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Agreed. Where's the fun in having a 2nd form, if you won't even see it because its gone on the next hit as well?
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4. Raise protection on best oni troops (50gp and 65gp "Oni" and "Koni Oni") from prot 6 to prot 11-12 by giving them at least *some* armor. 65 gp mostly melee-oriented units should be able to last longer than 1-2 rounds in melee, or not to be killed by few arrows.

They don't use armors, says the 'background story', and they don't use shields as well.

But they have powerful, if short-ranged missile weapons as well - don't underestimate those. Sadly, they (as all Oni) have poor precision - I wonder why.

Considerung that they are 350 year old demons who do not much more than come to blows with each other, I would like to see their Att/Def/Prec stats rised significantly, and their resistances upped to full 100%.
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Protection 11-12 and size 3 would still leave them very vulnerable to both missile fire and melee attacks, but it would make to survive slightly longer.

As shortbows have only DAM 10, Prot 11-12 would make them pretty much impervious to missile damage ..

Even with Prot-6 only, they do not take that much damage from shortbows anyway. And once they're ethereal, 75% of the arrows miss ...

I'm more concerned with the low melee stats, which make the get hit way to often ...
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Make them more resource intensive to compensate for their better armor. Currently Sloth 3 is almost no brainer for Oni Kings player.

No need to do that - the game does that on its own if you slap armor on them. Armor would mean more encumbrance and less Def as well, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't want that.

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5. Make low level Oni national summons to summon multiply demons with appropriately increased costs, instead of summoning them one by one.

"Yomi, Oni Kings" does not summon any "Oni national summons", therefore I do not really know what you're talking about ... . If it's the different Tengu (no plural "s") - that spell already does summon 5 of them, the Dai Tengu even comes with 25 warriors. And Kappa and Karasu are useless or non-castable respectivly, anyway.

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6. Make "End of Culture" and "End of Weakness" Oni's spells Thaumaturgy 4 and Alteration 4

Agreed. To research both pathes to level 6 takes to long, especially as you'll want Conjuration, Construction and Evocation, too ... .

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7. Give Oni demon troops with ranged attack prec 11 instead of their terrible prec 9 .

Agreed.

I've modded all the less-than-10 prec weapons and troops to have at least 10 prec test-wise, and 'friendly fire incidences' dropped by 1 order of magnitude... .

All in all - I think some of your claims, remarks and suggestions are quite valid.

Other seem to stem from a tendency to 'use' Yomi like any other, more 'standard' nation, which clearly can't and IMHO isn't intended to work.
I think, Yomi like e.g. Early Pangaea needs some creative and out-of-beaten-pathes thinking to be played successfully in either SP or MP. What IMHO isn't a bad thing - there must be something in the game to keep the Gandalfs and QMs occupied
-> The Dai Oni kings are perfect raiders in earlygame if you do a e9 bless.

With the e9 bless + summon ep they get 8 reinvigoration. So you can use them unequipped and they still make terrific thugs.

With equipment they are SCs.
Imho they are fine, you just have to rely on your mages. Your troops are not important, but the archers for 8 gold are useful.

Hanyas can cast flaming arrows for them.

Yomo is imho a good nation, but hard to play. But they have extremely interesting options available with the dai oni, which are imho more flexible than niefel jarls.
You said dai oni have less hp then the niefels, that is only half true, you have to count their ghost form hp as hp too. And their ghost form is an extremely useful feature:

A niefel jarl dies from 1 sucessful GfH hit, whereas for a dai oni you need 2 such hits.

And they have the most flexible buffs i think, both atlantis and niefelheim are a bit more limited there.
Summon EP, Invulnerability, Soul vortex, Fire shield, Phönix Pyre, every 4th mirror image.
They also can do terrific battle magic: Earthquake and RoS.

Their troops are a weakness, but at least the archers are useful enough. The Dai Oni are their main strength.

Imho they are balanced and one of the better early era nations. The only problem is that you are almost forced to play them with an e9 strat imho.
-> The bandit archers are among the better archers since EA is all about battle of the archers and their better armor allows better durability. Also my strat with Yomi just tends to be using tons of indies and splurging most of my gold on mercs. I find Yomi's actual recruitables largely useless =). (I actually tend to bulk on bakemono archers in beginning simply to spam my opponent with them) Though they do have very nice magic IMO.
->

* In the SP vs. AI games I've played as Yomi, I tended to do quite well. I don't remember ever actually losing an Oni King.

