Failing with MA Abysia?

[onomastikon]

I'm sorry to say I have just as much problems with MA Abysia as with MA Marignon. I believe that Marignon is considered to be on the weaker side, so I don't feel so bad about failing with them all the time, but Abysia is considered a bit above average, no? I fail with them too. I love the feel of them, and they seem kind of straightforward, but it seems really map dependent. They get wasteland survival (whooo) -- and so on most maps I'Ve played on, they get a nice thematic start in the middle of some desert. I clear my cap circle with no problem with my decent starting army, but I get dust for it. I managed to get things going nicely on a map which had decent provinces nearby, but that seemed the exception. All the mages are so expensive, and I can't do much with astral or blood until I get things going, and those dragons are not cheap. I feel that research is slow with warlock apprentices even at magic 3. I'm sure I'm doing the blood economy wrong, but don't I have to get things going a bit before I can start into blood? I don't know, they always seem nice to me and then when I play them I get reminded of Marignon (old, expensive A&F mages). It's fun while it lasts, but I die. What me do wrong?

[jojeck]

I haven't played them since the 5.29 patch but it seems that the rebalance would make order and production scales good and avoid growth as they only get 1/2 the bonus. The sacred mages are expensive and old age. They are gold hungry since they need a full fort to recruit them as well as pay 185 for a 9 RP mage. An unaging bless is useful and helps break into N paths on a dormant pretender.

The secret to researching for both MA Abysia and Marignon is to head to Const 6 and lightless lanterns as soon as you can do so safely. You should have a good stock of fire gems that can be turned into a lot of extra research in 1 turn. The basic non cap sacred mage goes from 9 RP + 1 for M scales to 22 with a lightless lantern. I would avoid using the cap warlock mages from serious blood hunting until that Const 6 research target is reached and then set them free to hunt

[Alias]

Originally posted by onomastikon:

All the mages are so expensive, and I can't do much with astral or blood until I get things going, and those dragons are not cheap. I feel that research is slow with warlock apprentices even at magic 3.

Cap-only mages never, ever, determine a faction's research speed. It's what you get in the other forts that counts.

If you want to see a good Magic 3 mage, take a look at the Sequani Stargazer. Recruit in all forts, 45 gold, 10 research. Does MA Aby have such a mage? No. With Aby you have to be aggressive and secure indie provinces and thrones with good researchers like lizards, sages, 45g F1 pyros; while also targeting Const 6 for lanterns (and sitesearching the Fire income).

[Alias]

There are certain principles in pricing mages in the game:

- the better the national troops, esp. sacreds, the more expensive the mages. This ultimately splits Dominions' factions in 'rushers' and 'late bloomers', with some balanced nations inbetween

- Priest levels come at a premium, hobbling Priest-Mage nations in research. On the flip side you'll have lots of priests, so consider a good banishment, a good smite if H3 will be common, and know you can recall your god fast

- higher mage paths are slightly pricier than broad mage paths of the same number, meaning broad mages are more cost-efficient researchers. However, nations whose broad mages have S (or, less ideally, B) are able to work around their lower paths in combat. It isn't random such nations rank high in reported victories.

[ml.bkil]

I question your assertion that Abysia is stronger than Marignon, who has cheap recruit anywhere astral, E and A access from their grandmaster which can be ued in communion, and some very strong summons, as well as crossbows and a solid recruit anywhere cavalry sacred.

Anyway, MA Abysia... Lack most of their advantage. They have fire and not much else except for cap only blood. Yeah dragon get one point of E, but since they don't have S or B to get into communion outside of randoms, it's not like they can make use of that. I would only recruit a few Dragon for H3 purpose and use Salamander (with great regret since they're trash too) for research.

Meanwhile, except your cap only sacred, your troops are okay heavy infantry but are just that, and they aren't even cheap heavy infantry.

Originally posted by onomastikon:

I feel that research is slow with warlock apprentices even at magic 3.

I feel here is part of the problem. There's literally no reason to recruit warlock apprentice except maybe in year 0 if you're tight on gold. Warlocks are not slow to recruit, and do everything the apprentice can do but better. The E random would be fairly valuable too.

The best way to be a successful MA Abysia would be to get Garnets (or even better, the rare circle masters)

More seriously, you probably want to get blood 3 soon for hellbreeding, which will get you upkeep free troops to mass (and you can use them as patrollers for your blood-hunting, too). Keep an eye for indies mage and try to fort those province where you can recruit them. For war... Well a smart opponent will have fire resistance, or rain, or stuff to counter your fire ele spam (there's a couple other things you can do with fire, but mostly it's fire eles). Getting some N indies to strap into communions and do wooden warrior might be an option.

