MA Eriu

[Elerus]

So, picked up Dominions 6 and have been experimenting and looking around with the changes. Eriu (and TNN) are now both Glamour nations. MA Eriu received some new Firbolg units as well as a more heavily armored footman infantry.

My issue has been they feel underwhelming - the cap only sacred needs a massive bless to compete. I tried a Twist Fate bless and it's alright, but more indies means more archers and lossless expansion wasn't something I could figure out.

Any advice/thoughts on the Nation? I really enjoy their theme, and love the new Glamour magic (big fan of Changeling the Dreaming TTRPG) but I can't get the nation to work for me. Thanks!

[Darkfireslide]

For clearing, a group of the axe+shield fir bolgs and the new fir bolg cattle raiders are very efficient depending on what you're fighting, probably in a group of about 25-30 minimum I would say. The new chariots in small groups (or one large group) can trample most indies, too. Daoine Sidhe are aren't very good sacreds, but they do happen to benefit from the same blesses your thugs might be using, and while MA Eriu is lacking in a lot, they do have very solid thug chassis in the Sidhe Lord. So the answer is to not do a heavy bless strategy unless you're trying to specifically boost your thugs, imo.

I'm new to the game so I don't know some of the more in-depth strategies but I was definitely able to clear indies with them using the above units. As always, if early expansion is the issue you can always take an awake expander, for which Eriu get a discounted green dragon that with nature 6 can take recuperation to avoid injuries or nature 8 to get full regeneration, and cast personal barkskin fairly early on. Just avoid the usual pretender-killer camps like barbarians and it should work really well

[Big Dog]

Rush alteration or thaumaturgy and cast blur and luck on your units to reduce losses. Also not every nation can expand without losses, it's part of the game, sometimes it's better to mix cheaper units with your scareds so they take the losses instead of the limited recruit sacreds.

[Demonsthenes]

A really fun thing to do with the nation is playing with fluffed thugs. Take a Sidhe Lord, give it like 4 Reinvigoration from bless plus gear (you can add barding and other gear to make it stronger), have it cast Shroud of Bewilderment, Displacement, Personal Regeneration (with a gem), blessing, maybe one more buff and then attack.

Put a Milesian Mage "fluffer" in the same square to do buffs like Ironskin, Mistform, Protection from Arrows, Temper Armor retreat (you'll spend a few gems depending on what random you have).

And that'll be able to fight for a very long time against normal troops. And there's lots of ways to make that stronger with more investment, but it's one of the better thug chassis options for being able to kill 50 independents without risk without forging any gear.

The cap only sacreds aren't very strong, so it's a nation where you'll lean into summons to build strong armies. I would design a bless mainly for your Sidhe Lords.

[Hajduk]

Cattle Raiders or Chariots with luck are pretty interesting, but you have to accept they will have a bunch of afflictions if they aren't killed. The new Milesian Mage helps temper some of the pain of losing air. The new man-at-arms isn't a bad line holder for set piece battles and the higher base MR means they can take friendly fire or splash from glamour spells better than the average enemy. For example, they are fairly comparable to the Pyrene man-at-arms but those have 9 MR instead of 11 MR, so if they are locking horns, a sleep cloud or ephemeral blast cast into the front lines will harm way more Pyrene troops than yours.

[Demonsthenes]

The chariots really need barding, kinda ruins the unit. I also don't know why Fir Bolg lack helmets but it's probably a secret conspiracy against nations that can do Rain of Stones easily :).

But yeah the Man at Arms is good.

[swan camper]

Your cap only sacred unit is above average but doesn't have a magic weapon or really anything special besides what's intrinsic to elves. So don't make a build around blesses. Put points into decent scales so you can amass really good income and go wide with troop variety. Fir bolg do a lot of damage reliably. Slings are a good answer to units with shields, mounts and without helmets. Javelin are good at straight up killing when they land, and the Javelin units aren't bad as actual units themselves minus the protection. The man at arms shreds through indies as well. Really solid selections honestly, not all, but you have a lot to work with. When you've got some leniency to make the bless after scales, see what you really can't go without, and if it may seem too much, then just test limits. Consider what your sister nations or related nations have, there's always trade offs that nations have. Even a level one magic path that's reliably attainable is night and day.

I recommend you get a titan with a niche that is fun to you or a monument (dom 3 and 4). Eriu is probably looking at an imprisoned god or dormant if taking a titan. Awake expanders and rainbows are eh. You're not gunning to take a high level bless or wide bless variety with a nation that loves nice scales. Also some of your heroes are monstrous, some of them you throw into the people's arena and call it a day.

I've tried Eriu several times as if it were TNN or Dominions 6 Eriu and I hit the wall every time. Eriu has a lot it gives you but is shrouded behind experience and some trial and error.

Get at least neutral or positive order and prod, temperature if you want more bless points, growth isn't important but death isn't preferable, luck is fantastic but you're catching lightning whether you get your incredible images, magic I think is highly desirable. The magic paths you go down, especially thaumaturgy means you can cast great buffs with good range and are onto units who are on the squishy side, which happens to be common on Eriu. Cu Sidhe in conj 3 are your spammable extremely cheap sacred, rain in evo 3 deals with hot nations. Use your mages as mages and your monks as priests.

