Woo! Been draggin my feet on these guys for a bit, glad you tackled them! Before I get biased by watching the video: I had some ideas of using the giant cylopes on land cause they are really good, thugging out the yetis with forged gear, and using Sorgina to just be real strong mages that do things. The rest of the roster was "OKAY", nice to have free resistances. Mainly I was just stuck between wanting cave provinces because they are safe / strong, and wanting to go on land to grab forests for yetis and hills for giants. (assuming a cave start) Send Aatxe looks strong too, like the LA Atlanits remote. Maybe a bit weaker because they don't fly?
I just tried casting send aatxe in a debug game since in dom6 mod inspector it had a "speciallook 1" and i wanted to know what it was, but it didn't do anything, just spent the gems and didn't send the asssasin. I sent it with the sorgina too incase it was a commander specific thing, but no. So it seems bugged atm.
@@sirkana As far as I can tell remote assassinations now return an empty battle report, but still happen. Not sure if this is a bug or intended (one would need a scout in a province to see the remote assassination battle). Side note, the cave recruit scouts are a nice bonus feature on ea pyrene!
I played these guys a lot already. Don't sleep on the Sorgina. Your guys get absolutely wrecked by arrows and the sorginas can fly around casting arrow fend and later army of mist. Also your troops are a pain in the ass to buff before the army sides anyway. Find a goodboi province underground and slap a fort on it. They get bonus gold and resources so you can really crank them out. After that your expansion (and really all) your problems are over. You can do some funny blesses too. I did one with precision and far shot and gave my jentils a pouch of pebbles. R40 boulders getting chucked all over the place. Maybe not the best use of bless points but it was funny as hell.
@@gibbcharron3469 Cynocephalians, dog headed people. Bit larger than humans, size 4 I think, and normally berserking strong warriors with a weapon and bite attack. The "goodboy" thing relates to LA Andromania which is when they lose almost all the berserk in favor of the best troop roster I think anyone has ever seen in the game. Ulm is nothing next to the goodboys.
About the free spawn commanders. You don't need a fort to get them, there's only a terrain requirement. If you're using the new cave system Pyrene starts underground and after expansion you can start recruiting free spawners every other turn in almost every province you own.
And the cave start is actually pretty nice too, it gives you a bit of protection from rushes and basically with dark vision you get an early start for getting those cave provinces. Really interesting nation, i'm having fun trying them out so far. I think a thug bless might be a solid choice. Then switching late game to using transformation spell on your nature mages to luck into other magic paths + saving some money + getting some interesting chassis for your thug bless. idk just guessing so far but that's how it appears to me.
I enjoyed the video as always. I do think it's worth mentioning the national item, flying ointment, which grants flying, flying map move, and storm immunity!
If there were popkill nations in EA, those mouflons would be lovely to keep a big army marching through utter desolation. The Emerald Knights that ride them in MA, which also are a net positive on supplies, have been a real help against Ermor in my current game.
My best results with expansion have been a frontline of Bekdreyes infantry with a squad of mairu club units hitting the enemy just after the lines meet. Minimum losses from either troop, and i saw no substantial increase in performance from heavy inf. Most things in the cave layer hit hard enough for the protection difference not to matter
This is my go to scales expansion plan too. Enough infantry chaf will protect the giants from attrition, while the giants do the killing. Watch out for horse tribe, high defense is rough for the giants to hit.
Since the mouflons give supply and have a teeny bit of siege defense, you could probably amass enough of them in forts to make sieging you an absolute pain in the ass.
So happy to see play Pyrene. They are currently my favorite faction. And I look forward to seeing how you play them. I like to superComb the Tartalo with heavy prot/magic res/flying boots and reinvig as back line disruption. Or with heavy shock resistance and chain lightning equipment. Not sure if that is efficient, but it sure is fun. Love your vids and if you see this, since you are playing the nation, could you take a look at the Watchers summon. Maybe I missed something, but the other day when I played, they didn't fire a single of their lightning spells when my province got invaded. Not sure if they are bugged, or it was my fault.
You have 1 gem sacred water. A thuggy bless generally does just fine for helping heavy infantry sacreds expand. And having piles of bodyguards left over from expansion is great for sticking on valuable mages to provide some resistance to assassinations, especially now that many assassin battles happen closer together. Like, you don't want a crazy hellbless probably, but a decent bless and decent scales are probably fine.
This is super interesting. Despite not even owning the game I am like super knowledgeable about random stuff like Lemuria after watching your full playthroughs, but I'm totally clueless on these new nations.
Not sure if you noticed that the free spawn generators don't need forts, labs, or temples. You can get tons of them without affecting mage recruitment. Also, the free spawn are a source of magic attacks for the nations.
