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stacks-on-stacks-a-guide-to-ind-by-baalz [2021/04/21 14:41]
naaira [Ind, what not to do] |
stacks-on-stacks-a-guide-to-ind-by-baalz [2021/12/21 15:40] (current)
joste [Tower of Power] |
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| ====Magus ‘crootin==== | ====Magus ‘crootin==== |
| {{:nations:ma:ind:abbot_magus.png?nolink}} {{:nations:ma:ind:abbot_magus_supreme.png?nolink}} | <WRAP column 28px>{{:nations:ma:ind:abbot_magus.png?nolink}} {{:nations:ma:ind:abbot_magus_supreme.png?nolink}}</WRAP> |
| Ind is unique in that everything in its cap is cap only. This means you’ve really got to make the most out of your very nice cap stuff - there’s no expanding into extra forts to get more of it. One of the big implications of this is you really can’t just recruit your “best” cap only mage and do the secondary stuff elsewhere, you’ve only ever got one cap and you’ve got to use your cap turns cleverly to get everything you need. You definitely want as many of your top-shelf ??Abbot Magus Supreme??s as you can get, but you can recruit ??Abbot Maguse??s twice as fast - and they can do many of the same things. As a general rule of thumb, any time you are using a Supreme to do something that a smaller Magus could do (forging, casting, research, etc.) you’re playing suboptimally. The Supremes can do some lab work out of reach of the smaller guys, but really the reason you want them is because they can all teleport and layeth the smackdown on the battlefield in support of your armies. They are, ahem, supremely good on the battlefield, and we’ll get more into that below but definitely don’t neglect to get a healthy mix of the smaller Maguses as they’re way more efficient. Plopping out a 16 research Magus each turn along with an awake pretender who starts our researching gives you a pretty brisk initial research, then start easing into your top shelf guys. | Ind is unique in that everything in its cap is cap only. This means you’ve really got to make the most out of your very nice cap stuff - there’s no expanding into extra forts to get more of it. One of the big implications of this is you really can’t just recruit your “best” cap only mage and do the secondary stuff elsewhere, you’ve only ever got one cap and you’ve got to use your cap turns cleverly to get everything you need. You definitely want as many of your top-shelf ??Abbot Magus Supreme??s as you can get, but you can recruit ??Abbot Maguse??s twice as fast - and they can do many of the same things. |
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| | As a general rule of thumb, any time you are using a Supreme to do something that a smaller Magus could do (forging, casting, research, etc.) you’re playing suboptimally. The Supremes can do some lab work out of reach of the smaller guys, but really the reason you want them is because they can all teleport and layeth the smackdown on the battlefield in support of your armies. They are, ahem, supremely good on the battlefield, and we’ll get more into that below but definitely don’t neglect to get a healthy mix of the smaller Maguses as they’re way more efficient. Plopping out a 16 research Magus each turn along with an awake pretender who starts our researching gives you a pretty brisk initial research, then start easing into your top shelf guys. |
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| Note, Ind can only prophetize {{path>H3}} (or above) priests. Your first inclination is probably going to be to spend your first 2 turns recruiting a Primate king so you can prophetize him. Don’t do that. The primary reason that you want a prophet early is usually to drop divine blessing on your expansion parties - but one pretty big national advantage Ind has is that all their sacred troops autobless themselves. That’s right, you don’t even need a priest present to lead your sacreds! Use your starting Bishop General to lead your first expansion party out, then send indie commanders back to lead the rest of them - no need to spend your capital’s turns recruiting anything but mages. | Note, Ind can only prophetize {{path>H3}} (or above) priests. Your first inclination is probably going to be to spend your first 2 turns recruiting a Primate king so you can prophetize him. Don’t do that. The primary reason that you want a prophet early is usually to drop divine blessing on your expansion parties - but one pretty big national advantage Ind has is that all their sacred troops autobless themselves. That’s right, you don’t even need a priest present to lead your sacreds! Use your starting Bishop General to lead your first expansion party out, then send indie commanders back to lead the rest of them - no need to spend your capital’s turns recruiting anything but mages. |
