0. 2 Description 3 Credits
Download 5.74 Mb.
|
| That just leaves Growth and Luck to play with. I would suggest Death, because your have no Old Age to worry about. I like Luck for the gems (nice to get your site searching started), but it is not necessary. Do not take more than Misf 2, your PD is junk. It cannot take too many Barbarians/Knights (I would even be wary of Misf 1).
Dom strength - probably 5 to 7. There is no reason to take a high dominion, though you will want a moderate dominion for building sacreds and general satisfaction. Magic: You want a bless. All your mages and units are sacred. Some unit benefits from pretty much every bless, so here is a brief overview: Fire: only useful to the units. The units have magic weapons already, so really it is just the Att and 6 AP dmg. Decent, but not my favorite. Water: Great for the thugs and the units, useless for the mages. If you are pursuing a thug/sacred strat, take this one. Air: Consider a minor in Air. Your shieldess summons and your communioned priests could use the air shield. Earth: My personal favorite. Helps your communions and your thugs, and definitely adds to all your sacreds (though some like this more than others). Astral: Meh. Nice, but by no means necessary (though it is excellent for your thugs). Nature: Only has a noticeable effect on the Slann. Don't bother. And DEFINITELY don't get N9+, b/c your best mages are sacred. Death: Good bless. Als the only real way to get into Death. However, I think you do not need the bless or the death access, viable as it is. Blood: Pushes your high damage units into the very high damage realm. Also, Farstrike on your Slann for early SC/thug killing. Definitely mess around to find a Bless that fits you. As I have said, I prefer earth. You don't really need your god for expansion, I would suggest an Imprisoned God. That and your scales should give you ~600-800 points to play with. Also, decide now if you want to go deep into blood. If you do, you should probably take some on your pretender (otherwise, you need to empower to get anywhere). Sadly, I have no experience with a heavy blood Lizardmen, so you will be on your own. Your strategic goals: Awash in Gems You have access to almost every path of magic. You also have a respectable starting income of gems, and you can forge (guaranteed) fever fetish and (with just the smallest touch of luck) clams. Keep in mind Slann cannot wield hammers (though they can forge them). If you really want to get into fetishes/clams, you will want a priest with the right paths (check each priest for FN/WN combos). For clams, you need Constr 6, robe of the sea, and a water bracelet. Also keep in mind whatever gems you put into these projects are not going into summons, BE enchants, globals, or other items. Wait until you have a steady foothold before starting this. For remote site searching, definitely start asap with Astral, Nature, and Water. For Earth, Air, and Fire you need to do a little manual searching with a Slann first. If you get enough Astral and you have the research, I would even consider Acashic record (as Slann time is very precious, and you actually can use every gem you get). Why are the Cities all so Great??? You need to build a lot of forts. The money is nice, the control is nice, but the real reason is for Skink Priests. By the endgame you want to be swimming in priests - piles and piles of them. You want to be recruiting a Skink Priest in every province (which means you need a fort/lab/temple in every province). Your default action in every fort is to buy a priest. This takes priority over EVERYTHING else. Those extra ticks on PD? put it into a priest. Those 2 or 3 extra units? put it into a priest. I would support doing almost anything short of alchemy (and in some cases, even that) to get more priests. So, this is your handicap. How much do your forts cost? In reality, 2300 gold and 6 turns. 1400 for the Great City (ouch) plus 400 for the temple, plus 500 for the lab, so you can recruit your priests. Don't bother trying to find a province with a different fort, they are all Great Cities (thats how the lizards roll). On the plus side, your forts have admin 60. This is not for resources (remember, you have forts in every province), this is for gold. That is 160% gold in a province with a fort! So try to build your forts on farmland where possible. But most importantly, keep them away from the front. You do not want to lose your 1400 (or 2300) gold investment. The Slann may be your big hitters, but correct management of your priests is what is going to win you games. Slann VS Castle This is the most difficult balance you must keep. I like to put my first 650 into a Slann. From there on, react to your needs. If you are fighting a lot or you are feeling the pinch for Slanns, buy some. But remember that every Slann you buy slows you entire economy because you are delaying that castle and therefore, those priests. Also, remember that the castles are practically useless without temples and labs because your ultimate goal is to build priests. SKINK PRIESTS: In case you don't know, Skink priests auto-cast communion slave. Slann auto-cast communion master. This is the most powerful advantage your nation has. And thoug the Slann are flashy, the priests are the ones that make the machine work. Be very careful with these guys. Even though you have a lot, it is very easy to lose them all. Take a lot of steps to protect them: 1) Keep the Priests in a 3:1 or greater ratio with the Slann (2:1 if you really need the extra firepower). If you must have more in a given province/battle, put some Slann to sleep or remove the priests from battle (they can hide/sneak instead). Otherwise your Slann WILL pop your priests like candy. 