High Bless rush strategy :(

[Foodstamp]

Wow, you guys are making multiplayer sound depressing at any level. I didn't know the blesses were so devistating on larger FFA maps as well.

I guess I can hope that the players in my current MP games chose to have fun and be original over using someone else's strategy to try to secure easy victories.

[DominionsFan]

Foodstamp said:
I didn't know the blesses were so devistating on larger FFA maps as well.

They are not. It helps a lot however.

[Belcarl]

Haven't encountered a super bless strat in MP yet, so just throwing out some ideas.

What about Mind burn + Communion? Thau lvl 2 should be able to dish this out if you can recruit astral mages. So Ermor, pythium and C'tis should be able to paralyze and kill expensive sacred units with MR below 13...

Nature mages gets Vine arrows at Evoc lvl 2. does 14+ damage and entangles the enemy.

For low strenght enemies (Mictlan?) Conjuration 1 gives tangle vines.

Thaumaturgy lvl 2, Bonds of fire. Requires F1.
Alteration lvl 2, Earth meld. Req E2
Alteration lvl 1, False fetters, Req A2

Combine this with some long range attacks like archers, or artillery mages to actually kill off the Blessed troops.

So basically Blood and death are the paths with problems if you cannot get lvl 2 mages of a certain path to spamm the above spells. In theory that is....

[dirtywick]

Rage might work, you could get them beating up eachother.

There's also Decay for Death which I've had some success with killing units, but it's not that reliable.

Dust to Dust works against undead.

Rust Mist, Evoc 3, works wonders against high prot units blessed or not, but your mages aim with it is spotty at times.

[alexti]

Belcarl said:
Haven't encountered a super bless strat in MP yet, so just throwing out some ideas.

What about Mind burn + Communion? Thau lvl 2 should be able to dish this out if you can recruit astral mages. So Ermor, pythium and C'tis should be able to paralyze and kill expensive sacred units with MR below 13...

The problem is that most of effective low-level are single target. I can see Caelum managing to put some sort of defense - recruiting the cheapest indies just to build up numbers and electrocuting blessed enemies while they're getting through the militia screen. But Caelum has cheap serahps who almost never miss and neither MR nor morale helps vs lightning. For almost everyone else it's worse - more expensive mages, less reliable spell.

Fire nations get some reasonable spells (poor precision but area effects), maybe they can do something too. Otherwise, I guess the only way is to hide in the water

[DominionsFan]

Graeme Dice said:

I'm sorry, but that's an absurd exaggeration. There is no way that the forces those nations could gather on a 10 province per player map would be able to capture the C'tissian castle by turn 8. This is especially true with the imprisoned pretender necessary for a dual bless strategy.

Just an example. Turn 4: QM has rushed my niefel capital with a mictlan [IIRC] uber bless strategy. The map was silent seas, and the game was a 5 FFA.
I've also rushed many players before turn 5-6 with high bless sacred builds in blitzes.

[Graeme Dice]

DominionsFan said:
Just an example. Turn 4: QM has rushed my niefel capital with a mictlan [IIRC] uber bless strategy. The map was silent seas, and the game was a 5 FFA.

And did he manage to capture your capital before turn 8?

[DominionsFan]

Graeme Dice said:

And did he manage to capture your capital before turn 8?

Heh, I had to throw in the towel of course. I had no choince against that fast rush. Niefel cannot field enough troops for turn 4.

[Graeme Dice]

DominionsFan said:
Heh, I had to throw in the towel of course. I had no choince against that fast rush. Niefel cannot field enough troops for turn 4.

So how many of his troops did you kill during the final siege?

[DominionsFan]

Graeme Dice said:

So how many of his troops did you kill during the final siege?

I cannot remember exactly, because I had many blitzes in the last days, but I am sure that he had many Mictlan sacreds by than. EA Mictlan is nasty and excellent for a bless strategy. Since their sacreds are so cheap, it is easy to mass them in a couple of turns.