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8.33.3.2.3.8 Ancestor Guide (200G /11R) D2A1 + A or S or N or D Guaranteed D2, these guys will lead you on the long road to Tartarians. They are my favorite Battle Mage with so many uses its hard to know where to start. Early on, I like to use them to site search and get my death gem economy humming. They also can forge Skull Mentors ¿ TC can reap huge benefits by hitting Con 8 first and with its cheap sacred mages and access to Skull Mentors, they have a great shot at it. On the battlefield, they can spam Disintegrate (Alt 8 ¿ D2) and will be your insurance against any major undead incursions with Dust to Dust (Thaum 1 ¿ D1) and (with boosters) Wither Bones (Thaum 6 ¿ D3). Those with an Astral path can cast Nether Darts (Evo 7 ¿ D1S1), and Shadow Blast (Evo 5 ¿ D2) is fun and effective against Demons. In conjunction with your Ancestor Vessels and their fear causing Howling Bows, you can wreak havoc on your enemies morale with Frighten (Thaum 1- D1) and Terror (Thaum 4 ¿ D3). This can be even more effective with a Death Blessing which will imbue your arrows and spells with affliction causing capability, likely many will be Battle Fright (-5 Morale). Furthermore, summoning fear-causing troops, using Horror Helms, fighting in your own domain, and fighting in wasteland (where your Spirit Masters supply bonus will help keep your troops fed) where your enemies might starve themselves (and just having them read this guide) will all work toward ruining enemy morale. 8.33.3.2.3.9 Celestial Master W2A1S1 + A or S or E or N + 10% (W or N or A or S) These guys are just plain cool. Early on they make awesome researchers, then later they will provide the foundation for a strong astral late game. They have a wide range of paths and can get up to W3 and S2. Your CMs are cap only ¿ I would try to recruit one every turn if you can. They are map move 1 and you don¿t want to waste a lot of time on the road, so best to keep them at home til you need them and then teleport them with some astral boosters (Starshine Cap / Crystal Coins). With a booster or lucky W3 can cast Falling Frost (Evo 5 ¿ W3) while your high level astrals with boosters / communions can use all the great astral battle magic like Paralyze (Thaum 4 ¿ S2), Soul Slay (Thaum 5 ¿ S3), and Enslave (Thaum 6 ¿ S4). In addition you have the great national spell Celestial Chastisement (Evo 5 ¿ S3). Some important battlefield enchantments you will need in your late game battles include Will of the Fates (Alt 8 ¿ S4) and Antimagic (Ench 4 ¿ S3). Save your N1s for forging Clam of Pearls ¿ you¿ll want as much astral income as you can for a strong end game. Your E1s with boosters are valuable to forge Crystal Coins and Slave / Master Matrices. 8.33.3.2.4 The Heroes Ho Hsien-Ku A2N3, Sacred, Immortal, Flying, Ethereal, Healer, 3 Misc slots, Produces 1N per turn
A2D2S2N2 Sacred, Immortal, Fear, Plague Carrier, 3 Misc slots Lu-Tung Pin F2A2W2S3 H2 Sacred, Flying, Immortal, 3 Misc Slots - HP 15, Pro 0, Morale 14, MR 18, Str 11, Att 16, Def 16, Prec 15, Move 3, Leader 130 Note he comes with the Demon-Slayer sword and a magic Fly Wisk (stun damage) 8.33.3.2.5 The National Summons Celestial Servant (Conj 1 ¿ S1E1) For one earth gem you get a big fat guy with low attack and defense. The cool thing about him is with your easy access to Water magic, you can cast Quickness (Alt 3 ¿ W2) on the Servant and you have a decent and durable warrior pretty early on. He could also benefit from a Bless. - HP 48, Pro 4, Morale 16, MR 14, Str 24, Att 9, Def 8, Move 2 Sacred, SR100%, Glutton 3 Celestial Hound (Conj 4 ¿ S1A1) This spell is usable by all your Celestial Masters and gets you 2 hounds for 3 air gems - HP 25, Pro 7, Morale 17, MR 14, Str 17, Att 14, Def 10, Move 3 Sacred, SR100%, Flying, Patrol +10 I think these guys can fly during storms. Start summoning early to build a large force and combine with Fog Warriors for a nice late game force in conjunction with an Air Queen or one of your flying immortal commanders. Ambush of Tigers (Conj 3 ¿ N2) 7 nature gems for 7 tigers, meh, these things aren¿t too durable and an MR of 5 means they are toast if you are fighting anyone with a jot of astral magic. - HP 21, Pro 4, Morale 15, MR 5, Str 15, Att 13, Def 10, Move 3 FS I¿d find something better to do with your nature gems. Celestial Soldier (Conj 6 ¿ S1A2) These guys are excellent late-game soldiers with all-around solid combat stats. They cost 8 air gems for 5 of them and require an A2S1 caster, so only a certain percentage of your Celestial Masters will be able to summon these tanks. - HP 38, Pro 17, Morale 17, MR 15, Str 18, Att 15, Def 12, Move 2 Sacred They do not have magic weapons and are large (size 4) so