MA Eriu

[bbz]

MA Eriu. Is it just me or they seem quite strong. I am specifically talking about Sidhe Lords having Golden Lance(with the falce fetters effect) So they always hit. That is different from their early game counterpart (same sidhe lords but having golden spear instead of lance). My observation is that that makes Eriu quite powerful. They basically have similar weapon effect that was removed recently(vine whip)). This also makes fire bless redundant. Also I find their sidhe warriors to be a bit overprised for a unit with 10 prot.
In the test games I had against a firend I never wanted to use them just because fir bolgs were way better and more cost effective for what they were supposed to do (tank off the damage and let your sidhe lords flank). So I am just wondering if someone else feels the same way.

Further analysis: Regarding the new spells, I quite like them especially mists of Tir na nog. Song of power is also nice but I find it quite hard to be used well.

[Shangrila00]

Sidhe Lords are great yes, and the Golden Lance is nice. But it's not as good as it sounds. It's mainly good for locking down thugs, though I'm not entirely sure whether or not it's MR negates. For thugging as opposed to anti-thugging, it locks down a single square of enemies until they die. That takes quite a while since its damage isn't spectacular and the hoof attack is worthless. (Shouldn't they get the warhoof? Surely Fay horses are as strong as warhorses...) All the while, the rest of the enemies will be wacking away. Against stronger PD or semi-serious armies, a vineshield+brand+reinvig if bless isn't E9/10 is still necessary. Regarding the fire bless, I think it helps with repelling. The Golden Lance is length 4, so it should repel anything with enough damage to hit through mistform. In theory at least, though I'm not sure how repel interacts with the length zero hoof attack. I've never noticed repelling doing wonders, so maybe it doesn't work at all, or maybe I should have cast Dark Skies so morale is low enough for it to work.

As for the spells, I can't quite figure out how to use the Enchantment 8 mist spell, the one that blinks everybody, mists, and summons chaff. The problem is Eriu thugs want a great deal of buffing, so you don't want to blink them turn 1 potentially into danger. On the other hand, you want the mists up and chaff spawning soonest so they can buff uninterrupted while the enemy deals with the chaff hopefully inflicting tons of friendly fire. So I end up sticking with the Enchantment 5 version. It would be awesome if mass blink were available as a separate spell.

[Legendary League]

Eriu from what it seems to me, is a very strong midgame nation which falls off hard late game if you don't have a large enough lead, due to the lack of access to Death/Astral/Blood in any meaningful way. You can do it with a pretender or summons, but the access is time consuming for the latter and point demanding for the former (esp. when you go for the E9/N4-6 bless that you get on Eriu for supercharging Sidhe Lords and Tuatha from decent thug chasses to "can operate with 12 gems of equipment [frost brand, vine shield, forged by a bean sidhe] and be a pretty sizable threat to most anything"). The fetters are nice, but only against SCs or thugs (so they make great anti-thugs out of the can).

They do have really good battlefield magics, though, when combined with how good Fir Bolgs are. Storm into thunderstrikes on everyone, or Mass protections/legions of steel for everyone.

[Valerius]

I agree with most of the points made here, in particular with LL's assessment of them as a very strong midgame nation that falls off late game.

I'm going to post in the CBM thread because I think the false fetters effect should be changed and I like some of the other suggestions here as well.

[bbz]