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| Next thing to notice is that there are {{path>H3}} {{nations:ma:ind:viceroy_primate.png?nolink}} ??Viceroy Primate??s recruitable outside of forts with just a temple. Get up a second temple up fairly fast and pop out a {{path>H3}} from outside your cap to prophetize to {{path>H4}}. He’ll take 4 turns to recruit and most of the first game year will be over before you get your first prophet, but there’s really no rush since all your blessing is covered. At that point slowly (every 4 turns) crank out {{path>H3}} priests wherever you’ve got a temple up outside a fort. {{path>H3}} priests are one of those things that amplify in power the more you have, so stack 'em up. On top of the usual ways to use {{path>H3}}, Ind’s guys also reduce unrest. Ending up with a stack of several of them in a province will counteract the unrest caused by bloodhunting, can call back your pretender instantly if that becomes necessary, and slapping void eyes on them will give you a really brutal battery of both wide-area banishments and smites. It’s pretty amusing watching several penetration-boosted guys spamming smite at medium MR guys that thought they were tough elites or an overly aggressive enemy pretender. Squish! | <WRAP column 28px>{{nations:ma:ind:viceroy_primate.png?nolink}}</WRAP>Next thing to notice is that there are {{path>H3}} ??Viceroy Primate??s recruitable outside of forts with just a temple. Get up a second temple up fairly fast and pop out a {{path>H3}} from outside your cap to prophetize to {{path>H4}}. He’ll take 4 turns to recruit and most of the first game year will be over before you get your first prophet, but there’s really no rush since all your blessing is covered. At that point slowly (every 4 turns) crank out {{path>H3}} priests wherever you’ve got a temple up outside a fort. {{path>H3}} priests are one of those things that amplify in power the more you have, so stack 'em up. On top of the usual ways to use {{path>H3}}, Ind’s guys also reduce unrest. Ending up with a stack of several of them in a province will counteract the unrest caused by bloodhunting, can call back your pretender instantly if that becomes necessary, and slapping void eyes on them will give you a really brutal battery of both wide-area banishments and smites. It’s pretty amusing watching several penetration-boosted guys spamming smite at medium MR guys that thought they were tough elites or an overly aggressive enemy pretender. Squish! |
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| ====Pretender/sacreds==== | ====Pretender/sacreds==== |
| ====Constructing Artillery Stacks==== | ====Constructing Artillery Stacks==== |
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| Some particularly fun stacks of stuff open up as your research progresses. Use your pretender to forge a Fire booster - a ??Flame Helm??, ??Staff of Elemental Master?? or ??Skull of Fire?? should be possible depending on the paths you picked, or worst case save up {{gems>50D}} and empower a Magus Supreme to get a flame skull. Forge a ??Water Bracelet??, and now a water random Supreme can crank out as many ??Rune Smasher??s as you have gems for without bothering your pretender anymore. Probably not too much of a surprise, but while we have great use for penetration boosters throughout the game at this point we’re going to set up a mind hunt battery. Stacking an astral cap, rune smasher, ??Void Eye??, and a ??Spell Foci?? is a Tower of Power that’s a staple for a reason, but Ind can stack higher. The risk of course with ??Mind Hunt??ing is that if you do it aggressively your enemies are gonna start sprinkling astral mages around with bait, and then you’ve got a feebleminded expensive, slow to recruit cap-only mage with a permanent void eye. One powerful combo if you can swing it is adding the ??The Chalice?? artifact to that tower of power, but that requires researching all the way up to [[construction]]-8, you then have to hope nobody else has already grabbed it. Luckily there’s no need for that! | Some particularly fun stacks of stuff open up as your research progresses. Use your pretender to forge a Fire booster - a ??Flame Helmet??, ??Staff of Elemental Mastery?? or ??Skull of Fire?? should be possible depending on the paths you picked, or worst case save up {{gems>50D}} and empower a Magus Supreme to get a ??Skull of Fire??. Forge a ??Water Bracelet??, and now a water random Supreme can crank out as many ??Rune Smasher??s as you have gems for without bothering your pretender anymore. Probably not too much of a surprise, but while we have great use for penetration boosters throughout the game at this point we’re going to set up a mind hunt battery. Stacking an astral cap, rune smasher, ??Eye of the Void??, and a ??Spell Focus?? is a **Tower of Power** that’s a staple for a reason, but Ind can stack higher. The risk of course with ??Mind Hunt??ing is that if you do it aggressively your enemies are gonna start sprinkling astral mages around with bait, and then you’ve got a feebleminded expensive, slow to recruit cap-only mage with a permanent void eye. One powerful combo if you can swing it is adding the ??The Chalice?? artifact to that tower of power, but that requires researching all the way up to [[construction]]-8, you then have to hope nobody else has already grabbed it. Luckily there’s no need for that! |