One thing you forgot to mention is that your Jentilak make 1 gem Frost Brands as well. I've been theory crafting that a Mairu Champion with a Frost Brand and Armor of Knights casting Personal Ironskin could be a pretty efficient raider (2 gems, 110 g)
Wouldn't the autobless bottles work well for applying the bless for a gem? Also I think the shamans are quite fine since you get the path boosters so cheaply (e2 can go e4 with boots, nature ones can gaia with a gem (and booster) to n3 and water can just fh spam at w2) so the earth nature isn't that bad a crosspath.
Their sacreds are indeed bad, what I've tried is an awake demilich with fear + stygian skin, your sacreds run around with 18 non magical prot vs attacks, so they can last long enough for the fear to rout enemies. Very fun to use with bekyrde chaff swarms for even more survivability. Later, the fear on your thugs makes them even stronger. Plus your demilich can research and if you rush thaum 4 he can site search for you! 300 labs go hard!
8:04 in fact I suspect in-army thugs will be much better now because larger units can now shove their way to the front line through smaller friendlies. Great on nations with big mages like Pyrene, but any N nation can just enlarge the thug.
Nets are useful vs defense stack blesses/elves. It's a big hit to defense that most high defense enemies can't avoid (unlike flight and such), similar to a web you buy with gold. There will be games where you never buy them, but it's helpful to have them in some matchups. Stuff like 15-20 def and blur + glamour goes from obnoxious to still reasonable odds to slap them. Army thugs are your best source of magic weapons I suspect. You can stack on a bunch of 1 gem items that are mwep and put quickness on a square of that.
These guys kind of confuse me, but my best instinct is to run them as a freespawn chaff nation with mass Mouflons, and just buff the crap out of them with your big mages. Also, your cavemen have above average HP as well as fire and cold res. If you can put F+W on your pretender and summon Flame Spirits/Sea Troll Kings, you might be able to leverage that via lategame wipes with Firestorm, Heat From Hell, and Grip of Winter.
I have to wonder in Dom 6 if Caves/Alternate Dimensions have an inherent + Value or +Cost to nations which start in them. In Dom 5 a caves province is just there on the map, in Dom 6 you have to go there. Pyrene effectively has some major vision advantages and choke point control for their tiny australia they start in. EA Pyrene is a bit confusing, MA Pyrene seems like an absolute beast.
Every time I see a N nation after Atticas video on Uruk I just want to spam transformations. Also , doesn’t high growth gives forest now? Maybe you can terraform your own nation. Also do cave cows have bonus siege?
With the sacreds, I feel like a good percentage of the sacreds in this game only exist to be bodyguards with halved upkeep costs and aren't really supposed to be given a huge bless, and the Bebryx Guards fit that description very well. You're going to be able to pump out hordes of cavemen and the only decent leaders you have for them are squishy H1 humans that are cap-only, without some good bodyguards your whole nation could probably get paralyzed too easily by assassins.
I think getting bishop fish with amulet of the fish for moving on land will be a useful midgame tactic to get divine blessing for your load of sacred non priest mages. Seems like this nation would also work well for mage blesses because of how many of their mages are sacred
I think im keen to ignore the bless, or get one of the blesses that effects sacreds rather than blessed units. But yeah you certainly can make bishop fish if you go the bless route.
Feels like an awake dracolich to kickstart your expansion and get your freespawn rolling extra early while giving the option for a couple strategic mound fiends for casting darkness in big battles in the late game will be a strong setup for them. Fire dragon+flame spirits for battlefield flaming arrows seems like a similar line of inquiry, but probably not as deeply impactful.
Im interested how you're gonna make these guys work! I had a very similar idea with cheap item thugs. My thinking was to initially run kill teams of two forest-only dudes working together with 5 gem kits each plus 1n per encounter, so that one can cast Regen, iron skin, temper flesh and the other can do moss body, temper flesh and temper armor, stacked in the same square. After evo 7 you add 3rd forest dude as an ez Stone Rain support. That was the thinking, but.... it kinda sucked, idk maybe my kits were wrong, but AI would frequently defeat them. Cant put may more buff on them or they will fatigue and their attack stats are bad Another issue I had with the forest mages is that since they are not priests is a pain to bless them. Now you will say, just get the holy water bottle, but thats 20% of the budget right there so idk, I tried just running recuperation for them as they WILL get afflicted and it doesnt required being actually blessed (and you can get it with a Drakkon for ez expansion) but then their effectiveness was mid. Another issue was you spawn in the caves and the forest mages are from forests only, fungus forests does not work. So you gotta get your ass to the surface ASAP and hope you can snag some forests. And if im playing against you I am gonna bomb the ever loving shit out of those forests of yours with any long range fires I have access to. Sticks and stones and a big stick troop is kinda nice tho, since they stop to yeet their shit at the enemy and thus take buffs nicely.
The Bebryx Guard does pretty well with expansion if you just give them a Larger bless. Don't really need other support, especially in cave provinces. Larger is also a comfortable bless for all of the big mage boys.
Wonder if in addition to water nations with that underground layer we now get "underground" nations like this who can dominate in their layer. The freespawn may be quite diffrent if you have a cave layer where you own 10+ provinces that can recruit freespawn summoning commanders.
