Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

I'm starting to get my butt kicked in my first MP game; while I will still fight to the death (I'm not one of those people who say, "Well, I've lost, no point in putting any more effort into it!"), I am starting to consider how I can improve my pretender design for my next game, and I was hoping to get some tips from people with more experience than I have (pretty much everyone else on the forum lol).

So, as the title suggests, I'm looking for some hints on better pretender design for MA Abyssia (I think it's better to stick with one nation for a while, just to learn the basics of the game). I've certainly learned some stuff from the first game... my design was pretty awful.

The first thing I'd like to know is what people typically do to deal with the fact that all of Abyssia's recruits (with the exception of the Humanbred) have heat that radiates from them and eventually catches your indy troops (and summons) on fire. Do people generally have separate armies, where, for example, some armies are Abyssian mixed with a few heat-resistant units, and then there are separate armies made of non-heat resistant units? Or do people tend to go towards mixing them up, but using some method of protection? Is there a spell that I could eventually get which will provide fire protection for the entire army?

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Eh, don't beat yourself up to much, MA Abysia comes with a lot of hurdles that make them one of the weakest nations in the Middle Era.

And I was just messing around with MA Abysia to get a feel for them for a game I will be hosting soon.

So, I'd say the major challenge to overcome with Abysia is suboptimal mages. Your non-capital mages offer terrible Research Points for the gold they cost, and all come with old age meaning a lot will get diseased every winter and die soon after. This is agravted by non-capital mages being Fire and Holy and no other paths, meaning capital mages must provide diversity.

That being said, their national troops are pretty good, albeit resource intensive. A positive scales, production-3 pretender design will be fine for expansion.

So, I can recommend (off the top my head and with my limited experience), two approaches for pretender design. The first is to go for broke and pick up a Awake SC Pretender (such as a pathless Dominion-9/10 Wyrm) alongside the best scales you can afford and try to rush as much as expansion as you can. If you are lucky, you might accumulate a large of territory lead to be competitive until you research Fire Storm and Heat from Hell, which will make most nations hesitant to attack you in force, fire-immune troops are hard to come-by.

Another approach is a sleeping Rainbow, such as a crone with Air-3, Nature-3, Earth-3, Water-3, and Death-3. Buy positive scales again, and expand with your national infantry. When the crone/Rainbow awakens, start site searching. If you are lucky, you may find a site that provides worthwhile independent mages.

As for fire-immunity, I believe the spells in questions such as Army of Gold only provide 50% fire resistance, which is not resistant enough.

Hope that gave you some ideas.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

The situation with old age isn't quite that bad after the first year or so. Boots of Youth are Abysia's friend.

As far as mixed troops, my general approach is not to use indies with Abysia. At least not for front line troops. Archers can be segregated in most armies and will usually stay put pretty well. Indy mages can be carefully placed or given FR through items or personal spells. Never let Nature mages on the field once you've researched Protection!

Many of the Blood summons are fire resistant, the others can work well on their own, with Humanbreds/indies or other summons.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

While others may disagree, I've found an awake rainbow to be usefull as abysia, using early manual site searching gives you a good chance to open up air/nature/death gem incomes and greatly increses your chances of finding a viable independant mage to diversify into. A properly built a rainbow also gives you access to a lot of forging that abysia normally doesn't have access to.

By the way, humanbred should be your core recruit, as they have awesome cost efficiency. The heavier abyssian infantry are nice, but difficult to field in big enough numbers and are more suited to specialist roles.

If you use humanbred for your core force, you then have the option of whether or not to add heat aura to them by mixing salamanders into the humanbred formation.

Most independants aren't worth recruiting by the way, between the fact that your humanbred are immune to fire arrows and carry tower shield, the lack of national archers doesn't hurt much. And firestorm is a much better alternative to fielding your own archers once you research it.

As far as mages go, DO NOT recruit warlocks until you have the ability to rejuvenate them or put boots of youth or regeneration on them, they die from old age way too quick. Early on you should be recruiting mostly demonbred instead, as they are awesome once you have pheonix pyre and fire shield researched, particularly if you have a minor nature/earth bless. Switch to warlocks once you have the ability to keep them alive.

Also very important is that your PD is probably the best in MA, learn when, where and how much to build against different opponents. Your PD can easily kill armies when you support it with well scripted mages.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Did you read this thread?

http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showthread.php?t=43824

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

While I haven't played ma abysia competitively in mp my thoughts on their troops in sp were how nicely varied they were in terms of movement.

humanbreds + indie troops (archers) together (map move 2)
pure abysians shuffling along by themselves (map move 1)
demonbred+devils (?) flying support (map move 3)

So my thought process was to have MM1 corps spearheading attacks, with MM2 corps in the back sort of bouncing around where needed, and finally MM3 flying in to support the other 2. I recall I had demonbreds as bloodhunters and devil summoners in the blood hunted province and then those forces flying out when needed. Quite a nice zone of control set up. :)

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Don't take death scales. It's a total disaster with a nation reliant on old age mages.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Am I alone in thinking that, although it would seem like a natural match (Fireball, anyone?), Evocation is not where you want to put your research points? The mages are blind as bats! My daughter will say, "Daddy, why are you jumping up and down?" to which I'll say, "My mages finally hit someone!"

