are the best answers to prevent that or to live without the capital?

I'd bet devils make good patrollers, but your regular troops not so much so.

Heh, ask me a hard one! Devils make *excellent* patrollers, there is absolutely 0 chance that spies will cause you any long term problems. You've also got easy access to one of the best domes which unlike others you can actually use - dome of corruption. Your warlocks are mostly out of your capital blood hunting anyway and you can stick vamp bodyguards on anybody still hanging out there so the down side of the dome is essentially negated. That means you've got a dome powered by cheap blood slaves which blocks 75% of spells while driving the caster insane. Its possible that you might get caught with your pants down but nobody is going to be spamming unrest causing spells into that dome once you put it up so again I can't imagine how you'd have a long term problem.

[Baalz]

Oh another point I wanted to reiterate is the economic impact of your dominion push. If you manage to push your dominion into 2/5ths of the enemy territory and it drops their income there by 50%, then that's equivalent to a 20% income drop over their whole nation. That's the equivalent of dropping their entire nation from order-3 to neutral scales. I also pity the poor guy if he took luck scales to as close to half his events are going to be under your misfortune scales. I wouldn't be so sure that you're operating at that much of an economic disadvantage.

Keep in mind that in some ways this is even worse to apply to somebody *after* the beginning of the game once their upkeep has been run up. It hits their marginal income which can be fairly slim...

[chrispedersen]

Baalz
I find the tactics to shoot for generally pretty good. But what I find unrealistic is your expectations of what can be accomplished. Ie., what is realistic with the race.

I'd like to suggest that for future guides you spreadsheet out the first 2 years (at least). Figure the odds of expanding a territory - show what blood income you get. Show the consumption for blood slaves due to construction; mage actions.

I think this would make your guides more useful.

When you read your guides - it is easy to get the opinion that *every* nation is the best thing since sliced bread. Clearly not so.

Despite a very good guide - how would you rate (in general strength) MA abysia vs Shinuyama. Vs. EA-Niefle, vs Ashdod?

[Baalz]

That’s silly Chris. If you look back at my guides there are several
where people question the feasibleness of my (deliberately fuzzy on
hard details) opening where I come back and give a very concrete,
numbers based example demonstrating it. Furthermore, most of my
guides are more or less outlining the actual results I got in a MP
game, or at a bare minimum stuff reliably repeatable against the AI.
If I’m able to pull it off when others don’t see how it can work this
seems like a good place to write a guide. Is it going to play out
smoothly every time? Of course not – some times you just can’t find
suitable provinces to blood hunt, sometimes Bogus sieges your capital,
sometimes every one of your warlocks gets diseased at the end of year
one, sometimes you stumble on indie mages that blast your first
expansion party with orb lightning, and sometimes your neighbor comes
in with a rush you have difficulty dealing with. On the other hand
sometimes your neighbor is fighting off his other neighbor giving you
easy pickings while you find mount chaining and two sage sites while
your other neighbor took an imprisoned pretender with a low dominion
score. My guides are fairly fuzzy to give you an idea of where you
want to generally be heading, not a spreadsheet showing how many
provinces/blood slaves you should have on a given turn. At the end of
the day is it really a deal breaker if it’s turn 25 before you manage
to get 7 soul contracts rather than turn 20? Maybe you’ve instead
managed to make an early dom kill by sneaking your vamp queen into
their cap and blood sacrificing more aggressively? You have to play
the game as it comes, roll with the punches and take the opportunities
that show up.

[LumenPlacidum]

Personally, I find that the feel of each nation being the "best thing since sliced bread" is a large part of the charm and appeal of the guides. Far better to have a general outline I can aspire toward (if the guide is unrealistic, then I'll keep changing and altering things to get closer to the goal, as opposed to being satisfied by being up to par) and that I'll enjoy reading than not.

Also, when I saw the strange formatting of your last post, I was really hoping for a rebuttal in iambic pentameter or as a limerick. That might be fun for your next thing