[Aellas3]

Originally posted by FamilyCarCrash6DeadGaming:

Your cap only sacred unit is above average but doesn't have a magic weapon or really anything special besides what's intrinsic to elves. So don't make a build around blesses. Put points into decent scales so you can amass really good income and go wide with troop variety. Fir bolg do a lot of damage reliably. Slings are a good answer to units with shields, mounts and without helmets. Javelin are good at straight up killing when they land, and the Javelin units aren't bad as actual units themselves minus the protection. The man at arms shreds through indies as well. Really solid selections honestly, not all, but you have a lot to work with. When you've got some leniency to make the bless after scales, see what you really can't go without, and if it may seem too much, then just test limits. Consider what your sister nations or related nations have, there's always trade offs that nations have. Even a level one magic path that's reliably attainable is night and day.

I recommend you get a titan with a niche that is fun to you or a monument (dom 3 and 4). Eriu is probably looking at an imprisoned god or dormant if taking a titan. Awake expanders and rainbows are eh. You're not gunning to take a high level bless or wide bless variety with a nation that loves nice scales. Also some of your heroes are monstrous, some of them you throw into the people's arena and call it a day.

I've tried Eriu several times as if it were TNN or Dominions 6 Eriu and I hit the wall every time. Eriu has a lot it gives you but is shrouded behind experience and some trial and error.

Get at least neutral or positive order and prod, temperature if you want more bless points, growth isn't important but death isn't preferable, luck is fantastic but you're catching lightning whether you get your incredible images, magic I think is highly desirable. The magic paths you go down, especially thaumaturgy means you can cast great buffs with good range and are onto units who are on the squishy side, which happens to be common on Eriu. Cu Sidhe in conj 3 are your spammable extremely cheap sacred, rain in evo 3 deals with hot nations. Use your mages as mages and your monks as priests.

I'm still an intermediate beginner I'd say, but I mainly played with MA Eriu in dom 5. I like some of the changes in dom 6, but the air nerf really took away the one thing they could do really well. The new changes are overall better imo.

In my test games I've found you want high order and production to recruit your good units (cattle raiders and chariots). I'd personally recruit the cattle raiders as I believe they're stealthy and you can mass more of them quicker. The chariots are good for niche encounters, but in early expansion you want massed troops. You will suffer attrition, your firbolgs are a bit less armoured than average but hit slightly more often and harder. The attrition can get intense and you don't really have an answer to giants since they nerfed air access, so yeah good luck there. High protection and health will be your enemy. The attrition is why you want good order and production scales. Your heroes are good overall so I like to dump cold and go for luck, though I wouldn't build a strategy around your really good heroes. Your good units only come from certain province types, so you really want to be able to mash the troop button when you can.

I'm still not the best with magic, nor scripting mages, but your thugs are really good at cleaning out indies. With glamour they are good at stalling enemy stacks as well while you let your troops do the work. I imagine there is a play with web/entangle and the various confusion/fascination spells but I haven't figured it out due to my scripting problems. With their overall higher level magic paths being more restricted to rng, you might want to mash out a lot of commanders and keep the good ones hidden and safe. Simulacrum will be a really good play here.

They aren't quite as good at research as they were, but really you want to be spamming the mage button anyway to get a lucky draw (plus some new glamour items ;p). Priests aren't the greatest, but they are spammable and cheap. I use them for preaching in new lands, shoring up old ones, building forts, and heaven forbid the undead (one of my first SP games was against Ermor oml. It became a race to see wether they would kill pop and run out of chaff or I'd run out of troops. Any province I took was useless, I gave up on that game).

[TheMeInTeam]

ime thugging vs indy to expand quickly enough was unreliable. you can't rely on glamour defenses because you can die to arrows/unlucky hits too frequently. even with quick research for self point buffs combined with bless, too often a sidhe lord will die or retreat and fail to take the province. even pairs of them aren't 100% safe, more than that and we're slow than generic nation troop expansion.

which eriu can do as well. fir bolgs have pretty good stats, so while their armor isn't amazing the shield and attack of 12 makes them okay for repelling and taking hits less frequently than regular stuff.

if enemy doesn't have battlefield wipes or a means to block the twilight spell, howl + twilight to get ghost wolf spam going is a surprising volume of tarpit trash, and not many things can fully ignore the false damage. eriu also has a wide array of paths that contribute to point buffing, way more accessible than in dom 5, so you can supplement scales troops with very hard hitting, fast attacking thugs or elite troops/summons.

sidhe lord can swap between tarpit spammer hell or point buffed (2 per square) army thugs with all of strength/ironskin/moss/quickness/elemental fortitude/displace body/sharpness/earth shatter hammers(for hoof attacks) on them.

while not always useful, this nation can also do all of the arrow stuff. wind guide, envenom arrows line, even aoe flaming arrows via the f1. not bad for when enemy has lots of stuff w/o shields.

before you get to weapons of sharpness + full point buff suite for sidhe lords, addition of cattle raider gives them an options they didn't have before. strength + berserk on that will make them hit very hard, harder still if you enlarge. i don't think you should spam these unbuffed in most cases, but several squares of them will take point buff priority (most hp/square of your troops) and anything w/o ethereal or mist form will have a very hard time tanking hits for long. strength + enlarge + berserk is +9 strength, enough for 34 slash damage. that will smash through moss and has a reasonable chance to high roll and pop mist form on some thugs. having this on flanks with chaff to absorb damage can be very helpful.

