EA arcosephele - bless strategy?

[Wick]

In simple melee cost effectiveness they are the worst recruitable sacreds in the game. (Of the 57 I tested anyway.) Flying makes up for a lot but still... even the independent Pegasus riders are better.

[Xanatos]

how do you come to that conclusion wick?

[Wick]

Xanatos said:
how do you come to that conclusion wick?

I've done a stupid amount of testing of "How many of a vast hoard of heavy infantry (ID 40) can 600g of <unit_type> kill before dying." In a four battle trial the Wind Riders scored a total of 19. The median for recruitable sacred troops (57 types, null blessed) is 63. The Heavy Infantry got 79 against themselves, which was a slightly better then the overall median. Basically, the implication is if you have a strong bless multiplying the Wind Riders 400% then they are as strong as independent infantry.

Certainly, the test is pretty simplistic. It's biased against archers and in favor of tramplers and poison. However, the results tend to be stable and to approximate the conventional wisdom -- which includes, Wind Riders aren't worth a bless strategy.

[MaxWilson]

Hmmm, interesting. I just did a quick check myself, and F4W4E9-blessed Wind Riders (5 in number, 625 gp) plus a prophet doing <Divine Bless, Cast> in the background lost handily to 80 Heavy Infantry #40, killing maybe 10 of them before dying/fleeing. I wonder how much of that is due to the unfortunate tendency of fliers to spread themselves too thin and get ganged up on.

In contrast, 7 E9D9 Helhirdlings (630 gp) killed maybe thirty or forty heavy infantry before routing (4 surviving Helhirdlings). 1 E9N6 Niefel Jarl + 1 Niefel Giant (650 gp) killed them all with no losses. 4 E10N6 Ahiman Anakites (600 gp) killed them all but one of them got a limp. 24 F9W9S9N4 Jaguar Warriors (600 gp) killed them all and lost 4 jags.

Altogether, it's an interesting way of evaluating the cost-effectiveness of sacreds. It's a little bit misleading in some cases because some sacreds are more resource-limited or holy-limited than gold-limited, especially depending upon what scales you traded away to get the bless you're using in the test. It also doesn't evaluate non-combat-related stuff like strat move (flying troops are sometimes better for expanding in rough terrain even if you take more casualties). Overall, though... interesting methodology.

-Max

[Agema]

Have you run the tests multiple times? Results can vary a lot from trial to trial.

In contrast, in an EA MP game I had 5 points Agarthan PD rout a force of 3 Niefel giants (N9F4?? bless), plus priest leader (Skratti?). They got lucky, nailed one Nief and injured another on the second round of melee, the giants routed off.

[Gregstrom]

There is a bit of an issue with Greek summons, isn't there?

Satyrs and Maenads went off to form their own nation, Hydras belong to someone else, Kithaironic Lions are open access (if they're Greek - they sound like the lion Hercules killed), so are the Furies...

[JimMorrison]

Gregstrom said:
There is a bit of an issue with Greek summons, isn't there?

Satyrs and Maenads went off to form their own nation, Hydras belong to someone else, Kithaironic Lions are open access (if they're Greek - they sound like the lion Hercules killed), so are the Furies...

Most of the Greek myths have been incorporated into other nations, sure. Does this preclude Arco from summoning them? Of particular interest are things such as the gorgon and cyclops. Being able to summon versions of these creatures seems only fair, really. If they are made comparable to other higher end summons, and cost similar amounts of gems, they won't confer any distinct advantage, but would hopefully be summonable by national mages, with a bit of boosting.

Honestly, I think that's one of the things that would most improve this game, more plentiful national summons. Many of them wouldn't even need to be completely exotic, but for example Caelum could get a "Giant Ice Drake" at Conj6 that had enhanced power. Pangaea might have a "Minotaur of the Maze" who is larger, and angrier than the ones that they can recruit. Obviously it would lose some of the point if ALL of them were just bigger versions of already available creatures, but there's a lot of room for creative additions.

[Jazzepi]

Agema said:
Have you run the tests multiple times? Results can vary a lot from trial to trial.

In contrast, in an EA MP game I had 5 points Agarthan PD rout a force of 3 Niefel giants (N9F4?? bless), plus priest leader (Skratti?). They got lucky, nailed one Nief and injured another on the second round of melee, the giants routed off.

I think you got pretty lucky.

A N9F4 bless sounds awful though. I would definitely go some form of E9N4-6. Generally you don't even care about those giants swinging. If they can't hit the broad side of a barn, their cold aura, which stacks, kills everything around them through fatigue anyways. Honestly, what you really want to have happen is that you get swarmed by a bunch of guys in waves. They start to fatigue from the cold, and then they fatigue down to the point where they pass out. What happens then is that you have these big nasty giants, mostly surrounded by units that are asleep, and who are slowly dying to the cold aura. Then the guys who first came up to attack the giants die off, opening up a 3 unit square next to the giant which is quickly filled in.

Once this starts happening your giants are mostly immune to meele damage.

Jazzepi

[MaxWilson]

Agema said:
Have you run the tests multiple times? Results can vary a lot from trial to trial.

Wick ran it multiple times. I didn't because 1.) I was sanity-checking the methodology, not the units, 2.) luck didn't appear to play a huge part in any of the battles I examined. The Helhirdlings didn't get hit once with a lucky hit and then rout, they gradually degraded under infantry pressure. The Wind Riders died one or two each round and then routed--maybe they would have killed slightly more HI in a different run but it was pretty obvious they weren't going to do as well as Niefelheim. Niefelheim, of course, just needs to survive one or two rounds of combat and then everybody around freezes solid.
Obviously you would be more rigorous if you were trying to make a decision whether to take a bless strategy for a certain kind of unit. You'd want to check vs. heavy infantry, units with multiple attacks (Ulm's Steel Maidens or C'tis' Elite Warriors), cavalry (Helheim's Mounted Hirdmen), other blessed units (F9W9 Jaguar Warriors), archers, etc. I didn't.

-Max

[Frostmourne27]

Wick said:

I've done a stupid amount of testing of "How many of a vast hoard of heavy infantry (ID 40) can 600g of <unit_type> kill before dying." In a four battle trial the Wind Riders scored a total of 19. The median for recruitable sacred troops (57 types, null blessed) is 63. The Heavy Infantry got 79 against themselves, which was a slightly better then the overall median. Basically, the implication is if you have a strong bless multiplying the Wind Riders 400% then they are as strong as independent infantry.

Certainly, the test is pretty simplistic. It's biased against archers and in favor of tramplers and poison. However, the results tend to be stable and to approximate the conventional wisdom -- which includes, Wind Riders aren't worth a bless strategy.

Well, I'm not necessarily going to argue with conventional wisdom, but sacreds are occasionally used against something other than heavy infantry, and some sacreds benefit from blesses more than others do, IMHO. Especially since in the early era, heavy infantry is comparatively less common. I would, however, still agree that EA Arco isn't a bless nation. Just compare Wind Riders to what is established as good sacreds - they aren't terrible, but three of them probably won't beat most indiy provinces.

As a somewhat OT note, what do people think of Hinom's sacred giant? The Melqart is awesome, able to solo most EA poptypes no proeblem, and Hinom can eaven heal it, but what about the units? There doesn't really seem to be a whole lot of point to them...