Sleepy Blind Fighters

[Telos]

LA Agartha's blind fighters are are unusual sacreds, in how far they go in the direction of being tanks with little killing power. Their 10 encumbrance and meager swords ensure that they'll have a really hard time stabbing things to death. They'll often fall asleep even in an evenly-matched gold-for-gold battle, much less the uneven battles that often arise because your blindfighter recruitment is capped by candles, resource costs, and most importantly rec-point costs. Their only real saving grace is that they're recruitable from every fort, and are tanky, with very heavy armor and decent enough HP for their price. It's quite feasible to make blindfighters sleep through a long battle, occasionally waking just long enough to feebly swing their swords again.

Since blindfighters start at encumbrance 10 (worse in extreme temperatures), there's no way to buy enough reinvigoration to keep them from falling asleep in anything larger than a skirmish. But reinvigoration points can forestall their falling asleep, and greatly increase the fraction of turns they swing their swords when drifting in and out of sleep. However, those swings will still suffer heavy fatigue penalties to attack skill, so probably aren't really worth the cost.

Since blindfighters will often be asleep, and/or suffering heavy fatigue penalties to their attack skills, you can't really count on their swords to do much, so that means there's not much point in the various blesses that improve attacks (attack skill, strength, bonus damage, etc...). Instead, you need something else to do your killing for you.

One option would be to use Agartha's excellent crossbows, which are higher damage, lower precision than most nations. I haven't tested this, but it might be interesting to see if the cursed-luck bless would make opponents locked in melee with blindfighters be more susceptible to crossbow fire. Unfortunately, its hard to find resources and rec-points to recruit many crossbows alongside blindfighters. Also, especially once fatigue makes them less good at holding up their shields, heavy-damage low precision armor-piercing crossbows are enough to make it through blindfighters' heavy armor, so friendly fire becomes something of an issue, reducing blindfighters' longevity, and making it much harder for them to indefinitely hold a line (even with a couple of defensive blesses, like regen + stygian skin). Also, it's hard to amass enough blindfighters to completely hold the line, so you'll often end up with crossbows fighting flankers in melee, which is a recipe for disaster. Flankers and flyers are always a challenge for sacreds, but you can't even use bodyguards to protect your crossbows.

Another option is to use mages, e.g., for skellyspam and/or evocations. Elemental resistance blesses can help protect blindfighters from friendly fire. However, I haven't yet been really happy with how I've gotten this to work. Blindfighters are a pretty expensive way to extend the use of skelly-spam, or to try to hold the line ahead of mages. By the time I bring that many mages to the battle, it feels like I shouldn't *also* be spending so many resources and so many pretender design points to bring a bunch of blessed sacreds to the battle to, when their only job is basically the same as that of disposable skeletons anyway.

That leaves perhaps the most interesting option, choosing a bless that can help kill things even when blindfighters are asleep. I've had decent luck with chill aura + regeneration + stygian skin. In many battles, the blindfighters fall asleep surrounded by their frozen enemies, but blindfighters withstand the chill better, and regenerate, so end up winning the day. Tis a very unusual sort of dominions battle, most similar to using big Niefel giants. When it works, it's kind of fun and unique, and this also synergizes with national undead summons, especially the cave wights with their own chill auras and welcome wakefulness. Still, I haven't been able to convince myself its really worth the various costs.

Heat auras could probably work similarly, faster at killing enemies, but slower at putting them to sleep, and less synergies with national summons. Fireshield could also add killing power, at least against lightly-armored short-weaponed enemies, though it wouldn't help fatigue them out, so might make it harder to keep the blindfighters alive. You might also construe fear auras or withering weapons as other ways to help blindfighters win lengthy battles, without requiring them to connect with their swords all that many times, though I haven't tested these yet.

Anybody else have good uses for blindfighters?

[wilson.max]

General solution for recruit-anywhere sacreds which lack offensive power: give them a Heat Aura or Chill Aura. Enemy units get one or two rounds to land some solid hits, and after that they're at 70+ fatigue and effectively at -7 or more to defense, as well as taking Prot penalties.

I've seen this work well for EA Agartha's Ancient Ones and MA Marignon's flagellants. (In conjunction with other blesses, but still, heat aura did its job.) Those units have good damage but poor attacks. I expect it to work well for LA Agartha's blindfighters as well despite their having somewhat lower baseline damage. Heat aura + regeneration is cheaper than Heat aura + stygian skin + regeneration, and seems about as good (especially after you finish buffing with Legions of Steel/Marble Warriors), so give it another shot. It's definitely not that unorthodox.

Fire Shield is really fun to look at but I've reluctantly come to the conclusion that it doesn't scale well. Against even moderately armored foes with long weapons (e.g. soulless warriors) it takes forever to score a kill, and unlike heat auras you don't get synergies from having a whole bunch of blessed warriors together in the same formation. The downside to heat auras is of course that they can kill unblessed troops, e.g. a sacred mage that accidentally sets his own bodyguards on fire, so be cognizant of that when creating your strategy. The fact that heat auras come with a bit of fire resistance is gravy on top that lets you take Heat-3 for the points (and a more effective aura) without incurring enc penalties.