The thing is the fetters is not only nice against SC's I think its nice against almost anything. Any unit that has protection less than 20 is dead(early/mid game) late game any unit is dead literally. For equipment I feel that putting a frost brand is a waste. You can give each one of them horned helmet and dancing trident. (works well with high water bless You can get W10, B4, E4 and S2(for forings) without abyssimal scales or W9 B4,E4,S2 with quite good scales) You don't need production at all.
With the bless suggested and with the 8-gem items and a little stength of giants you get 4 attacks, hitting for 24,10,19,19 always. That is enough to kill anything that has protection below 20(especially if you have more than one and you'd always have 4-5 operating together) Later on you can add in weapons of sharpness to kill high protection targets since defence doesnt matter for those guys. They can cast arrow fend(the self version is there turn 1) and have shields (so that is going to make any archers struggle against them) You can add in another 4 gems item for cold/ heat resistance. depending on what you are up against, They can self buff for poison and thunder. You have minor S for amulets if you need them. The point is there aren't many ways you can kill those 21(29 with the build suggested) defence guys. And they chew through most things on the battlefield if you quicken them they do twice the killing for the same price, and only cost 280 gold.

So I guess my question is how do you stop them on the battlefield?
Rigor mortis - Eriu can easily cast relief.
Darkness - they have dark vision so their defence after darkness is 25. Their attack doesnt matter since they always hit.
Enslave mind/soul slay might work. Petrify most certainly will work, but not many nations can pull out an E5 mage, or lets say enough E5 mages to matter.
Any fire/ice/thunder/ poison evocations won't work(blind is an exception but is MR resistable).

hmm stellar cascades will work on them but you can script your guys on buff-buff-holdx3 to avoid it. Gifts from heavens won't work unless massedand then again if they use storm/mist you wont be hitting any of them(those guys have mistform from level 3), blade wind might work if you manage to pull 2 off before they self buff. But also there is no way to know where they wills strike next (glamour) so that makes it harder to make yourself the defender for the battle.

My point is if you remove the false fetters effect from the siddhe lord its gonna be harder for them to ammas great numbers of always hitting thugs. Also there is not even need to remove it if you make it singe target rathr than aoe, this way high defence units will be a suitable counter, and you might be a bit more incined to go for a fire bless.

I am trying to think of something that can stop them but I cannot. Even big communions will fail due to how easy it is for Eriu to cast rain of stones.

[Shardphoenix]

So I guess my question is how do you stop them on the battlefield?

Earth meld spam. Vine arrow (AoE 1, so defence doesn`t work). Mind burn/soulslay. Size 4+ tramplers. Mind hunt. Send Horrors.

[bbz]

size 4+ tramplers dont work Ask my friend that Used earth elementals against 25+ defence guys.
MInd burn is a good point actually that is the only reliable way (sort off hard to pull off against 17 MR but might work).(and even then its hard if he adds the amulets but I guess early on might work).
Mind hunt was the non battlefield way to kill them I guess.
Horrors will die quicker than they can kill/route the commander.
Vine arrow try hitting through storm/ mist (and they have arrow fend(not sure if it stops the vine arrow have to check ).
Earth meld spam has range issues as well. 25 range is not reliable.

I agree abut the fear point but not call horror maybe something like massed fear generating effects. Sidhe lords do have low moral I guess. (kind off unthematic since they are supposed to be brave heroes and poets but I guess they rely mostly on the poet part)

So basically if you have no astral against them you are screwed. Blood has life for a life but you can always always assume there is a screen of PD when he is defending.(also not sure if Mistform negates the damage)

[Shardphoenix]

Sidhe lords do have low moral I guess

They have Song of Bravery AND Sermon of Courage.

size 4+ tramplers dont work Ask my friend that Used earth elementals against 25+ defence guys.

Dunno, indie elephants trampled water-blessed Lords without too much trouble. He just needs more tramplers, I guess.
Also, try summoning imps. They interrupt buff cycle and swarm nicely (13 MR helps too).

[bbz]

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

Dunno, indie elephants trampled water-blessed Lords without too much trouble. He just needs more tramplers, I guess.
Also, try summoning imps. They interrupt buff cycle and swarm nicely (13 MR helps too).

I'll check and tell you the results.

