Tips for safe Wind Rider Expansion (EA Arcosphale)

[DragofLord]

I've been experimenting with EA Arco, and their famously good expansion with wind riders. Currently I'm using a larger/+4 attack bless for hp and repel (among other things).
They do expand well, but the problem I tend to have is that their wind rider leaders often die early in fights. I'm not just talking about heavy cav rushing them down or something, but firbolg axemen just killing them the second they fly in, even with 3 turns of wind riders doing their thing. Losing the wind rider leader to a fluke isn't that bad when you've got a cleared cap circle and 5 expansion parties, but for your first expansion party its very crippling.
Does anyone have any advice/scripts/positions they've used to reliably expand with them?

[BoboYagga]

Have their leaders hold a turn or two longer to let the chaff come to them, then they fly to the back and kill all the leaders.

I run a classic rainbow bless with them, an imprisoned rainbow pretender with extra attack, swiftness, defense, magic weapons, strength, blood surge (super important) and poison resist (you can cast foul vapors later to really wreck some nations)

I also use squads of 2 leaders and about 6 or 8 units with them.

[DragofLord]

That could be the problem. I've been trying to find a non-blood surge bless because the blood paths aren't worth much to you on the pretender, I might just have to accept the cost though.
Why do you run swiftness on them? As flyers it doesn't increase their charge bonus.

[criddlerattack]

Originally posted by DragofLord:

That could be the problem. I've been trying to find a non-blood surge bless because the blood paths aren't worth much to you on the pretender, I might just have to accept the cost though.

I think blood paths are awesome on a rainbow. If you're waiting until turn 30-36 for your pretender to come out, I think you want to have a plan to make each turn as impactful as possible. With 33334144 (7 dominion and net 3 scales), you only need 5 death gems to forge a fire booster, you can already have your water booster from a mystic, so their 2nd turn they can make the fire/water staff of elemental mastery. That opens every elemental path (which you should already have site searched, so no waste of pretender turns finding gems).

If you're lucky enough to have 40 blood slaves already, you can bang out a robe of the magi on your third pretender turn. Along with starshine and crystal coin (mysics can do these before your god is out as well), you get to make a ring of wizardry without having to make a ring of sorcery, on your 4th pretender turn.

So 4 blood magic can save you 60 astral pearls at the cost of finding/trading for 40 blood slaves; that's a very good trade, even when you consider the 82 design points cost. And now you have two +1 to all path boosters and a +1 all elemental booster. Your mystics and oreiads can spend turns casting big spells and forging more boosters, rather than depending on your pretender for everything. But if you should desire to stack everything on the pretender, I think the only major spell you'd want to cast and can't is wish, which would take a 75 pearl empowerment.

Obviously, blood and death aren't going to be easy to climb/cast even with all those boosters, but if you do get your hands on 10 more death gems and 77 more blood slaves, you can forge a skull staff and cast curse of blood, effectively breaking you into every path for real. That's a bit more late game, probably, but not totally unreasonable. Even a trickle of death income can get you revenants who can cast dark knowledge. And any commander in the game can hunt for blood slaves, if you're willing to take the hit to unrest and commander turns. The world is your oyster, thanks to those 4 levels of blood magic you took.

[Shinuyama]

That could be the problem. I've been trying to find a non-blood surge bless because the blood paths aren't worth much to you on the pretender, I might just have to accept the cost though.
Why do you run swiftness on them? As flyers it doesn't increase their charge bonus.

When you take a statresist bless, what your pretender 'does' when it comes out on turn 36 is basically utterly irrelevant. You don't care. You're buying super ridiculous overpowered troops. Not the pretender. What the old man does when they appear is irrelevant. They might forge a booster. They might cast a global. Those are nice bonuses or whatever, relevant to some people I guess.

In the meantime if you use the bless right you've killed 3 people with it and secured a winning position. Which so vastly overshadows anything the pretender is doing that changing their paths to better suit some lategame global or booster or whatever is totally irrelevant compared to maximizing their combat potential in the short term.

People take swiftness for +1 def. It also helps units not 'waste' turns by moving and not reaching an enemy to attack. In the case of flyers it means they 'walk over and smack someone' instead of 'flying into the air and gaining ten million fatigue'.

The def is the important part. Stacking stats such that you outpace the dominions random number generator (drn) is the basis of any statbless. A high defense score mounted elite knight who then adds +3 to his def score from +def +swiftness in his bless goes from 'rarely hit by mundanes' to 'almost never hit by mundanes'. One adding +5 from bless goes to 'almost never hit full stop'. Mounted units suffer half the harass penalty, further adding to the power of def, atk, and repel on them.

[BoboYagga]

Yup. Those things

[Perro Grande]

You can try equipping them with luck pendents or something.

[Tzyder]

think of them as giants without the hp. Anything to make them more durable and help overcome their huge hitbox. Twist fate, hp bless, charged body, barkskin... +def isnt going to be helpful as you can have so many people swinging at you driving down your def.

[DragofLord]

I didn't know that the decision of whether a flying unit goes up was based on their move speed, I had always thought it was a set range. That is really good to know.