* I tended to use Oni Kings as thugs without really needing to cast spells, and seeming very effective with only a magic trinket or two, and/or casting a spell or two to help them out. I didn't try to use them as SC's, but instead would but one or two together and support them with some non-demon fodder. I felt nearly undefeatable against the AI.
* Another advantage of the ghost form is that it makes afflictions vanish! So not only was I never losing my Oni Kings, but they were never getting permanently crippled either.
* Using combined arms rather than all-demon armies seemed effective. I didn't try to make a huge army of smaller demons, but would have a few specialized squads of them.
* The Oni King seems to me like an extremely powerful unit to have recruitable from turn 1, even if it is capitol-only. Having them seems like it goes a long way to needing to have weaknesses in other areas.
-> Hey Corwin, lemme throw a couple ideas your way.
#1) About the Demons being reliant upon humans for success. I don't think this is as bad as it initially seems. For one thing, demons making deals with humans is thematic, so it shouldn't be a thematic concern. For another thing, you don't have to be too discriminant as to what indies you have on your team, so long as they are human and un-banishable (although heavy inf. is a suggestion). For a third reason, it's not unfair because, as has been said before, each nation plays differently. If it falls that Oni-Kings needs to be a Nation that hires indies to be successful, then that's just part of that Nation's style. If you think about Ashen Empire and how they really, REALLY benefit from hiring a few indie slave armies to protect/fight against priest armies, then it's a similar situation. Demons simply have a weakness, and it needs to be worked around. Saying that one should be able to play without any humans in the army is like saying an undead theme (Ashen Empire) should be able to play with 100% undead in the army -- they technically can, but it's not wise. Haha, you end up being like a prejudice demon lord who refuses to work with mortals and then gets trounced by more cunning enemies.
#2) About the whole retreating when turned into ghosts. I think this could go either way, gameplay-wise. You've listed the major downside already. You lose the battle. However, that's not really that bad considering your losing the battle when all the other nations would have as well! Think about the benefit, though. The survivability of the Onis goes up substatially, and a whole new game dynamic becomes apparent for Oni-Kings: they are very difficult to wipe out. I would say to make this work well though, Yomi would have to all flee to the same province and regroup; you might call them "masters of retreating" or something. Imagine losing a battle, but getting 66%-75% of your demonic army back at the end of the fight, one province back. That would frustrate the heck out of MP opponents. So, what we're really looking at is a trade-off. The ability to hold out longer during a battle versus decreasing casualties. In a strategy game, I would opt for the latter. In the end, most strategy games boil down to numbers of troops. Also consider that the ability to hold out longer during a losing battle is not desirable anyway. I can see Yomi being very a desirable nation if they have the ability to trade losses with other nations and always end out on top. Of course, for this to work, the fleeing ghosts would have to be able to survive their flight, but I think that's very realistic considering they'd be fleeing as individuals, while their former squad would remain to hold the line. Heck, it would also just look freakin cool in the battle simulator!
Anyway, those were just little considerations. Hopefully I just presented a different way to look at it.

8.32.1.2 Yomi eats nothing!

This is my guide for the Yomi nation. Like the other 'weak' nations, they can be a lot of fun.
Their strengths are:
- Cheap archers, with Flaming Arrows

- Good magic

- Cheap forts

- Decent forging for your thugs, and Fever Fetishes

- Dai Oni

- Demons
Yomi has no sacred recruitable troops, just summons and commanders. The Dai Oni can self-buff, so doesn't really need a strong bless. Later, it will be too busy with its other buffs to self-bless. Yomi priests are weak and few and far between. But, a minor Earth bless is nice for the Dai Oni for reinvigoration, before they get Soul Vortex.

Pretender
With no sacreds, Yomi needs an awake pretender for expansion. The Prince of Death is unavailable, so that pretty much leaves the Cyclops, Wyrm, and Dragons. Yomi has no astral mages, which is a big problem later on, so it's nice to get some astral on the pretender. That pretty much takes out the Dragons. An awake E5S5 Cyclops is strong enough to expand, can wear equipment, and later on in the game can summon Golems. S5 is not too terribly vulnerable to Magic Duel. If you're fighting Kailasa you might want to hide in a castle until the war is over, though. A Lord of Plenty would be really nice, but with initial gem income it takes a while to make enough armor for it to survive, and the whole point is to expand early.