I think you could do one of your awake beasts expanding pretenders with this nation. Hardskin would make your sacred troops ok expanders, your Pretender can expand and be your astral access, and your sacred mages are potentially quite durable with hardskin+equipment. I feel like the worst part is wailing winds and their bad morale. Low leadership, skirmishers, and you don't really want to defend with sermon of courage. You're going to need to mix in-army zerker thugs with whatever other gameplan you have. Maybe mass flight lets you try to keep the battles short, but it looks kinda rough. Turbo communions and similar blobs eat magic phase thunder strikes from Sorigna, and then the cats stealth out. Strong nature mages should make serpent's blessing accessible, can foul vapors yourself too. Some giant troops with high hp for sustained foul vapors fights. Fog warriors pretty accessible, also storm is not too hard, to try to negate mass flight stomps. Plenty of really strong moves you can make. Early wars you're tossing webs and nets while smashing high damage, rush sieges with your amazing siege strength from cave cows etc. Try to win before late-lategame though or you'll get enslaved, charmed and blood scaling demolished. Ramp up and churn out golems with your god and seize the win somehow in the early late game. I'd definitely see it as a snowball nation. If your territory is wide enough they can't hit your exposed temples easily :P
Would clusters of geared out thugs be an idea? You can't field single thugs to kill armies, but what about 4-6 of them, kitted out in one-gem gear? Every part of that seems reasonably cheap (plus you have really strong buffability with all the Earth and Water and stuff).
After a bit of testing, you dont give the bybrix enough slack. I ran a test with improned bless: larger, + 10 HP trough resilient and strong vitae, unbreakable and 4x heroism. This makes the Bybrix excelent at early expansion and synergises effeciently with the prospect of thug building. With 4x heroism you hit level 3 to 4 pips in experience really fast even on the normal troops + you get a lot of heroic abbileties on youre Bybrix generals, they are quite survivable enough to reach those levels fighting with indies. i ran with multiple expansion parties and lost 4 bybrix guards 2 to cav and 2 to trols. The fact that they have fire and cold resistance is kinda a nice plus, same goes for the darkvision. Its a good troop to buff with smaller parties of thugs and their attached guards, though for that one might consider a bless effect that allows them better map move? Youre thoughts?
Personally, while I do really like EA Pyrene, I think you kind of have to go with an expander with them, since their basic units aren't that great for expansion and they are fighting cave pops, which (in my opinion) tend to be trickier then surface pops. Which is especially bad since caves tend to have tons of choke points, so a strong indie province in a bad spot can really hinder expansion. On the other hand, cave forest seem really good for the recruitment of the forest recruit guys, since movement is slow underground so its kind of hard to raid in the caves. (EDIT: They aren't recruitable in cave forests ) All in all, I think EA Pyrene is fairly average across early-mid-late game, but can have pretty good thug game, with decent chassi and cheap gear.
The Mairu champion would be good candidates to wear a shroud of the battlesaint, since they can ironskin themselves, as a way to give them youre bless. Pitty the smith ing mage doesnt have an astral path though, would be 2 gems with forge of the ancients
Hey Lucid, when you cast the Forging Global (+1 forging path, cost reduction global in construction), does that stack on top of the 4 forging bonus the jentil can get? If so, does he forge 5 gem items for free now? Bit of a niche question, but I'm sure it's something that is known because Ulm has been in that 4-forging discount bracket forever. Cheers
It does stack, and furthermore even applies first. So a 10 gem item gets a 20% discount -> 8 gems. Then you take the hammer discount -> 4 gems. However you always must pay at least one gem of each type. Like if you make a liot pelt which is 3n2e... It will always cost at least 1n1e no matter how many discounts.
@@LucidTactics thanks so much Lucid! Very clear explanation! Despite their higher cost I think there would be a lot of potential with smithing here, plus the Jentil itself has an imposing chassis with its magic paths. Particularly with high construction they could be made to kill infinite mundane troops for cheap gear. I might give this a shot. I've never seen people rush the forge of the ancients global so odds are it is a reliable way to go. Oh another thing I thought about. Iirc the flasks of holy water are 5W, so essentially 1W here. 1W to activate the bless on the non-fort mages seems reasonable if you want to have a bless that leans into that, right?
Really just: Thug, the nation Joining the club of MA Ctis, Foul Vapors, the nation, and Ermor, skeleton, the nation My thought is ea pyrene armies just full of chaff mass recruited everywhere, with ten or so Mairu w/ GSS + armor + E1 buffs to tank any elite targets
Eh sacred are decent especialy if you put Blur bless on them (in my personal opinion best bless to invest if you go for sacred armies/blobs) tough air 4 mage is rarer than hens teeth > was mesing around in SP and in 40 rounds of recruiting her got 0.
This faction looks like something a cat dragged in, or an abomination that random draft may spit out for a meme multiplayer game. What's all those different folk doing sitting together in a cave anyway?
