Basic Fomorian Gameplan

Technically it's 'the fomoraigh'.

Basic Fomorian Gameplay

1. Nemedians. Nemedians are basically nonsacred tuathas, they are excellent elven infantry with high stats and glamour. Between the spear, the parry/def, and the glamour, they tend to roll indies. It can be worthwhile to make a nemedian champion or two early on to later lead your surviving nemedians as raiding teams (as your cap is much too busy past the early turns to spend a turn making one). They will generally do a better job of fighting indies than firbolg, and also defeat more types of enemy sacreds than firbolg do. You can however mix them with some axe firbolg to plump them out a bit and add a bit of damage, although the firbolg will generally die off pretty quick in this combination. Although their usefulness drops off over time, you may continue making them all game due to their high stats and magic equipment making them useful to hang buffs from.

2. Air Elementals. Full size air elementals (Conj 5) are extremely powerful and generally the go-to plan of most heavy air nations (like fomoria). People look at their lightning damage and think that is what they do - that is incorrect. They have a little elephant on them, which means they trample. Trample hits 3 squares/turn with a huge pile of def-avoids AP damage. It tends to one shot anything that isn't a giant. Air Elementals really like Storm (Evo 5) which can also help you cast more of them or cast them more cheaply via Summon Storm Power + waiting one turn (for the Storm to start) and then casting the elementals, however this gives the enemy time to buff or kill you so it might be worthwhile to instead simply cast it without waiting for the storm to go up. Air Elementals generally also enjoy being timed in their casting such that they attack the enemy while the enemy is in melee, and can't be 'ganged up on' quite so much (due to your infantry running interference).

3. Greatswords of Sharpness. It's EA, thugs and SCs abound, and the major counter to air elementals is size 6 guys to block them. A few indie commanders (horse tribe is good) or fomorian champions (cost fort turns, and not on a horse, but 22 base str and tougher) with gss fielded alongside infantry and air elementals vastly increases the difficulty of countering you for a relatively low cost.

4. Wailing Winds. This spell hits the whole battlefield with fear that only affects enemies, and can hit the same squad quite a few times. It tends to rout anything that isn't mindless, or 15+ morale, in a few turns. It tends to rout anything that isn't like 18+ morale (only achieveable by morale-stacking items on high level commanders leading elite troops, generally) over the course of 6 or more rounds. It's at Evo 6, and is eminently achievable to grab after you have gotten Storm. Only your cap mages can cast this spell, and you will need to research Construction to get a Skull Staff for the ones that don't have Death randoms (3da1 can cast this spell, via giving them 3 death gems instead of 2).

5. Cloud Trapeze. This spell is a ritual speed movement spell, that allows you to move Fomorian Druids pretty much wherever, but at a hefty cost in gems. It can 'catch' enemy raiding parties (and then usually the fomorian druid pounds them with air elementals) before they move, or allow raiding further away than usual. I would personally entrap enemy raiding parties with regular movement rather than waste the gems, and try to use stealthy units (nemedians) and light thugs to raid with but I have used cloud trapeze for the mobility in the past and it causes great consternation and morale damage to many players when they see it being used. It's also relatively easy to research.

Delicious Druidic Tidbits

6. Strength of Giants and Legions of Steel. Summon Earthpower (via giving an e1 firbolg druid a gem) gives you access to both of these spells, albeit at the cost of a gem per cast. However they have a high AoE and can help your nemedians in battle. They also help firbolg and fomorians, but to a significantly lesser degree (firbolg armour problems are too extreme to fix with legions - and fomorians don't need a strength boost, they need to actually be able to hit enemies that matter). Your troops will often be outclassed by actual EA elites like vanhere, this can help close the gap so your troops will do a bit more oomph, as well as giving your e1 firbolgs something to do early on other than sitesearching. The main draw of these spells is that they are very early in research, and you are already going up Conj for air eles and up to Const 2 for Greatswords of Sharpness.

7. Protection. This humble spell in Alt can be used in extremis by n1 firbolg druids to 'prot stack' a fomorian king or a small number of nemedians or a few people holding greatswords of sharpness. Tangle Vines and Earth Meld can also be ways of using your firbolg druids in combat 'early on'. Once you get const 6, Water Bracelets can be used to turn your w1 firbolg druids into Quickness buffing turrets. In general, utilizing these early spells is not required and firbolg druids sitesearch and then research. However certain situations may require you to deploy your druids, and in particular they can 'point buff' fomorian kings, gss counterthugs, or small groups of nemedians/fomorian warriors fairly effectively.

8. Wooden Warriors. With a gem, any n1 firbolg can cast this and it is very effective on nemedians or fomorian warriors to push their protection quite high. On firbolg it is again only somewhat effective, as it doesn't push them outside the level where normal weapons still hurt a lot.