Scales
Dom: 6 - Pretty scary because of weak priests, but the points just aren't available

Order: 3 - You need money for more troops

Sloth 3 - Low troop resource cost

Heat 3 - Hannya is cold-blooded, and many units and god have fire resist

Growth 1 - Sorcerers have old age

Magic 1 (Depend on magic)

Luck 0 (Nice heroes)

Prophet
Yay, a good point for Yomi! Recruit an Oni General the first turn, and make it your prophet. Demon priests can both preach or raise dead. Very useful! It's too bad Yomi H3 priests can't make longdead horse, they are limited to the usual ghouls, soulless, or longdead.
Strategy
If you hire demon armies in the early game, you can't use indy commanders to pull them out of your capitol. They need undead leadership. So you won't be able to recruit mages for research, but you really need to leverage your magic. Stick with the bakemono archers. At 8GP each, they are a good deal. Hire whatever indy forces you can with shields to protect your archers.
Early expansion relies on the Cyclops soloing, with the prophet and archers as another expansion force. The prophet should stop to raise soulless. Make a fire sword and a tower shield for the Cyclops. Recruit a Hannya early and have it search forest sites for nature income. You really need some N income to empower a Hannya to N2, for Dai Oni gear. Later, empower this Hannya in W too, unless you find a Jade Amazon indy province.
Any extra income can be used to hire a Dai Oni, who can also site search. But make sure to build another castle and lab in year 1, to hire more bakemono archers and Sorcerers. Take advantage of Yomi's cheap forts.
Mid game you can use flaming arrows behind skelly spam. Bakemono archers are cheap and have short bows. Make some golems for Mind Hunt defense and Antimagic. You should have two sick humans with Fever Fetishes with every army group.
Late game you can finally hire some Kuro-Oni troops, when you've got the buffs to help them survive. It's unlikely you'll be able to get the Chalice or Gift of Health up, making Tartarians a challenge. The best bet to get the Chalice is to Wish for it with your god. But Poison Golems are probably a better choice in any case.

Defending an early rush

If you see a rush coming, try to stop it with your god. Enchant-3 will give you skelly spam, and Enchant-4 gives you behemoths to defend against tramplers, so switch research goals immediately.

Research
Alt-1: Luck for your god

Const-2: Hammers, Fever Fetish, Horror Helm

Conj-3: Summon Earthpower, Summon Phoenix Power

Enchant-3: Skelly Spam, Fire Shield

Enchant-4: Flaming Arrows, Behemoth

You really need a second castle up in the first year, to get your research going. You can build an 800GP, 3 turn fort anywhere except farm and mountains.
With Summon Phoenix Power and 2 gems, a Hannya can cast Flaming Arrows for your archers. Behemoths are only needed if you're worried about tramplers.
Const-4: Skull Staff, Earth Boots, Dai Oni gear
The Skull Staff boosts your skelly spam, and you've got lots of D gems to spend. All Hannya can skelly spam, and so can Generals and Sorcerers with D2. If you are falling behind in the research race, skulls will of course help, but try to save death gems for summons later.
A Dai Oni with a Fire Sword, Vine Shield, some armor, Horror Helm, Luck Pendant, and a girdle is a great thug at this point. It should Summon Earthpower, Fire Shield, and maybe get blessed.
You should empower an A1 Dai Oni to A2, to make Winged Shoes, and later hire a Dai Tengu. This A2 Dai Oni should script Mistform in addition to the usual combat buffs.
More good stuff to research by the end of year 4:
Alt-3 (Body Ethereal)

Alt-4 (Destruction, Blight)

Evo-2

Alt-6 (Soul Vortex)

Thau-2 (Site Search)

Evo-5 (Shadow Blast - use Eagle eyes first)

Evo-6 (Bane fire)

Const-6 (Fire Skull, Lanterns, Standard of the Damned, Boots of Quickness)

Conj-4 (Ghost General)

Thau-5 (Raging Hearts)