Edit:
5 sidhe lords(no Items just bless) vs 16 elephants + PD = 2 elephants killed 5 sidhe lords dead. So they work.
If you add in mistform though.(alt 3 should be your first reseach goal) 16 elephants dead and 0 sidhe lords (no items again)

[Shangrila00]

Have you tried out your ideas? They don't look like they'd work. First, without a E9/10 bless, reinvigoration gear is a must. That adds 4-8 gems to the cost of each Lord. I don't understand why you think skipping a 5 gem brand in favor of 2 5 gem items so you can clear a single square per turn at greater fatigue cost is supposed to be a plus. And at least a minor N bless is also a must. Mistform reduces damage to 1 point per hit, but Sidhe Lords have only 15 hp.

And evocations work fine against them. A Sidhe Lord with a frost brand can buff up immunity to lightning, cold, and poison, but not all of them due to fatigue and limited scripting slots on a already heavily buff dependent thug. Mix multiple of the above elements to pop their mistform, at which point they die fast. They also cannot buff immunity to fire, just the 50% from elemental fortitude, reduced to 25% if you cast barkskin. Mistform doesn't work if you don't have good protection underlying it, so you need either barkskin or shell out 10 gems for better armor. Again evocations don't need to kill them, just pop their mistform at which point they die quickly to normal attacks. For communion nations, spamming the astral MR negates spells works, not awesomely or anything, but well enough. Their big advantage though is that with range 100 and precision 100, they are not countered by the national mist spells or storm dropping precision. Incidently, hiding in the back row for 5 turns can 1) be countered with scripting if you keep doing it, and 2) does not necessarily stop stellar cascades. Astral mages without other paths like casting stellar cascades even after the script runs out. They will also cast stellar cascades if you are immune to what elemental spells they can cast and you don't have a good number of nonimmune chaff. If you do have chaff, once they die, your thugs will flee from the hp limit, and die if they are behind enemy lines as glamour thugs tend to be. Sure, rain of stones is an option, though not particularly easy since your best earth mages have no feet, but CBM has pushed that to Evocation 8. It's not as if your research is good enough to make even Evo 7 in good time, and you can forge neither lanterns nor mentors.

The big counter to Eriu though is mindhunt. Works on stealthed units, and Eriu has no counter. It doesn't have access to astral mages, who wouldn't be able to sneak with glamour armies anyway. It can't forge AMAs except with a Pretender and there's no way that can keep up with demand. Lead shield makes buffing ridiculously fatigueing, so no go, leaving just rainbow armor. It's good, and you should have them, but it's too low protection so barkskin is a necessity which means vulnerability to fire unless you can add more gems for fire protection gear, which you can't even forge with your build.

Now, I don't know how many tests you have done, but the vine shield is not an option. It's a must. You aren't talking 50 hp giants but dudes with 15 hp. A single lucky hit can kill them. So in the end, for an unstoppable army of 4-5 kitted out thugs, you are looking at ~30 gems each. That minor forge bonus reduces that to 25 (as no bonus for fire gems). You army costs more than an SC. It has advantages over an SC of course, but also disadvantages.

Incidently, all of this has nothing to do with the false fetters effect from the golden lance. Again, it's practically meaningless against regular armies. It's meaningless if you keep locking down 3 guys while the rest hack at you, and even more meaningless if you add so many attacks that you kill that square in one turn, since, well the dead aren't locked down. I haven't tested them against SCs to see how well that'll work. I suspect it works, but has the same problem of all specialized anti-thugs of getting hung up on a few points of PD then dying instantly when the SC wacks them.

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

Dunno, indie elephants trampled water-blessed Lords without too much trouble. He just needs more tramplers, I guess.
Also, try summoning imps. They interrupt buff cycle and swarm nicely (13 MR helps too).

That's why storm staves are not an option either. Eriu's guys are so buff dependent that turn 1 flyers wrecks them good. I find it hard to justify spending air gems on practically anything else. You can't do anything about horrors and storm demons though. And from experience, tramplers do mess up low hp thugs. I think it's because even if you dodge the trampling attempt, you lose 1 hp, and Sidhe have so few.