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Yeah, I didn't know about the whole "Death scales have an indirect effect on old age" thing when I designed my pretender... all I knew was that Abyssia's income wasn't affected by Death scales, so I was thinking I would take advantage of it and grab an easy 120 points.

This brings up an interesting question... is there a list somewhere of ALL the effects scales have? Because it sure as hell isn't in the manual.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Evocation is still good for Abysia if you expect to be facing large armies. A big enough target even your mages can hit and you don't have to worry about friendly fire. Fire Clouds can be quite effective.

Against smaller, but tougher groups, they're less effective. Hard to say what else the Salamanders are good at though.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

So would you say it's best to hold off on researching it until later in the game, when armies are larger?

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

that's a fair point. they need their opponents' armies to be large, because their mages are about as precise as a volcano.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

If you don't want to go evocation early, Prison of Fire in Thaum is a decent early support spell to aim for when used with fire resistant troops.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

When I played MA Abysia, I always rush into Conj 3 for drakes and lesser fire elementals. Then you spend all of your gems on grakes and kill your closest opponent.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

But Prison of Fire is still precision based, isn't it. So it suffers the same problem.

Drakes & Elementals always seem to gem expensive for what you get. And it's not like you've got easy access to Dragon Master.

I'd be tempted to turtle and push blood. You're relying on cap-only b2-3 hunters so the SDR nerf in CBM 1.7 doesn't hurt you much.
Go for Const-6 for Lanterns, then you can research what you need quickly.
I'd still say evocation is your best option for early mid game wars. Try to get to the AoE spells. You can minimize the precision problems with battlefield placement. Your troops are tough and slow so it's not hard to wind up with mages just behind the battle lines. It's hard even for them to miss completely at short range. Ignoring friendly fire is a huge advantage.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Yes, but it's also AOE 7+, so will almost always hit some enemies.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Abysia has been my favorite nation in Dom 2.
While MA Abysia lost a lot of its appeal now in Dom 3,partly due to the introduction of old age(which I personally hate), I still think they do reasonable well...but i wouldnt recommend it for beginners since many mistakes can be made.

Basically, there have been 2 ways i played MA Abysia in MP games so far:

1.Soul Contracts

MA Abysia is perfectly suited for Soul Contract spamming.
I prefer this a lot compared to concentrating on Blood instead.
generally other blood nations tend to outresearch you in that area so that u have no chance to get some uniques,which are a main reason to rush for blood first.Furthermore,construction synergizes a lot with MA Abysia.

Those Demonbreds are simply great all around commanders,with no old age problems AND they make the perfect leaders for your devil hosts....this is a big differnce to LA Aby,which lack fitting commanders and are therefore not equally suited for sould contracts(though still pretty nice),especially early on in a game.
Take for example an awake Blood Fountain with 6Blood ,leave out the 1 Fire path to get 1 more scale and just empower the Fountain after 10+ turns to Fire 1...you dont have much need for Fire gems early on anyways.Concentrate your research on Construction therefore.Those fire lanterns for research are as much needed as the soul contracts.If you do it right,you can already build 1 or 2 contracts within the first year with this strat and in addition you got pretty nice scales as well to afford building up 1 or 2 more starting armies that can easily beat most indies.
Its not exactly turtling that is needed here.
You can also make the fountain dormant to gain even better scales,but this comes with quite a bit of drawbacks and delays the contract production quite a bit.
Only recommended with CBM mod though,since only there the Fountain has got some really nice things.

2. rushing strat

RUSH your opponents.Dont care about mid/endgame.Just try to conquer the map.
I think many people underestimate the Early game options you got with MA Abysia.

-You a got extremely strong starting army.
-You can field quite a lot of smiting mage priests early on,use smite for small enemy armies and with Fire 3 even fire darts become pretty good early on vs larger armies.I dont care about low precision here early on.u still kill a lot of troops and friendly fire is nothing to fear due to fire immunity.
-You can crank out Assasin scouts like crazy as soon as you got 1 or 2 more castles.Most people underestimate how good Assasins can be in Early Game and Mid game.Use them as scouts and to kill indie commanders.Then switch to do surprise attacks on human enemy provinces(yes.2-3 slayers have no problems with low to med PD) or to assassinate enemy commanders.At early to midgame,killed commanders can mean a lot to every player.
-Lava Warriors crush everything that you might encounter early on...when played with some decent blessing and mixed with Shield wielding troops as arrow fodder+placed properly.Sure ,u take losses,but when played right,u can afford it.
-5 fire gems per turn is a nice boost to your gold income when alchemized...that extra income is a nice early game boost.

