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EA Lanka: Boy Eats World; Ruling the world as crazy-strong demons!
Topic Started: Jul 13 2015, 08:49 PM (9,877 Views)
joansam
*Spicy* Crew
EA Lanka: Boy Eats World

Introduction
This guide is meant to provide beginner and advanced players with enough information to succeed as Lanka. The guide will focus mainly on singleplayer games, and as such we will consider how appropriate various tactics are for Lanka's theme, not just what makes us win the fastest. That's not to say this is a bad strategy - it's extremely effective when used properly. Early on, I will discuss ways to use Lanka in multiplayer more competitively, and talk mostly about singleplayer from there.
Lanka is a nation of Kailasa's monkeys enslaved by demon ogres. They are stronger and tougher than men, and they enjoy feasting on human flesh. As Lanka, we are shamelessly evil, and, like the Sith, we will draw our power from the Dark Side. We'll be using our expensive but extremely powerful demons, screened by the reanimated bodies of our dead monkey slaves, with some (for now) living monkeys on the side. As our demons cut everything in front of them to pieces, they'll be protected by a powerful blessing from our god, so we can expect to lose almost no troops (demons, anyway) for much of the early game. As we move into the mid-game, our army will grow with Lanka's unique and powerful summoned demons. And by the mid- to late-game, lesser gods will blot out the sun, and we will fight our enemies in total darkness.
There are certainly other ways to play Lanka than the one described above, and they will be mentioned when appropriate. But in my experience this is one of the strongest strategies for Lanka, and the most fun to play.

Pretender Design
Our Pretender design will change how we play the rest of the game - and especially so for Lanka, as we're going with a pretty powerful bless strategy.
There's some room for flexibility in designing our pretender, but I highly recommend taking at least 2 Turmoil (preferably 3), and a Dominion of at least 7. Our demons all have Chaos Power of at least 1, so Turmoil helps them a lot. For each point of Turmoil (or 15 of unrest) in a province, they will get more strength, attack skill, defense skill, and action point – very helpful. The most powerful demons will get twice the benefit. There is, unfortunately, a downside to this ability. Each point of Order will weaken them by the same amount. We shouldn't take Order, and we want a high dominion to beat enemy dominions with Order, which are common in multiplayer. In singleplayer the AI seems to choose Order or Turmoil randomly, so to be safe we’ll take high dominion. If we can fight in our dominion most of the time, our troops will be golden.
Lanka's sacred troops are extremely important to its overall strategy. ALL of its unique summoned troops and commanders are sacred, as are a decent portion of its recruitable units. Therefore we'll take a double bless strategy: I've chosen Earth 9 Nature 9 as I think it works best for Lanka.

In-Depth Blessing Explanation, skip unless you’re interested: Our demons hit so hard that there's little use in a bless like Fire. The Nature bless gives them 8 more health, and 10% health regeneration, so most of our demons will get at least 4 health back per turn. On top of that we put the Earth bless, which gives them Reinvigoration 4, so they recover 4 fatigue per turn. Most of our demons have 4 encumbrance or less, so they'll never get tired in battle. Otherwise, every 10 fatigue they accumulate gives -1 defense, and every 20 fatigue, -1 attack, which makes long fights unnecessarily hard. And the major Earth bless gives them +5 natural protection (in practice + 4, because increasing natural prot. decreases armor prot). While the major Earth bless isn't always a great choice, it helps our demons significantly because they're now well-armored. Combined with regeneration they become just about unkillable against regular troops. Another potential bless is D9 instead of E9. With Undying 10, our sacreds will often regenerate back to positive health as they chase routing enemies, so you essentially give them 10 more HP…for almost 50 HP per demon. This would also let you cast Utterdark in the late-game, where almost everything but your demons will take a huge stat penalty for fighting in the dark. However, I think E9 works better than D9 on your troops (and we’ll have some darkness anyway), so I'm taking it to maximize demon survivability. You will need to take Imprisoned and a few negative scales to pay for the blesses, but it's worth it.
Because Lanka's sacreds are mostly demons, human players will start to Banish them pretty quickly. While they're not easily killed, if he holds the line with a lot of chaff, enough priests will start to slowly eat into your (expensive) demons. One possible counter is a Blood 9 instead of Earth 9 bless. However, I think a better option is to get a minor Astral 4 bless for the +1 MR, which as the Monolith you can take for 48 points. Paying for this by only taking Magic 1 will get rid of Magic 2’s -1 MR effect in your dominion as well, resulting in most of your demons’ chance to pass the MR check improving from 46% to 62%: a 35% decrease in hits paired with regeneration for much less damage. It also opens up astral options that Lanka otherwise can't get, and lets you forge more MR items if your thugs are being aggressively countered by kitted out groups of priests. I would strongly consider the S4 Monolith for a multiplayer game, but in singleplayer it shouldn't matter much (although you can get S2 at no real cost if you pick the Monolith over the Bull, which might be useful). In the mid-late-game we have the potential to cast Storm and Mass Flight to neutralize priests, and equip our SCs and thugs with the MR +5 Armor of Souls.
An easy counter to Banish is to use some of Lanka’s plentiful undead to screen our demons. All in all, anything less than 5 or more priests usually won't kill demons, as they have decent magic resistance and gobs of health.