With your troops and sacred being quite good, expansion should be quite easy and profitable, and there might be an option to kill someone early and take their cap. This would let you get some decent research and not appear an easy prey to your neighbours. For research, short-medium term is construction 6 for lanterns, but only take it after you got the research that will let you stay alive. Then you probably want to go for vampire as fast so you can start looking like a real blood nation. By that point your blood economy should let you do at least one or two vampires a turn.

[jojeck]

Some good ideas there ml.bkil :) but I think that all the cap mages have their place. The Warlocks are the best battle mages and site searchers but they are too expensive as blood hunters costing 285 more than twice as much as the Apprentice and only get 1 more blood slave per hunt if both use a SDR. The maintenance cost of both is in proportion. Apprentices as also more cost effective researchers, so I recommend a mix, probably 50% long term. You can also use a few Demonbred as very effective flying leader of devils to give high mobility. Demonbred can summon a single devil per turn or for a more efficient use of mage turns forge a Soul Contract and give to another mage (researching) and then blood hunt to recover the cost. Devils are very cost effective blood summons for MA Abysia, the problem is getting enough of them efficiently before the big end game spells.

In most games Construction 6 will be your main target for early research, the sooner it is reached the sooner Lightless lanterns can be used to sky rocket research rate. I agree with your sentiments about relative inefficiency of using Anathemant Salamanders and Dragons as research mages but most games you will have to use them early on. They are useful throughout the game as battle mages in fire based armies casting elementals and fire spells, rain will dampen their effect but that doesn't stop them plus many nations can't use it easily. They are also great preachers and blood sacrificers and can threaten other nations by pushing dominion vigorously. This can be very good if you have a nasty global spell that works inside your dominion. And of course their powerful banishments mean that undead enemies are not much of a problem

So I normally try to build at least 2 expansion forts in the early game and pump out mainly Salamanders plus a few Dragons for site searching / battles. I agree if you get lucky with good researching indies they can take priority, but you need some Salamanders for the other tasks and to mass forge the lightless lanterns.

Assassins are another powerful option for Abysia with each fort able to make 2 per month. They are probably the best recruit anywhere assassin in the game. You can use them as a cost effective way to disrupt enemy armies and make movement a nightmare, you can use them en-masse to wipe out the enemy research mages if he is not patrolling heavilly. With artifacts they can assassinate even strong enemy battle mages and lifelong protection is one of the best artifacts in the game for this.

The sort of pretender that can support this style of play would be an enchantress with E4S3D3N3B3 giving a bless for the sacred mages and warlocks with a shroud that has Reinvig 2, Mag Resist 2, Undying 2, Undead leader, Unaging, Strong Vitae 3 and scales would be Dominion 6, O2P2H2G1Mis2Mag1. The extra resources and reasonable income means it is easy to recruit the heavy infantry in enough numbers to have a good expansion, the magic scale needed for unaging means research will go a little quicker early on even with the A Salamanders providing most of the out of Cap effort in 2 forts.

ml.bkil mentioned finding N1 mages and using them for casting wooden warriors on the heavy infantry as a huge no cost bonus to their already good protection, and that is a vital part of my plan too. Common sites like witchdoctor and shaman need to be used early unless a better option is found. Witchdoctor just needs a lab and 2 turns to recruit, no need for a fort unless you like the site, shaman require a temple too and that province then becomes worth protecting with a fort. The pretender suggested can forge the first thistle mace and then the N1 mages can site search everywhere to N2. N2 is also enough in battle to cast wooden warriors 2 times without a communion, so HI units on hold and attack get a massive boost to protection that means more ordinary troops will do no damage. N1 mages can cast the cheaper Protection spell that only targets 1 tile but has a range of 20 so they can probably get 4 or 5 tiles covered before the slow moving HI move out of range. N1 mages are poor researchers but a cheap and useful body to put a lightless lantern on allowing you to use other mages for more useful things.

TLDR: Abysia has quite a few options when you analyse their troop mix. For all their limitations they are a nasty nation to play against.

[Mardagg]

Gonna throw in some of my thoughts on MA Abysia which is actually one of my favorite nations in the game ( note: i dont consider MA Abysia top tier, I just love playing them):

- First and foremost you should know that LA Abysia is just hands down much better than MA Abysia, there are a few things though where MA does shine a little bit over LA and those are the things I will begin with:

1. Lava Warriors do counter rush nations in MP, especially when coupled with some useful rainbow bless effects( e.g. Magic weapons, strength, blood surge). They do mix pretty well in groups with the regular heavy infantry of MA Abysia no shields, as both got the same combat movement speed

2. Recruit anywhere H3 Priest-mage ... in LA the H3 priest is cap only. This essentially means you are free to produce your warlocks in the capital every single turn in MA.