[Aellas3]

@TheMeInTeam

Excellent points, I'm not very good with magic yet. Do you have an answer to well armoured giants? Do you think mass slingers + fire or venom arrows is the answer? How does enlarge affect things?

I've found thugging later in the game to be more effective than early, though not 100%. The random hits are really a weak spot I've noticed as well, one good hit is all it takes. I've had the most luck with expansion with either the cattle raiders or chariots. You can use numbers with basic firbolgs, but I like to use the heavier hitters so I have them around when I need them.

Any tips for expansion and pretender design as well? I generally prefer a scales build, though I could see a rainbow for late game, or an expander for early game.

[Ddraig Lleuad]

I think your first answer to giants is the cattle raiders, tbh. The low prot doesn't matter when giants hit hard enough to smush basically any human unit anyway.

[Aellas3]

I've tried them before and it works on low protection giants. I had the unfortunate luck to spawn next to Jotunheim. My answer in dom 5 was thunderstrike, but I didn't have easy access anymore. I'd have to point buff or something to make them hit hard enough, and I'm not the best at magic scripting.

[TheMeInTeam]

Originally posted by Aellas3:

I've tried them before and it works on low protection giants. I had the unfortunate luck to spawn next to Jotunheim. My answer in dom 5 was thunderstrike, but I didn't have easy access anymore. I'd have to point buff or something to make them hit hard enough, and I'm not the best at magic scripting.

strength stacking moves their damage from 23 to 34 slash. this is far beyond what regular jotun troops or even their sacreds can get in protection. by default jotun doesn't get earth paths, so their best buff for prot would be barkskin. their sacreds already have a natural protection of 6, so it will go to 10. prot will be in low 20s, no chance to tank. they would have to instead try to kill your guys faster.

skratti with a bunch of gear would be hard, but you should have more than just cattle raiders in your kit by then. another thing that might cause trouble vs cattle raider is vaetti hags with s point buffing a skratti or some other kitted thug. you don't want to fight ethereal with mundane troops. jotun can't spam low cost ethereal guys, but since they do get them, you will want to eventually move on.

fortunately, body ethereal is alteration 4, while strength stacking is possible as early as enchantment 1 + alteration 2. but they also need gear from construction and you can use mages too.

while kitted thugs can be a problem raiding your provinces, the biggest threat in mp from jotun will be turbo sabbaths where they use regen to heal off the damage their mages do to the sabbath slaves, effectively casting stuff like horde of skeletons and damaging spells indefinitely unless/until you do something about it. nerfed rigor mortis makes this somewhat easier to handle, but fighting piles of undead in darkness is still a tall order if the game gets to that point. there will be a window in mid game where i expect eriu will usually have a hard time dealing with this, unless your pretender has a trick up its sleeve.

i haven't messed around much since the gem bait change went into effect, but maybe you can still bait them to use up blood slaves or otherwise kill them in magic phase with pretender or maybe a foul vapors play? dealing with sabbath behind an army can be brutal, but if you prevent that, fights become a lot more winnable.

[Bumc]

Body ethereal is alt-3 now.
Big changer since dom5 and can go up in time for early fights.

[TheMeInTeam]

oh, you're right. i still wouldn't be very afraid of it on turn 12-24 from jotun, since it's a 1 in 5 roll for hags and gygjas.

against someone like arco or bandar, having half a dozen or more s1 guys paint 18+ squares of sacreds with ethereal could legitimately be a problem in that timeframe.

[Aellas3]

Originally posted by TheMeInTeam:

oh, you're right. i still wouldn't be very afraid of it on turn 12-24 from jotun, since it's a 1 in 5 roll for hags and gygjas.

against someone like arco or bandar, having half a dozen or more s1 guys paint 18+ squares of sacreds with ethereal could legitimately be a problem in that timeframe.

Yeah I fired up the game yesterday to peek at spells and such I could use. Alt 6 seems like a good rush target and I want to say enchant 5 or 6. I really like the strength of giants play w/ enlarge. I was thinking barkskin with potentially mossbody. You could do luck spam as well I think. Weapons of sharpness is doable but not realistic for large encounters. Foul vapors and envenom arrows are options as well for slinger spam. There's some potential for a tangle vine and earth meld play I think, but Eriu also had their nature access nerfed making things more difficult. Like I get nerfing air, but at least leave the nature access if they're going to do that.

I think there's a few options Eriu can use to target the backline, they might have rare access to flight but I can't remember.

What type of pretender do you think would be ideal? Matron of the Healing Spring I like because you get the site that heals afflictions.