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.

[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.

[bbz]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

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 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.

first off you don't need lanterns or mentors you have rectuit everywhere mages with 6 research for 220 gold(that is 7 research with magic 1 wich everyone takes anyways)
I was just thinking Elemental Armour that and elemenatl fortitude gives you protection from 3 of the spells. You can forge one for one of your lords to act as a decoy at the front casting spells(most evocations have limited range) so you have your mages at the back cast elemental fortitude and then after the enemies script ends, attack.
I have to try the major earth bless but i'm not sure if you need it. with reinvig 2 you net 1 fatigue from an action. So thats not too much.

I don't think that you need the regeneration if anything goes through mistform strong enough to pop it then the lord is dead anyways. (regen won't help) And there aren't many chaff units that can hit through 29 defence consistently especially if you are clearing 1-2 squares per turn and , they won't be able to surround you Also the aoe effect keeps 3 units in chains so that is 3 less units to warry about. So if you get 12 units around you(unlikely) then you might get hit from 9 of them 9x2 -18 defence (and keep in mind your thugs are size 3 so you can have 2 at the same square so the defence reduction is only -9 thats still 20 defence and there arent many chaff units that go through that and even if they do you have to be hit 14 times. I agree that masses of markatas might work havent tried that(aswell as other size 1 units) for size 2 units I doubt it.

[Valerius]

Originally Posted by bbz

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 do agree that the false fetters effect should be made to take effect on a hit, just like was done with the vine whip, and I mentioned that in the CBM thread.

Originally Posted by bbz

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.

I had assumed you were talking about 1-2 thugs (for which you wouldn't send a large communion), not thug backed armies, but in any case rain of stones isn't easy to cast. It was already often a death sentence for human HP level casters but now that it requires two gems to cast and thus can't be cast using an E random bean sidhe with just earth boots it's become a very expensive endeavor since you need two boosters to cast it in the first round (and getting it off the first round before the attacker can buff is the whole point).



Thugging is my favorite part of the game and I spend more resources on it than is wise and I've faced a lot of effective counters so I'll throw a few ideas out there.

First, look at the thug's gear. Either the player will have spent a lot of gems to avoid weaknesses (like I tend to do) or they'll have spent less and there will be vulnerabilities. No equipment to boost MR? A perfect target for smiting if you've got H3s (really, all you need are enough blockers and you're almost guaranteed a kill). Astral magic is the same thing - mind burn, paralyze, soul slay, etc. - all very effective if the thug doesn't have high MR, and given enough time even if they do have high MR. This is the great thing about MR magic - there is no full immunity and given enough rolls one of them will succeed. The only thing better is magic that doesn't allow a resistance roll. If you can pull off drain life that's pretty much a guaranteed win.

Second, look at the scripting. TNN/Eriu thugs can cast a lot of buffs - more than they can script in five turns actually. In one of my most fun matches my opponent was Machaka. My thugs could get full elemental immunity when buffed but they needed time to do it. He didn't give me that time. He cast haste on fire snakes and black bow equipped archers and I had two rounds before they were on me. I needed to cast bless first but what next, air shield or elemental fortitude? This cat and mouse game was huge fun but when he broke into blood magic the issue was decisively decided in his favor. Also, when it comes to scripting remember you may need to use "attack one turn" to get in range for your spells.

Blood magic kills glamoured thugs. Want an exercise in futility? Try sending thugs after Jotun late game. But you don't need high level blood magic. Research blood 1 and cast blood burst. Research a little more blood and then send flying troops to hit the thug pre-buff. Since they also have magic attacks they can knock off mistform even if you do get it cast.

Btw, even if you don't have high quality flying troops like blood magic does you can still send flyers to disrupt the thug's buff routine, giving your higher quality troops and mages time to close before the thug can finish buffing.

Also, these are not morale 30 SCs. Fear can route them quite effectively and if they're off raiding and don't have an escape province a routed thug is a dead thug.

Then of course there's the bane of glamoured thugs, mind hunt. If you're playing Arco then you just send out forces to retake your provinces post-raid. Does the glamoured nation have spectres covering every province? He'd better.