There are several different ways to play a rush tactic with it.
You can,e.g., take a dormant Fire 9 or Fire 6 Blood 4 Solar disc.
Strengthening your Lava Warriors,who wield 2 weapons and as such profit a lot from Fire/Blood blessing.

Those magic paths still allow for pretty good scales,something along: Order 3,Prod 2(u need it when rushing,since capital troops are important);growth 1-2(normally 3 would be nice here,but when trying to rush,its not that important anymore),Heat 3,Luck 0,Magic 1,Dom:6-8
On what to concentrate research on,should be pretty obvious when going with the solar disc: Evocation.

Turn1:

prophetize assassin.He is the one to single handedly take down tough indies at start.Script him on Smite,Smite,Smite and you kill even knight commanders in your first battle like 90% of the time,depending a little on your blessings.Kill all commanders and then move a scout to take the province.
Build anathemant dragon to lead your starting army.
Build some more Heavy Infantries with no shield.
Patrol home province with starting army,set taxes to 120-130.

Try to get a second army composed of Heavy Infantries no shield and some Lavas,lead by a Dragon as fast as possible.
The reason I first concentrate on those heavy infantries without shields is because they are better when mixing actual squads with Lava`s,since both got around the same combat movement and then the berserker morale from the lavas gives a nice boost to the whole squad.You will take losses with Aby and morale can be an issue otherwise.This is the reason as well why i dont focus on demonbreds early on.U cant mix them with lavas due to speed reasons and ive had severe morale issues with these guys in important battles at early game stage during test games.
Later on you should switch to form whole squads of Shield wielding infantries and the lavas form there own squads behind those guys.U need some time though before u can do that well.

try to get a second and third castle up very fast.If necessary skip building lava warriors for some turns to get some money in,if alchemizing fire gems isnt enough.
Try to build those on provinces with surrounding mountains,so that you get high resource production.
Second castle is for Heavy Infantries,third castle for spamming slayer assassins.Nice thing about the slayers that u dont need to build a temple or Lab in that castle,since the commander spot is taken away anyhow.That way u can use that money for other things early on.Always renember: Slayers are much,much stronger than regular assassins and can be produced everywhere( i wish machaka`s assassin would be as well),they are a unique weapon Abysia possesses,something other nations dont have and as such,should be played accordingly.
If you have been lucky with a lot of resources in your home provinces due to surrounding mountains,you can go first for slayer spamming in castle no 2 .
All can be done within the first year ... by late at Turn 15 you should have 3 castles up,otherwise u did something wrong or have been very unlucky.
At that time,turn 12-15,u do have alot of power to attack other human players already.Use it!

I dont have the time to go into further detail here,but i hope u at least get the idea.

Ive been very succesful using both of these strats in expert only MP games.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

What do you guys think of the following...

Great Warlock, Dominion 5, Production 3, Heat 3, Magic all 2, except E4 (I figure Reinvigoration +2 is good for the Lava Warriors, since they have two attacks).

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

i think that with dominion 5 you might as well hold a gun to your head :)

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Ok, you *need* growth 3, because you are a blood nation, and you want somewhat sustainable bloodhunting. (Abysia being immune to the -gold scale effect of death scales is ridiculous, since they still lose population, and they want to bloodhunt, so there is absolutely no reason for them to actually take death scales).

Prison of Fire is good, but honestly, push construction/blood early. Really, you want to rush constr 6, mass lanterns, then rush down blood as fast as you can.

Recommended pretenders:
Awake Great Sage: lots of RPs, plus good site searching utility. Your strategy is dependent on research, this guy delivers.
Fountain of Blood: probably sleeping with dom 10 and decent scales. Basically, this is your blood sacrifice strat pretender.
Awake SC: it works, it gives you a high dom for blood sacrifice, and tbh, you don't need totally amazing scales as abysia. (Although they're certainly nice)

I know your national troops are strong early, but they're not *that* strong, so i'm not sure you actually need production scales. See what you need to expand. If you can expand fine with Sloth 3, do so. You're going to want to be using blood-based troops for wars with other players.

Scales:
Heat 3 (required)
Growth 3 (required)
Magic 1 (virtually required), 3 is desirable
Luck 3 is nice
Order 1+ is always nice (positive synergy with luck scale events despite the frequency antisynergy). Can always run turmoil 3, since you aren't gold limited most of the time (and there'll be less opportunity cost from bloodhunting).
Sloth 3 is always preferable unless you need the production - see what you can get away with.

BTW, Lava warriors aren't that good, ignore them.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

So here's my final one, which will get single player testing, followed by any tweaking necessary.

