NB: The attached mod is the work of Frank Trollman, from (I think) the original work by Peter von Kleinsmit (sp?). I only wrote the guide, and the mod is posted for the reader's convenience.
Themiskyra, Amazon Queens
I first heard of this mod in relation to Dominions 2, and while my curiosity was piqued at the time I quickly forgot it. Besides, the original author of the mod (for Dom3, at least) had deleted all his posts and the mod was effectively lost. Then, while trawling through the hidden depths of the forum, I found a copy of it in DrP's megamod
here.
I had a look, and found a nation I think is worth bringing to people's attention. And how better to do that than writing a nation guide?
Nation Concept:
Following the fall of Sauromatia as a new Pantokrator arose, the four Amazon tribes were scattered across the world. As the power of this upstart Pantokrator faded, a Pretender arose and reunited the four tribes under its protection. Gathered around one of the last of the Great Dragons, guarding it in the final decades of its existence, they have founded a new homeland. When the Pantokrator was cast down, they knew the time was right to come forth and take their rightful place in the world once more.
Units:
As you might expect, you get more or less the same units as you would if you had one of each amazon tribe under your control. But... the thing about building a city around a dying dragon is you find a lot of scales lying around. Infantry now get dragon scale mail as standard
Basic troops:
Infantry all have good (bordering elite) stats, bar strength which is 9. As they only carry spears, none of them really have attack power worth a damn in LA.
Jade Amazon Infantry: These are the nearest thing to chaff you get. They still cost 12g/11r, but then they're prot 15 chaff.
Garnet Amazon Infantry: A better troop, at 14g/11r. 12 att, 14 def start them off, and the 100% FR is a very nice boost indeed on a recruitable. These make probably your best line infantry, especially when you start looking at fire nations.
Onyx Amazon Infantry: The last of your infantry units, and possibly the least of them. These are the real heavies, with a full 18 protection. Problem is, they cost 12g/24r. They do have mountain survival and mapmove 2, in keeping with the mobility theme of Themiskyra. Oh, and of course they have str 9 and a spear. You'd think they might have worked out why the tribes got scattered in the first place and changed things, but nooooo...
Crystal Amazon Infantry: These suddenly bring the other amazons together. Why? Because instead of the rather wussy shortbow you were expecting, they have a Poison Composite Bow as used by Sauromatia. All those nice tough infantry you have suddenly come into focus as a really good way of holding a line while your Crystals poison swathes of opposing troops. They still cost quite a few resources, but it's an investment that pays off.
Cavalry units and sacreds:
Pegasus riders: 50 gold and 14 resources get you a size 4 Crystal Amazon with wings. So why bother? Well... fair enough. You have better combat fliers in the Gryphons. The bows/wings combo gives them a niche as raiding archers, but otherwise I wouldn't bother with them.
Jade Maidens: Good armour, shield, defence 16 and a bite attack that nicely supplements their light lance. All yours for a mere 40g/11r. And they can take a bless to boot! These are pretty useful troops overall, and I'd advise using them as your shock troops.
Gryphon Riders: You'll probably have seen these on indy Amazons, and thought 'great troop, but with no armour they're mostly useless'. Guess what? Armour is now provided. 100g and 16r get you one of these guys - 13 att, 17 def, 3 attacks (obligatory light lance, claw and bite), 14 morale and 15 prot. They fly, and they have mountain and wasteland survival. Oh, and if they die the gryphon fights on. They cost a lot, but a squad of these could go a long way. And of course you can bless them too, if you want.
Nightmare: 80g/24 resources for a unit with fear+0 and 18 prot. 12 att, 15 def, morale 14 are all very good. Cavalry with mountain survival are frequently well received too - can you say 'strategic mobility'? However, they have a monstrous 15 encumbrance and so in a long fight you're probably going to see them chopped to pieces as they lie down for a nap after 6 rounds of combat.
You might think this was all you're going to see, but no. There are 2 more troops to go - the cap-only sacreds.
