Bakemono high tier rituals

[They Live]

won a game as bakemono, i liked those one some of em being good but i didn't reach higer tier rituals, actually the only one i got was "summon king" but i didn't cast it.

Anybody has some screens/infos about bakemono hig tier summons or utility rituals?

[They Live]

Ok i was too curious to see that summon king ritual that i reloaded the old save and kept the game alive just to check it.

The oni king is badass has kuro do spells lvl3, necro 2 and lot of hp and armor plus some dmg reductions.

Will post a screen in screenshots.

[Necroscourge]

When I summoned King I got a tribe of badass Tengu with a Dai Tengu commander. Bakemono is great for their elemental summons, if only there were more ways to go to other planes besides hoping the Pale Ones player is any good.

[They Live]

Originally posted by Necroscourge:

When I summoned King I got a tribe of badass Tengu with a Dai Tengu commander. Bakemono is great for their elemental summons, if only there were more ways to go to other planes besides hoping the Pale Ones player is any good.

Tengu commander? would love to see that did you take a screen?

I used those nasty oni kings, they are really good. Don't know why i was kinda underestimathing this faction but looks pretty solid after i gave a try.

[Necroscourge]

It's because they look kind of boring at first, especially when you go from Dwarves to Bakemono. Then you realize nto only do they get free mountain troops, but their Sorcorers can become Immortal extremely cheaply, turning into some of the best magic commanders in the early game; combined with fantastic summons I feel pretty stupid for not trying them sooner.

In contrast, the dwarves require a great deal of map control and effort to start ramping up but one they do they get to the point where they are unstoppable defensively. Bakemono however dominate early game with their cheap units. If the Pale Ones were only 30 gold a recruitment they could very well be decent too.

And no I don't typically screenshot.

[Orion @ UVA]

When I cast Summon King, I only rarely get Dai Oni. I'm not sure if there's a skew to the probability or if it's 50/50 and my luck is off. Usually you get a Dai Tengu, who is a flyer with 20-something HP and Storm Magic level 3. He comes with ~10 of the ... konoha tengu, I think? The lower-level summoned tengu with the wind attack but no casting. He also comes with ~10 Tengu Warriors, which are the same thing but with more armor and strength.
---
After a number of spins with Bakemono, I've concluded that they're not very good. They're not unplayable or shockingly weak or anything; they just have very little to recommend them over the other sacrifice classes.

Bakemono have, in theory, some really nice stuff.

-Freespawn troops!
--Recruit Level 2 mages for gold! (sometimes) ; frequent level 1 mage recruits
--5 GP archers
--You can exploit almost everything on the map, which means you can snowball into a power-house when you're ahead. You collect sacrifices, you have great uses for iron, you get free units from certainmines, you get special recruits from temples AND libraries, and if you have lots of citadels you can pump out huge numbers of archers incredibly quickly. Oh, and your mages really benefit from buying library spells.
--You shouldn't run into anything you can't kill. You have lots of magic damage and it affects inanimates. Some of it even negates armor.
--Summon list includes artillery, tanks, and flying commanders
--Special infantry


Most of these things have downsides
--Kuro Do and Hedge Magic are bad spell lists. Also, multiple casters stack terribly. Once you've diseased all the enemies, or run into something that's basically not harmed by wind, it's pretty sad. Witchery is solid but you can't promote.
--The freespawn are terrible. Most of them are infantry, and extremely weak infantry. If they actually have to fight anything, they will die. A human faction could field swordmen or even tougher troops who might survive a small melee without casualties. Their infantry is, in this sense, "free." Yours are literally free, but they die. It works out about even.
--The archers are actually pretty amazing. I don't have much negative to say about them.
--Your summoning is super unreliable. Your summons are split into 2 lines, so if you want a particular unit, you might not even have the spell. Worse, neither line really has a theme. For some factions, the split summon lines allow you to know what you'll get. Demonologists, for instance, know that imp summoning will usually be a mage and minor demons will usually be infantry. Infernal horde will be ... a horde. Infernal Lieutenant will ... be a lieutenant. For Bakemono, your casters and line troops are jumbled together, and you can't pop a guaranteed commander when you want one (short of kings) but might pop one when you needed bulk. And it has failure chance.

You also have some special problems of your own
--As far as I can tell, there is no way to get scouts. You don't get to recruit actual scouts and none of your recruits or summons have the scout ability as far as I can tell. In some eras (agriculture especially) this can be ruinous. Also, no siege weapons.
--You're very feast-or-famine; the inverse of the snowball effect is that you can stutter and fail to launch entirely. You need everything, and none of it is easy for you to get with your basic stuff
--You can't make Dai Bakemono without Iron, and you can't even use one of your rituals without a mine. Unfortunately, mines are often guarded by dwarves. Dwarves are your nemesis. They have enough armor and shields to shrug off a lot of your tiny arrows, and they have enough morale/MR/strength to shrug off your decay/fear/stun spells. The arbalests are guaranteed to score some kills.
--If you fail to secure a mine, you need a second citadel ASAP. You can only spend 25 gold per citadel each turn unless you have a dai bakemono option and enough iron to use it. Even then, you'll be spending 50 gold from 1 citadel and 25 from the rest. You can easily become gold-flooded if you don't find a lightly-guarded guard tower.
--Lightly-guarded is important because early on your are garbage at sieges. The reduced damage and HP on your little archers, irrelevant against animals and villagers, becomes a big problem. Also, several of your spells become garbage (animal summoning, mostly) If you have dai bakemono or summoned oni, you can break the door easily, but with the little dudes it's horrible
--Oh yeah, being bad at siege also means you may not be able to take the good sacrifice sites early.

Basically, you're a potentially strong faction who depends on finding an iron mine, a guard tower and some villages early (villages, not towns or farms). You also need to not start in the north, because your logistics are a nightmare. Ideally, you'd start with a summon spell, but this is not guaranteed.

So yeah, I like bakemono and all, but I have trouble thinking of a faction that's similarly delicate.

[Aquillion]

One thing that always confused me about Bakemono:

They get huge numbers of freespawn troops with very low HP. Additionally, their summons are often larger numbers of relatively low-HP things with special abilities, not big bruisers like late-game elementals, undead, or demons.

Yet Kuro Do is full of spells that hit the entire battlefield for damage! Why? How are you supposed to use those? Unless you carefully divide out your larger troops (which tends to leave you with an ineffective army because so many of your troops are tiny), you're going to kill your own side more than anyone else.

[Orion @ UVA]

Aquillion,

It's a problem. You can work-around it, but again it makes the faction even more finicky. Here's some of the stuff you can do:

--Easiest: make an army of just mages and dai bakemono
--use ao-oni and aka-oni instead. Their printed HP is mediocre, but they get a second life as an ethereal ghost, so they actually have a lot of HP. And once they're ethereal, many of your spells won't hurt them! (Well, usually won't hurt them)