I formerly recommended Heat 3 because it would affect other nations more than us, but from testing it seems that our troops get the same encumbrance penalty from Heat 3 as everyone else’s. For this reason, it may be best to avoid it, as our sacreds will otherwise gain no fatigue. I took Sloth 2 because we're already handicapped by gold from the Turmoil scale, and our demons are so expensive that we usually won't be recruiting a massive number of them. I also chose Growth 1 to keep provinces from slowly dying when we blood hunt, and Luck 1 to take the edge off Turmoil's bad events. Magic 2 is pretty important so that we can research at a good clip with our cheap sacred Raktapatas, but Luck and Growth can be fiddled with at your pleasure.

Troops, and the Main Game
Now we've made a Pretender who'll give us very nice sacred troops, albeit expensive ones. The mainstay of our army at first will be Palankashas: armored tiger-ape demons! Usually with Sloth 2 you'll be able to recruit 4 of them your first turn, but sometimes just 3. Prophet our commander and wait until turn 3 when we have 6-8. Send them out with the starting army and watch them tear up everything they run into without any losses. If you want, you can actually send 3 or 4 out on turn 2: they still kill almost everything except throne defenders. Be a little careful using a group of just 3 or 4 against troops like barbarians or heavy cavalry, or we may lose one or two. But we can easily send out 3 or 4 on turn 2 then come back to our home province and grab a few more on turn 4. Edit: Turn 2 expansion may be a better idea, because then we'll be able to recruit a few more tiger-demons over the next few turns. By then most adjacent territories should have at least Turmoil 1, which will give us a little extra help. Now we'll use Palankasha Expansion Groups (PEGs) of 8-10 Palankashas, led by a prophet or priest and optional screens. These are the staple of your early to mid-game forces, and are nearly unstoppable in Turmoil. Play around with your army setup a bit: I have my Palankashas 'hold and attack', positioned a few clicks behind the middle of the screen. A few barbarians or something similar getting a few first attacks in on your closest one is just about the only way to lose troops to indies, screens help too.
We need to get income fast for our PEGs. Build a second fort ASAP, money permitting. Actually, Lanka is well-poised to rush a nearby player's fort instead - if you find an enemy dominion quickly, scout around for the fort. One PEG is enough to beat the PD unless they have 2-3 Order scales, and you may want to bring another to actually take it. If they do have Order, get a group of Kala-Mukhas instead, supplemented with a PEG unless they’re urgently needed to attack his other troops. Keep pumping out PEGs (or KEGs) every one or two turns. They're expensive, so it helps to not recruit any commanders the first few turns other than the Kala-Mukha priests to lead them. Forsaking early research gives us more dough, so more forts and more guys. Once we have a comfortable (600-800ish) net income, we'll look to build more temples and start recruiting Raktapatas in our forts. With Magic 2, they're 9 research for 80 gold, and have half upkeep because they're sacred. We don't need to research a ton as we're focusing on Blood Magic.