2) Set the priests to Holdx5. You can do reverse Communions (I touch briefly below), but normally you won't (your Slann are normally much more powerful). The extra 20-60 fatigue the Priests will get casting their own spells of questionable value is a significant hazard, and makes them pop easily. 3) Reinvig. By mid (or at least by late) game you should have Summon Earth Power or Relief (and an Earth bless if you took it). Always cast these. The 4-18 reinvig can make a huge difference (especially 18!). 4) Scales. Your priests are cold blooded, so be very careful in cold dominion. Try a higher priest/Slann ratio, have your Slann cast fewer/lower level spells. 5) Communion Bonuses. Your Slann get +1 path for every power of two number of priests (+1 for 2, +2 for 4, +3 for 8, etc...). Keep note of this and be careful about which spells your Slann have access to. They like to cast the big stuff, even when it isn't necessary. NOTE: you get a Skink Priest at PD 20, remember this in your calculations. Research: So many options. A quick overview: Conj: Not very useful in early & mid game, except for summoning the powers (especially summon earth power). Also, there is Power of the Spheres (great for reverse Communions). Your water summons are in here, for attacking under water. Keep in mind you still need an underwater commander to lead them (construction-4 for rings of water breathing work well). Alternatively, you could just go for Constr-6 and the Sea-King's Goblet. Alt: So many uses. Great for early astral/nature buff spam on your thugs/sacreds. Your Slann can use Eagle Eyes and Aim (in general they only seem to need one). Phantasmal Army is great for following up an ambush. At higher levels, there is Mother Oak, Frozen Heart, Iron Bane, great astral spells, and more... Also, the earth summons have great protection. Try iron bane/acid rain with them, because they have no armour. Evoc: You can cast everything here (except for those pesky death spells). Most of them probably aren't actually worth your Slann's time until you hit Evo 4 (acid rain, thunderstrike, bladewind). At Evo 6 Notice one of my favorite spells, Astral Fires. 100 Prec (haha darkness, storms, mists, &c...), 10 AN damage, 35+ range and 3+ AoE. On your fourth Gen slann that translates into 4 squares +your communion bonus. Spam it on any foolhardy opponent without fire resist (even underwater!). The fire summon is 100% fire resistant and has strong stats otherwise. A solid summon if you can land the fire gems. Constr: Great for gearing your recruitable thugs and mages. Also, the Astral summon has 30 morale! Worth the gems if you can spare them. Oh, and you can get Golems easily. And crystal shields. The possibilities are too numerous to list. A great research tree at any time. Ench: Not your best tree. Lots of useful stuff that you will want eventually. Mostly go here if you need the domes. Or if you want to try out Flaming Arrows + Skink Archers. The nature sacreds are stealthy (useful for ambushes) but otherwise not terribly good. Thaum: You will want Teleport to get around your mage's terrible 1 Map Move (all your mages can cast it). It also has the well known Astral anti-sc spells (though there are some other choices you can use if you want to surprise people). If you aren't playing CBM, watch out for Berserkers. Your Slann probably won't cast it (they prefer damaging spells), but you never know... Also, the air summons have 19 (!) MR. Use them if anyone is giving you grief with MR spells. Blood: Useful, but you aren't the strongest blood nation. The blood summons are ok (they have berserk, but you don't want a N9 bless for reasons I already stated), but nothing to get excitied about. No point in researching more than 2 (4 if you want the sacreds) unless you have blood on your pretender and you have a plan for going deep. Tricks:
1) Firestorm. Have 1 Slann + some priests + Summons of Chotek if you can. Cast Fire Res -> Fire Storm and enjoy the show. 2) Astral Tempest. Does MR negate this one? If so, cast your MR boosting spell(s) of choice followed by Astral Tempest. 3) Earthquake/Falling Rocks -> Cast Invulnerability first. You get the idea of these... 4) Using Priests of Sotek, have them cast Sabbath Master followed by some Reinvigorations to help with fatigue on your communions. Note, The Slann can go Dormant (change shape) mid-battle, making some of the best reverse communions. -Fantomen REMEMBER: Your skink priests are stealthy. You can easily infiltrate a large communion of priests and teleport a couple Slann on top of them (great for attacking someone's capitol). Aaaand thats as awake as I am tonight. If anyone ideas they think would go well here, I would be happy to add them to this post. Also, some of these ideas come from other people, but I can't remember who. If you want credit, just ask (here or PM) and I will add you.