Wouldn't sweat the pronunciation in a game that uses spellings and vocals from dozens of disparate languages. Having recently learned the correct pronunciation for "Gygja" no one in the community says it right because who the hell speaks Icelandic? As for these guys, guessing they should sound something like the Pyrenees mountains, but again, who cares.
I cannot say enough how frustrated I am with this nation design: - Dark vision, but no way to cast anything that brings darkness - Fire res, but zero fire magic - Cold res, but only 1/3 foreign forest mages get Water 2 - Many sticks and stones attacks but no way to give them flaming arrows - So many undisciplined units but no one with Tight Rein It must be a nation meant for heavy thugs and SCs, which is fine for some players but my least favorite way to play
* Given that they start in the cave layer, dark vision is still rather nice to have. * Cold and fire res are nice even if you don’t have fire or high water magic (although water is also one of the easiest paths to boost, so this can be remedied regardless.), because not only does it help when dealing with chill auras, heat auras, and extremely temperature scales, it also helps against enemy Fire and Water mages, not to mention flaming arrows or items like frost brands or chill mist scimitar. * while they don’t get flaming arrows, there is now a bunch of nature spells that do the same thing, but with poison instead of fire, and they have air, so all the new air spells that buff Missile units, plus old spells like wind guide, are all still available. And because the boulders and sticks and stones are thrown weapons, all the strength buffs will significantly increase the range and damage of your ranged attacks. I should also add that of the nations with recruitable units that have sticks and stones, the majority of them don’t actually have any fire magic either (Lanka, Kailasa, Bandar Log, Patala). * While they don’t have tight reigns, the undisciplined units are aren’t required to actually expand, and even if they were, the combination of wide access to beast master and inspirational means that undisciplined is not as big a deal as you might assume. And a number of the undisciplined units are freespawn meatshields with high hp and size, so it’s not like you needed them in dense formations to begin with. *if you really want access to darkness and flaming arrows, that is what pretenders are for. * I think you (and Lucid too, to be fair) underestimate the Sorgilak. They are aren’t slow to recruit, they have a stealthy second form, and they can fly, all while having Air 3. Sure, you can use them as mediocre thugs, but their real power is as earthquake-immune, surprisingly hard to kill mobile thunderstrike and air elemental casters. And because you have shitty sacred units, it’s entirely possible to build a bless around your sacred mages (even the ones that can’t bless themselves, because you can craft flask of holy water for 1 gem). Far caster or reinvigoration or precision, all make your mages excellent battle mages. * while I would not consider them a troop-focused nation, they aren’t limited to wholly thugging and SCs. Their units aren’t necessarily anything to write home about on their own, but they have good resistances, and they don’t need to be god-tier to be effective, because their mage’s Magic paths mean that they can still buff them extremely well.
As one of the three people who are basque and wach dominions, dont think anyone is gonna get mad at the pronunciation of the names.
Wooo!
Woo! Been draggin my feet on these guys for a bit, glad you tackled them!
Before I get biased by watching the video: I had some ideas of using the giant cylopes on land cause they are really good, thugging out the yetis with forged gear, and using Sorgina to just be real strong mages that do things. The rest of the roster was "OKAY", nice to have free resistances.
Mainly I was just stuck between wanting cave provinces because they are safe / strong, and wanting to go on land to grab forests for yetis and hills for giants. (assuming a cave start)
Send Aatxe looks strong too, like the LA Atlanits remote. Maybe a bit weaker because they don't fly?
Yeah those crazy Jentil forge bonuses and how badass the forest sacreds are really make me want to all in on thugs.
I just tried casting send aatxe in a debug game since in dom6 mod inspector it had a "speciallook 1" and i wanted to know what it was, but it didn't do anything, just spent the gems and didn't send the asssasin. I sent it with the sorgina too incase it was a commander specific thing, but no. So it seems bugged atm.
@@sirkana As far as I can tell remote assassinations now return an empty battle report, but still happen. Not sure if this is a bug or intended (one would need a scout in a province to see the remote assassination battle). Side note, the cave recruit scouts are a nice bonus feature on ea pyrene!
Its a display bug for the caster. The recipient still has to fight an angry ethereal bull
@@sirkana
Does Gaia's blessing into Foul Vapors give the poison stat penalties?
I played these guys a lot already. Don't sleep on the Sorgina. Your guys get absolutely wrecked by arrows and the sorginas can fly around casting arrow fend and later army of mist. Also your troops are a pain in the ass to buff before the army sides anyway.
Find a goodboi province underground and slap a fort on it. They get bonus gold and resources so you can really crank them out. After that your expansion (and really all) your problems are over.
You can do some funny blesses too. I did one with precision and far shot and gave my jentils a pouch of pebbles. R40 boulders getting chucked all over the place. Maybe not the best use of bless points but it was funny as hell.
‘Goodboi’? I’m not sure I know that reference.
@@gibbcharron3469 Cynocephalians, dog headed people. Bit larger than humans, size 4 I think, and normally berserking strong warriors with a weapon and bite attack.
