[KissBlade]

So you like nations with a cool theme. Giants are boring. Onis sound cool! You open up the nation, start the game and what'd you see? A whole line of crap. But never fear! You can actually do something with these bags of crap so let's check out what we got.

First off, let's talk about Yomi's troops.

Bakemono's. They come in melee variety and archers. The melees are useless so use them as arrow soakers or something. Or you can just use the archer varieties as arrow soakers so yeah, the melee varieties are useless.

The short bow versions are very nice though. They're cheap and easily massable. Dark vision, mountain/forest srvival, double map moves means they're actually somewhat nifty. Especially once you get flaming arrows. Anyway mass these up.

Bandits come in melee or bows. The bow versions are ok because they got helmets. I prefer the bakemonos for their various survivals and darkvision but I'd use these too if I got a lot of resources.

Both bandits and bakemonos are stealthy so make sure your armies are moving when attacking =) Not sneaking!!! The stealth abilities do let you make some ok raids but overall not something you'd care about.

Alright that does it for your mortal troops, let's discuss the actual oni's of an oni themed nation. =)

All of them are gluttonous but consume no actual supply so it's generally not something I notice. They also cost very little resources allowing them to be easily massable. They have a second ethereal form when "killed" which is nice but hardly worth factoring for. Their biggest weakness are priests but some of their higher end onis have the MR to stand against banishments. They are overpriced in base and still a bit expensive in cbm.

The Ko-Oni's blow. They are completely unredeemable.

The Ao-Oni's and Aka-Oni's are basically fire and ice throwers. They're both resistant to the elements that they throw. I prefer the fire ones. I will discuss these later.

The regular Oni's are hard hitters with javelins that get tossed nicely with their high strength. If you get something to soak the hits, they do some damage to even giants. However, they fall short compared to their bigger brothers.

That being the Kuro-Oni's. These guys are actually pretty decent. Two elemental range attacks that don't worry too much about armor and a big no dachi lets these guys really do some damage. They are also resistant to fire and poison. I'll discuss these a little bit later too.

Alright so there's your set of national troops. Nothing spectacular and pretty much what shapes up to be an archer nation. Your demon commanders can reanimate with priest levels. So prophetizing an oni general or hannaya for that duty isn't a bad idea. Let's look at the commanders.

Bandits: Both stealthy and able to command troops, starting with two of these aren't shabby. They are very flexible as scouts and being able to shuffle troops to your front lines. You probably won't build more of them except when your lab isn't built in your castles but overall not bad.

Demon Generals: you will not build these. They're able to command /everything from undeads to demons/ which is good but there are just better buys.

Sorcerers: Cheap old guys with earth and death. You can build some of these but I prefer hannayas.

Demon Priest: They suck.

Oni Generals: Decent thug chassis. All types of them are pretty nice, the fire gives fire shield, earth gives ironskin (allowing you to replace their armor easily), and death 2 lets you toss on a skeleton staff for soul vortex. I still use hannayas but I use these guys to hold the line occasionally.

Hannayas: For 200 gold and only five magic path, these girls don't look too impressive. Don't let the gold per research fool you, these gals are casters PAR EXCELLENCE. f2/d2 opens up nice boosters AND great summons/evo's and more! The random nature pick there? How about eagles eye so they're precise bringers of death? That's not all, all of them possess above average hp, decent leadership (2picks of fire), supply bonus (nature) and map movement of 2 with swamp/mountain survival. ON top of that, they are 100% IMMUNE to fire and poison allowing you to toss those battlefield fire evos to your liking. Lastly they are demons. Which is a note I'll get to in a bit. Their only downside is they're cold blooded so you need to be careful against the heavy hitter Niefel. They radiate heat so be careful with their placements. I can't say enough good stuff about these gals, they really are the centerpiece of Yomi. Dai Oni's are great but these gals are the only hope for competitive Yomi.

Dai Oni: You know these bad boys. Crappy armor leads to huge encumberance on an otherwise great chassis able to self bless, summon earthpower, soulvortex, invulnerability. Replace the armor and you got something. Crap researchers and cap only. If you get an a2 HOLD ON TO IT LIKE IT's DIAMOND. They will be your air boots maker + auspex summoner. If you're stuck with a1 for awhile and can't trade for an air booster (which I advise you do in a MP) then empower one. 30 air gems is nothing to scoff at but it's worth it.

Yomi's national summonables are ignorable. Nushi's & Kappas are out of your reach for the most part. The Dai Tengu is worth mentioning because if you traded for an air booster to summon one, you can slap that same booster on the dai tengu to forge your own air boosters and get you to the Air Queens. Worth looking into but don't stress yourself over it.

That's the wrap up on the troops. Let's talk pretenders.

If you're playing CBM: an awake Lord of Plenty will stand out to you. It comes with a free gem generation including the much needed astral gem. An n4/e4/s4 awake dom 6 Lord of plenty is easily acheivable. Splash on order 3, sloth 1, heat 3, growth 2, misfortune 1, magic 1. Or vary the scales to your liking, the only essentials are order 3 an d magic 1 anyway. You get a nice bless to your onis and splash into path that you want (nature/astral and astral/earth forms some great crafting combos)

If you're using base game, the choices are not as great. I'd recommend an awake enchantress with s4/e4/n4/w1 dom 6 order 3, heat 3, misfortune 1, magic 1. You can replace heat with death or sloth if you wish. I prefer not to take sloth because the opening for Yomi can get resource intensive. A dormant one is ok too but honestly the extra 12 astral gems mixed with the jump in searching helps.

There are other options but IMO those two are among the most feasible. If you're blitzing, I'd just go with an awake n4 dragon =) and scales with dom 4.

