Any Good Non-Bless Strategy Nations

[alexti]

EA Ermor and Caelum are good nations for non-bless strategies and non-bless strategies are arguably better for them than bless ones.

[Meglobob]

LA Agartha is a good non-bless nation. Go for really good scales order 3, prod 3, luck 3. There massed crossbows behind heavy protection infantry backed with death/fire/earth/astral magic the nation has, makes for a powerful nation with lots of options. There national spell are excellent as well.

This nation is kind of like Ulm with heavy armoured units but backed with some serious magical power.

There only drawback is there slow movement but you can grind enemies to dust...

[Aleph]

I'm relatively new, so I speak from less perspective. That said:

I bought the game for R'yleh and Ermor, who play nothing like anyone else, so if you're sick of blesses give them a try.

LA Ermor is totally unique: you have no need for resources or supplies and minimal need for gold, and once you get your magic flowing your best troops are all recruitable anywhere you can plunk down a Dusk Elder and a Lab (empower or item up some S3 Dusk Elders to teleport into new areas to help your spread). Easy access to Skull Mentors means loads of research, allowing you to unlock a lot of their fantastic no-friendly fire spells (Darkness, Wind of Death, and Rigor Mortis for the battlefield, as well as the globals listed in the manual) and summons. I'm currently into a Master Lich with A/F/N 2 E/W 3 S5 D6 for a Pretender - LA Ermor really needs good site searching early since they are so magic dependent, and if you're thinking of an early Burden of Time you'd like your pretender to be Undead. Add Luck 3 to the scales recommended in the manual and you can't go wrong.

LA R'yleh is similar in some ways. It has the additional advantages of being the only late age nation to start under water, and its best mages can start with astral 5. Once you empower one mage to 6, you set of a whole chain of Wish possibilities (Wish for magical power, Wish for Blood Slaves, Blood empower, robe of magi, now you can item other starting S5 mages up to Wish without needing to Empower them) which will eventually leave you with numerous commanders capable of casting Master Enslave. On the downside, a lot of your commanders will end up insane, which leads to even more micro.

The only other army I've toyed around with much is Shinuyama. Lots of unique troops, assassins, and some slick national summons make for great play - also, I like their mixed options for incredibly inexpensive to deluxe troops. And, as the manual notes, their immortal Bakemono pretender is pretty neat.