[meglobob1]

I haven't played LA Agartha since Dom 3, but I remember doing very well with them!

I think with the blindfighters, I came to the same conclusion you have, that there massive encumberance makes them fairly useless. I seem to remember just using them as meat shields to protect my mages / x bows, who did all the damage. Skellie spam + massed x bows protected by the meatshield blindfighters does well early game.

I don't think the Blindfighters even thou they are recruitable anywhere are worth a bless.

[Telos]

Max, I wouldn't have thought of auras as a good prospect for flagellants. Flagellants are on the glass cannon end of the tank...cannon spectrum, with 2x highly skilled attacks and absolutely nothing to keep them alive while waiting for an aura to kick in. I've had good luck playing up their strengths with things like +4 attack skill, +10 strength (from both E and B, magnified by Dom5's multiplying 2-hand weapon strength by 1.25), and +60% combat speed (from A) -- conveniently, none of these blesses requires an incarnate pretender. This makes them hit with high skill (esp vs shields) and enough damage to bash through the heaviest armor, which is great at killing things quickly, though they do suffer losses from the hits that come back. They move forward through enemy lines quickly enough that I doubt a thermal aura would be much help. I could see auras maybe working better with a more defensive Marignon build, e.g., one based around luck, though that would require incarnate, and would probably still run into frustrations from the fact that flagellants have basically zero innate defenses of any sort.

I think the stygian flesh really helps blindfighters against most enemies, subtracting 5 damage from most hits, which turns lots of scratches into no damage at all, and the few heavier hits into mere scratches, which regeneration can keep up with. Sure it can be bypassed by magic weapons, but those aren't super common, and stygian flesh is cheap enough that it doesn't have to work against everything to be well worth the price.

My biggest troubles with chilly blindfighters have been (a) how to keep the commander alive, and (b) how to deal with heavy hitters like barbarians, who can outpace blindfighters' regeneration, and can do so faster than chill auras can kick in.

[Mount Nomad]

I haven't played LA Agartha in Dom5 yet, so perhaps they've suffered from some changes, but Blind Fighters in Dom4 were potent.

Here's a video with Sy wielding them. Quite a rotlstomp.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=glyvkU_sxA8&list=PLG9FZ5QOwlJgX9f1AiMtyDPtdDHzUoz4a&index=2

[Komutan]

Darkness helps them a lot.

[Zonk]

Also, especially once fatigue makes them less good at holding up their shields, heavy-damage low precision armor-piercing crossbows are enough to make it through blindfighters' heavy armor, so friendly fire becomes something of an issue, reducing blindfighters' longevity, and making it much harder for them to indefinitely hold a line (even with a couple of defensive blesses, like regen + stygian skin)

Have you tried Fortitude instead? In my tests, it was quite good.
And it's not obsoleted by spells - yes, Liquid Body/Wave Warriors exists and also gives +affliction resistance, but it decreases strength (and combat speed).
You could also go for elemental resistance blesses.
Also if you have a regeneration pretender, you should eventually be able to cast Relief - that can help (slightly) with fatigue issues.

You could also try to reduce your relative encumbrance disadvantage by making the enemy fatigue faster.
LA Agartha can easily cast Curse of Stones with penetration boosters.

Although slowing the enemy (CoS lowers combat speed by about 1/3) might be to your disadvantage sometimes, by forcing your troops to fight the enemies closer to their own mages.

[Kref]

Generally it's a problem of game mechanics which make any extra heavy armor worse then just medium armor. Creatures should nt attack every turn when they get fatique 50, in order to not fall unconcious. In different melee sports there are practically no cases when man falled unconcious because he made himseld tied.

[Kref]

Agartha of cause have ♥♥♥♥♥♥ troops. It is a hard nation to play, and it should rely on it's national summons and have a blessing which would enhance it's sacred summons. And of cause darkness, better as global enchantment at some point.

[Telos]

Thanks for the link to the Sy video, Nomad. Was he using some sort of mod? It looked like his blind lords had H1, which is a huge improvement over vanilla Dom's making them just be sacred commanders with no ability to bless. That would do a lot to solve the frequent problem of flankers killing your bless-commanders. Also, I noticed that his blindfighters had "only" encumbrance 9, rather than the 10 they have in vanilla Dom -- a slight, but still notable improvement. Of course the biggest difference in Dom5 is the bless system: e.g., regeneration no longer provides the +8 HP, now requires an incarnate pretender, and no longer applies to shrouded iron ancestor thugs, all of which are huge nerfs.

[Telos]

Originally posted by Kref:

Generally it's a problem of game mechanics which make any extra heavy armor worse then just medium armor. Creatures should nt attack every turn when they get fatique 50, in order to not fall unconcious. In different melee sports there are practically no cases when man falled unconcious because he made himseld tied.

