Eriu guide

[Baalz]

Yes, their sacred infantry are not bad, but they are capital only and not really good enough to carry a strategy in small numbers - as you say you mass them far too slowly. You can certainly mix them in as a bit of a bonus but I haven't found they make that much of a difference. For the cost of one of the Daoine Sidhe you can get three Firbolgs, and outside of the bless each Firbolg is almost as good.

[Shovah32]

I just lost a Sidhe Lord(fully buffed) to a volley of Mictlan PD slings. I'm guessing that was just unlucky?

[OmikronWarrior]

Shovah32 said:
I just lost a Sidhe Lord(fully buffed) to a volley of Mictlan PD slings. I'm guessing that was just unlucky?

There almost had to be more than bad luck there. I don't think glamour defends against projectiles (somebody please confirm or deny this), but mistform will reduce all damage to 1. There is a 1/100 chance of any attack dispelling it, but if you're lord is even lightly armored (did he have a shield?) then the odds of slingshots taking him out or pretty slim. An improbability drive powered ship didn't fly by, did it?

Anyways, there might be a rare bug in the randomizer that lets wonky things happen.

[Baalz]

With a shield and at least a 21 protection (assuming earth bless + barkskin) slings shouldn't really be able to touch you and mistform should catch any few wildly lucky shots. I've repeatedly taken out PD of 20+ from T'ien Ch'i and they've got compound bows - though admittedly I do script air shield in that circumstance.

[vfb]

Just a shield will give you 90% protection against the bullets, assuming you're around 45 fatigue from the buffs, and if you had an air shield on top of that, the chance of a bullet hitting you is around 2%.

The bullet probably got a critical because of your fatigue, there's a 1 in 6 chance of that at 45 fatigue.

So now a 9 damage bullet versus 10 protection (halfed for the critical) needs to do 1 damage, and pop the mistform with a 1% chance; or 25 damage to pop the mistform, reduced to 1 (that's also around a 1% chance). 2% chance of popping the mistform, and that's generous.

And then you still need more bullets hitting to start doing real damage, unless you lost your shield arm from an affliction on the 1HP damage.

It's all really unlikely, if the manual is correct about fatigue and criticals.

You could run with -ddddddd to try to see what happened.

[ComTrav]

I appreciated this guide a lot, I'm playing around with Eriu (and Tir and a couple other new countries) and found this helpful. (I guess Fir Bolg are better units than I thought...shows what I know)

So newb question:

Superficially, Eriu has a lot in common with Vanheim (air magic, glamour, recruitable thugs) but Vanheim seems to be a more popular (I mean, cmon, it's Norse! And they have a bless strategy, which seems to be all the rage!). Eriu has the songs (which are nifty, especially for removing spell fatigue) and better access to nature, but Van has Earth (on the smiths) and even Blood, and what seem to be better national troops. I haven't played either country extensively (although I sorta want to go vanbless some mp game, just so I understand it better) but I'm interested to hear some veteran players thoughts on this comparison.

[Sombre]

They do have one of the few sacreds that actually benefits from a blood bless, though that isn't something anyone should give them given that they're slow, cap only and generally pretty weak.

[LDiCesare]

ComTrav said:
Superficially, Eriu has a lot in common with Vanheim (air magic, glamour, recruitable thugs)

I don't think so. Glamour for Vanheim is more widely available than for Eriu, where it's limited to commanders and capital only troops.
I certainly don't play Eriu well, but their having to rely on indeps to do any kind of research certainly takes most fun out of them for me. They are really bad at research, even when you try to give them owl quills, which is the only thing they can forge to help research.
As for Fir bolgs, it should be noted they cost 13 gold, which is still a bit expensive for what they are worth. With the cost of Tuathas, fielding an army of any size is quite hard imo, and research is poor.

I believe a surprise attack with sneaky leaders can be nice, particularly if you coordinate a lot of attacks at once, but I can't see how you can build enough units and research to get it to work without being attacked by someone first. You certainly need to be good/lucky in diplomacy to be able to pull this out.