Anyway, I can think of more things later if you want. My basic point is as much as I like thugging/raiding it's not a game winning strategy. If that's all you've got then you'll trade provinces back and forth until your thugs are killed and then the nation with a real army will crush you. The key thing about the changes to Eriu is they now can put together a stronger real army (at least up though the midgame as mentioned earlier).

[bbz]

Originally Posted by Valerius

I do agree that the false fetters effect should be made to take effect on a hit, just like was done with the vine whip, and I mentioned that in the CBM thread.

I had assumed you were talking about 1-2 thugs (for which you wouldn't send a large communion), not thug backed armies, but in any case rain of stones isn't easy to cast. It was already often a death sentence for human HP level casters but now that it requires two gems to cast and thus can't be cast using an E random bean sidhe with just earth boots it's become a very expensive endeavor since you need two boosters to cast it in the first round (and getting it off the first round before the attacker can buff is the whole point).



Thugging is my favorite part of the game and I spend more resources on it than is wise and I've faced a lot of effective counters so I'll throw a few ideas out there.

First, look at the thug's gear. Either the player will have spent a lot of gems to avoid weaknesses (like I tend to do) or they'll have spent less and there will be vulnerabilities. No equipment to boost MR? A perfect target for smiting if you've got H3s (really, all you need are enough blockers and you're almost guaranteed a kill). Astral magic is the same thing - mind burn, paralyze, soul slay, etc. - all very effective if the thug doesn't have high MR, and given enough time even if they do have high MR. This is the great thing about MR magic - there is no full immunity and given enough rolls one of them will succeed. The only thing better is magic that doesn't allow a resistance roll. If you can pull off drain life that's pretty much a guaranteed win.

Second, look at the scripting. TNN/Eriu thugs can cast a lot of buffs - more than they can script in five turns actually. In one of my most fun matches my opponent was Machaka. My thugs could get full elemental immunity when buffed but they needed time to do it. He didn't give me that time. He cast haste on fire snakes and black bow equipped archers and I had two rounds before they were on me. I needed to cast bless first but what next, air shield or elemental fortitude? This cat and mouse game was huge fun but when he broke into blood magic the issue was decisively decided in his favor. Also, when it comes to scripting remember you may need to use "attack one turn" to get in range for your spells.

Blood magic kills glamoured thugs. Want an exercise in futility? Try sending thugs after Jotun late game. But you don't need high level blood magic. Research blood 1 and cast blood burst. Research a little more blood and then send flying troops to hit the thug pre-buff. Since they also have magic attacks they can knock off mistform even if you do get it cast.

Btw, even if you don't have high quality flying troops like blood magic does you can still send flyers to disrupt the thug's buff routine, giving your higher quality troops and mages time to close before the thug can finish buffing.

Also, these are not morale 30 SCs. Fear can route them quite effectively and if they're off raiding and don't have an escape province a routed thug is a dead thug.

Then of course there's the bane of glamoured thugs, mind hunt. If you're playing Arco then you just send out forces to retake your provinces post-raid. Does the glamoured nation have spectres covering every province? He'd better.

Anyway, I can think of more things later if you want. My basic point is as much as I like thugging/raiding it's not a game winning strategy. If that's all you've got then you'll trade provinces back and forth until your thugs are killed and then the nation with a real army will crush you. The key thing about the changes to Eriu is they now can put together a stronger real army (at least up though the midgame as mentioned earlier).

I will take your word for that. The thing is my experience is from a duel I had (and playing another one now) and they seemed brutally powerful. Its quite dufferent for a proper MP game so I believe you that thugging is not a game winning strategy. But wuldnt having great anti-thughs and at the same time thugs work for a real army?

I also understand about attack move mages but in a normal battle you cannot do that because they will get chopped by the normal units.
I also agree about blood that can kill off eriu, and mind hunt.

My point also was that having glamoured units you are most likely to be the defender(since you will be taking lightly defended provinces) and then defending them when it feels safe enough. being the defender + PD counters the fly in strategy.

Anyways I do agree that late game they are not as strong and I agree about the other points that you made.

[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.