Conj-5 (Nushi,Dai Tengu)
Make Const-7 a priority instead if you think you'll have trouble with Astral neighbors, so you can make Golems. Thau-3 for teleport is important too, and will also give Iron Will for you Dai Oni.
With Soul Vortex your Dai Onis can handle almost anything, except they do have a problem with lances. You can counter lances with Skelly spam, or mix 50/50 Yari Bakemono with Ko-Onis. Cast Destruction with a Sorceror and fire away with your flaming arrows.
Enchant-6 (Arrow Fend, Heat from Hell, Reanimate Archers)
Summons
Naked Banes and Shura are good for blocking a castle gate, while you lay down some Destruction plus Flaming Arrows. A single group of Kohonas is good for messing with attackers or defenders in a siege. Since Dai Onis are using all the gear you are making, full-kit Bane Lords don't work too well with Yomi.
Summon a Dai Tengu and a Nushi, for diversification. The Tengu troops are best used on Guard Commander in seiges, they are too fragile for fighting.
A Dai Oni can cast Weapons of Sharpness later for your Kuro-Oni too.
Spectres will free up your God from Astral duties, and immortal Wraith Lords are great for defending the home country.
You've got a decent shot at the King of Banefires. Poison Golems are your best SC in the late game, and can be easily summoned by Dai Onis.

Where are the Oni troops????

Once you get Alt-6, for End of Weakness, you could hire some Oni troops. Be sure to have an Antimagic caster too, to protect against banishments. Bring along your Dai Tengu if you need Arrow Fend, and pop up a Heat from Hell. Darkness would help too.
Usually Flaming arrows are just way cheaper than Oni fire, and they've got better range. So Onis really need to come late in the game, when their HP and resists will help. Kuro-Onis are really the best bet.

Troop analysis

Bakemono-sho: At least the Yari have half-decent repel. Mix these with some Ko-oni if you need to eat some lances.

Bakemono archer: The best Yomi unit! 8GP, cheapest move-2 short bows in the game. You've got Fever Fetishes and a great F2 caster to buff them with.

Yari Bandit: Grab some indies with shields instead

Short Bow Bandit: If you're short on gold, you might as well hire some of these instead of Bakemono archers. They do more damage than a Yari Bandit in melee, and have good armor but no shield.

Ko-oni: Useful for eating lance charges.

Ao-oni: Maybe if you need cold-resistant troops and aren't facing archers or priests. But Skelly spam is cold-resistant so maybe not.

Aka-oni: One Aka-oni or 3 Bakemono archers ... you're better off with the archers.

Oni: For 10 gold more, get a Kuro-Oni

Kuro-Oni: Somewhat useful in the later game, with enough buffs.
Commander analysis
Bandit Leader: Hire if you're too short on gold to grab a mage, and haven't found any indy scouts.

Demon General: For 1/2 the upkeep, get an Oni General instead. The only good reason to hire one of these is if you're pumping out 100 Bakemono archers in a castle and desperately need mundane leadership. Which is a situation that's actually not to hard to get into if all your other commanders die of Fever Fetish!

Sorcerer: Great mage! Decent cost. Good forging paths. E2s are good for Destruction, D2s for Skelly spam, EDA can make some useful items like anti-missile robes for your mages, EDF with some earth boots or a fire skull are great battle mages.

Demon Priest: Hire if you're too short on gold to grab a mage and you built a temple, you might get lucky

Oni General: Dai Oni are better thugs and will eat up all your gear, and you've got better mages. They aren't bad, but the other choices are generally better.

Hannya: Another great mage! Site search with these to find N sites, then start making fever fetishes. Watch out for the additional encumbrance in cold provinces. Skelly spam, or Eagle eyes and cast Shadow blast or Bane Fire.

Dai Oni: Diverse paths, so hire one early to site search. Give them any armor to get rid of the horrible encumbrance. You can forge almost anything early, so use this to provide the situational resists you need. Bless them and cast Summon Earthpower if you don't have Soul Vortex yet. Later you can script (Summon Earthpower, Invulnerability, Soul Vortex, Fire Shield). They are vulnerable to lances and priests, and when they turn into ghosts they lose nearly all their gear, making it quite unlikely they'll survive the battle.
Don't hire too many Dai Oni in the early going. They are most useful as raiders. Concentrate on more castles, more mages.
Later in the game use some of your Dai Oni as battle mages, rare ones can have (unboosted) 4F, 5D, or 4E.
If you're lucky enough to get Kurofumi as your hero, dedicate him to Blood Stone production.
One last note: End of Culture will instantly berserk all your demons. That includes your Hannya, Dai Oni, and probably your prophet. It's like Touch of Madness, except on a larger scale. Watch out!