Hey this has to be the first mod nation with two guides I see that I fail at paying attention as you found a reasonably attractive way to get into clams, which would be very useful for the lizardmen. We appear to have a few differences of opinion on them but that hardly surprises me, if people can say baalz is wrong, just about anything in this game is up for argument. I'm pretty sure fantomen was the first person to realize (publically at least) that slann being able to go dormant has excellent reverse communion potential, which again was really quite brilliant. The lizardmen have amazing reverse communion potential given that and coupled with a solid earth bless. One of my biggest disagreements though is to your assertion that they're easily one of the most powerful nations. They have a good deal holding them back and while I would definitely agree that they're above average their deficiencies are too large to ignore. One of the big ones is that while their slann are amazingly powerful in battle, on the strategic map they're not nearly so great. They don't have hand slots so they can't forge, and it can be hard to pull together the levels for the more powerful ritual spells and globals since they are restricted to miscellaneous slots for boosters. Slann are also unfortunately vulnerable to mind duel. So in my mind they have plenty of weaknesses to make up for their strengths to keep them from being too powerful. -> Fate: First, thank You rdonj for reminding me of your excellent guide (here). I read it when I first got the mod, but had since forgotten. Maybe I should try to cover some of the other, less guide-covered Warhammer Nations. As for being the most powerful. Hmm... Maybe my only fighting the AI has colored my opinion of them. It is true they will have trouble with many rituals, but it is a short walk up the astral tree (crystal coins to the rings on your Fourth Gen Slanns gives you S6) enough for all but the really high level astral rituals. E2s can even summon Golems. Also, W2 + bracelet (or a lucky W3) gives Naiads for Water and nature magic. You are in contention for the water queen (though you aren't concentrating on conjuration early, so don't get too hopeful). A lucky A3 + bag of winds + RoW gives Queens of Air. If you get a very lucky 4 in an elemental (can only be done on a Fourth Gen) you can get fire/earth elemental w/ a ring of Wizardry. Of course, all these worries would be easier if you could summon Third Gen Slann (*hint hint*). I think the most painful part is not being able to wield Hammers. I would suggest forging with something else (that can hold a hammer) wherever possible. If you took earth on your pretender you could try forge of the ancients, but I'm not sure it is worth it. As for Dueling, I don't know. They are rather high level, on top of normally operating in a communion, so your opponent needs S4+ to even have a decent chance. If they have an S9 Pretender, well... I will have to think about that (I don't think it is an extreme worry until at least year 2, because who will take an awake S9 pretender?) On that note, you have a lot of Astral gems and your Fourth Gen are guaranteed to cast Dispel. Do NOT let some one else get Strands of Arcane Power. In my opinion the lizards can take cover under their strong sacreds through the early game (though you will have to be careful about your losses). You shine in mid-game (all those BEs). Maybe I will look at mage summons and try to get an examination of them written soon. Also, all your Fourth Gen Slann can cast Transformation. This removes their amazing combat potential but also removes their hefty upkeep (unfortunately, most of them have the same slots). You could try for Master Enslave +Pen items to get more mages (especially against Baalz's MA Oceania...). -> thejeff Communion levels, or any other booster levels, are not considered for Dueling. Only the base (or empowered) level counts. -> Humakty I must disagree on the skinks part. Red crested are more than able warriors, chameleon are deadly and quite survivable in melee, and I had very good results using terradons to storm castles, as they can dominate any non-infantry unit. Plus they are all stealthy, which is most usefull to fight on your terms. Sure they won't make you forget your sacreds, as those are your line troops, but it would be a mistake ignoring them. 8.36.4