The "goodboy" thing relates to LA Andromania which is when they lose almost all the berserk in favor of the best troop roster I think anyone has ever seen in the game. Ulm is nothing next to the goodboys.
@@wadeperry4294 Ahh, of course. Sadly they aren’t all that common in EA.
About the free spawn commanders. You don't need a fort to get them, there's only a terrain requirement. If you're using the new cave system Pyrene starts underground and after expansion you can start recruiting free spawners every other turn in almost every province you own.
oh didnt realize that... very cool
And the cave start is actually pretty nice too, it gives you a bit of protection from rushes and basically with dark vision you get an early start for getting those cave provinces.
Really interesting nation, i'm having fun trying them out so far.
I think a thug bless might be a solid choice. Then switching late game to using transformation spell on your nature mages to luck into other magic paths + saving some money + getting some interesting chassis for your thug bless.
idk just guessing so far but that's how it appears to me.
I enjoyed the video as always. I do think it's worth mentioning the national item, flying ointment, which grants flying, flying map move, and storm immunity!
Ooh very cool, didnt notice that.
Wait.. you have a coffee table? I have to revisit my mental images of you.
he slurps alot, sounds like a fatty too.
Since dominions 6 launch this have been my fav faction, thanks a lot for your work.
If there were popkill nations in EA, those mouflons would be lovely to keep a big army marching through utter desolation. The Emerald Knights that ride them in MA, which also are a net positive on supplies, have been a real help against Ermor in my current game.
Popkill nation in EA is Therodos. Its just that they are also a water nation.
@@SerpenTyx Therodos is almost completely amphibious and absolutely wrecks face above or below the waves
My best results with expansion have been a frontline of Bekdreyes infantry with a squad of mairu club units hitting the enemy just after the lines meet.
Minimum losses from either troop, and i saw no substantial increase in performance from heavy inf. Most things in the cave layer hit hard enough for the protection difference not to matter
This is my go to scales expansion plan too. Enough infantry chaf will protect the giants from attrition, while the giants do the killing.
Watch out for horse tribe, high defense is rough for the giants to hit.
Since the mouflons give supply and have a teeny bit of siege defense, you could probably amass enough of them in forts to make sieging you an absolute pain in the ass.
So happy to see play Pyrene. They are currently my favorite faction. And I look forward to seeing how you play them. I like to superComb the Tartalo with heavy prot/magic res/flying boots and reinvig as back line disruption. Or with heavy shock resistance and chain lightning equipment. Not sure if that is efficient, but it sure is fun.
Love your vids and if you see this, since you are playing the nation, could you take a look at the Watchers summon. Maybe I missed something, but the other day when I played, they didn't fire a single of their lightning spells when my province got invaded. Not sure if they are bugged, or it was my fault.
I love the lore section and hearing / reading about what inspired each faction. Would love to see that in all future National Overviews
Nidavangr are based on the villains of one of the devs Pathfinder campaigns, it's in the manual.
You have 1 gem sacred water. A thuggy bless generally does just fine for helping heavy infantry sacreds expand. And having piles of bodyguards left over from expansion is great for sticking on valuable mages to provide some resistance to assassinations, especially now that many assassin battles happen closer together.
Like, you don't want a crazy hellbless probably, but a decent bless and decent scales are probably fine.
This is super interesting. Despite not even owning the game I am like super knowledgeable about random stuff like Lemuria after watching your full playthroughs, but I'm totally clueless on these new nations.
I learn about the actual historical stuff sometimes and I just think, oh I know that from dominions 😂
Not sure if you noticed that the free spawn generators don't need forts, labs, or temples. You can get tons of them without affecting mage recruitment. Also, the free spawn are a source of magic attacks for the nations.
I assume you mean the cave cow spit, but is that actually a magic attack?
I just double checked and the cave cow's corrosive spit is a magic attack. @@Max-lp8gt
I've had great success with army thugs with basic armour and hammer of the mountains, AoE Stun effect turn elves into sitting ducks.
Yeah i love that item!
I always get the warm fuzzies from seeing the Starsector icon on Lucid's taskbar.
One thing you forgot to mention is that your Jentilak make 1 gem Frost Brands as well. I've been theory crafting that a Mairu Champion with a Frost Brand and Armor of Knights casting Personal Ironskin could be a pretty efficient raider (2 gems, 110 g)
That sounds badass
Also Flask of Holy water is only 1 gem if you want to bless your sacred giants and have room for it
Wouldn't the autobless bottles work well for applying the bless for a gem? Also I think the shamans are quite fine since you get the path boosters so cheaply (e2 can go e4 with boots, nature ones can gaia with a gem (and booster) to n3 and water can just fh spam at w2) so the earth nature isn't that bad a crosspath.
The water 1 holy water miscellaneous magic item. I have been using it on my thugs.
Yeah Holy water bottles are great; main downside is just that it's a slot that could be used for SC gear. 1W is a great deal for those though.