Great Warlock, Awake, Dom5, Prod1, Growth2, Heat3, Magic all 2 except for E4.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Why do you want an awake pretender? Abyssia has good expanding troops at start. If you make him dormant you get him in time for good forging etc

With your proposed build you could add order 3 for 120 points giving you great income to build more mages AND boost his dominion. Personally I'd then take out one point of growth to take Luck 1 as well, because the events are significantly better if you have luck 1 over luck 0.

Edit: You don't really want fire or blood on your pretender either, as you have great options for that already.

Edit2: for example, you could get a dormant great druid with O2, P1, H3, G1, L1, M1 with A4, W2, E4, S2, D2 (or, your original magic line with E4 and +1 to another school)

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

If i take air for rainbow pretender i usually take it up to 4. That gives him access to air boosters and maybe to elemental staff too. Those low fire and blood are not very usefull but they are not that expencive either. Gives bit more reseach too.

Starting dormant gives points for better scales or more magic. Awake pretender can do lot of research or site searching in the first year. Which is better depends on your early game strategy.

Abysia is one of the few nations that can play with dominions strenght 5. Good priests and blood sacrifice. You still need to keep an eye out on those candels all the time. Its maybe bit experts only strategy. For beginners i would suggest atleast 6-7.

Good luck on your game... and im not talking about the scales :D

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Actually, for Abysia, a little Fire, along with the more useful Death, gives you Flaming Skulls, which will also let you get the F4 booster. Access to primary path boosters is worth a few pretender point. You can get the Helmet using a RoW too, which this build will give you.
I'd agree with the blood. If there's anything else you can trade that for I would.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

First of all, Great Warlock is not a good pretender for Abysia. It doesn't give you anything you really need.

Second of all, ew.

Ok, assuming Pr1 is a minimum... if i was going to use that pretender, i'd change the scales as following: T0->T3, L0->L3, see if I can't get points for G3 out of dropping some magic somewhere.

... Is this CBM or vanilla? In CBM i get everything you claimed with G3 and 10 points remaining. Take T3 and L3 (even point swap). Drop F2 to F1 which allows A3. (Air boosters with Ring of wizardry, which you should have no trouble forging with national mages + astral boosters).

Note, since you don't need astral or blood on your pretender for *any* reason, the master druid is a far better pretender choice for you - it'll make E4 relatively cheaper, and allow you to avoid investing in magic paths your pretender doesn't need to provide.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

If you don't want to go with a Blood Fountain (mobility/booster reasons) and you still want a Soul Contract-forger, the warlock is the best option - and also has some dousing bonus.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Or you can just, i dunno, use one of your B3F1 warlocks with some blood boosters? You can even empower him to B4 if you need to, because blood is cheap.

Warlock is never a good option for abysia - why spend pretender points for things that are cheap to get with national units?

The whole point of soul contracts is to get them as early as possible,many of them.Since Abysia is so well suited for contracts,i really dont see it as a side-strat here,involving waiting for empowerment/waiting for the right paths on your warlock/waiting for Constr 6 and the boosters/and being lucky or unlucky with old age on your warlocks .
With an awake blood fountain,you can get 1-2 already within the first year..of course you have to blood hunt your capital 1 or 2 times to achieve this,but dont forget that you get a slave income per turn with the fountain on CBM mod,too.
Its the fastest way to get a contract factory going,by far.
Later on,you can then empower/equip a warlock to be able to build contracts,so that your pretender gets better things to do.

Never Heard of sloth with Abysia`s resource-needing troops.
So you are using Humanbreds mainly to expand then for the early game?
What are you doing,if you meet another Human early,that attacks you?
Looks to me very risky here,to put all eggs in one basket.
Humanbreds can very easily be countered and depending on starting position/strong indies it can take some time to get a 2nd or 3rd castle going.
I think you need at least Prod 0 to be more flexible,and if you plan to rush your opponents(for which Lava Warriors are definately very well suited,even though i agree it might be their only good use) you need more.

Furthermore,you need money like crazy early on and for most good Abysia setups,something along O3 G3 and like P1 or P2 is a good choice,simply for the money bonus.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Okay, your big problem here is that you don't seem to have a clear direction...

Scales work better in combination...

Production is worthless if you don't have Order 3
I agree with whoever said Magic 1 is almost necessary for Abysia.
I personally think Growth is not worth the points for Abysia, but if you want to try it, Growth 3 is a must, as it has synergy with itself
Luck synergises well together with Death or Turmoil, Death 3 is very playable with Abysia. (this does hurt though)
Sloth is very doable as Abysia if you are willing to use a humanbred / salamander mix (don't underestimate this combo, at about 2 salamanders per 10 humanbred, it works _very_ well if you mix them in... DO NOT use the salamanders as a seperate unit)

You also need a clearer direction with paths.