Unless we have unlucky commander deaths, we should be able to expand quickly and comfortably. If Banishment or high Order is a problem against an opponent, recruit Kala-Mukha Warriors from the nearest castle-they're still sacred, but unlike your demons they don't have Chaos Power, and can't be Banished. Palankashas are better in general because they have Chaos Power and more health, but your Kala-Mukhas aren't capital-only, so you'll probably use both, and in longer and larger games they'll take over the Palankasha's job. I don't like to move away from demons (even to half-demons) but we'll remedy that soon enough. Pretty much the only useful monkey recruits are our Markatas. They’re good screens for the occasional elephant PD, as well as more common hard-hitters. It's worth noting that our priests have quite bad leadership, so when lots of fodder is necessary we'll recruit Bandar commanders from a fort or just Atavi Chieftains from a forest.
In the early-game, we should recruit a few Kala-Mukha commanders for blood hunting, but most won't have B2. That's alright, they're great for one of Lanka's hidden benefits - reanimation! Your priests can use the action 'Reanimate' to bring various kinds of warriors back from the dead. They're not very good, but they're cheap and will draw priests' Banishment if you stick them in front. Leave a Kala-Mukha reanimating Longdeads in each fort (Soulless only appear if there are corpses in the province) and you'll have plenty of fodder to protect your demons from their only real weakness. The other Kala-Mukhas should be used to lead more PEGs. Meanwhile, site-search with 1-3 Yoginis for some extra Nature gems.

Blood Summons, Then the World
Once you get to level 4 of Blood Magic you can recruit Rakshasa Warriors: a nice addition to the ranks. Asrapas at Blood 3 are okay, but these guys have 1 more MR than your Palankashas, 18 protection with the bless, and 2 more damage (although no shields), for NO upkeep. You can recruit 5-10 per turn with 3+ blood hunting Kala-Mukhas even without Dowsing Rods, because Lanka gets a bonus to blood hunting in Turmoil. At this point in the game you should get one or two Raksharajas: your best recruitable commander, and a pretty decent mage. Use him to help command your large demon armies where it would take a lot of Kala-Mukhas to do the same (but not too large or he won’t be able to bless them all). At first though, he might be most useful for Air site-searching, especially if he has A3. As our armies grow, watch their supply consumption. Now that we have Blood Magic 4, get Construction 4 so that our Raktapatas can forge Dowsing Rods for the Kala-Mukhas and our Yogini can forge Endless Bags of Wine to keep the troops from starving. Most of your demons consume at least 4 supplies, and wastelands will often have fewer than 100 supplies. Give the Bags of Wine to your commanders and multiple PEGs will be fine. Although our demons won't get diseased and die, the Kala-Mukha warriors and priests will. If you're leading with a Raksharaja, you only have to worry about the -4 morale hit, which probably doesn't matter since you won't be losing many troops.
After we've reached Blood 4 and Const. 4, aim for Blood 6, when we can summon Dakinis. These demonesses have Air 3, Blood 3, and Death 1, so make capable blood hunters, air mages, and thugs. They're also sacred, can bless themselves, and have a version of Blood Vengeance where the enemy takes the damage instead of them (if he fails his MR roll, like normal BV). Without equipping any gear, you can put them in your bigger armies, research a little Evocation, and lay down some air magic. With a Ring of Tamed Lightning they can cast Mistform and spam Shockwave on poor unsuspecting PD. Do be careful if they're going into close combat in enemy dominions, because they also have Chaos Power. For 50 blood slaves they're a tad pricey, but you can afford a few if you've been hunting for a while. Use them or Raksharajas to search for air sites as much as possible, then if you want, they're one of the only ways for a nation to get the Robe of the Magi at Construction 6 (+1 to all magic paths). You'll have to empower the Dakini once in both Air and Blood, and after that you can forge boosters. For later summons we'll need to empower one in Blood anyway, and empowering in Air lets them forge the Storm Staff or cast Mass Flight for our medium and large armies, which take away a lot of priests’ power over us. With Construction 6 our empowered and boosted Dakini can also forge the Armor of Souls (+5 MR), and our D2 Raksharajas can make Skull Mentors with our extra Death gems (+18 Research).