3. E1 on the H3 mage, whereas LA Abysia needs the precious E1 random on the warlocks. This is pretty important for basic site searching. E gems are important for Abysia and finding them early is a top priority therefore.

4. The starting army. If you know how to place Abysian troops vs the different indies you can regularly expand even into heavily defended provinces with minor/zero losses. Especially if you mix in some lava warriors. I honestly think that the starting army of MA Abysia is the best around.
LA Abysia got rather crappy light infantries as starting army. Big difference.

Thats it. Now to the other things:

- Assassins can be used in 2 ways: early expansion and vs opponents. I tend to produce Assassins at least turn 1 and turn 2 in my cap. You can usually conquer indie provinces pretty fast with groups of 2-3 assassins. Avoid Cavalry indies, since those commanders can kill your assassins...same with barbarian.. But regular commanders lose like 80% of the time vs your assassins. Its possible to get 4 or more expansion partys going with Abysia on turn 8 this way . 2 armies and 2 or more assassin partys.

LA Abysia btw is much better at this because the recruit anywhere assassins there are sacred and they got 3 commander points in the capital...which means 3 assassins per turn.

- Lightless lanterns are great for research. Totally possible to go drain scale when focusing research on constr 6. I usually prefer to take Magic 1 though and go for blood 3 , conj 3-5 first, then constr 6.

- Blood 3 is a nice early research target, because those national blood summon spell is really good imo.

- Conj 3-5 for Fire Elemental spam (very strong early in the game) and in case of LA Abysia: to summon abysian ancestors...a sacred summon, which hits pretty hard and is ethereal.

Now to the general strategy:

Early game usually is no problem with MA Abysia and it should do very well in most early war situations as well...thanks to lava warriors, cheap blood summons and fire elemental spam.
The hardest part is the transitiion to mid game which is where the heavy blood hunting has to start at some point.
If you manage to find indie blood mage recruits, then you are in a very good position.
If not, well, personally I only produce the expensive warlocks in the capital from turn 6 or so onwards. Those guys make very good battle mages and are my blood hunters.

I never ever go for the Apprentices except maybe 1-2 very early in the game...reason for this:
Every apprentice means 1 less warlock...and since I want the warlocks for battle magic and blood hunting, I need every single one of them. I dont care at all that the regular warlock is less cost efficient as blood hunter...I want as many warlocks as possible. They can make the difference in mid and late game.

You wont have a super strong blood economy this way, but still ok to do some serious things.

[criddlerattack]

Nobody mentioned Awe for a bless effect yet? I thought it would be automatic. Since they get +1 fire bless, I play to that strength. The more you spend on fire, the more that extra point is worth from a design point perspective. Awe is perfect for your 2-defense Lava Warriors and certainly helps your sacred mages if they get jumped on by flying units or targeted for assassination.

I take a F6E4S5 awake Divine Glyph with 7 dominion and flat scales (some combination of productivity and drain). Full bless is awe, 2 reinvigoration, arcane finesse, and minor MR.

[Alias]

Awe is bugged at the moment.

Also, having played with it in the past, I don't rate it particularly high on Abysia.

[Mardagg]

I dont think Awe is a good idea for Abysia.
Its a nice blessing vs chaff but pretty much useless vs high quality troops or single SC`s.
Abysia can deal easily with hordes of chaff but needs some bless effects to make Lava Warriors deadly vs high quality troops.

Pretender design for MA Abysia should deal with its biggest weakness: magic diversity.
I consider Earth,Death and Blood a must. D+B to get into Vampire Lords, Earth to get into Earth boots and hammers at some point.
Air is a nice idea on top since Air+ Earth get the elemental staff and Air + blood the robe of the magi.
Astral for magic weapons .
Nature for Poison resistance.
I almost always take rainbow imprisoned with A,E,S,D,N,B in the end.

Nature is probably the least important path here.
I always ignore the bonus path in Fire for Abysia... in game you can get to F4 easily with items, randoms on your H3 mages or Arch Devils.

Taking death 5 allows for Stygian Skin...which comes really handy for all your mages and your lava warriors in mid/late game. You dont need it that much earlier thats why imprisoned pretender is reasonable imo.

[Shinuyama]

but Abysia is considered a bit above average, no?

No.