How to fight Ashdod

[Agusti]

Ok. How? It's a very strong nation and with a good bless his troops can reinvigorate easily. I'm playing in Middle Age, we're in turn 20-25 and I'm playing Vanheim. Ermor and Shinuyama are also fighting Ashdod.

I'm going to cast Thunder Strikes and cast Iron Warriors to buff my troops. I'm thinking also in casting Curse of Stones, False Letters, Earth Meld, etc. We have more troops but Ashdod giants have a lot of hit points.

Enlighten me, please.

[Gregstrom]

Thunder Strike is a good bet if you can mass enough casters. It has AoE fatigue as a secondary effect, which will help a little if you're doing Curse of Stones (although they tend to have high MR, so a lot of the fatiguing effects you can cast will be resisted.

Iron Warriors is not going to help too much, because the high Str on Ashdod giants will still punch through armour. False Fetters/Earth Meld may help a little, but Destruction would make a big difference if you can cast it a few times.

[LDiCesare]

I suppose the bless is something like E10N4+ and his adonim are the main issue?
Definitely use magic duel against all his astral mages. There are many. It works quite well and one third or one fourth of his mages will be rendered unusable against you. Teleporting a magic dueller (who may return after committing his deed) works well. Best if you have a high level astral pretender. It looks like only Ermor could pull this easily out of the three of you, though, unless you picked an S pretender.
Try for fatigue spells. Cold auras may work as water is about the only thing Ashdod is lacking.

[13lackGu4rd]

what you can do as Vanheim really depends on your pretender choice, and more importantly its paths. if you took an SC Chassis(say 1 of the Titans) than you can equip him as an SC assuming you have const4 or even const6, than fight them. just make sure to equip him with items that will both stop most of their damage(so you won't die easily to a few Adonim) and items that will punch through their defenses(so don't take a fire brand if they have fire immunity via items).

if you took a rainbow pretender, or even the Titan with basic A1E1 and have at least A4 on him than you can forge the air boosters at const4 which will allow your Vanjarls(which you should have a lot of, recruited from every non capital fort all the time) to spam thunderstrikes like madmen and not run into too many fatigue problems(thanks to having high enough level in air magic compared to the required 3 for thunderstrike). this will require a lot of air gems though, so that would really be the limit on how many such long lasting Vanjarls you can have.

another option is to research to mass flight and weapons of sharpness ASAP than recruit a huge amount of Skinshifters and go to war. with mass flight you close the distance to the Adonim very fast, before they can finish putting up all their buffs, and with a few weapons of sharpness casters, you can cover most of your Skinshifters. so you need enough casters cast on turn 1: mass flight(once) and weapons of sharpness(a few times, depends on how many Skinshifters you brought. give your Skinshifters orders to attack rear, (spell casting will happen before regular troop movement, so they'll all be buffed before getting face to face with the Adonim), instead of a more typical hold and attack order which lets the Adonim get most of their buffs up.

as for your allies, Ermor can reanimate massive undead armies and can skelli spam during combat with his mages, so I really don't see a problem for him... he also has access to Shadow Blasts(with penetration boosters, very devastating for Adonim) and other death goodies(even Disintegrate if high enough research). oh and he should have access to the acid spells too IIRC. no armor(acid rain IIRC) and massive undead hordes=dead Adonim...

Shinuyama has good access to most magic paths, including acid spells IIRC, so they can bring the to fight whatever the Adonim are vulnerable to. rely heavily on summonable armies(drakes, snakes, lions, etc) and whatever combat spells that will hurt the Adonim(depending on their equipment).

[Galou]

Increase unrest (100+) in his capital with Hurricane (you), blight (shinu)(cast a lot in one single turn and maintain the unrest with some other casting in the following turns). This way he could not recruit more of his sacreds until he cast a dome and patrol a lot his capital.

Use your Vans for raiding his territories...Ashdod's troops are all but cheap.

[Baalz]

Iron bane + shifters/Einhere = giants going down really fast. Mix in bone fiends to make sure you've got a considerable numeric superiority.

Orb lightning is a better bet than thunderstrike as you can cast it all day long. It'll not only kill them relatively fast, it'll also fatigue them which makes hitting the vans you've got blocking for your casters damn hard to hit. If you're feeling baalzy you can slap some defense boosteres on some vans and carve up the big guys from the front lines via shockwave.

Storm demons...won't take many. Just a dozen or so will carve up stuff faster than you'll believe.

[Agusti]

Many thanks. Great stuff here.

My Pretender is a Rainbow. Ermor is being defeated by Ashdod but me and Shinuyama have strong forces and the next turn will be the first in our war against Ashdod. I will tell you how is going

Thank you.

[Wrana]

Yes, Weapons of Sharpness - and also Strength of Giants. Vans have good troops and should kill giants relatively fast.
You have a number of Vanjarls and they can both raid and join into Sabbath for big battles. Sabbath master can do many interesting things - look up Baalz Guide on communions. In particularly decisive battle you can use Sabbath->Hell Power (+2 levels for master and all slaves, but Horror mark) then you can really spam many things.

[Maraxus]

You are Vanheim. They are Giants. You have already won by mythological example. And the Edda does not read "And in the days of Ragnarök, the Giants attack Valhalla and some crazy Werewolfs fight for the gods", so produce Einheres and more Einheres.

I just ran tests:
6 fights @500 gold: 4 Sheshik Anakite vs 25 Einherias
6 fights @1500 gold: 12 Anakite vs 75 Einherias

The Anakites are blessed with Earth 9, Nature 5, besides this, commanders did not interfere meaningful.

In all 12 fights Vanheim was the clear and honorable winner, in both gold classes with about 60% casualties average.

Model problems:
-The Anakites cost only 2/5 as much resources.
-The Anakites are capital only, the Einheres are not!!
-I guess, a Water/Nature blessing could be better against Einheres although it makes them more vulnerable against Vans and Valkyries again.

With these results, I won't even try to optimize the result by using a handful of Water9-blessed Vans as a wavebreaker to get the Ashdod combat line uneven and place the Einheres behind them.

Ashdod is very powerful because of their Magic: Earth/Fire/Astral 3 and reasonably often Death 4 to top it! Good national only conjurations and all that in middle era. It's insane, but their troops are "only" average.

[Redeyes]

Summoning lesser air elementals through the combat spells worked excellently for my Pythium in countering singular SCs/raiders. 5-6 Lesser air elementals were capable of taking out everything but the strongest 20+ turn regen Adons, and were still quite capable at keeping those locked down while I rained paralysis their way.