So I have 2 games with Pyrene in EA now and I am kinda confused. What am I supposed to do with these guys?
I think you want a bit of scale especially gold and Rec Point so Order is a must. The Mairu Giants will be your bread and butter and they are rather expensive. Regarding Bless you could either focus on SC Bless or Troop Bless but not both, your SCs are giants while your troops are basically a Sacred, better EA Heavy Infantry. I am not even sure if the Sacred troops are even scaleable enough to be worth taking more candles. They just die too easily and they are cap only.
Expansion is rather easy so long you are not swamped with Shades. The Giants just murder everything, the cheap troops with net are amazing against anything that's not Trogoldytes. But here lies the first problem. Unlike most other cave nation I think you really REALLY want to expand up the ground. Your cap only mage is amazing (Sorginaks) but you non Cap Mage (Mairu E1 and E1?1 Shaman) sucks and you want to get an unforted fortress to get the neat mages. This means stepping on other people toes early probably. The other problem is if you don't get good access to forests or cave entrance. It gonna screw you up.
First war unless against Elves or better Giant Nation is probably very winnable from pure troop power and raw HP. The problem is end of year 2 onwards. Suddenly everybody cut your giants like hot knives through butter. This means you really really want Alt 6 and 7 for the big Nat Prot buff as the giant troops are effectively unarmored? These 2 games I am going for Cons 5 for that sweet Jentil bonus and thugging but this feels like a waste of RP considering by Year 3 those singular thugs suddenly is very vulnerable to counter thug or just mages while your troops just die without Alteration buffs? Is going Cons 5 early a trap here?
I had a look at them when picking a nation for our EA game and they look weak. Only thing they have is cap only giants the troops don't seem interesting either. And no summons to speak of.
With that in mind I'd tailor my pretender towards a very heavy giant thug bless for cap only and rec anywhere giants. Larger, regen, awe, ethereal, resistances, fire shield - I'd pick from among those blesses, probably dormant if expansion is indeed easy for them (haven't tested). Once your pretender wakes up go kill someone with cons3 items and alt3 blesses.
If you find yourself in caves with other nations you MUST kill them ASAP, both Agartha and Xibalba outscale you easily. For Agartha I'd just rush with troops, your troops are weak but his are even worse.
As for mid and late game you have none as a nation so the pretender has to provide that too. This means high astral and high death are preferred.
Do you think it's possible for MA abysia to beat MA agartha underground? Or should I just ask hosts to spawn me above ground. I had fun in my Ermor game but I want to try something without slow ass research too. Abysia is my next choice but I heard it's near impossible to beat agartha down there. And cavemen also fuck over your expansion as abysia too.
First I ever hear about that being an issue.
The advantage of being in a death match (locked in one big cave or big lake with one-two nations) is the fact that you know who you are fighting and can build accordingly.
Abysia has heavily armored hard hitting troops while Agartha has low def targets with decent armor. Its a good match-up especially since classic Agarthan early game counter to rush - magma kids - won't work on you at all.
Just tailor your bless towards killing them, if you feel like you need extra help get awake pretender and tank scales.
Why would indie cavemen be an issue, sure they hit hard but you do too and they have shit prot.
The main issue I hear is how agartha can suicide bomb with earthquake since it's only evo 5. It does a billion damage underground and armor wont save anyone really. Abysia can kill cavemen if they make the cheaper slave units to outnumber them, but the expensive units seemed to trade 1:1 with even numbers, and it's hard to tell exactly how many cavemen are in a province so it's gotten me wiped a few times expanding early. I've had way more success spawning above ground.
EQ in caves is indeed an issue but the cave collapse effect only covers 10% of battlefield, so depending on RNG it can either absolutely murder your army (if the 10% is your tiles) or don't do anything (when it covers empty tiles). In my experience however its overstated and overblown.
Also evo5 is way too deep for a rush/knife fight situation, the war in this setting usually starts right away, often even before expansion is finished. We are talking one capital fort vs one capital fort, often with recruiting indies to boost numbers.
Finally expanding in caves is very hard for everyone, that includes cave nations, but Abysia should have a better time with it than Agartha.
Pro tip BTW: attack provinces with scouts set to retreat, thats 100% accurate scouting. Trusting on map scouting is a recipe for disaster.
Another tip for Abysia: you can recruit a few assassins and assassinate all indie commanders in provinces then take them with one unit since they will rout leaderless.