Powerful Fomoria-Exclusive Maneuvers Entirely Not Available To Other Nations

9. Wind of Death (Evo 7). Sometimes your enemies have a big pile of chaff and you want to remove it. Mages tend to have enough MR to tank it, and antimagic will sometimes go off before WoD does (depends on number of casters). Spamming this spell can reduce doomstacks down via weight of MR-or-basically-die, but it's quite expensive to deploy that many d3a1 casters enough times to do it, so if a single cast of wailing winds +cut retreats will do the job instead it's often better to use that. Can be a lifesaver if your other methods of army removal do not work, however. If you find astral indies, it may be worthwhile forge void eye + spell focus to make your wind of death more lethal. Bringing blockers is advised, even if they will die - PD is good in this role, or firbolg.

10. Marble Warriors (Alt 7). The 'Big Daddy' of prot spells, this spell is basically mandatory for late midgame for many nations. This is not necessarily the case for Fomoria, as you have methods (air elementals, wailing winds, wind of death, turn timer thugs) that don't rely on grinding infantry against each other to deal with problems. However it's still nice to have. You access this spell by spending 3 gems per cast (1 gem to earthpower, 2 gems to cast) or by empowering an e1 druid to e2 and having him forge earth boots, which he gives to other e1 guys, allowing them to natively cast summon earthpower and only need 1 gem per marble warriors cast (or first-turn it with 2 gems).

11. Fog Warriors (alt 7). A useful buff spell, fog warriors is easier for you to cast than for many other nations as you have recruitable A4. But it's still a big investment. This spell is mostly useful to lower chip damage, against units without magical weapons. Now the main problem there is that if they don't have magic weapons, you should generally just be trampling them to death with air eles while laughing maniacally, so Frog Warriors is left as something of a boondoggle. However the fact you can just cast it means that once you have the research if you are planning to use troops to defeat a problem, you will generally put it up. It tanks one hit vs even magic weapons, and a hit is a hit, so :person_shrugging:.

12. Weapons of Sharpness (Const 7). As prot buffs become ubiquitous, you start to want WoS. As a nation that maxes out at e1 this is very hard for you. If you scout bloodhunt, you might have scraped up enough slaves to empower a firbolg druid in blood and make a few blood stones. But in general you only get this spell if you have a strong enough E gem income to use your e2 empowered druid to cast Troll King's Court (technically cheaper to empower a new guy and give him boots, but the troll king is sturdy which is nice). With a pair of earth boots, the troll king can epower or spend a gem to spam WoS for you. Very painful, very expensive, but potentially worthwhile.

13. Living Clouds (Conj 7). Summons multiple smaller air elementals. Worthwhile when you have a big enough air mage to cast it, and the opponents are mostly size 2.

14. Lategame Laundry List Stuff. Army of X, all the non-national path buffs like Will of the Fates etc from indies, mass flight, so on. Like everyone else, if things become Late Enough in the lategame you start painting every buff in the game on every army you have. Your advantage in this stage of the game is your easy access to wailing winds and wind of death to spam on many battlefields at once rather than the 1-2 people forced to empower into it can afford.

15. Thugging and Supercombatants. A basic fomorian druid can be thugged, although it is often expensive and he might be better off using air elementals (and it might end up cheaper). Fomorian Kings can be heavy thugs or SC, although their paths for doing so are very weak until later on unless you find n/w indies to cast Mossbody (on a water-random fomorian king casting liquid body). In both cases, these thugs benefit from point buffs such as Iron Warriors, Protection, Legions of Steel, Quickness (with enough reinvig if using on an SC) etc. However it's a very broad topic and hugely depends - not just on what you're fighting, but also if the enemy player will give up mentally when seeing an SC rather than just handing out greatswords to kill it.

A fomorian king can cast Soul Vortex (alt 6) which helps him with fatigue and hp regen while fighting living targets, and/or be outfitted with a morrigan spear that likewise does something similar, and can cast invulnerability but otherwise pretty much relies on being point buffed with iron warriors or w/e to live. Vine shields are as useful for fomorian thugs/SCs as they are for anyone else, but in general the lack of innate earth magic on your SC/thug chassis and fomor druids' lack of armour means thugging often comes at a considerable opportunity cost for fomoria and must be considered carefully alongside other options.

Addenda (Plural: Addendoes)

The Firbolg Problem

Firbolg have pretty good stats for human-alike infantry, but they cost 13g and are armoured in what is effectively a leather cuirass. They pay for their high stats in gold, gold you can ill afford, while their goldcost does not take into account their vastly inferior gear to even many indie units. This makes using them more a matter of 'I need chaff' than 'I want firbolg specifically' and indie heavy infantry are a competitive alternative. When you are choosing between 3 firbolgs (39g) or 1 nemedian (35g) the nemedian will generally outperform the 3 firbolgs, especially if you are casting any kind of buffs. This means that you will generally use nemedians or fomorian warriors whenever possible, especially if you are also fielding any kind of buffs.

Sometimes you need a bunch of troops to fight someone, who has counters to all of your other tricks. This can be firbolg. But in general putting in the extra effort (and fielding the extra mages) to use small groups of buffed nemedians or fomorian warriors in troop-requiring situations like blocking or killing things in melee will work better.