8.37 Ashdod 8.37.1 Ashdod proto-guide 8.37.1.1 Original guide Hinnom/Ashdod/Gath center around the concept of a "few mighty men," that is, small armies that are much tougher than mere numbers would indicate. I haven't played much with Hinnom or Gath because I dislike blood nations, but Ashdod has a nice smattering of Earth/Death/Astral/Fire, with a touch of blood and nature in the summoning tree, and quite a lot of overall versatility. Here are some thoughts from my few days of playing around with Ashod. In order to take the concept of a "few mighty men" to its logical extreme, i.e. one Adon soloing indy provinces on his own at the beginning, it is absolutely essential to have an E10 bless and some level of regen, preferably 10% (N6). This gives you functionally zero encumbrance. You might think that E9 is enough, but fatigue mounts quickly when your lone Adon is trying to solo 60 indies and with an E9 several Ahiman Anakite guards will be necessary. With E10N6 you can expand as quickly as you can accumulate Adonim. Be sure to take Heat-3 scales because the extra +2 encumbrance in Heat-3 provinces will not affect your Rephaite troops (which is everyone except humans and Edomites) as they are all 50% heat resistant. Your units are pretty decent. The top-line recruitable-anywhere troop is the Bashanite, with 40 HP to the Gileadite's 35 and 26 damage to the Gileadite's 21 (but worse repel). The Bashanite is superior against most foes because of the additional chance of one-shot-kill, but the Gileadite is quite decent and has excellent morale. (Note that the Gileadite shows up in PD, 1 Gileadite and 1 Edomite per 2 PD, and 1/2 Gileadite Archer per 2 PD over 20.) Mix in human slave warriors to improve force density (Size 4 Bashanite + Size 2 human = full square) and reduce enemy defense. I haven't thought of a use for the Edomites or poison spear warriors yet--generally it's better to kill things outright than to poison them slowly, and the Edomites have fairly bad stats and poor morale. The Gileadite Archers have a bow that does 17 damage, but because of their high resource cost and gold cost, against all but the heaviest troops you're better off using Edomite javelineers and/or human slingers. (The fluff text notes that the Gileadite archers showed their worth against the Abysians by picking off their mages at long range. I can buy that, but it's a niche use.) Overall, Ashdod troops are fairly expensive and easily swarmed, and you'll outright lose any pure slugging match against a conventional-arms power like EA Ulm. However... Ashdod troops have high HP and decent (13) Prot. They make excellent blockers for Ashdod's nifty battlemages, the Zamzummites and Rephaite Sages and Talmai Elders. Ashod can forge the Skull of Fire and Flame Helmet to get up to F5 reliably. They can forge Earth Boots to get E4, and in the late game can bootstrap to Bloodstones and E5 via Banquet for the Dead. They can forge Skull Staffs and Skullfaces to get up to D6, and forge Starskine Skullcaps and Crystal Coins for up to S5. Any of these limits can actually be exceeded because Ashdod can also forge Rings of Sorcery and Wizardry. (S3 Talmai Elder forges Starshine Skullcap, gives it to an S1E2 Zamzummite, which is 1 in 8, who forges a Crystal Coin and gives it back to the Talmai Elder who is now S5, and forges a Ring of Sorcery, which is used with the above to forge a Ring of Wizardry.) 1 Zamzummite in 4 will have Astral magic so he can participate in communions with 1/3 Rephaite Sages and 1/3 Talmai Elders, but it's more likely that large communions will happen by way of Zamzummite-forged Crystal Matrices. Fire magic is especially interesting to Ashdod because almost all troops are resistant to fire and have good armor. Evocation magic in general is pretty solid for Ashdod, because Zamzummites are sacred (I mentioned an E10 bless?) and all mages have decent precision (10 except for Talmai Elder's 9), and there won't be much damage to Ashdod's large (i.e. widely-spaced), high-HP troops. Here's a breakdown of Zamzummite randoms and what they can be used for. Zamzummite base is 1E2D + 100% (E/D) + 100% (E/D/S/F). 1/8, +FD: Banefire. 1/8, +FE: Magma Eruption. 1/8, +SD: Nether Darts, or thugging, or communions. (See below.) 1/8, +SE: Gift of the Heavens, or communions. 