Some ideas: raiding, seiging, spell AI and more..

[Boron]

Soapyfrog said:

Perhaps on a small map. I agree you definitely have to make it to turn 30 or so, although having Ice Devils by turn 13 should be a nice boost to your survivability.

Hm i thought Scouts can't sneak away a besieged castle not sure though .

Ice devils are nice but if you have them unequipped they are not invincible .
Abysia can't clamhoard before they research water bracelet . Your pretender could clamhoard but normally he has more important tasks like conquering provinces earlygame .
So with water bracelet and either spectres or lucky Warlocks you can clamhoard finally .

But getting the astral items early for your Ice devils if you don't trade isn't so easy .
Boots of flying + an Air resistence item can be if you have no luck with your Warlock random take a while too .

Simliar with Mictlan they lack Earth + Air magic too on their mages .

Earlygame Caelum or Vanheim can be pretty hard opponents against your devils and they may have 1-2 Airqueen SCs then too when you have e.g. 100 devils + 3-4 ice devils / arch devils .

Caelum can screw your blood hunting earlygame by false horror raiding strat , Vanheim can do similiar with this + stealthy Vans .


Bloodhunting costs you a lot because you have to use mages for this + get normally no income from the bloodhunted provinces .
So you have less research than other nations + less gold income .

A staff of storms is very common . Basically every better air nation could give you a lot of trouble if they want to wipe you out early .

The resources you invest in Soul Contract hoarding pay off but it maybe too late .

How do you defend as Abysia/Mictlan when you hord against Vanheim/Caelum/Pythium ?
Finally with the blood nations you can have just plain bad luck and neighbor ermor on the one side + have poor provinces on the other side limiting your bloodhunt abilities more than normal .

It all depends , if you survive the early-midgame your hoarding pays off but often you won't survive early-midgame .
So you will perhaps win half of your games or 1/3 with hoarding but lose the rest .

Abysia is very good at hoarding Bloodstones + Soul contracts while Mictlan is good at hoarding Soul contracts + Clams while e.g. Pythium is damn good at site searching + Clamhoarding .
Normally the different ways to hoard pay off all similiar and the nations who suck at horde are very good early-midgame then instead so they can very often compensate this by territory .

You have a lot of good points though .
What makes the Devil so special are his stats + abilities .
18 attack + 16 def make most ( or all ? ) national troops useless .
18 attack + 16 def is almost as good as a banelord early game SC or similiar .

The devil almost forces your opponent to get staffs of storm + use air magic to counter you . If he can't do this he has probably problems .

But about 1/3 of the nations can do this with little or no effort . Another 1/3 has other not too bad means like banefire ( Ctis desert tombs ) or watermagic . Bladewind and magma eruption etc. should not be tooo bad against devils too .
You are probably more mobile though so you can pick your battles easier .

There are too many different factors to think of that you can say if devils are imbalanced or not .
They are probably costwise the best summon but there has always to be 1 best thing in each area .

But earlygame you use your resources setting up your hoarding factory . So you are very vulnerable there .
Midgame airnations can still give you a good fight and lategame everyone else has other strong measures against you in fields where he is good at .