The Mairu feel like more interesting thug-labmonkies in magic dominion vs shamans...
Their sacreds are indeed bad, what I've tried is an awake demilich with fear + stygian skin, your sacreds run around with 18 non magical prot vs attacks, so they can last long enough for the fear to rout enemies. Very fun to use with bekyrde chaff swarms for even more survivability. Later, the fear on your thugs makes them even stronger.
Plus your demilich can research and if you rush thaum 4 he can site search for you! 300 labs go hard!
8:04 in fact I suspect in-army thugs will be much better now because larger units can now shove their way to the front line through smaller friendlies. Great on nations with big mages like Pyrene, but any N nation can just enlarge the thug.
Nets are useful vs defense stack blesses/elves. It's a big hit to defense that most high defense enemies can't avoid (unlike flight and such), similar to a web you buy with gold. There will be games where you never buy them, but it's helpful to have them in some matchups. Stuff like 15-20 def and blur + glamour goes from obnoxious to still reasonable odds to slap them.
Army thugs are your best source of magic weapons I suspect. You can stack on a bunch of 1 gem items that are mwep and put quickness on a square of that.
These guys kind of confuse me, but my best instinct is to run them as a freespawn chaff nation with mass Mouflons, and just buff the crap out of them with your big mages. Also, your cavemen have above average HP as well as fire and cold res. If you can put F+W on your pretender and summon Flame Spirits/Sea Troll Kings, you might be able to leverage that via lategame wipes with Firestorm, Heat From Hell, and Grip of Winter.
Cave cows are also really good, that acid spit can help cut through heavy armor
I have to wonder in Dom 6 if Caves/Alternate Dimensions have an inherent + Value or +Cost to nations which start in them. In Dom 5 a caves province is just there on the map, in Dom 6 you have to go there. Pyrene effectively has some major vision advantages and choke point control for their tiny australia they start in. EA Pyrene is a bit confusing, MA Pyrene seems like an absolute beast.
Every time I see a N nation after Atticas video on Uruk I just want to spam transformations. Also , doesn’t high growth gives forest now? Maybe you can terraform your own nation. Also do cave cows have bonus siege?
That's a yes on both
Tried these guys, the lack of dark vision on many units makes the cave start a challenge.
Almost all have dark vision though?
@@luka188 the mairu don't
With the sacreds, I feel like a good percentage of the sacreds in this game only exist to be bodyguards with halved upkeep costs and aren't really supposed to be given a huge bless, and the Bebryx Guards fit that description very well. You're going to be able to pump out hordes of cavemen and the only decent leaders you have for them are squishy H1 humans that are cap-only, without some good bodyguards your whole nation could probably get paralyzed too easily by assassins.
I think getting bishop fish with amulet of the fish for moving on land will be a useful midgame tactic to get divine blessing for your load of sacred non priest mages. Seems like this nation would also work well for mage blesses because of how many of their mages are sacred
I think im keen to ignore the bless, or get one of the blesses that effects sacreds rather than blessed units. But yeah you certainly can make bishop fish if you go the bless route.
@@LucidTactics what about make 1 wgem bless accesories?
Looks like the Manual is now generally availible! I've ordered mine :)
sounds like your better , glad to hear it , look forward to you playing 6 in multiplayer
I actually love that Dominions has an in-built "Power-couple" unit set xD That's oddly cute and funny.
Ars Magica < 3 such a great tabletop roleplaying game
I ordered the manual from their website, it's been printed and just waiting for it to be shipped
Really enjoyed the review! Any plans to do the same for the other new nations? Personally I'm excited to see how the LA Ind offshoots play in MP
Feels like an awake dracolich to kickstart your expansion and get your freespawn rolling extra early while giving the option for a couple strategic mound fiends for casting darkness in big battles in the late game will be a strong setup for them.
Fire dragon+flame spirits for battlefield flaming arrows seems like a similar line of inquiry, but probably not as deeply impactful.
Im interested how you're gonna make these guys work! I had a very similar idea with cheap item thugs. My thinking was to initially run kill teams of two forest-only dudes working together with 5 gem kits each plus 1n per encounter, so that one can cast Regen, iron skin, temper flesh and the other can do moss body, temper flesh and temper armor, stacked in the same square. After evo 7 you add 3rd forest dude as an ez Stone Rain support. That was the thinking, but.... it kinda sucked, idk maybe my kits were wrong, but AI would frequently defeat them. Cant put may more buff on them or they will fatigue and their attack stats are bad
Another issue I had with the forest mages is that since they are not priests is a pain to bless them. Now you will say, just get the holy water bottle, but thats 20% of the budget right there so idk, I tried just running recuperation for them as they WILL get afflicted and it doesnt required being actually blessed (and you can get it with a Drakkon for ez expansion) but then their effectiveness was mid.
Another issue was you spawn in the caves and the forest mages are from forests only, fungus forests does not work. So you gotta get your ass to the surface ASAP and hope you can snag some forests. And if im playing against you I am gonna bomb the ever loving shit out of those forests of yours with any long range fires I have access to.
