Abysia

[Mali Belizec]

For some time now I am looking at Abysia as a new nation to learn playing.

What is the difference between Abysia in three ages? In the guides MA was described as average while other two are bellow average, but from brief look at the units, LA seems like more interesting to play.

Anyone having advice for which Abysia to choose and what tactics to try out?

[Eldritch Gentleman]

I don't know what guide you're reading- EA is a time of magic and myth, MA is where they start to die out, and LA is when Men (Or Atlanteans) and steel rule the day.

EA Abysia, you're almost solely fire-based. Your burning ones are fantastically powerful sacreds, and you have enough magic to reduce everything on the battlefield to a cinder- and in the event it's fire resistant, Abysian infantry are tough as nails and can probably kill it themselves.

MA Abysia takes the dive deeper into blood- instead of being restricted to heavy abysian infantry, you can supplement it with lighter humanbred infantry, who aren't quite as tough. They get demonbred mage-priests, and better warlocks, which, combined with the humanbred troops, makes blood a much more powerful option.

In the LA, Abysia is almost out of actual Abysians- but they're damn good at blood magic with all their mage-priests. Couple that with all of their assassins, warbred, and cross-breeding rituals, and you're going to have a strong core force backed up with some sacred smoulderghosts, light infantry to catch lance charges, and a whole host of devils to provide support.

[marsilian]

All three are mainly fire and blood nations, with the latter being their true strength. They can do fire very well, but their mages are in general too pricey to just sit back and spam evocations. So their bread and butter is summoning fire elementals and all the different things blood can do. The Warlock is probably their best mage throughout the ages, most of the others are rather overpriced.

EA has the most powerful sacreds and even a small number can tear through almost all indies and many early player armies. Something like Barkskin, Bloodbond (to activate berserk), magic weapons, and some resistances is very strong. Awe bless is also powerful, but falls off later.
Generally, I think EA can shine early, but tends to burn out as your blood hunting (and potentially death scales) destroy the land. So you have to be aggressive.

MA and LA are less extreme, with cheaper troops and mages, but weaker sacreds, so they can be played more conventionally. LA also has sacred assasins, which could allow for a very unique bless strategy focused on them. Strength, magic weapons,, maybe decay weapons.
LA also has cheaper blood hunters outside the capital, so they are the best version at that.

[Reign_of_Error]

LA Abysia is distinctive and interesting and fun. On top of what's already been said, they are a respectable Astral power (25% S3 on the Warlocks of MA and LA, 25% can forge crystal matrix). In LA you have a recruit-anywhere sacred sabbath slave. They can pull out some surprising battle magic via communions, and a pretender should probably be designed to help with this, as well as give good scales - as suggested, Abysia is very gold hungry.

Blood/Astral is also the horror cross-path. Quite a few nations have this in LA, very few in MA.

The LA sacred troop is pretty disappointing, however.

[TheMeInTeam]

Even in EA Abysia's mid-late game is blood IMO. You are limited to cap recruitment and generic blood summons to get blood mages, but since you'll mostly be pumping warlocks there you should still have a ton of slaves/turn come years 2-3 with warlock + dowsing rod hunting. Warlocks can also do astral point buffs, remote search it so you get good income for it eventually, and later on can get blood rain online for morale plays and/or cast things like leech or life for life which trash thugs/SC.

While you can consider a pretender for it, late game blood will eventually break you into death as well (worst case: empower B random warlock, give it a blood thorn, and cast heliophagus until you get the B/D ones). Two of the heliophagus summons can cast vampires, which can then search death + add death spells to your lineup.

In addition to the usual early game useful techs (conjuration 5, alteration 4-5, enchantment 3-5), construction is an attractive early path for Abysia. Abysia has excellent starting fire income and will get more quickly, so you can forge a bunch of lanterns to ratchet up research. At baseline Abysia's research is bad for its cost, so piling on lanterns helps a lot.

Lifelong protection items can make assassination battles awful for enemies, but don't forget if you have a few of these that you can also put those same assassins into big fights and have them hold in the back constantly making imps. Imps can screw with opposing mage off-script casting, and if they don't script against flying can kill mages/commanders. Even if they do script for it, the constant stream of imps will make fights higher stakes because they will clog up retreats.

[Mali Belizec]

Thanks for the advices guys, I think starting from EA which seems more straight forward is the right way to go, and then progressing toward LA.

[Twogun]

EA Aby is a great beginner nation

it encourages you to learn about blesses

it hand picks your magic paths, which is actually good as a beginner, because it's easy to get lost in all the magical options

its heavy troops are very forgiving most of the time if you make most errors, so gives you a super early game base to work from.

please ask questions if you have any. the dominions journey is a great one, but it's good to get guidance so you don't get lost!

[Mali Belizec]

I am not actually a begginer as I am playing Dominions sins dom3. I am very much begginer when Abysia is concerned, never tried that nation in any if the ages.

I am not fan of the blood magic or slow moving units which so I avoided abysia. It always seemed interested lore wise though so this time decided to dive in and try it seriously.

Thanks for the advice!

[Olter]

Honestly, the most hilarious thing about Abyssia is their hot virgins. I mean literally. They are the only blood nation, that sets their own blood slaves on fire with their freaking heat aura.

[andymcnish]

EA Abysia is probably my main land nation. It has quite a lot of nuance.

Basic strategy is to expand using fire and break into blood in year two.

You can play it super-aggressively or set up for late game if you prefer.

It's not the sort of nation where anyone sane tries to rush you, after all.

You also have to be flexible with magic diversity opportunities.

You can rely on Fire (so many fire gems) and will get plenty of blood slaves (better if you can grab farmlands etc. for their $$$ and high population), but other gem income depends on luck and can vary wildly from game to game.

So you can't afford to tie your end-game down to planned use of another specific magic path (at least if you need gems to power it)

The main problems are:
No getting UW (unless you take Wyrm or similar I guess)
Lack of magic diversity.
Easy counters available for fire magic.
Limited non-cap mages (blood is available at cap only).
No flying leader for your undead flyers

Pretender options are also very wide:
Imprisoned Scales Builds, Awake or Dormant Rainbows and Awake Monsters are all perfectly viable.

Whether melting people with Liquid Flames of Rhuax, spamming out hell-armies with Infernal Breeding and buffing them with boosted E3s, kitting out assassins with cheap fire plate and helm and Heart Finder swords, spamming out vampires or shutting down rituals with Astral Corruption there is always something fun to do in an MP game with them.

Not top tier for sure, but very fun...

[TheMeInTeam]

Fire evos are easy to counter, but incinerate, elementals, and prison of fire less so. There aren't a lot of things that survive burning ones with a decent bless while slapped with prison of fire.

It's worth fighting wars over nature indies, and high blood will get you death. You do get a little earth, so the real lacking paths long term are air, water, and nature. Nature is somewhat easy to pick up especially in EA, water/air not so much.

If you get enough resources in cap to recruit more than burning ones, you can make some fliers for some light elfing.

Abysia is pretty weak in magic phase game, unless you set up pretender for it or use your astral income to get golems going.