At the start of your game, you'd want to prophetize one of your bandit leaders and move/scout/retreat the other one to get him to the hall of fame as well as check out the local indies. He will also be a nice army commander once you find a scout province =). Recruit an Oni General and 3 kuro oni's and with base prod scales, you can get 2 bake archers and an aka oni. Pass on the aka if you wish. Your Oni general will be your "arrow catcher". With your prophet divine blessing him, he will be very very durable on the front lines. He will stand at the very front to "fire closest". Your kuro oni's will be behind him also on same orders. Set your bandit melees a few steps behind him so they can support him to prevent your oni's from being swarmed. Move your archers close as well to take advantage of precision being boosted at close range. This sort of formation should take VERY little casualties (if any) against most sets of indies. On indie 5, it'll handle everything save the toughest ones. Start recruiting hannayas and gunning for evocation 3. Without some spells, you might as well just tuck in your knees and take it if overpowered giants come knocking. With some evo's, your onis and hannayas can at least make a good stand. As long as you can DETER people from early wars, you are golden. Also fireballing hannayas will /greatly/ help against stray indie pockets inside your sphere of influence on the map that you were saving for later.

As soon as you can afford a dai oni (turn 4-5 ish), recruit one and have him lead a modest army of kuro onis and whatever amount of bakemono's he can lead. Set the same formation as the first set of your army except your dai oni blesses himself. Your 2nd bandit leader can run around picking up 22 resourced heavy infantries if you find a nice resource province with them. Try to use him to lead a bake archer/heavy infantry army if he gets a nice heroic ability.

After evocation 3, I send my pretender out to sitesearch. You needed it earlier for the extra research boost but you should be solid now and hopefully looking for a nice province to set up a second mage castle. Go for alteration 1 for eagle eyes and then construction 4. A dai oni can forge earth boots and then a dwarven hammer if he's not e3, if you get an e3 one just nab a hammer when you can. You should be collecting dai oni's only when you feel you need the army power (aka a giant nation is bullying you around or you want to ramp up your expansion.) Otherwise recruit hannayas. If you get an a1 dai oni, use it to site search with your pretender, otherwise use a hannaya. You'll cover most of your bases in gem production this way. Try to keep an eye out for Obscuro to aid your air. BID HEAVY on him. AFter const 4, you'll want to dwarven hammer some skull mentors to bump your research a bit. Don't go overboard with them, death gems are really useful and if you're not getting pressured heavily, you don't really need them. Go into conjuration for dark knowledge and possibly further for summon phoenix/earth powers. Then flesh out your site searching spells so you don't have to run around manually doing them.

You have a few options after you're done with that and effectively early mid. Enchantment opens up raise skeletons for hannaya spammers and also allows flame arrows for your f3 dai oni's to cast when they summon phoenix power. Fire shield is also in it. However, I tend to skip enchantment for now. If you're lucky and get a moment of reprieve, try to get construction 6, it opens up lines of boosters.

But you already know how to play at peacetime, you want WAR right? Well let's talk about what makes oni's actually scary. First off, you're able to tool up your dai oni's with various fire brands/ethereal cape/luck pendant to rampage around with a bless + iron skin. So you'd want to jump into alteration. It gives you lots of fun toys. If Hinnom or Niefel is bothering you, spam the crap out of them with shadow bolts/fireballs (depending on which) while Blinding them and swarming them with skellie spamming, small bakemonos. Getting to alteration 5 gives your dai oni's invulnerability. Getting to alteration 6 gives you the BIG NASTY SOUL VORTEX. D4 Dai Oni's suddenly become treasure troves of goodnesses.

But remember how I kept mentioning I'd talk about your other oni's earlier? Well let's look at two other spells at alterationo 6. End of weakness buffs all your demons protection which is ok but iron bane is serious fun because none of your oni's wear armor anyway so who cares if armor rusts! =D Let's look at one other fun spell for your d4 dai oni's. Darkness. Demons ignore the darkness penalty. Suddenly your dark visioned archers, onis and oh yes, Hannayas look a LOT MORE imbalanced. Let me repeat. Demons IGNORE darkness penalties. Makes sense doesn't it? After all, Onis are scarier in the dark! Who will be casting these beauties? Well your dai oni's can cast the iron bane/darknesses, just give them a lighter armor so they have a chance of coming back from fatigue afterwards. (or not, it doesn't matter too much). Remember, just because your dai oni's are great thug/SC chassis doesn't mean they can't play a support role too. A darkness here and there for keybattles led by evo spamming hannayas (who have access to banefires if you skullstaff/give them some death gems) of falling fires /shadow blasts will really tear things up while your demons chomp through half stat troops. Giants suddenly become A LOT LESS scarier. If your opponent tries to counter with undeads, thaum yields many anti undead counters which do NOT work against your demons.

Suddenly you've got more tools than just the typical SC Dai Oni's your opponents are expecting. Every hannaya with two death boosters becomes a HUGE threat with an army. (hence why I recommend going const 6 while saving death gems) Where to go from there? Well conjuration have a healthy spell of well of misery and king of banefire which you can easily summon. I'd recommend continuing alteration for it's final bags of goodies when you find the time, once you find phoenix pyre for your dai onis, disintegrate for your hannayas and the all mighty Utterdark, who the heck still needs artifacts?? Your Dai Oni's can run around laughing at half attack/defense jarls when Tartarian factories haven't hit the field yet. Meanwhile your Hannayas are the ONLY battle mages of EA able to fling around evo with any sort of precision while leading likeminded armies of oni's and bakemono archers around. Burden of Time and Foul Vapors doesn't even phase your demon troops. Suddenly you've became LA Ermor without being open to any of the counters. And your opponents are still blindsided because he was expecting just SC Oni's.