How to play LA Abyssia?

[Godisen]

I have been unable to reach the lategame, but early game i have been sustaining myself by rushing firedrakes, fireballs and Abyssias unique crossbreding. I tried to transition into devils and heat from hell/fire storm spam. But by that point Man almost owned the entire map so i was simply outnumberd 4 to 1 in every fight.

[Sombre]

Are you talking about a single player game, and if so what difficulty of AI are you playing against?

[hanssverre]

I'm also interested in this topic.

1.) An imprissioned god gives you lots of design points. Good scales, and some good blessings.

2.) I've tried a game where I use a shield-wall to protect my mages, then FIRE evocation magic.

3.) Assassins are great in dom 5. Now you recrewt 3 of them a round in good fortresses. And they are potent enough to kill enemy commanders. Maybe not their top of the line ones, but many of them. Don't remember if LA is the age where they have the holy assasin, but if so, making a bless to help your assassins may be a good way to go.

I'm also concidering a bless strategy for the mages...

[Godisen]

I have only played them in single player so far. I play against the difficulty below impossible.
I have been trying to use a imprisoned mage pretender with good scales, and a mage bless. I would like to expand into playing them in multiplayer eventually but first I would like to be able to "master" single player with them.

[Alias]

Incarnate bless + Fire Magic is all you need to roll Master AIs.

[MattStriker]

Originally posted by hanssverre:

Don't remember if LA is the age where they have the holy assasin, but if so, making a bless to help your assassins may be a good way to go.

It is, yeah. And the slayers are pretty damn good at causing havoc in an enemy's backyard. With a good bless they can also assist in expansion...it may take 4 turns, but they'll get you a neutral province with minimal effort.

[Sombre]

In terms of learning the game/having fun it's best to avoid strategies the AI can't cope with at all, like heavy blessed sacreds, or army killing tooled up commanders. It's good to try them and see how effective they are once, but not really a sensible way to master the game.

[Mardagg]

LA Abysia is my favorite nation in that Era:

- great sacred recruit anywhere assassins
- pretty decent sacred heavy armored capital only Infantry
- lots of sacred mages, some of them non cap only: Blood mage/priest and 2F/1D Anathamenant salamander
- in Dom 5 as of now: very good sacred national summon

Good Blesses are the key here, since you profit from them throughout the game with a ton of different sacreds..
You can either go imprisoned with lots of low level blesses or dormant with low to medium level blesses. Awake pretender is a waste for LA Abysia, since you got strong starting army + strong strats generally for early game. Good scales are important.

Usually early game is all about assassins to kill indie commanders and H3 Priest+ guardians of the pyre+some regular infantries to conquer provinces.
I tend to research construction first, to give assassins +x attack items (Blood is the best, but Fire item is ok ,too), this makes them like 2 times better.


EarlyMid game I make the transition to blood.
I consider LA Abysia one of the best blood nations in that Era.

Try to search for Death sites asap, because spamming Abysian Ancestors is very strong...SP and MP alike.

Since Abysia has really useful Heroes, I would never go below Luck -1.

[Mardagg]

Originally posted by MattStriker:

Originally posted by hanssverre:

Don't remember if LA is the age where they have the holy assasin, but if so, making a bless to help your assassins may be a good way to go.

It is, yeah. And the slayers are pretty damn good at causing havoc in an enemy's backyard. With a good bless they can also assist in expansion...it may take 4 turns, but they'll get you a neutral province with minimal effort.

I usally have teams of 2-3 assassins running around. Doable already very early in the game..at the cost of not recruiting a mage in the capital here and there.
Experience makes assassins notably better , not to mention Hall of Fame bonuses(its rather easy to place assassins in the HoF). Its probably a good idea to retreat some of the very experienced assassins to a lab and wait until you can forge some good items for them. Pays off later.
Also, if you can get access to water magic/gems, amulet of water breathing+1 or 2 other items on assassins is a cheap way to conquer indie water provinces.

[hanssverre]

Originally posted by Sharkspeare aka Sombre:

In terms of learning the game/having fun it's best to avoid strategies the AI can't cope with at all, like heavy blessed sacreds, or army killing tooled up commanders. It's good to try them and see how effective they are once, but not really a sensible way to master the game.

I'm wondering about that... If being great at beating the AI you learn how to BEAT the AI. Not how to play a human...

[Alias]

From what I've seen so far in multiplayer, Impossible AIs are harder to defeat than most humans.

[applenta]

Really, i've always been playing against Impossible AI x max nation, can't bear playing less than that, my wall of fire elemental burn everything they throw at me =))

[hanssverre]

The point may still be, beating the AI is not the same as beating a human. Beating the AI is like searching for the AI bugs. If you found them, you win. But humans are different than beating the AI. I have never played versus humans, but I do bet that the optimal strategy versus an impossible AI is not the same as the optimal strategy versus humans...

[MattStriker]

Originally posted by Alias:

From what I've seen so far in multiplayer, Impossible AIs are harder to defeat than most humans.

If you're talking about multiplayer games with AI players in them, there's a reason for that.

It's quite simple to build a strategy that'll utterly destroy the AI regardless of difficulty level, but if you do that, any human players will completely destroy you because unlike the AI, they can see what you're doing and put some hard counters on the field. And if you play with strategies that work against humans, the AI's production bonuses can overwhelm you.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Alias:

From what I've seen so far in multiplayer, Impossible AIs are harder to defeat than most humans.

That's because most humans are either fooling around with new strategies, or simply don't have a lot of experience. You'll change your tune real quick when you play against players who know how to abuse scripts to bait evocations, use communions to cast crippling battlefield effects with otherwise cheap mages, and do really clutch strategies to allow like 5 guys to destroy a whole doomstack. I've also seen a lot of players who just roleplay in multiplayer and aren't exactly too concerned with optimized gameplay, so that might be impacting your percetion of how skilled the average human player is.

The AI can be really tough to beat with some nations, but ultimately as the game goes on the player gets disproportionately advantaged due to being better able to adapt to the AI than the other way around.

Originally posted by MattStriker:

Originally posted by Alias:

From what I've seen so far in multiplayer, Impossible AIs are harder to defeat than most humans.

If you're talking about multiplayer games with AI players in them, there's a reason for that.

It's quite simple to build a strategy that'll utterly destroy the AI regardless of difficulty level, but if you do that, any human players will completely destroy you because unlike the AI, they can see what you're doing and put some hard counters on the field. And if you play with strategies that work against humans, the AI's production bonuses can overwhelm you.

There is SOME overlap between what works vs humans and what works vs the AI, but otherwise you are pretty spot on here in that good anti-human player strategies tend to be inefficient vs the AI, and strategies that work well vs the AI tend to be meticulous and monotonous enough that any reasonable human player will eventually be able to completely counter it.

That said, throwing an impossible AI or 2 into a multiplayer game does tend to generate some lulz even if it completely unbalances the game in the process.