Fire 1 is almost a necessity, allows you to forge both flaming skulls and soul contracts. It is possible to empower this, but unlike a lot of other nations, you _always_ have good uses for fire gems.
Air 2 is hard to leverage, Air 4 is much better, 3 is workable with a ring of wizardry.
I'm not sure you get much value out of water, unless you want it for something specific.
Earth 4 is a nice bless for your national mages and provides access to earth boots to boost warlocks.
Astral, take it at 5 or 6, for stuff out of reach of your warlocks, or not at all.
Death 1 is almost a necessity, the other half of the requirement for flaming skulls, I'd go Death 3, as it will give you access to boosters and easy diversification into death mages.
Nature 4 is a nice bless for national mages, works well with pheonix pyre to reduce afflictions, and allows you to use shrouds on mages with disease. Also gives you access to boosters for the many varieties of N1 indy mages, which will allow them to site search. If your using Magic 1 most of these guys are better options than salamanders for research recruiting.
Blood, for the same reason as astral take it at 5 or 6 or not at all, 6 is needed for soul contracts, 5 is workable because an armour of souls is a good enough item in it's own right to justify a slight delay in soul contracts.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

I know, but this is only my third game; I finished the tutorial, and I'm currently in a multiplayer game.

Until I get a firm grip on the game mechanics, I think my best bet is to play a game, see what works and what doesn't work, then slightly change things and see if I can make it work better.

If I'm using a radically different pretender from what I used the last time, even if it wasn't the best design, I don't think I'll really get a grip on what the values have changed. That's why I'm keeping a Great Warlock. Blood has been a disaster, so I'm planning on keeping it secondary and focusing on other stuff.

BTW, for anyone who has asked, I'm not using any mods. I want to know the system before I start playing with mods.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

:confused: MA Abysia is called Blood and Fire for a reason...

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Here's the big secret: MA Aby's troops aren't *that* good. They will not save you from a sacred rush. Lava warriors are crap, seriously, and you don't want a bless that's going to be big enough to turn the steaming pile of crap they are into something almost useful (if such a state of affairs is even possible).

Regular abyssian troops, even with P3, are hard to mass, and not much more effective than humanbred tbh.

So yes, you hang your expansion on humanbred. Its not even that hard. P3 is such a waste of points since you aren't going to care after year 1. At all.

Key to surviving year 1:
-Diplomacy. Talk to neighbors. Abysia isn't exactly considered an easy rush target. Make peace.
-Thaumaturgy. If there must be war, get the fire prison spells. Hoses any bless rush.
-Awake rainbow - fast research is fast.
-Bloodhunt early and often (NOT YOUR CAPITAL!). Do some early blood research. Spinedevils are actually pretty nice, for example.

Besides possible low level thaum/blood research, you're going to be bum rushing construction to at least 6 and probably 8. You're going to dump every F gem you see on lanterns when you hit constr 6.

Anyway, by the time you can forge enough blood boosters to get a warlock making contracts, you may be behind *two* contracts. To which i say: whatever. You saved a few *hundred* pretender points not doing it on your pretender.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Why are lava warriors crap? They have good hp, good prot, good AS, berserk, lotsa stuff. Their only real downside in my view is expense. (At least in CBM 1.71. Bear in mind the armor revamp.)

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Generally, there are two types of good sacred troops:
(1) low resource troops that can be massed easily and given a big bless like F9W9 which multiplies their combat effectiveness. See MA Ermor (S9 is the key bless here), all Mictlans (often dual-triple blessed), EA TC, etc...

(2) Troops who can be given enough survival and net-neutral encumbrance to outlast almost any opposition. Nieflheim, many sacred cavalry, Ashdod, etc... EA Abysia's sacreds are good enough to qualify here, mostly because of their fire shield and powerful heat aura.

So what do lava warriors have?
Massability: no
Survivability: no. No shield, only 17 protection, abominable defense which berzerker only makes worse, impossible to get net neutral on fatigue because of berzerk.

Really, the moment you see 41 resources, its time to seriously reconsider using them.

And even if you were to use them, they would absolutely need an E9+N4+ bless. They're pointless without it. And MA Abysia cannot afford the pretender design points for that, nor does it really care to.

Which leaves lava warriors as just a crappy unit that should never see play.

MA Abysia is not about national troops. They're about demons, demons, and more demons. With a side of demons. National troops are glorified arrow catchers.

(Burning ones vs. Lava warriors: Burning warriors have 1.33x as many hp, more str, 1 higher attack, 2x as much heat aura, *fire shield*, and the exact same resource cost. They also belong to a nation that can't dive into blood as easily as MA Abysia can, so they don't really have an alternative strategy).

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Didn't say you should base a national strategy around them, i just said they wern't crap. Even with just a +3 strength bless, which I think is pretty common for Abyssia, they hit 20 str in a heat 3 province. 23 with Berserk. So 2 29-damage attacks at 16 AS, optimally. 18 AS against shields (if I understand the morningstar bonus correctly). That's without considering Rush of Strength and the like.