Our late-game summons bring Lanka from powerhouse to nearly unstoppable. Sandhyabalas are a notable mention...only 3 demons instead of the 5 Rakshasa Warriors, but significantly better, they're great bodyguards for our generals and give thugs much more breathing room. At Blood 8, in the late-game, we get two ridiculous summons: the Mandeha and the Danavas. The Mandeha, at 133 blood slaves, is our reward for spending so much time on blood magic - an enormous Demon-God whose hatred of the sun turns every battle completely dark. Luckily, your demons are just about the only ones who can see in the dark, other than undead. He's a great Super Combatant, and D3A3B2 mage with Fear 8. In Turmoil, his Chaos Power 2 and Dark Power 3 give him +9 strength, attack and defense skill, coupled with the -6 attack and defense penalty for any troops without Darkvision (everything but demons, undead, and cave dwellers). In Order 3 he's a less invincible but still strong +3 relative to non-darkvision troops in comparison to all of their regular stats. Forge a horror helm, give him a small demon posse and watch the enemy's troops grope around in the dark before getting massacred and fleeing in terror. He's also Holy 3, so you have another commander with Divine Blessing. His main weakness is fire - find an F1 indy mage somewhere and forge him a ring or a dragon helmet. The cherry on top is the Danava summon, which brings 3 fairly cheap 4-armed demigods who can be Gift of Reason-ed into their own extremely capable Supercombatants. They're Lanka's other Chaos Power 2 demon, so try to use them in Turmoil, where their apocalyptic destruction will leave other nations curled into the fetal position.

The bad guys get all the cool stuff.

Comments/suggestions are welcome!
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Dom4 guide: EA Lanka: Boy Eats World
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ilja
Tartarian
Not a big fan of blood nations (a bit too icky for me, at least large-scale) but good on you for making a guide, and quite interesting to see a flavor-focused guide.
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joansam
*Spicy* Crew
Thanks! The micromanagement can be annoying, though I haven't found it to be too bad with enough patrollers. I'm all for winning, but against the AI at least it's a lot more fun to do it in character.
Especially when that character is a cross between Sauron and the guy from The Temple of Doom.

Just updated the guide to reflect some more play experience/better magic strategy and realized it grew by over 300 words...-_-
I apologize to those with short attention spans.
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Dom4 guide: EA Lanka: Boy Eats World
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sum1won
Dom 5 Beta Team
I've played W9 lanka in two pbems now, and found it to be excellent in both. For one thing, it allows your dakini to thug in O3 dominion with nothing more than a vineshield. +4 defense helps with O3, and 1.5 attacks provides plenty of lifedrain and regen.

Kala-Mukhs are remarkably expensive for blood hunters. I mostly use B1s, even early on. More gold for infrastructure, and you need that gold.

You seem to be ignoring indie priest reanimation, and that's a huge mistake. They're cheaper reanimators, and they free up mage/fort turns.

You also might want to focus more on dakini - they add a massive amount of mobility and strategic flexibility to your nation, thanks to flying, mm3, cloud trapeze, and good thug paths that are also good for combat and army support.

Finally, you entirely neglect the use of remotes, which Lanka excels at. Hurricane, Pazuzu, and Toads are native spells that spike unrest in target provinces, shutting down forts and aiding your chaos-power troops.
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Gregstrom
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Serial Lurker
As per Sum1won, W9 is nice. The quickness is an appreciable damage booster and the +def is good. You can add some E bless to the mix too if you're worried about fatigue.

I also suspect an F8N9 bless might be viable. You don't need to spend the points on the flame weapons, but the extra attack score means more of your hits connect - a big deal if you're taking on cavalry or high defence sacreds. It'll also pad you if you're attacking an Order nation.
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Johannes
*Spicy* Crew
F8N9 doesn't make any sense. Either go F9 or F6/4, the +1 att and +2F isn't worth the points by itself. Secondly you have no suitable chassis even if you wanted F/N combo of some sort. Adding a F4 minor to a Demilich, Monolith, Oracle, Raksharani or such can work, though.


Also an awake pretender is something to heavily consider, due to the great boost to domspread (turmoil) gained. An X9 Dragon, W9E4 Wyrm, E4B9 Devi of Darkness, E9 Earth Serpent, all may work well and something else too. You don't actually even need a major bless for the sacreds to be great in Turmoil, though you probably do want one regardless.