Probably, if you're concerned about realism, we should construe 100+ fatigue not as complete unconsciousness, but instead just as such exhaustion that you need to catch your breath before you can attack or walk or cast spells again, though they do still retain some semblance of defense at that level of fatigue.

[Mount Nomad]

Originally posted by Telos:

Thanks for the link to the Sy video, Nomad. Was he using some sort of mod? It looked like his blind lords had H1, which is a huge improvement over vanilla Dom's making them just be sacred commanders with no ability to bless. That would do a lot to solve the frequent problem of flankers killing your bless-commanders. Also, I noticed that his blindfighters had "only" encumbrance 9, rather than the 10 they have in vanilla Dom -- a slight, but still notable improvement. Of course the biggest difference in Dom5 is the bless system: e.g., regeneration no longer provides the +8 HP, now requires an incarnate pretender, and no longer applies to shrouded iron ancestor thugs, all of which are huge nerfs.

It probably is modded and using game settings in some way that's subtly beneficial to Sy - that's how his videos seem to work overall. N9 no longer grants +8 HP, and E9 no longer granting Reinvigoration in tandem with protection is probably a bigger deal, but now we have nonsense like blessable Awe (without a Throne) and Luck/Undying hax, so even passed out they're potent line holders. Could also go the Rainbow route with Blood Surge/Reinvigx3 (+Magic Weapons, Solar Weapons, +Att, +Def, Swiftness, etc.), which'd even out the fatigue in large part.

Iron ancestors iirc don't have armor on by default - Shroud of the Battle Saint? Can still have Blind Lords lead the Blind Fighters - just drag along a Necromancer to bless them (new recruitment point system would help by letting you recruit 2 Lords at once, though indy. priests would be preferable for blessers as I think all of LA Agartha's national priests are mages).

As EA Kailasa now shows, Recruit Anywhere sacreds in Warriors of the Faith are nothing to be sneezed at.

[Mali Belizec]

Sy had some great news for blindfighters in his lets play. They seem like ok units even if its purpose are as blockers. Agartha lore suggest the same.

[wilson.max]

Originally posted by Telos:

Max, I wouldn't have thought of auras as a good prospect for flagellants. Flagellants are on the glass cannon end of the tank...cannon spectrum, with 2x highly skilled attacks and absolutely nothing to keep them alive while waiting for an aura to kick in.

I wasn't intending to discuss flagellant durability in this thread, separate from heat auras, because blindfighters are already very durable and the topic is offensive boosts. Suffice to say that in my SP game yesterday I had an army of maybe 30 Knights of the Chalice and 70 flagellants plus light mage support absolutely smash an army of 450 Ulmish black plate infantry, killing 300/450 Ulmishmen at a cost of IIRC 15-20 flagellants. This is NOT due to any inherent qualities of flagellants but to the other blesses I took (I mentioned that heat aura is one) and the fact that I happened to stumble upon the Throne of Splendour.

But here's the point: heat aura gives the enemy a relatively short window to kill you before his troops fatigue out, and even before he fatigues out he loses a lot of defense/prot. You wouldn't normally expect flagellants, with their lowish damage, to be any good at killing Ulmish infantry: 16 damage vs. 23 prot is only 0.4 points of expected damage per attack, so it would normally take ten rounds for a flagellant to kill the average Ulmish Black Plate Infantry even if he never missed. But it didn't--the Ulmishmen evaporated. I'm sure my other blesses contributed as well (the Throne of Strength and Blood Surge, although of course Blood Surge only kicks in after you've made a kill) but from examining battle logs I know that my Heat Aura helped bypass quite a lot of Protection.

Blindfighters have built-in high durability and weak-ish attacks comparable in damage (but fewer in number) than flagellants do. They've also got mages who would just LOVE their troops to fatigue out enemies and buy lots of time for skelly spam and/or evocations. (Or crossbow bolts, if you're into that kind of thing.) Heat aura or perhaps chill aura seems like a natural choice for them.

[Kref]

Originally posted by Mali Belizec:

Sy had some great news for blindfighters in his lets play. They seem like ok units even if its purpose are as blockers. Agartha lore suggest the same.

No, they are sh*t units. You can make some use of them in global scale, for example take golden pillar with 8 earth to give them 4 reinvig, and then you may even try and give them regen bless or some minor bless but they still would be poor sacreds because sacred nations do not need to take 8 earth just to make reasonable encumberance.
Still, they are not cap-only and they see in darkness, so it is possible to put stakes on them casting darkness or at least solar eclipse in every serious battle. You'll need slave and crystal matrixes for your necromancers to be able to do it. But I do not think it is a very reliable strategy and I saw only this, while there are many ways to bless for example mictlan jaguars so that they would be effevtive and usefull without such demands as many resources to recruit and darkness to fight.