8.32.1.3 Tips for Yomi, Oni Kings

-> Tip #1: The Dai-Oni enters every battle with three wolves. They don't do much, but they do draw arrows and are nice to have in arena deathmatches. It seems like the Oni General gets the same benefit.
Tip #2: Blessing may be precision 100, but can miss even if you're soloing a province (thanks to the wolves, I suppose). Consider scripting redundant blesses if you happen to have a nice one. A low level regeneration bless can reduce the number of afflictions you get in addition to the hitpoint bonuses.
Tip #3: Oni generals and Dai-Onis show 20 protection, but wear no helmet. A right click reveals a basic protection of 7 and 10, respectively. Not horrible, but if you want to make the best of an Oni thug, don't forget the headgear. Or, if you have a random earth magic on your general, cast iron skin.
Tip #4: If your Oni does get a head wound, don't despair. Muted, they're still a decent thug. Battle Fright may bring their morale back down to 13, but a basic bless (no magic paths) will boost it back to 15.
Now to the real truth of the matter... Got any advice for me? I'm just starting out with them.
-> Alteration is your best friend ever, as far as paths. For Dai Oni especially.
-> Consider an A9 bless. It will couteract Iron skin buff. And if you get into war with a major air user (caelum) it will help. Your pretender will be able to actually do something with those air gems you get. And the air shield is nice vs bows of botulf and allows you to use 2handed weapons without fear of flaming arrows.

The nature 4 bless is also very nice.

[comment:

I really don't recommend the A9 bless in any case, but for Yomi it seems a particularly poor choice. I have yet to ever have a Dai Oni die or be crippled from an arrow, and if lighting is a big issue for your SCs, you are much better off trading for lightning res items or switching tactics than paying the ungodly amount of points for A9. Actually, about the only Yomi blesses I think I'd consider very seriously are earth and perhaps nature 4.

Tips that come to mind:
*Don't underestimate Hannyas, they are extremely potent and versatile mages for 200 gold. Early on on use skelly spam or eagle eyes + fireball, later add phionix power, falling fires and shadow blast to your options.
*Be sure to abuse your stealthy 8 gold shortbows to the max, including of course flaming arrows. Don't even think about the other bakemono in 99% of cases.
*Careful buying demon troops, in general error on the side of buying better mages, fewer demons.

]

order3/sloth 3 seems to be a no-brainer with the low production cost of the Oni's.

-> Tip #5: Dai Oni can reanimate dead. Specifically, Ghouls and Soulless. If you've got a crippled Dai Oni, he can spend time bringing you some spare troops to flush out the ranks of your undead leadership - especially since it's difficult to afford many of the oni.
Your Demon Priests cannot reanimate, but your Oni Generals and Hannya can if you make them your prophets. If you make them (or Dai Onis) prophets (H3), you can reanimate more of the above and longdead warriors.
Soulless require corpses, Ghouls consume population, and longdead neither.
Tip #6: Twice born will not work on Hannya or Oni, since they're demonic. As of 3.08, it is not worth casting Twice Born on a diseased Sorcerer as they will be reborn with one hitpoint. But, if you want to save a particular demon general or sorcerer... just be aware that twice born keeps magic and experience, but loses all abilities other than heroic ones, in favor of the wight mage's chassis. Generally not worth casting with yomi, though there are specific applications for undead mages, you'll just be vulnerable to banishment.
Tip #7:

Ritual of Rebirth does not work on lifeless or undead, but does work on demons (just tested). Use this on a former prophet to get multiple level three/four priests for reanimation purposes.

http://www.freewebs.com/dominions2/dom3spells.html

Edit: Also, a reborn oni loses the research penalty, and their sacred status, though they retain their priest magics.

-> Note that Yomi's paths cover forging lots of the elemental resistance items for your Dai Onis: copper plate replaces your too-heavy samurai armor and gives you 100% SR. Hannya's can forge Brimstone Boots to boost your PR to 100% and give you 50% CR (plus fatigue recovery). Charcoal shield or fire helmet or burning pearl boost you to 100% FR.

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