Valkyrie: They're back, after taking a long holiday when Helheim went belly-up. There's a bit of a bug with them, and they seem to be using 2 shields and a spear at the same time. They have 21 defence (18 if one of the shields goes away), 15 attack with a shadow spear, and can hit for decent damage. Oh, and they're glamoured. They'll last pretty well in early game fights, and they'll actually hurt their opponents when they hit them. They even have magic weapons to hit anything ethereal with. Definitely good troops, and the cost of 60g/16r isn't unbearable. All this, and they can take a bless to boot.
Shadow Vestals: 35g/13r buys you a post-MA Ermor shadow vestal. Defence 16, ethereal, stealthy, attack 14 with their magical spears. No real armour though, so they have the same problems as the ones in MA Ermor. They're cheap sacreds, but still niche units at best. As soon as battle magic starts to see use, they'll pretty much evaporate.
Commanders:
You've seen nearly all these guys before, so I'll try to handle them in groups.
Priestesses:
These are as per the indy amazons, but cheaper. They don't seem to have had the same armour and weapon upgrades as the troops, which is odd.
Garnet Priestess: 65g buys youH1 and a 50% chance of Blood. Ones with Blood are your equivalent of the Mictlan priest. The 10% with Fire can be cheap researchers. Shame about the rest, though. If they have a niche, it's either using the 100% FR or spamming them to get some low-upkeep blood hunters.
Crystal Priestess: H1, 50% have S1, 10% get A1. No poison bow, but prec 13 out of the box means they're okay to put magic bows on. That's their tiny little niche.
Jade Priestess. H1N1 (no, not the swine flu), 20% W1. A cost of 80 gold and sacred status means these are your researchers of choice.
Onyx Priestess: H2, 50%D, 10%E. Your priest of choice and national commander of choice. You have a lot of sacreds available, and these guys can both bless and lead them.
Sorceresses:
Again, these are cheaper than indy amazons. This is a very good thing, as otherwise you'd be in trouble. They get no path boosts over indies, and so they're terrible mages.
Garnet Sorceress: F1B1, 10% B. 110g gets you a blood hunter/researcher. With only 1 level in each, you're relying on boosters or phoenix power to cast even halfway notable battle magic. They can be Sabbath Masters though, so you might be able to drop them in a communion and cast things like Falling Fires. Ones with B2 can cast Bowl of Blood and nearly summon demons. Woo. Luckily, if you build a blood economy you can empower these guys as required.
Crystal Sorceress: A1S1, 10% S, 110g. These girls can actually cast a remote site search, which means you'll hire them. Oh, that and the way they can communion up and spam various Astral spells with 19 Prec (base 14, Aim, spam pain). You'll probably buy a lot of these.
Jade Sorceress W1N1, 25%WEDN, 130g. You get some extra diversity with these sorceresses. A whole 6% of them can remote search for water, and another 6% can remote search for nature sites.
Onyx Sorceress: E1D1, 10% D, 110g. They can remote search for Death, and the 10% with D2 can start to bootstrap death. You'll need this, given the state of your recruitable casters.
Other Commanders:
Warrior Sorceress: Baalz' guide to Sauromatia explains what to do with these better than I can (basically, they can make great thugs). 160g, W1H1, 100% WDNB. They have slightly higher prot than the Sauromatian version, which is nice.
Peryton Rider. N1, H1, 100%SDNB, 100%FAWE, 250g. Cap only. You'll get a load of oddball path combinations with these, many of which you may find useful. You'll want to spam these from your capital at some point. Some of the oddball path mixes you'll get will let you cast national summons with a booster or two, which is a Good Thing. The rest will work much like Warrior Sorceresses, only with more options and better stats. Oh, and these guys fly, making them commanders for raiding parties of Pegasus and Gryphon Riders.
Overview:
Themiskyra have excellent magic diversity. Unfortunately, this wonderful breadth is matched with an appalling lack of depth and as a result most combat spells aren't an option for you. Heck, site searching isn't even a great option.
Their troops are very good, barring the spear/Str 9 combo they seem to like so much. Resource costs are medium to high, even for their archers. They also have an excellent range of sacreds available to them. In the early game, I can imagine them being a force to be reckoned with - developing their strengths into the mid/late game is your biggest challenge.