And how much do they need shields themselves? They're immune to flaming arrows and have high enough protection to mostly ignore regular arrows.

Granted they are expensive, I agree, perhaps too expensive. But there's not much else to do with your cap resources.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

17 defense isn't that high. Ask MA Ulm how useful it is in keeping troops alive. And they acquire fatigue fast enough that even indies are a threat (especially given the numbers you can field them in). Lava warriors are *unplayable* without E9.

Attack damage is all well and good if you can *hit* anything, which given all their attacks are at 10, well, half of those are missing outright against most indies, and most of the other half are hitting shields (which gives the indie some 24+ protection unless its militia). So now you're expected to do <1 damage with the average 'hit'. But even so, a strength bless is *not* what they want. Tough sacreds want to outlast the opposition (reinvigoration, regeneration, +protection), not kill it quickly.

And can ignore arrows, lol. 17 protection does not let you ignore arrows, shields let you ignore arrows. And pray your opponents don't bring xbows. (Fire arrows are still magical, btw, and thus still improve the chances the arrow will hit, they just won't deal fire damage, oh noes).

Seriously, i'd rather have 4 humanbred than 1 lava warrior, which is about even on resources and *cheaper* (iirc) on gold.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

This is the real arguement against lava warriors, it's not that they are terrible, they are just overpriced for what they are capable of. Humanbred are close to the best value infantry in MA, don't overlook them.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

[quote=Squirrelloid;766564]Attack damage is all well and good if you can *hit* anything, which given all their attacks are at 10, QUOTE]

10 +3 for berserk + up to 3 for heat +2 against shields. And +2 on the second attack. Not that this makes them good units suddenly, but I think saying they have attack 10 is a misrepresentation.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Now to my secret:

First and again ,Lava Warriors are good for rushing if you use a decent blessing and mix them with regular troops.Simply for the fact that no one expects you to use them.
I repeat,i use them only when I try to improve Abysia`s early game via pretender design/scales/strats,which is only 1 strategy to play Abysia.
I dont build a Lava Warrior ever,when i am going for Soul Contracts for example.
I did say that several times.
And Lavas die a lot but have huge damage potential and as such can even kill Sc`s easily in early game WITH the right blessing and troop placement.Coupled with Heavy Infantries with Shield and Falling fires from your mages,I would call it a very strong early game force.

Second,P3 only a possibilty for rushing enemies because i want the P for Lava Warriors in my cap,otherwise I prefer P1 or P2 not only for production but also for the extra money.A matter of preference,I almost always take Luck,but with Aby i mostly go the O3,G3,H3,M1,L0 theme and then i often got points left to distribute on P.Points you have left if you dont go the rainbow pretender way;)
Apart from that,I still doubt going for below P0 is effective with Abysia,because I want to decide if I rely more on Humanbreds or more on Heavy Infantry when the time comes,i.e. in the game,when i see my position and my surrounding indies and meet possible neigbours,and not put the eggs in the Humanbred basket right before the game.Salamanders mixed with Humabreds seems like a good idea though,that did convince me.
First year is extremely important with Abysia and i dont want to be stuck due to a bad start.

Third, your soul contract argument is totally wrong,really.
I got 5+ when you make your first,because i churn out soul contract on like Turn 11,12,14,16,17 and i highly doubt you are able to outfit a F1B6 regular warlock,before Turn 17 to forge the first.
Now,that does mean though,that i got: 1+2+2+3+3+4+5=20 more devils than you.Its a stacking advantage.
Thats a whole devil army i got already for the early game,when you build your first sole devil.
Furthermore,the pretender points aren wasted.
Taking a B6 Blood Fountain,to be empowered to Fire 1 as soon as possible leaves room for very good scales and dominion.In addition you got some research help as well,some Slaves per turn and,if needed,the ability to blood hunt your cap,for a huge headstart in blood slaves.With G3 and some patrolling troops,just set your taxes on 70% for 1 turn and watch the fountain get in 20+ slaves.
Imo,early game advantage multiplies.Getting 20 more slaves on turn 7 is much more helpful than getting say 60 more on turn 50.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

damage output: yes

Really,you have played/you see Lavas the wrong way .
You are right in saying they arent worth to go for the E9N4 classical bless nation theme.Absolutely.
But you obviously havent actually tried it the other way:
Improving the strength of a unit and living with the weakness.
F9 or F6B4 make them VERY strong offensively.Sure,you rely on killing your enemies fast,so that your low def/high fatigue troops dont die like flies.But that is possible.
Only some strategical placement is needed.It mixes well with the regular troops.Place a squads of shield wielders in front.Lavas behind mixed with regular Heavy infantry/no shield.Rush for evocation for strong magic support,build more anathemant dragons than usually,less warlocks,less demonbreds,less blood focused in general.

