Any Good Non-Bless Strategy Nations

Teraswaerto · #1 January 8th, 2007, 05:34 AM

MA Ulm is probably the weakest nation of the game.

A few that come to mind:

Pythium is good. Great national troops, powerful mages with Astral and Air, and easy access to communion.

C'tis (particularly EA) is also good. Cheap, powerful death mages recruitable everywhere, and slave lizards are great against indies.

They wont be able to defend against an early rush of heavily blessed Vanir, but no one can really.

Ironhawk · #2 January 8th, 2007, 05:43 AM

There are plenty of non-bless strat nations. Particularly in your game, with such large maps, bless strats are overall weaker anyway. Except that I guess you are playing AI which cant compensate for that at all.

Why dont you try a really strong magic nation and try that out? Play Arco, Caelum, Pythium, or even Tien Chi. All of them have very good magic and not very good sacreds. See how the game plays when you are dependent on your mages for domination.

Epaminondas · #3 January 8th, 2007, 06:41 PM

Quote:

Teraswaerto said:
MA Ulm is probably the weakest nation of the game.

A few that come to mind:

Pythium is good. Great national troops, powerful mages with Astral and Air, and easy access to communion.

Agree with both points. Ulm truly is crap and is in need of more help than just about any other nation.

Gandalf Parker · #4 January 8th, 2007, 06:44 PM

Isnt bless-strategy best as a rush strategy? Small maps?
All the bless troops in the world wont be much good without the priests.
I would think that you could create an anti strategy around Mictlans titan/assassin god.

alexti · #5 January 8th, 2007, 10:24 PM

EA Ermor and Caelum are good nations for non-bless strategies and non-bless strategies are arguably better for them than bless ones.

Meglobob · #6 January 8th, 2007, 11:26 PM

LA Agartha is a good non-bless nation. Go for really good scales order 3, prod 3, luck 3. There massed crossbows behind heavy protection infantry backed with death/fire/earth/astral magic the nation has, makes for a powerful nation with lots of options. There national spell are excellent as well.

This nation is kind of like Ulm with heavy armoured units but backed with some serious magical power.

There only drawback is there slow movement but you can grind enemies to dust...

Aleph · #7 January 9th, 2007, 01:14 AM

I'm relatively new, so I speak from less perspective. That said:

I bought the game for R'yleh and Ermor, who play nothing like anyone else, so if you're sick of blesses give them a try.

LA Ermor is totally unique: you have no need for resources or supplies and minimal need for gold, and once you get your magic flowing your best troops are all recruitable anywhere you can plunk down a Dusk Elder and a Lab (empower or item up some S3 Dusk Elders to teleport into new areas to help your spread). Easy access to Skull Mentors means loads of research, allowing you to unlock a lot of their fantastic no-friendly fire spells (Darkness, Wind of Death, and Rigor Mortis for the battlefield, as well as the globals listed in the manual) and summons. I'm currently into a Master Lich with A/F/N 2 E/W 3 S5 D6 for a Pretender - LA Ermor really needs good site searching early since they are so magic dependent, and if you're thinking of an early Burden of Time you'd like your pretender to be Undead. Add Luck 3 to the scales recommended in the manual and you can't go wrong.

LA R'yleh is similar in some ways. It has the additional advantages of being the only late age nation to start under water, and its best mages can start with astral 5. Once you empower one mage to 6, you set of a whole chain of Wish possibilities (Wish for magical power, Wish for Blood Slaves, Blood empower, robe of magi, now you can item other starting S5 mages up to Wish without needing to Empower them) which will eventually leave you with numerous commanders capable of casting Master Enslave. On the downside, a lot of your commanders will end up insane, which leads to even more micro.

The only other army I've toyed around with much is Shinuyama. Lots of unique troops, assassins, and some slick national summons make for great play - also, I like their mixed options for incredibly inexpensive to deluxe troops. And, as the manual notes, their immortal Bakemono pretender is pretty neat.