Sticks and stones and a big stick troop is kinda nice tho, since they stop to yeet their shit at the enemy and thus take buffs nicely.
The Bebryx Guard does pretty well with expansion if you just give them a Larger bless. Don't really need other support, especially in cave provinces. Larger is also a comfortable bless for all of the big mage boys.
Get well soon!
Wonder if in addition to water nations with that underground layer we now get "underground" nations like this who can dominate in their layer. The freespawn may be quite diffrent if you have a cave layer where you own 10+ provinces that can recruit freespawn summoning commanders.
I think you could do one of your awake beasts expanding pretenders with this nation. Hardskin would make your sacred troops ok expanders, your Pretender can expand and be your astral access, and your sacred mages are potentially quite durable with hardskin+equipment.
I feel like the worst part is wailing winds and their bad morale. Low leadership, skirmishers, and you don't really want to defend with sermon of courage. You're going to need to mix in-army zerker thugs with whatever other gameplan you have. Maybe mass flight lets you try to keep the battles short, but it looks kinda rough.
Turbo communions and similar blobs eat magic phase thunder strikes from Sorigna, and then the cats stealth out. Strong nature mages should make serpent's blessing accessible, can foul vapors yourself too. Some giant troops with high hp for sustained foul vapors fights. Fog warriors pretty accessible, also storm is not too hard, to try to negate mass flight stomps.
Plenty of really strong moves you can make. Early wars you're tossing webs and nets while smashing high damage, rush sieges with your amazing siege strength from cave cows etc.
Try to win before late-lategame though or you'll get enslaved, charmed and blood scaling demolished. Ramp up and churn out golems with your god and seize the win somehow in the early late game. I'd definitely see it as a snowball nation. If your territory is wide enough they can't hit your exposed temples easily :P
yeah that jives with what im thinking too. good points
the giant troops have no dark vision for expansion
Would clusters of geared out thugs be an idea? You can't field single thugs to kill armies, but what about 4-6 of them, kitted out in one-gem gear? Every part of that seems reasonably cheap (plus you have really strong buffability with all the Earth and Water and stuff).
Physical book seemed to be available at 25ish bucks last week when i checked.
it's a print-on-demand service so they are always in stock
Just the name cave cow is so cool I don't care if they're not great, I want an army of them. Now if they could be blessed...
After a bit of testing, you dont give the bybrix enough slack. I ran a test with improned bless: larger, + 10 HP trough resilient and strong vitae, unbreakable and 4x heroism. This makes the Bybrix excelent at early expansion and synergises effeciently with the prospect of thug building. With 4x heroism you hit level 3 to 4 pips in experience really fast even on the normal troops + you get a lot of heroic abbileties on youre Bybrix generals, they are quite survivable enough to reach those levels fighting with indies. i ran with multiple expansion parties and lost 4 bybrix guards 2 to cav and 2 to trols. The fact that they have fire and cold resistance is kinda a nice plus, same goes for the darkvision. Its a good troop to buff with smaller parties of thugs and their attached guards, though for that one might consider a bless effect that allows them better map move? Youre thoughts?
If they are inspired by Fransisco de Goya artwork, I'm surprised they don't have blood magic.
Personally, while I do really like EA Pyrene, I think you kind of have to go with an expander with them, since their basic units aren't that great for expansion and they are fighting cave pops, which (in my opinion) tend to be trickier then surface pops.
Which is especially bad since caves tend to have tons of choke points, so a strong indie province in a bad spot can really hinder expansion.
On the other hand, cave forest seem really good for the recruitment of the forest recruit guys, since movement is slow underground so its kind of hard to raid in the caves. (EDIT: They aren't recruitable in cave forests )
All in all, I think EA Pyrene is fairly average across early-mid-late game, but can have pretty good thug game, with decent chassi and cheap gear.
Ballin spammed so much sticks and stones at False God and I
By the way the "Pyre" part of Pyrene is named after not fire but the Pyrenees which are the mountain range in Europe that was mentioned in the manual.
The physical guide is out I just got mine yesterday
Sorgina are not cap only. They are recruit anywhere. Its crazy.
The Mairu champion would be good candidates to wear a shroud of the battlesaint, since they can ironskin themselves, as a way to give them youre bless. Pitty the smith ing mage doesnt have an astral path though, would be 2 gems with forge of the ancients
Thinking scales for this nation it seems like going sloth and magic are no-brainers
It's a great nation for scales, and you can absolutely handle full sloth and even turmoil due to cave bonuses
Look! Lucid found a new Free Spawn nation!
When you do an overview of Andramania would you use a picture of my doggo on the title screen? 🐕
I tried them out but honestly I dont get them
Hey Lucid, when you cast the Forging Global (+1 forging path, cost reduction global in construction), does that stack on top of the 4 forging bonus the jentil can get? If so, does he forge 5 gem items for free now? Bit of a niche question, but I'm sure it's something that is known because Ulm has been in that 4-forging discount bracket forever. Cheers
It does stack, and furthermore even applies first. So a 10 gem item gets a 20% discount -> 8 gems. Then you take the hammer discount -> 4 gems.