Pretender design:
You want quite a lot if you're playing as Themiskyra. Scales-wise, Order is helpful because you'll want lots of gold to build fortresses with. Production is probably preferable to Sloth, because all your troops require reasonable amounts of resources to build. You don't have a Heat/Cold preference, sadly. While you could take Death, one of your options for late game power is Blood and that really doesn't go well with a Death scale. Luck is desirable because: 1) your national heroes have level 3 in 2 different paths, and you'll really want that, and 2) you have low ability to site search, so the random gems can be incredibly handy. Magic wouldn't really hurt, although Jade Priestesses aren't too bad as they are.
As if that weren't enough, magic on a pretender is a good idea too. Those sacreds of yours are practically begging for a bless, after all. High defence and multiple attacks on most of your sacreds say W9 to me, and E4/N4 wouldn't go amiss either. For that matter, B4-6 would boost your sacred amazons nicely.
An imprisoned Lady of Springs with W9, decent Dominion and any leftover points spent on scales could do okay, I think.
If you don't want a big bless, perhaps the rainbow path is tempting. Your sorceresses aren't any good at making boosters, so perhaps you should go for F4A4W3E2S2D2B4 (you can get N2 commanders, so no need to get that at least). Boost W3 to W4 and you have a reasonable bless, too.
Oh, and with all those sacreds to hire you might want a high dominion as well.
An SC god is probably unnecessary, given your troop lineup.
A possible strategy:
Early on, crush indies with amazon infantry or blessed Jade Maidens (cheap and still very effective). This expansion should fill your coffers and allow you a couple of extra forts with labs/temples. These will let you throw out lots of amazons, researchers or whatever else you want to continue expansion.
Expansion groups like your starting army work pretty well - Jade or Onyx infantry hold the front line while Crystal archers use their sauromatian bows to do the killing. You can read Baalz' guide to Sauromatia for a good idea of how to expand with Warrior Sorceresses.
Research conj 2 and cast Dark Knowledge enthusiastically with an Onyx Sorceress or two. One of each sort of sorceress for site searching is a reasonable priority too. Once you have extra forts to punt out Jade Priestesses for research, you will want to make some Peryton Riders (1/4 has N2 for Haruspex) and a Crystal Sorceress or two for Arcane Probing (although 1 in 4 Peryton Riders has S1 for Arcane Probing anyway). Naturally, you'll want to push out the remote searches on these as fast as you can. Astral income is a good thing, and Nature searches can net you Enchantresses with luck.
You'll need to expand as much as possible early on, as mid and late-game power are not Themiskyra's strength. Search as much as possible so you can get some gem income going. Empowerment is going to happen at some point, so start that gem income early.
As time passes, you might want to try for B2 Garnet Sorceresses and W2 Jade Sorceresses, but pushing for a D2 Onyx Sorceress (repeated recruiting or empowerment) would definitely be a good idea. These let you bootstrap Death for lots of goodness.
You'll want to start stockpiling Crystal Sorceresses too.
Odds are by the sort of time you're doing this you'll have access to a Thistle Mace or two, which means some of your national spells can see use. I'll cover a lot of the national spells in one go, as you'll be looking at them in the mid-game.
Bird Maiden is Conj 6 and N2A1, so 1 in 4 of your Perytons can cast it with the aid of a thistle mace. 9 Nature gems gets you a flying unit with A2H2 for better site searching. As one of your priorities in the game will be to get better path access, you'll want a couple of these.
Alt 8 and E2B1 (hard to get, sadly) gets you Teeth of the Dragon, where 30 gems get you 20 Daughters of the Dragon. These are pretty much thugs and have 75% FR, CR and PR - 14 MR too, so they're viable late game units.
Call Oreiad is Evo 6 and N2E1, so again you should have a Peryton who can cast it by the time you have it researched. Oreiad = better path access = you want one, even at a price of 26 N gems. Paths are A2E1N3, with 110%AWEN, so you could do very well with a few of these.