small and ethereal foes can bog them down. Still, I try to have a Celestial Master who can summon these on my active war fronts to give my forces some tough meat to survive any mass damage battlefield spells. Celestial Soldiers are sacred as well so can be quite effective depending on your bless. Ancestor Spirits These little buggers can only be summoned on the battlefield but can be quite effective at slowing down your enemies efforts to get across the battlefield. - HP 1, Pro 0, Morale 30, MR 11, Str 1, Att 8, Def 8, Move 2, Sacred, Ethereal The low level version of this spell is not particularly useful as you only get 1, but the higher level one can be an thug killer. Think Swarm but with 20+ ethereal, paralyzing gnats that do 5 Armor Negating damage. You can grind your enemy to halt spamming this spell though it does take some micro management as a result of the 1D gem cost. 8.33.3.2.6 National Spells Celestial Chastisement (Evo 1 ¿ S2) This nasty little spell is yet another trick in Tien Chin¿s robe of many sleeves. It is 100 Precision and causes a nice 7AN damage that is irresistible and has a chance of enslaving your enemy (MR does resist). I think is gives a +4 MR save so you may need some penetration boosters to help boost its effectiveness. The one trick is its only range 15 so you will probably want to script it a bit later in the combat sequence and have some decent bodyguards around the mages that you plan to cast with.
This weird spell that costs 2 water gems reduces the caster age by 15 years. It also will give them insanity (5) and 2 experience stars. Since the only guys you have who can cast it are the Celestial Masters, who are not Old, it does not appear too useful. However, the experience bonus will increase your leadership from 10 to 25 which could be useful. 8.33.3.2.7 Pretender Design Thoughts I am not one for scripting an entire game so will leave out specific Pretender builds for the good reader but here are some thoughts. Obviously you cannot have everything so need to make tradeoffs here. The one thing I would not skimp on is an Earth Blessing. Blessings Your only sacred, recruitable troops are the Ancestor Vessels. While they are excellent units, they are capital only and they are not the real strength of LA TC so I would not recommend building a bless strategy based solely on them. That said, with their ranged attacks, a Death Blessing can make them extremely nasty / a joy to play and your opponents will come to loathe your hit and run tactics. But given LA TCs real strength is in their mages, all of whom are sacred, an Earth Bless is almost a requirement. Magic Paths Fire and Blood are absent from TC. You won¿t miss much ignoring them. High level Astral is very useful for TC. First, it can help you bridge many paths to boosters by allowing you to forge a Ring of Wizardry. Second, it makes a late game tactic, Master Enslave, possible / more effective, along with Wish. Finally Earth is a must to give your magi a reinvigoration bless. High level Death can be fun for the Death blessing that synergizes well with TC¿s sacred ranged troops and its effective combat magi. It also helps ensure you can summon Tartarians, another important late-game strategy. Scales * Order / Turmoil: Order 3 is a must. Period. Your troops and mages are not the most expensive, but nor are they cheap and you will want to buy as many as you can. * Production / Sloth: can be useful, and I actually took a Production 1 scale in my big LA TC game, but I have come to question the value of Production. It certainly can help drive early game expansion, but I question its usefulness in the long-run as your end game battles will depend more on your magi and summoned troops, and you will find that gold will most often be your bottleneck ¿ not resources. So I¿d suggest thinking about some serious Sloth. Besides, LA TC is still a bureaucracy and sloth is quite in line. * Growth / Death: I typically don¿t mess around too much with Death or Growth. Your Battle-Mages are all old but as long as you are neutral here, you won¿t have too many geezers kicking the bucket. I am no expert on these particular scales but I¿d suggest neutral. * Luck / Misfortune: Most people say take Misfortune 2 if you have Order 3. I have to say though that I love Luck, even if it doesn¿t synergize with Order. Anything that can get you more Gold, more Gems, more Magic Items, more Heroes, and less Lab accidents is worth its weight in gold, especially if you hit a lucky event early on in the game - it can literally give you a huge advantage. I will usually try to squeeze in at least Luck 1. Not to beat a dead horse on Luck but the TC heroes are nice to get early as they can make excellent mobile leaders and help you bootstrap up the magic levels. * Magic / Drain: As for Magic, there is no way you should even think about taking Drain. I would go for Magic 3 and race up the research ladder. It will also help reduce your fatigue, which can be the Achilles heel of TC¿s Battle-magi if left untreated. 8.33.3.2.8 Tactics / Strategies Many ideas are covered throughout with respect to the particular units but here is a summary of some things to be thinking about as LA TC:
Read up on Baalz¿s awesome guide on communions here. You should eventually have a large amount of astral casters with all sorts of additional paths. Communions boost holy levels too so will help shore up your lack of powerful priests. You will want a way to cast divine blessing, and communions are one of the easiest ways. Learn to set up reverse communions as well and use Banishment per Meglobob¿s suggestion in Baalz¿ guide if you need to deal with Ermor or Pan undead chaff. Vine Ogre / Smiths Your N2 mages with a Thistle Mace and Ivory Crown can churn out Vine Ogres. Send them forth to conquer with your Smiths, who can boost their protection. This can make for tough squads of high morale / high HP beings useful in the late game Enslave / Master Enslave Your S2 Celestial Masters with Starshine Skullcap and Crystal Coin make effective enslavers. Communion boosting for Master Enslave is risky as it will take a huge Fatigue blast on your communion slaves ¿ see MaxWilson¿s note on fatigue cost. But if you have a high level Astral Pretender or the Master of the Iron Crutch with 3 miscellaneous slots you can use him to Master Enslave your foes and watch them cry as their troops are assimilated into the TC collective. 8.33.3.2.9 Research If you can stay out of war, I would go for Construction, at level 4 you can forge Skull Mentors and research will really take off. TC really shines with high level of research where powerful combat spells with low path requirements become available. Rather than script a path, I have tried to cite spell levels so you can see which are some of the more important schools, like Alteration and Evocation. If facing undead or low MR powerful races, then Thaumaturgy. I think getting to Construction 8 can be a nice possibility for TC. Since they are somewhat of a jack-of-all trades, master of none magically, a lot of the Level 8 boosters will be a huge benefit to them. For example, they can bootstrap into A4 with a Fairy Queen and Tome of High Power, or A2 Ancestor Guide, Tome of High Power, Ring of Wizardry. A4 is critical to get the Bag of Wind and Winged Helmet that boost your Air. These can then be given to your Ancestor Guides (or Fairy Queens) at your key battle fronts to help you cast Fog Warriors or Storm Warriors, important defensive spells for the late game. Of course there are a number of other great reasons to hit Con 8 first, like the Chalice and the Sceptre of Dark Regency, which will make your life much, much easier. The Sword of Injustice plus a Mound Fiend gets you another H3 caster in addition to your prophet ¿ useful if you are fighting a 2 front war and need another Divine Bless caster. Given LA TC has cheap sacred magi recruitable everywhere, and early access to Skull Mentors and Owl Quills, you have a great shot to win the Con 8 race. Thaum is a good school to work on for remote site searching early on, but I generally will switch to physical searching to save on gems and get more sites at once since many of your mages will have 3 schools. 8.33.3.2.10 PD TC has pretty strong PD with 1 footmen and 2 archers for each point . At level 20, you get a Spirit Master and PD points over 20 give you Barbarian Heavy Horsemen. Pretty cost effective but I usually leave it at 1 until I border the AI or a foe or have some extra gold, at which point I will raise it to 10 to try and catch enemy scouts. Against stealthy foes it is probably worth it to pay up higher. 8.33.3.2.11 Bootstrapping TC is well-suited to boot strap its way up the ladder in Nature, Death, Air, and Earth magic. Once you get going be sure to read sector24s awesome guide on how to do this here 8.33.3.2.12 Remote Assassination You will eventually have access to at least 3 forms of remote assassination and mixing them up can keep your enemy off balance. It is especially pleasant to hold off on remote assassinations until a key moment and then launch as many as you can at once ¿ hopefully causing your foe an unintended bowel release when he checks his turn. - Earth Attack (Conj 8 ¿ E5) - Manifestation (Conj 8 ¿ D5) - Mind Hunt (Evo 6 ¿ S4) 8.33.3.2.13 Some Common Threats and How to Deal Darkness