Concentrate on damage output.Attack,attack,attack.Relentlessly.Churn out 6+ lavas per turn and several dozen heavy infantries in your other castles by turn 15+.P3 makes sure you can afford the resources.Back them by hordes of slayers to threat the precious early game commanders of your opponents.
Advisable on small to medium maps only.
Aim for early game lead because later on you are toast.

(how can you ever compare Lavas to burning ones or EA to MA in general.
EA Aby is so bad at blood hunting for example compared to MA.So much differences.You cant do that)

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

This nails it.
This is the real question of importance here.
Humanbreds do fare terrible vs certain indies and most human opponents though.Thats why i want to be flexible in resources.
Ok,i have never tried to mix in the expensive Salamanders,that should be working vs most indy provinces at least.But its till looks more like "turtling until the blood economy is running" if you not only skip lavas but also the Heavy Infantries for the early game(concerning sloth 3).

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

I see no need to respond to your comments about F9 blesses on lava warriors. Sure, if you're playing a blitz it might work, but in a real game this is just stupid, and anyone can see that. I've run a W9 bless on Jotunheim in a blitz before too, which is also stupid in a real game. The average game involves 8+ players. Lets talk about things that actually work.

Regarding contract timing:
Turn 11
Awake Great Sage T3S3H3G3L3Mg1 40RP (all paths but blood in varying amounts, ok, technically 39RP, +1 scales), CBM 1.7
Blood Boosters forged or forging: 2
slave income/trn: ~30-40, all non-capital, 3rd province coming online this turn for hunting.
Research completed: Construction 5+
Time to 1st contract: depends on whether i want to just empower or wait for constr 6. Assuming i just empower, which i can do next turn, the first contract will be forged on turn 13.

Note: this was in a very unlucky practice game which featured more bad events than good events despite the luck scales, and really nasty indies despite default settings that forced rather limited expansion routes (dark vines, jade amazons, lamia queen + horned serpents all next to capital, oh my). Also: 2nd fort is almost finished.

Edit:
Anyway, behind exactly 2 contracts, will likely catch up quickly, however, since i should be hitting 60 slaves/trn by turn 15 at the latest.
Other advantages: massive research lead, will be capable of forging boots of youth before the end of year 2 trivially. Full magic diversity on the pretender. Also, lantern spamming by turn 16, especially since i won't be wasting 50f empowering in fire.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Seriously,you are pretty unfriendly.
Have you ever tried fire 9 with MA Abysia yourself?
I did play it on cradle,9 player game,3 expert players.
I won it,normal settings.
Ok,we did use EDM as well,so that my F9 solar disc lead me to Ember Lords pretty quickly.But decisive has been my early game lead,rushing 2 players who didnt expect me to field falling fire/lava/Heavy Inf combos.
Besides,even with F9 you get blood entry,so that you at least can do somenthing for the endgame.
Plays a lot more different than W9 with Jotunheim bitz,since i field masses of troops overall and not just a few SC likes.
But thats the point.
There are so many variables/paramater you would have to ask before making an even slightly educated guess about someone elses strat,especially if you have never actually tried it yourself, that i am not seeing here.Keep on misjudging me as an obviously terrible player.Its ok.

regarding your timing:
Just LOL.
So,how many Warlocks did you built within the first year?
How many provinces did you have,because you put everything on research/blood hunt,it looks like you completley skipped expanding?
What about old age with your warlocks?
your scales are extremely luck dependant to get a fast start,whats your income?
Did you really hit B4 Warlocks,since you would need 3 boosters otherwise?
Did you mean empower to F1 or B4(big difference here for contract timing,since empowering to F1 doesnt delay contract forging)
Are you able to churn out a new contract nearly every turn right after you built your first?
If i got 2 more after the first year,but 6 more after the 2nd i still got dozens more devils,because of the stacking advantage.

Just to make it clear( will try your setup now),the setup i told you was realistically played ,Sp-tested and MP-tested,with a lot of expanding going on +aiming for 3 castles early on,even with a little site searching involved.
If i want to prove you the other extreme,i can stupidly just blood hunt my cap right from the start,take a fountain with F1B6 and churn out the first contract on turn 6,right after hitting constr 2 :D

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

I empowered an F1S2B3 warlock in blood, because its cheaper overall since slaves are cheap. I couldve empowered an S2B4 in fire, but it anti-synergizes with rushing lantern spam (and as long as you're rushing construction...). I could have empowered earlier and not wasted a turn by empowering with fire.

G3 mitigates old age quite a bit, I had no old age problems at the end of year 1. Generally speaking, you might get 1 afflicted if you built nothing but warlocks (i had some demonbreds and apprentices, since they're more reasonable bloodhunters)

I really got a B4 warlock. It happens 25% of the time... More actually, there's a second <100% random. you can expect one in the first year pretty trivially. Basically, buy warlocks until you get a B4 warlock, then switch over to other mages. (especially if you're going to empower in F1...)