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| ??Arel?? is powerful healers, and you’ve got reliable access to them way easier than trying for the Chalice. Several +5 penetration mind hunters that can operate aggressively without much fear of sneaky astral mages are really brutal against any nation that is not fielding tons of astral mages. Certainly, you can snipe thugs, but don’t overlook opportunities to fire several mind hunts at enemy armies as they’re moving to important engagements - if you’re lucky only half the army will move as an important low MR commander’s mind melts. | ??Arel?? is powerful healers, and you’ve got reliable access to them way easier than trying for the Chalice. Several +5 penetration mind hunters that can operate aggressively without much fear of sneaky astral mages are really brutal against any nation that is not fielding tons of astral mages. Certainly, you can snipe thugs, but don’t overlook opportunities to fire several mind hunts at enemy armies as they’re moving to important engagements - if you’re lucky only half the army will move as an important low MR commander’s mind melts. |
| Let's keep stacking though. ??Armor of Twisting Thorns?? are great and fairly cheap for what they get you - they boost two paths on your Bitch Mothers. Stick them on B and N random Mothers for different reasons. The reason you want them on the B random ones is that B4 opens up Hoard from Hell, which is very nice to be able to spam out with several casters. Imps can clear the light PD that people generally keep all around, and if they’re not in a position to respond quickly and effectively this will stack up very fast because the imp squads hang around after the fight. If you save up your blood economy for a few turns before an offensive and can do something like spam 3 ??Horde from Hell??s a turn for a few turns what happens is. 3 provinces fall the first turn. Turn 2 it 6 because you have 3 flying imp squads plus 3 more you summon. Turn 3 it's 9. This is contingent on your imps winning with few losses, but that’s pretty viable if you’re hitting the 1-6 PD that tends to be the default most people put up in random provinces. | Let's keep stacking though. ??Armor of Twisting Thorns?? are great and fairly cheap for what they get you - they boost two paths on your Bitch Mothers. Stick them on B and N random Mothers for different reasons. The reason you want them on the B random ones is that B4 opens up Hoard from Hell, which is very nice to be able to spam out with several casters. Imps can clear the light PD that people generally keep all around, and if they’re not in a position to respond quickly and effectively this will stack up very fast because the imp squads hang around after the fight. If you save up your blood economy for a few turns before an offensive and can do something like spam 3 ??Horde from Hell??s a turn for a few turns what happens is. 3 provinces fall the first turn. Turn 2 it 6 because you have 3 flying imp squads plus 3 more you summon. Turn 3 it's 9. This is contingent on your imps winning with few losses, but that’s pretty viable if you’re hitting the 1-6 PD that tends to be the default most people put up in random provinces. |
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| That's a pretty brutal artillery Tower of Power, but let’s keep stacking. You’ve got some great raid game here, but sometimes you really just need to shut down that enemy cap or important fort. If you’ve not power-spammed ??Rain of Toads?? you’re in for a treat. You should be able to hit an enemy cap with 6 castings all at once, spike the unrest to 200, and disease some premium mages before he can get a dome up. Let's stack it even higher. Those N random Bitch Mothers with thorn armor can cast ??Locust Swarms?? - which is not the sort of thing you want to dump N gems in indiscriminately, but it does apply an additional -50% income to the province targeted as well as some additional unrest so it can be a worthwhile consideration for the first couple turns as you’re spiking up all your imps. Aggressive raiding while axing your opponent’s cap income by 80% can realistically leave them with 0 gold to respond with - which is why you can find yourself with 9 flocks of imps flying around conquering province after province. | That's a pretty brutal artillery Tower of Power, but let’s keep stacking. You’ve got some great raid game here, but sometimes you really just need to shut down that enemy cap or important fort. If you’ve not power-spammed ??Rain of Toads?? you’re in for a treat. You should be able to hit an enemy cap with 6 castings all at once, spike the unrest to 200, and disease some premium mages before he can get a dome up. Let's stack it even higher. Those N random Bitch Mothers with thorn armor can cast ??Locust Swarms?? - which is not the sort of thing you want to dump {{gems>N}} gems in indiscriminately, but it does apply an additional -50% income to the province targeted as well as some additional unrest so it can be a worthwhile consideration for the first couple turns as you’re spiking up all your imps. Aggressive raiding while axing your opponent’s cap income by 80% can realistically leave them with 0 gold to respond with - which is why you can find yourself with 9 flocks of imps flying around conquering province after province. |
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| ====Fear Stacks==== | ====Fear Stacks==== |
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| {{tag>Guides}} | {{tag>Guides ind}} |
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