Early temples with which to hire reanimators from, also serve the turmoil spreading well as a good synergy.
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joansam
*Spicy* Crew
A W9 bless, really? I had bad luck trying that even against AI compared to E9N9's massive survivability. The Dakini is a bit of a special case because her weapon gives her hp, making the W9 a better idea than N9...do you really want to pay for a bless because it helps one expensive summon get better melee stats? I got the impression that the Dakini's cost and vulnerability to Banish made her rather unviable for a melee thug. Again, in my experience the E9N9 was better overall.
That's a good hunting tip though, I've been frequently running short of money with Kala-Mukhas. I use them to command and bless more demons than the Raktapata can, though, so they don't go completely wasted. And correct me if I'm wrong, but don't B2 hunters hunt many times as fast as the B1s? I haven't been using indy priests-I should probably start. I'm a little wary of using the Dakini too much...its demon status makes me worry about viability for extensive use. Against PD, it's not a problem. But against another player...I worry what their priests would do. I haven't gotten around to adding a bit on its potential mobility yet, but it's in the works. Also, I haven't used remotes because as I understand it they're fairly expensive and you the unrest doesn't kick in until the end of the turn resolution, meaning an invasion force on the same turn can't take advantage of it.

I'm here to learn-my experience is limited to singleplayer and reading forums, although I do read them a lot.

Edit: A W9N9 bless is much more expensive (2 scales) than E9N9, but I did test W9E9 and E9N9. I set up identical battle conditions (Turmoil 1, 15 Atavi Infantries and 6 Palankashas vs. 30 Ermor Principes) and, for what it's worth, the W9E9 group finished the battle with 1 death and 4 total afflictions, the E9N9 group with no losses and no afflictions. It's possible W9 is better in other situations, but this test seemed to bear out E9N9's usefulness on regular troops in typical conditions.
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Dom4 guide: EA Lanka: Boy Eats World
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Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
joansam,Jul 17 2015
03:56 AM
-I got the impression that the Dakini's cost and vulnerability to Banish made her rather unviable for a melee thug.

-but don't B2 hunters hunt many times as fast as the B1s?

For your first point : Dakini are some of the cheapest thug ever, and 50 slave is really, really low. They aren't vulnerable to banish either, too much MR, and damage reversal is also a protection, not to mention their high HP and life draining.

For you second point : a B1 have 50% odds of getting 1d6+1 slave, a B2 90% of 1d6+2. So it's kind of massive, but it's less than 50%
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joansam
*Spicy* Crew
Thank you Ohlmann. I need to work on blood hunting much faster, then. Still, an H2 priest with just an Eye of the Void casting Banish would be an MR check of 17 vs. 14, which means a 30% chance of damage, with probably a pretty low chance for the Dakini to reflect due to many H2+ priests having relatively high MR. Did I do that right? So 2 or 3 priests...you get the idea. I guess you could always put Armor of Souls on the Dakini, but that's almost as much as the cost of another one, and Lanka doesn't have access to much else that increases MR. Thoughts?
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Dom4 guide: EA Lanka: Boy Eats World
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Ohlmann
Dom 5 Beta Team
My though is that if people want to invest gems, they are things a lot more radical than an H2 with an eye of the void.

Remember that dakinis don't die on a banishment. They take ~7 (with a H2) damage, on 23 (without N bless), and they can regain 5 HP per hit with their weapon (or 3 ? Significantly enough anyway).

Banish is not prec 100 either. So, they need to hit, they need to have the 24% odds of penetrating, they need to pass Damage Reversal (MR 14 seem a good approximation of an H2, that's 76% odds of ignoring damage reversal), and they need to do it 4 times on average without the dakini hitting anything, as she wont to do.

All that chained mean that H2 with eye of the void seem much less of a probleme than, say, a beefy commander with an Holy Scourge, or a classic soul slay barrage, etc . I guess in some circumstance it's a good way to get rid of the mistform.
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joansam
*Spicy* Crew
Ah, I'm not sure why, but I was under the impression that Banish did 11 damage for an H2. That makes quite a difference. I think the Dakini regains either 2 or 3 HP, and...did I do the math wrong with the MR check? I got 30% odds...does the Banish have to beat the Dakini's MR, or the other way around?
I see your point...I was thinking about Banish as an easy counter (everyone has priests) but it seems like the Dakini comes off better than I first thought.
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Dom4 guide: EA Lanka: Boy Eats World
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Stone Dog
Maenad
Not a word on communions?

Your comment on needing to empower a Dakini in A to cast mass flight makes me suspect you're not considering them.
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joansam
*Spicy* Crew
You're right - I rarely use them. I was also thinking about empowering for the ability to forge Air boosters. But for other purposes...yes, communions would be better.
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Indract
*Spicy* Crew
I don't think a major earth bless is an optimal choice. The prot bonus becomes obsolete rather fast (it doesn't stack with wooden warriors, which is only an alt 5 spell), so it's only going to be useful in the early game or against fire nations. The reinvig bonus isn't particularly useful on the troops. The unarmored sacreds have got very low enc already and tend to die pretty fast even with wooden warriors. For rakshasa warriors / palankashas it's a bit better, but still not particularly good compared to the other options given that their enc is still quite low and battles they're in usually don't last very long due to their very good damage output.