My scales are luck dependant, and i didn't get very lucky, and i still managed that. (Ok, the castle was entirely a windfall from events, but that was about the sum total of cash events i got). In a more average game, you'd expect higher cash from luck scales than i got. Despite nasty indies and poor events, i still ahd 11 provinces by turn 12. With more average indies/events, you could easily do 14-15+. In a lucky game you could easily have +2 castles (at least building) by the end of year 1.

Also, my strat is a research/blood rush aimed at midgame dominance, which it will achieve. Turmoil scales give it low opportunity cost for bloodhunting, since the lost income is minor at best. Growth scales let you bloodhunt aggressively. It should hit 100 slaves/trn in or before year 3.

And yes, you can aggressively hunt your capital right from the start, but this kills your income and thus your mages (and thus your research). I think we'll both agree that's a bad idea.

Oh, the other thing my strat gives you? a good manual site searcher in your pretender (probably to be started right after you hit constr 6), and a caster who can hit N5 for GoH and/or forge the chalice, to make old age far less worrying.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

thats not true,and you know it.
I only have to blood hunt my cap twice.
3+3+3+3+3+3=18 slaves
+
2 times blood hunt= close,but could be enough for the first contract.
Still enough room to do things elsewhere,doesnt look too much different to your extreme strat on first sight.

I can probably do 2 contracts on turn 7,that would really be killing everything else though.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

not to offend you,but i really would like to see the save game file.
It simply sounds like a lie on how you managed to actually blood hunt enough slaves for 2 boosters AND 1 blood empowerment,while still expanding,buying warlocks until you get desired paths,researching and getting the requirment for your first contract by the turn you said+the enogh income to further build them every other turn and having that decent number of provinces using that scales.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

err.. i played past turn 13 at this point, just to see what year 2 vaguely looked like. SP doesn't keep old turns around.

I suppose i could run it again, for lulz.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

do that.
I just played your settings,but i did make some mistakes i think:
I didnt achieve what you told us here,it wasnt even close.
Ive been very unlucky though concerning magic paths for the Warlock and Events.
Solely from this,i can tell you already that i dont like it,being screwed in like 1 out of 4 games,whenever you are very unlucky.Exactly the reason i take Order with Aby.
I will keep on testing a bit during the next days.
You might as well just try out my design and compare:

B6 awake fountain,O3G3P2H3M1L1,Dom:6(something like L:0 and higher Dom ´doable to).I still play CBM 1.6.Shouldbt make a difference here,though.

I predict,you will be surprised.

Re: Trying to improve my MA Abyssia Pretender Design
 

Ok, 2nd run, turn 11:
-12 RP short of Const 5
-a little tighter on blood slaves due to a really lackluster turn of hunting, and i think i got started a turn late.
-only 1 B4 warlock means it'll take me until turn 13 to start contract forging. (Need to forge one booster and empower in F).
-No windfall gold until turn 11, but it was a 3k event, so no castles actually in progress, but capable of starting a bunch.
-14 provinces
-starting assassin got unlucky and had a province with *5* commanders in it, one of which had bodyguards, so didn't even get 1 province from indie commander assassinating...

2h file and trn file available upon request. CBM 1.71. Played on map: streamlands (very popular for multiplayer right now).

And you might note the reason I'm doing this on not a FoB is because i want a pretender who is capable of doing other things (site searching, casting GoH, etc...). If i was going to go with a FoB, i'd want dom 9-10 and pursue a blood sacrifice strategy.

i kindly request the turn file please;)

Sure,i note the reason.You did already made clear some days ago,you prefer sleeping Fountain with even better scales and/or strong blessings or rainbow pretender cutting the diversity weakness Abysia got,getting a better endgame unless i get lucky with indies.
And I generally prefer setups that try to optimize the strength of a nation.
The fire9 rush start tries to make the early game very strong,and the awake FoB strat tries to optimize Soul contract spamming.Testing it,you will quickly see that i am even able to afford building 2 contracts per turn before end of year 2+since i rush Constr as well,i do get the lanterns as well.

A sleeping /dormant Fountain for better scales/dominiion is clearly worse for Abysia concerning soul contracts,at least i came to that conclusion during test games,because you are slow at research/blood hunting at start.
Also,since i already got pretty good scales,i dont need more points.You can easily make it Dom 8 or 9 with an awake Fountain aswell btw,if you prefer.Just go P1 and L0(or P0 L1) and you got Blood saccing as a side strat going.
The biggest decision though,is : taking F0 or F1 at the start.
F1 allows for even earlier soul contract forging and you save fire gems for the lanterns.Thinking about it now ,i would probably got for slighty worse scales and F1 if i would start a new game with my setup.