Evo 8 brings you Escape from the Prison of Stone (D2E1, so castable by Onyx Sorceresses), who is a thug chassis costing 14 D gems. I'm not quite convinced this is a great use for your gems - she has Fear and Ethereal, but otherwise a Bane or Bane Lord might be a better bet. More to the point, you get...
Wishing Stars. One casting of this gets you 3 save or die effects, at range 25. 10 or more Crystal Sorceresses spamming this should be pretty impressive.
Con 5 has the S2W1 spell Attract Alchemist. The alchemist in question has F1W2E1S1, meaning Fire Brands and other goodies are looking more obtainable. So are Green Lions and acid spells, which is always nice. You aren't guaranteed to get a Peryton who has the paths to cast this (1/16 chance), but one of your national heroes has W3S3. Handy, eh?
Ench 5 and S2E1 gets you a Caryatid, who has E2H3. They can forge Earth Boots if needed, and the H3 is a good thing if you're heavy on the sacreds. 20 pearls gets you one of these, and with 15 natural prot and 19 MR they'll thug up easily.
Ench 6 gives you the B2A1 (so it'll be a push to cast it) Rite of Exposed Children. You'll get a Storm Child with A4, 40% regen on 20 hits, lots of lightning attacks and look a bit overpowered. A cost of 36 Blood Slaves is possibly a little low. Strangely, they're not #stormflier or #stormpower, but I think they should be. Of course, GoR is needed to unlock most of this goodness - good luck getting that going...
Thau 6 and 5 Fire Gems get you a Chimera (F2N1 spell - one of your heroes can cast this). Meh. It's not quite a thug, and the fire breath is nice but at 5 gems and a mage turn each, you're unlikely to use it much.
Thau 7 and Impress the Warrior Fate (B1F2) lets you turn 25 blood slaves into 25 Battle Vestals. I can't see this being the best use of 25 blood slaves by this point, unless you are up against someone without AoE magic. And if you are, why not use normal troops?
At Blood 5, a W2B1 spell lets you spend 30 W gems to create a B3 Bronze Maiden. This is a B3 mage who can also be thugged (natural prot 20 and 30 hits with Def 15 almost makes a SC). You'll probably want the B3 anyway, although the path requirements aren't exactly easy to get. The unit description implies it should eat population the way Hinnom giants do, although this doesn't actually happen (the mod is rather old, after all).
These spells have a lot of mid-game uses and can help set you up for the late game. You're going to have to get some units with high S somehow, though. Jade Sorceresses can at least be boosted up to start clamming, which can help.
Try researching Conj 2, Con 4 early on. Once you can boost caster levels, Evo 2 and Thau 2 become useful for site searching spells. Con 5-6, Conj 6 and Evo 6 seem like good places to go next for the summons (national and otherwise). I don't see Con 8 being an early research goal, as you don't have the high paths or path combinations needed for most of the artefacts. Ditto Conj 8. Choose research targets to boost your mage power and benefit your armies if possible, and expand aggressively - you may find you need huge income and a strong military to compete with other nations' superior magery in the mid-game.
As mentioned earlier, churning out either Garnet Sorceresses or Garnet Priestesses for blood hunting would probably be a good idea. And you'll want a lot of Crystal Sorceresses as well.
The late game will (I think) see a lot of communioned Crystal Sorceresses with appropriate communion masters (mistresses?). An E1S1 Peryton will let you make Crystal Matrices, so the communion leaders can be anything you like. Reverse Communions spamming Wishing Stars has to be fun. The masters can buff with Earthpower, maybe Power of the Spheres and Storm Power if you have a Storm Staff (+1 pen is good), and anything else helpful (Eagle Eyes/Aim?). I imagine you'll need a couple of sorceresses with heavily boosted B and/or S for the big late game spells - if you want Death you'll be bootstrapping it. Past that, standard late game madness will hold sway anyway. You have a harder time than most getting Wish, Tartarian Gate etc., so your best bet is to try to win before this stage.
Addendum: I suspect this nation (and guide) may need some more work. Suggestions are welcome, and if Frank Trollman isn't going to object I might even try to implement some of them.
Linear Mode