The ruin of many a non-undead nation, Darkness can make your life tough. Assuming you are fighting undead who are the most likely to use it, you can set up communions to cast Antimagic ( do this first), then Solar Brilliance (Ench 7 ¿ S5). Beware the blindness caused by Solar Brilliance is tough to get rid of via healing including the Chalice. Other ways to deal with Darkness are summoning your own undead troops to fight and using 100 precision spells. Demons Their high MR makes them tough foes. Focus on disrupting your enemies Blood economy with remote attack spells like Ghost Riders. You can also screw their Blood magic with spells like Rain of Stones, that can wipe out their Blood slave - whoops, where did Greta go? In addition, you will eventually have a W3 Celestial Master, who when equipped with a Water Bracelet and Robe of the Sea can cast Demon Cleansing. Also take a look at some of the Astral items you can forge, like Herald Lances. Giants Usually have low MR so you can spam Disintegrate, Charm, and Enslave. For those low protection Utsgard Woodsmen use lots of archers. Even better, give any high defense commander an Eye Shield, and watch their nation crumble (thanks to Cleveland for that lesson). Anything not Cold Resistant Frozen Heart, repeat. Wife or Significant Other "We need to spend some time together - why do you think that game is so fun" Your on your own on this one buddy - this would take a whole book of strategies.... 8.33.3.3 8.34 Ulm 8.34.1 EA Ulm 8.34.1.1 EA Ulm advice
Bonds of Fire (morale-dependent, so it should REALLY slow those elephants down!). Alteration: Earth Grip/Earth Meld might work. False Fetters has a much better chance of working, but Air 2 is rare. Perhaps Great Bears from Conjuration. They are size 4. -> Saw MA Ulm use Bonds of Fire, he had 6-12 dwarven smiths (this was his final stand vs Bander Log in his capital fortress), while they did effect the elephants, they only seemed to slow them 1 or 2 rounds, so not really effective. Others may be useful, not seen them used or tried them to stop a elephant stampede. The tactic seems to be to amass 10-20+ elephants in one large mass, mix in some higher morale apes/other units. Very simple, more deadly than a multi-blessed nation to any nation with size 3 or smaller units. Also its usually backed up with 20 - 40+ longbows just for added pain. -> I just started a large game with EA Ulm and chose a Dragon awake pretender with a high Domain to try and avoid that. With the Awe + Fear and my breath weapon I hope to make people pause before rushing me. The breath will help alot with the Van/Hel (though probably not enough). I get to expand very fast which is a big plus as well. -> Elephants can squash anything smaller than themselves almost no matter what it is... until they get hurt and panic and trample their own men. Bunches of archers are one counter that can work... -> EA Ulm can be very powerful, especially early on before they have to worry about nasty magic. Of their national troops, I prefer the female warriors with shields (skilled, shielded, good value for gold and resources), and archers. Armored archers in front of unarmored archers. Blessable two-handed sword guys can be good too, especially depending on the blessing. The axe throwers can be ok - a blizzard of axes can be deadly, but they are vulnerable. Warrior Smiths are of course nice. Sometimes they can make nice combat participants in various unexpected ways. -> A low level nature bless on the steel warriors makes them a lot more durable since regen reduces the chance of afflictions by a large margin. It's especially good since they don't have shields. I also used primarily warrior maidens and archers in absolute masses. First unarmored but later armored archers, and hordes of warrior smiths. The best kind of battle mage warrior smiths are the E3, E2F1 and F2E1 types, because when you give them earth boots and a girdle, they will be brutal at casting blade wind, magma eruption and fireball respectively. Magma eruption is easily my favorite of those, it REALLY gets rid of the annoying enemies in quantity even if they have shields. Shamans and antlered shamans are good for casting panic and those should be the best against big low morale things like elephants. -> Troglodytes are size 5 tramplers and have far better morale than elephants, but not as many hit points. 