Even if your goal is just to improve your sacreds in the early game, W9 is overall a much better choice as well as one that scales well throughout the game, unlike E9. An earth bless does have the advantage of giving reinvig to your mage priests as well, but for that an E4 bless is good enough. E9 is just not good enough for its cost.

I would say the only viable major blesses as Lanka are W, N and B, and most strategies use 2 of them. Water is overall the best offensive troop bless, even more so for Lanka since most sacreds have got only 1 attack (F9 and D9 tend to work better with sacreds with multiple weapons). Nature, as for many nations, provides many benefits. The sacreds have already got a lot of hp and therefore synergize pretty well with regen. The nation gets particularly good sacred thugs, and while Dakinis don't particularly require it (they already work very well naked and without a bless), it's pretty much mandatory for Raksharaja thugs. Finally, Lanka gets one of the best turbo slaves in the game, the Raktapata. With N9, personal regen from a yogini master and enlarge, they can get 8 hp of regen a turn, while still being very cheap. This is a significant boost to your battle magic capabilities.

Blood is a bit different. The added strength bonus is usually not that useful, since most of your demons already hit very hard and can kill most humans in 1 hit even without the bless (assuming you've got blood lust). Blood vengeance, on the other hand, synergizes particularly well with your mid / lategame strategies.

Reanimation is one of Lanka's greatest assets. Any Lankan army in the midgame should consist of at least a few hundreds of longdead backed up by a D3 raksharaja with 2 raktapata slaves to cast darkness. Longdead have already good pretty good baseline stats, so the -6 att / def most opponents will suffer due to darkness means there are very few troops that can cost effectively defeat your undead hordes without strong mage support, particularly evos.

So, if your opponent wants to defeat your undead army, he'll have to bring his mages and priests to use banishment and various evocations. That's far from being the only way to beat you, but it's by far the easiest tactic since it's available to everyone. Not a lot of EA nations can do turn 1 earthquake, and even such a strategy is far from being foolproof. This is where the blood bless comes into play. By mixing blood vengeance demons into your army (most of which are pretty cheap and have high HP, like asrapas and rakshasas), you are making life much harder for your opponent. He will either lose a lot of mages to blood vengeance or have to spend a lot of gems on anti magic / lodestone amulets, which becomes very expensive very fast and is simply not an option for your basic X1H1 researcher or an indie priest. Although antimagic does reduce its effectiveness in the midgame, blood vengeance is significantly boosted by the various defensive spells, since the damage blood vengeance reflects doesn't depend on the damage you took. So once you've got fog warriors, your sacreds will take only 1 damage from the attack but the attacker will still take the full BV damage. This improved survivability therefore means a lot more BV checks to deal with.

In the lategame it's also a good counter to battlefield killing spells, such as firestorm or solar brilliance. Even with a lot of MR items, you'll still have to pass through dozens if not hundreds of checks at this stage of the game, and one or 2 failures are usually enough to kill a human mage.
Titan / monster pretenders in friendly dominions, giant mages like Ba'als, elemental kings can easily survive with regen gear, but these are pretty rare.

Of course, your opponent can still resort to other spells, battle summons for example. But these will usually be less efficient and a lot of them (horde of skeletons, size 6 elementals...) aren't accessible to small mages (the most common ones), whereas evos and banishment usually are. So once more, BV prevents your opponent from using a lot of counters to your main strategy, or at least makes it much more expensive to use them. Troop blesses such as W9 tend to fall off at that point, since thanks to darkness your sacreds won't exactly need more stats in order to beat more enemy troops.

The downside of B9 is that it does make thunder strike spam suicidal if you've got a good amount of sacreds in the battle. Fortunately, you've got a lot of other spells you can rely on (horde of skeletons, air elementals and eventually living clouds, sleep cloud...) and your air mages have got good enough hp and MR to survive the occasional friendly fire from an offscript thunder strike.