However you always must pay at least one gem of each type. Like if you make a liot pelt which is 3n2e... It will always cost at least 1n1e no matter how many discounts.
@@LucidTactics thanks so much Lucid! Very clear explanation! Despite their higher cost I think there would be a lot of potential with smithing here, plus the Jentil itself has an imposing chassis with its magic paths. Particularly with high construction they could be made to kill infinite mundane troops for cheap gear. I might give this a shot. I've never seen people rush the forge of the ancients global so odds are it is a reliable way to go.
Oh another thing I thought about. Iirc the flasks of holy water are 5W, so essentially 1W here. 1W to activate the bless on the non-fort mages seems reasonable if you want to have a bless that leans into that, right?
“I’m not sure what job I want them to do…”
How about bodyguards for the thugs? lol
This is kind of a national underview if you get what i mean
I think you could really meme these guys with an Obfuscate bless.
Might have to try that, though its a little wasted vs the AI
Really just: Thug, the nation
Joining the club of MA Ctis, Foul Vapors, the nation, and Ermor, skeleton, the nation
My thought is ea pyrene armies just full of chaff mass recruited everywhere, with ten or so Mairu w/ GSS + armor + E1 buffs to tank any elite targets
I think I like Heroism as a bless on this nation to quickly get the sacred leader past the 75 threshold?
I really Like ma pyrène, but i don't know what i should think from ea pyrène 🤔
In my experience, the Mairu giants are not good at expanding underground due to the lack of darkvision. They are much better on the surface.
Eh sacred are decent especialy if you put Blur bless on them (in my personal opinion best bless to invest if you go for sacred armies/blobs) tough air 4 mage is rarer than hens teeth > was mesing around in SP and in 40 rounds of recruiting her got 0.
Beta testing didn't last past turn 14? No wonder the game is so raw.
This faction looks like something a cat dragged in, or an abomination that random draft may spit out for a meme multiplayer game. What's all those different folk doing sitting together in a cave anyway?
Wouldn't sweat the pronunciation in a game that uses spellings and vocals from dozens of disparate languages. Having recently learned the correct pronunciation for "Gygja" no one in the community says it right because who the hell speaks Icelandic?
As for these guys, guessing they should sound something like the Pyrenees mountains, but again, who cares.
I cannot say enough how frustrated I am with this nation design:
- Dark vision, but no way to cast anything that brings darkness
- Fire res, but zero fire magic
- Cold res, but only 1/3 foreign forest mages get Water 2
- Many sticks and stones attacks but no way to give them flaming arrows
- So many undisciplined units but no one with Tight Rein
It must be a nation meant for heavy thugs and SCs, which is fine for some players but my least favorite way to play
* Given that they start in the cave layer, dark vision is still rather nice to have.
* Cold and fire res are nice even if you don’t have fire or high water magic (although water is also one of the easiest paths to boost, so this can be remedied regardless.), because not only does it help when dealing with chill auras, heat auras, and extremely temperature scales, it also helps against enemy Fire and Water mages, not to mention flaming arrows or items like frost brands or chill mist scimitar.
* while they don’t get flaming arrows, there is now a bunch of nature spells that do the same thing, but with poison instead of fire, and they have air, so all the new air spells that buff Missile units, plus old spells like wind guide, are all still available. And because the boulders and sticks and stones are thrown weapons, all the strength buffs will significantly increase the range and damage of your ranged attacks. I should also add that of the nations with recruitable units that have sticks and stones, the majority of them don’t actually have any fire magic either (Lanka, Kailasa, Bandar Log, Patala).
* While they don’t have tight reigns, the undisciplined units are aren’t required to actually expand, and even if they were, the combination of wide access to beast master and inspirational means that undisciplined is not as big a deal as you might assume. And a number of the undisciplined units are freespawn meatshields with high hp and size, so it’s not like you needed them in dense formations to begin with.
*if you really want access to darkness and flaming arrows, that is what pretenders are for.
* I think you (and Lucid too, to be fair) underestimate the Sorgilak. They are aren’t slow to recruit, they have a stealthy second form, and they can fly, all while having Air 3. Sure, you can use them as mediocre thugs, but their real power is as earthquake-immune, surprisingly hard to kill mobile thunderstrike and air elemental casters. And because you have shitty sacred units, it’s entirely possible to build a bless around your sacred mages (even the ones that can’t bless themselves, because you can craft flask of holy water for 1 gem). Far caster or reinvigoration or precision, all make your mages excellent battle mages.
* while I would not consider them a troop-focused nation, they aren’t limited to wholly thugging and SCs. Their units aren’t necessarily anything to write home about on their own, but they have good resistances, and they don’t need to be god-tier to be effective, because their mage’s Magic paths mean that they can still buff them extremely well.