1/4, +ED: Terror, Leeching Darkness, skelly spamming, or thugging. 1/8, +DD: Cloud of Death. Thugging is also an option. For starters, as mentioned, an Adon with the right bless can solo indy provinces naked. Talmai Elders have forge bonus (15), and Adonim and Talmai Elders have full slots + 1 extra misc slot. Zamzummites can do Summon Earthpower/Invulnerability/Soul Vortex, or Body Ethereal/Ironskin/Soul Vortex, depending on randoms. One particularly interesting possibility is a linebacker communion (kudos to Baalz's Guide for the term). Give four or five Slave Matrices (5 earth, 5 pearls) to various Adonim and/or Zamzummites. Have the communion masters cast some or all of the following: Personal Luck, Summon Earthpower, Invulnerability, Ironskin, Fire Shield, Phoenix Pyre, Soul Vortex. With high HP and a good bless they will be much more durable than most linebacker communion thugs. Zamzummites have fairly poor attack ratings, so either give them good weapons or else... Boots of the Behemoth (5 gems). Size 4 tramples size 2 twice per turn, but fortunately between E10 bless and Summon Earthpower you'll have reinvig 9, which is more than enough to overcome the 6 fatigue you'll pick up per turn of trampling (Zamzummite has enc 3 naked). Supply is one weak point of Ashdod troops. Most troops have at least Gluttony-1, and Ahiman Anakites have Gluttony-5 and take 9 supply to feed. I'm not sure what wasteland survival does because I definitely had troops starving in wastelands. Perhaps it reduces the requirements slightly but it's still painful. And of course there are a lot of great national summons, like the Arel with Healer (50) and the Ophanim and Chayot (Call Merkavah). But I haven't gotten to an endgame with Ashdod so I'll just note the possibilities for now. 8.37.1.2 Comments -> Imprisoned cyclops. YMMV of course, but I am enjoying an E10N6 Cyclops with Order-3 Misfortune-3 Growth-3 Magic-2 Heat-3 Sloth-3. Ashdod is very production-heavy but Prod wasn't all that useful in my tests. In my current game I have ~120 Prod in my capital--I buy one Ahiman Anakite per turn plus enough slingers to use up the rest of my resources--and moving from Sloth-3 to Prod-0 would have cost 120 points and let me buy ~3 Ahiman Anakites per turn, or else buy 5 or 6 Sheshai Anakites. For the other troops you would just build more forts, so Prod is basically about producing more troops in your capital. Since I like battlemages more than armies of sacreds that didn't seem like a fun-optimal tradeoff to make, but if it had I could have traded Magic and some Growth to get Prod-0. (Growth is another dubious choice that happens to be fun for me, but has kind of a bad rep in MP.)
Luck Shield Bracers of Protection Girdle of Might Cost: 6 pearls, 9 earth gems, 7 death gems (w/ dwarven hammer and Talmai forge bonus where applicable). Yields Enc 3, att 13, defense 16, Prot 7. Then script . With the suggested E10N6 this will give you Prot 24/26 on head/body and leave you at ~25 fatigue after the Soul Vortex. It's possible that you'll get swarmed before you manage to get off your Soul Vortex, in which case you'll cast it later on (spells cancelled due to melee stay in the queue). You'll have a 35+ HP (up to 60 occasionally), regenerating, zero-encumbrance thug with luck and 26 Prot (most size 2 units can't reach the head), Soul Vortex and Leeching Darkness for chaff killing, a 34 AP melee attack at attack 13, defense 16, with several slots left open for resistances and other toys as needed. Substitute Flame Brand for Shadow Brand to save on research and/or death gems. For a unit with stats of Prot 4 Attack 9 Def 12, the Zamzummite makes a pretty neat thug. Astral Adonim are probably better, but the Zamzummite is recruitable anywhere and you'll have tons of them lying around doing research and battlemagey stuff anyway--this way you can convert one into a thug just by visting a laboratory. Flexibility + mobility = strength. 8.37.2 A Few (Really) Good Men: Guide to Ashdod Article Author: MaxWilson 8.37.2.1 Unit breakdown (troops): Human slinger: 7 gold, 2 res. Pretty much what you'd expect a slinger to be. Easily killed, not very accurate, low stats. Still, it's nice that this particular giant nation actually has the option to field human troops if it wants to, and slingers have their uses. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
|