On The Failure Of Fomorian Militia

Fomorian militia are basically a strength score on legs. This can be a nice thing in the protection-addled world of Dominions 5 especially for people used to nations with human-level strength scores on all units. That strength score for 15g may be the best gold/strength ratio of any recruitable unit, something often touted by those spamming or advising using them. However they lack any ability to actually deliver that huge damage to a target, as they lack armour and have an attack skill of 8 (and defense of 8). Unless you are using lategame buffs to keep them alive, they will die vs any reasonable amount of enemy goldcost of troops (if they hugely outnumber the enemy, they can work). They also don't hugely benefit from early buffs, as their 'cheap' cost means you are usually building a lot of them, they are 1/square and thus resist being easily buffed, and the early point buffs like protection or wooden warriors don't push their prot up to 'hard to hurt' since it is so abysmal to begin with. In EA many units have high defense scores, and sacreds with boosted stats are not the exception but rather the norm. Fomorian militia struggle to deal with this environment and need copious buffing simply to keep up much less excel. The perceived savings of the 15g price tag acts as a lure to invest in this sub-par unit, rather than an economic numbers advantage it would be on something that could be more easily buffed into relevance or where weight of numbers would better benefit them.

Thus it is usually better to spend the full 30g on a Fomorian Warrior if you need high damage units. With armour, a reasonable atk/def score, and better morale they are with buffs going to outperform militia under nearly any circumstances. Exceptions exist, of course, like taking on a thug who will basically instakill any of your units regardless of type, but in general, this will hold true.

But What About Thunderstrike?

But what about Thunderstrike? Tstrike is a very powerful spell but it is hard to recommend it due to severe issues that it has with missing. Unlike elves or airya, fomorians don't have superhuman prec - they actually have prec 9, lower than even shortsighted humans. The druids need a storm to cast tstrike without using gems (which pushes their prec into the Nether Regions), and your Kings are rare and expensive and largely have better things to do. Thunderstrike will still be worthwhile if the enemy clumps all his men together and has them holding there for several turns. If you cast it without storm and with wind guide, your fomorians will be able to hit the clump with nearly all their casts.

This will cause massive damage IF the enemy does not have ANY shock resistance. The secondary effect is the big damage causer generally for tstrike, so even 5 shock resist will make it far less worthwhile. However if your opponent is using line formation, or has high hp low-value units acting as 'evo baits', or casts Mist, or casts Storm, or casts Darkness, or uses Skirmish formation, or uses Spread Line formation, then tstrike rapidly loses utility for Fomoria. At best it is in those cases something you can use to wipe a weaker enemy force using a bunch of research mages and zero gems. In many cases the humble Lightning Bolt will outperform tstrike for Fomoria, being as it has much higher accuracy and lower fatigue and doesn't mind if the enemy is in line formation or what have you.


A Note On Protection And Damage

Protection is a very binary thing in Dominions. While everything is random to some degree, the variance of most rolls is like, 3. Generally 6-8 is the maximum bonus you'll see from a DRN roll outside of very rare chained 6's exploding to a high number. Thus if your unit has 25 protection, and the enemy is wielding a spear that does 13 pierce damage (so 13 vs 20, after pierce does it's thing) that means that even if spear guy manages to hit your unit, your unit will be very unlikely to take even 1 point of damage. This is called 'prot-stacking', and is an extremely powerful tactic and probably the key to a lot of different things in dominions.

A big reason I advocate air elementals is they do a lot of damage via trampling, like a LOT, and it is 'armour piercing', aka 'ap'. Basic infantry attacks or damage spells that aren't AN (armour negating) or AP (armour piercing) are generally not going to work vs someone stacking protection. Meanwhile you want to stack protection wherever possible, and look at enemy damage to see whether or not you can successfully 'push' your protection score outside of their strike range via spells that increase natural protection (protection, wooden warriors, mass protection, marble warriors, army of X ) or legions of steel (which increases the protection score of worn armour).

Firbolg Druids And You

Firbolg druids at first glance seem much weaker than fomorian druids, and people have referred to them as 'researchers' (ugh). However they are your major source of w1, e1, and n1, all of which have uses. W1 is the weakest, with a bracelet or some gems they buff units with Quickness. They can cast fire resist or cold resist with that water bracelet booster and extra gems. N1 is good for protection/wooden warriors, either on thugs or troops, and you empower one of them to make thistle maces to cast Poison Ward, an important anti-foul-vapours spell. E1 is probably the most useful, with a plethora of things it can do but all of them require either gemming into summon earthpower or empowering one of them to produce earth boots.

Sitesearching in all three paths is very important. Ergo you can end up making quite a few firbolg druids as fomoria. You should generally use the fomorian druids mostly for Air related things, and leave any w1 or n1 jobs to firbolg druids, and maintain a supply of firbolg druids for such jobs. Their low price point combined with all randoms having at least some utility is nice. In a Storm they can summon stormpower and cast lightning bolt, which can be surprisingly effective.