47 is still tough, though. Flaming arrows is good, but you need a fire booster to get it going. Fortunately the shamans have FEDN randoms so it's just a matter of time before you land one who gets both F and D from those, allowing you to make a skull of fire for one of your F2E1 warrior smiths. If you put a F9N4 bless on your steel warriors, they can and will hurt anything that comes up against them rather brutally. An air bless would not be bad either, because the steel warriors WILL be taking fire from archers, both enemy and your own. Massed warrior smiths and strong evocation is the way to go. Something like trogs and elephants are really NOT going to like magma bolts, fireballs, and magma eruption and blade wind is a staple. One of the strengths of EA Ulm is that even though its mages are not very powerful, they are very versatile. Also, except for your mountain, iron and steel warriors and warrior smiths, all of your units are stealthy and every single one of them has both mountain and forest survival. So you have excellent raiding potential. Lots and lots of scouts should give you eyes to see and warrior chiefs with lots of archers and warrior maidens should make for good raiding groups that can take care of most PD garrisons easily since the otehr players will be using their money for mages and troops. You will probably want to take at least some production scale since EA Ulm needs lots of troops quickly and that requires comparatively more resources than money. -> if you want to keep your sacreds alive, a single lvl 9 astral bless is good. It gives twist fate. Working very well on my Marverni sacreds. Also its a very, very cheap bless, so you can have good scales. It also means you have a pretender with lvl 9 astral magic which gives you access to alot of nasty late game spells. It won't help much against tramplers, but hopefully you will not start any where near Agartha. -> Ulm has fairly strong archers, but these are one of the easiest types of units to negate. They also have axemen with throwing axes--which do a suprisingly heavy amount of damage. Mixing unit types leads to stronger armies, but the real question is, what do you mix with what? To my knowledge, it seems like the Axemen are the most lethal, since they can throw axes on approach and then use these high-damage weapons to hack up troops when they get into melee, striking twice a turn. But there's no real reason to use the advanced soldiers, is there? A little bit of armor for half again as much cost? Also, much was said of the warrior smiths. Besides the smithing bonus, what help are they? They have a little bit of command skill, but the shamans also get priest spells, and stealth. They also cost fewer resources, which is Ulm's main limitation. I think EA Ulm's sacreds are pretty worthless in any major strategic sense. Being that they're Capitol Only and rather basic (and without shields), there's not much worth to the added cost. The chance to drop a high bless on them is tempting, but I think it's more tempting to heavily tip the scales and produce more units. What do you guys think? -> Most of the Ulmish warrior units are useless. The ones with throwing axes may do some good but the rest are rubbish. The reason why they are rubbish is because they have a basic attack of 10 or 11 that gets cut down to 8 or 9 due to ambidexterity penalties, meaning that the first time they go up against any high defense medium armor units like almost everything EA Ermor, Vanheim or Helheim and possibly other have, they will accomplish precisely nothing. If you want to use double attack melee units, use the Steel Maidens. Twin short swords mean only a penalty of 1 to a base attack higher than that of the various warriors and mixing them in with the Shield Maidens will give them some more durability. The Steel Maidens have fairly high defense for line units and are tougher than most other national infantries anyway. The Steel Warriors (sacred) do suffer from one pretty severe limitation and that is slow movement with mapmove 1. So they will become more or less obsolete as soon as you expand more than five provinces outward (assuming you get that far, of course). Takes too long to get them to the front and you don't have any astral mages (or means to get them unless you get Athalwolf the Maker of Heroes) to gate them to a friendly lab in the frontlines. So instead of a ?9 bless, you can go the route of several minor blesses, which would also give you magical versatility. The main problem there is that the most useful minor blesses would be E4F4W4N4 and you get rather the abundance of those magics already. D4 doesn't do much but gives you death magic and S4 likewise for astral. A4+ gives them some survivability against arrows and you and you need that much to produce the air boosters. A4E4 will give a couple of minor blesses and allow you to construct the more useful type of elemental staff later on. B4 will also help your sacreds, but it's a waste of points since you're not a blood nation. Astral and death is where you really hurt nationally. You can get a fairly cheap N4W4 bless with a dormant Lady of Springs if you're so inclined and have good scales left over. Download 5.74 Mb. Share with your friends:
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