Overall I like N9/B9 as Lanka (which is cheaper than W9/N9 and than W9/B9 as well if you want a mobile pretender) as it provides a lot of versatility in the midgame and lategame (thanks to N9) while narrowing your opponent's possibilities (thanks to B9). The weakness of this bless is that it does little for your early game, so it does depend on your playstyle and the size of the game. But I think you can cope with it most of the time. Your recruitable sacreds may not be as good as vanheres or white centaurs, but when defending the +3 bonus from turmoil makes a huge difference and should fend off potential rushes. Likewise, rushing as Lanka is harder than for most bless nations since most opponents will take order 3 if they see Lanka is in the game, which makes an early game bless less attractive imo since even with one your sacreds will perform poorly with -3 to their stats (and at this point of the game you won't have access to wrath of pazuzu). Of course, the scales must have spread for this to make any difference, but usually key battles in early wars are fought over the capital (at least if you want to defeat your opponent quickly, which is very important for your first war) and these always have maxed out scales.

An air empowerment on a dakini is very useful provided you've got the gems for it. Having air boosters means you can drop fog warriors on round 1 instead of round 2, which can often make a huge difference. It also opens up perpetual storm, which can be very useful if fighting a flying nation as well as dark skies if you're fighting a defensive war (this combined with blood rain and wailing winds, both of which you can cast, will easily give your opponent negative morale). Gale gate is also one of the best gemgen globals. Robe of the magi is also a good way to ramp up in water / astral / earth, which you'll eventually have thanks to spectres.
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joansam
*Spicy* Crew
Again, I've tested E9N9 vs. W9E9 sacreds (not W9N9 because it's 2 scales more expensive), and in my tests the former did significantly better. It makes them very near unkillable by even throne indies. Yes, your Yogini could buff them, but I usually use small groups of 1 commander and 8-12 Palankashas/Kala-Mukhas for raiding, indy clearing, and laying siege to forts. I'd have to include an expensive Yogini along with every small raiding group, which would increase its cost significantly - and what is Lanka short of? Money. Alt 5 isn't a research priority for Lanka, as they're either getting to Const 6 for Skull Mentors or just going straight to Blood for the early and midgame. The Earth bless lets you lose fewer Palankashas/Kala-Mukhas in the early game, and the midgame, sooner, and for less money than a Water bless. It's worth pointing out that Lanka's expensive demons (and even the cheaper ones) are going to work in relatively small groups, because you need priests to command your demons, and they have terrible leadership. The Earth bless makes them fatigue-neutral, which is quite helpful when they have to carve through many times their number of regular troops.

I used to consider a blood bless, but this thread convinced me otherwise: http://www.desura.com/games/dominions-4-th...d-9-major-bless

Basically it boils down to: B9 leaves sacreds open to cheap archer counters, it's pretty easy for most nations to increase MR significantly, and you don't get much in the way of useful paths, while losing the opportunity to get a consistently useful bless. From my testing against H2 priests, it seems that the BV is only moderately useful, even when they don't have MR items. Against lots of Evo I'd say just screen with your cheap undead, and battlefield-wide Evo seems to be the only potential reason to take BV. Note that it's not very easy to mix demons in with your undead in numbers to make a mage with MR items flinch. You have to build a lot of them (they're expensive), and you have to bless them, then mix them in with the undead.

I was under the impression that BV damage is directly related to damage dealt. Can you confirm that Fog Warriors lets troops reflect more damage than they take? If so, that seems like a bug, considering the concept of 'Blood Vengeance'.

I don't believe we can write off B9's near-uselessness in the early game. If sieging, I use Kala-Mukhas, which are unaffected by Order. With E9N9 they can knock out forts early on. B9N9...I suspect not so much. Also, E9 will help your mages much more than W9, especially for early blood communions.

As I've already covered, W9N9 is 2 scales more expensive than E9N9, so maybe not a great idea. Then you're left with W9E9 as the top contender, which doesn't do nearly as well as E9N9. I think I've already explained my reluctance to use B9.

Then again, I haven't tried multiplayer, so if huge battlefield-wide Evo is a really strong strategy, maybe B9 is viable. Against indies and the AI, it is not.

I'm also reluctant to use lots of undead, as Lanka's priests don't make for good leaders. They're pretty expensive and can only command 15 or 30 undead.
Dom5 mod: WARHAMMER COMPLETE
Dom4 guide: EA Lanka: Boy Eats World
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