Talk to Ashiel About Anything Mark II

[Ashiel]

Sure, pass it over. I know a few people who play it, some even mod it.

LA Ulm for life.

[MA] Akaia, Eternal Life Through Death (Google Drive Link)
The Akaians are based on a country from my campaigns. They specialize in necromancy and astrology, and use a workforce of undead for labor (in D&D, mindless creatures have a +0 modifier in most mental skills, putting them on par with your average laborer, and are perfectly capable of common tasks such as "Lay the bricks in this manner, this high, this long...", etc).

Nation Overview
Akaians are a magical civilization that relies on the undead to fight their battles and drive their industry. They have several unique quirks that influence the way that they play.

Commanders
Akaians have no standard commanders. Instead, they have four types of magicians. Each serves a specific purpose.

• Necromancers Sacred Death 2 mages. These can be ordered to produce 10 soulless swordsmen. The necromancers are the primary spellcasters for the Akaians (ideal for casting spells like horde of skeletons, shadow bolt, or invulnerability) and are a staple of any Akaian army.
• Priestesses Sacred Divine 2 priests. These can be ordered to produce 10 skeletal archers. The priestesses of Akaia serve as a supplementary force to armies.
• Artificers Random 1/1/1 mages. Artificers randomly receive 3 points distributed between 5 schools of magic (fire, water, air, earth, or death). They receive a discount when creating magic items and treat their magic paths as 1 higher when creating magic items. They do not summon units, but being present in a province allows the recruitment of Undead Laborers (a very important unit for the Akaians). Their research ability is not affected by magic scales.
• Seers Astral 2 mages. These units reduce the chances of bad events in a province by 10%. Akaia's sacred units are automatically blessed in any battle they enter alongside a seer (similar to entering the battle with your pretender present). Supplemental unit for sacred-heavy armies.
• Dreadnaught The dreadnaught is an immense national commander that cannot be recruited but must be summoned. Summoning a Dreadnaught requires research 5 in Enchantment and costs 15 death gems. They are an ideal unit for thugging and have a natural 20% regeneration (making them heal about 8 HP / turn).
• Others Akaians have no national scouts or regular commanders. Instead, they must rely on local provinces for these, or more likely research Conjuration 1 to summon Black Servants to use as scouts, and Enchantment 2 to summon Mound Kings to use as primary commanders (the mages of Akaia lack the proper leadership to form their armies into formations, and they cannot enter water without magic items, making Mound Kings an ideal basic commander for their undead armies or for exploring oceanic provinces).

Economy
Akaians work very differently from other nations when it comes to their economies.

• Gems Akaians begin the game with sites granting 3 astral and 3 death gems.
• Gold Akaian receive no gold from controlling provinces and are not strongly affected by economy scales.
• Undead Labor As long as an Akaian Artificer is located in a province, once per turn that province can produce an undead laborer. Each undead laborer controlled increases national income by 5 gold, and provides 5 supplies and 5 resources to the province it is located in. They are ill suited for combat and should be escorted away from battle whenever possible.

Units
Akaians field undead soldiers. They are not paid in gold and as such are limited only in province resources and recruitment points. Akaia's undead armies are well armed compared to common long dead.

• Akaian Longdead Akaia has several skeletal units. Swordsmen (sword & shield), Foebreakers (greatsword), Spearmen (spear & shield), Longspearmen (longspear & shield), Archers (short bow & dagger), and Cavalry (lance & shield). All but the archers wear iron hauberks and helms.
• Akaian Soulless Akaian Soulless have natural regeneration, which makes them ideal front-line chaff units to hold lines, even if they aren't likely to score many kills with their combat skills (or lack thereof). They come in two basic flavors: militia (spear & shield, leather armor) and swordsmen (sword & shield, iron hauberk).

Sacred Units
The sacred units of Akaia must be summoned with their national summons.

• Corpse Knights Corpse knights are heavily armored sacred soulless that are sacred and lack the undisciplined quality.
• Knights Akaian Knights are sacred longdead on heavily armored horses that are stronger than normal cavalry.
• Longdead Marksmen Marksmen are sacred longdead archers that wield longbows & broadswords and are armored in iron hauberks and helms.

National Spells
Akaians have a few nation specific spells associated with calling their special units.

• Animate Undead Laborers Enchantment 0; Death 1; 20 death gems; Calls 3+ undead laborers.
• Animate Corpse Knights Enchantment 0; Death 1; 5 death gems; Calls 15+ corpse knights.
• Animate Longdead Marksmen Enchantment 0; Death 1; 5 death gems; Calls 15+ longdead marksmen.
• Animate Longdead Knights Enchantment 0; Death 1; 5 death gems; Calls 6+ corpse knights.
• Call Dreadnaught Enchantment 5; Death 3; 15 death gems; Calls 1 Dreadnaught commander.

Province Defense
Akaian province defense has 1 necromancer + soulless warriors and akaian archers. Advanced province defense adds an assortment of longdead and cavalry. Underwater province defense replaces necromancers with mound kings and archers with spearmen.

Pretender Gods
Akaia is a nation ruled by mages rather than gods. As a result, the only pretender choices they have are mostly rainbow pretenders (master enchanter, crone, frost father, master sorcerer), and undead pretenders (master lich, lich queen, ghost king, vampire queen, and demilich).

Basic Summary of Play
Akaians begin play with a single necromancer with an assortment of soulless warriors, one artificer, and 25 undead laborers (giving them a national income of 100 gold). You'll want to garrison the laborers on your first turn (you do not want them to be destroyed). While you're at it, you will probably want to set recruitment of undead laborers to 1/turn (you can only produce 1/turn per province) and never remove them from the que.

You will use Necromancers and Priestesses to roll over most province defense. Their ability to call up hordes of basic units on the front lines rivals the Ashen Empire of Ermor, and most province defense will route against the undead hordes. Because commanders are initially in short supply (you may only produce 1/turn from your capital until you can build up other provinces with castles, labs, and temples) you'll probably rely heavily on 1-2 necromancers or a necro/priestess combo for taking independent provinces.

However, taking provinces is of little benefit without producing more Artificers. You must have an artificer sitting on a province to be able to produce undead laborers from that province, and without undead laborers, your gold production will not increase (though you will be able to search for gem sites). As a result, it's a good idea early on to have a steady production of artificers and form a trade-line (moving one artificer from your capital to a new province, and continuing this into each new province whenever your forward army is taking a new province).

Your basic undead units do not cost gold (only your commanders who are admittedly pretty expensive) but do require resources to produce (they are better armored than the rusty longdead of freespawn nations), and you will not be able to recruit many of them (especially if you tank your eco-scales) without a large number of undead laborers sitting on the province. With many laborers, you will find you're able to field any unit you want limited only by your recruitment points.

Gold gain is slow at first, and you will be broke early game. However, as you begin producing more and more undead laborers, your gold production will eventually grow to hundreds or even thousands of gold per turn, and you will build castles, labs, and temples en mass by mid to late game, and have enormous hordes of province defense on your lands, making you a very hard nut to crack later on. You can use the Animate Undead Laborers national spell to try to jumpstart your economy early on. It's expensive at 20 death gems per cast, but it's a permanent 15-20 gold per turn increase when you cast it. If you have an awake pretender with very high Death magic you can very quickly snowball due to the extra workers produced by mages with exceptionally high death magic.

General Strategies and Scales
The following are some sample strategies I've been playing around with and using during their development.

Undead Flood The basic strategy that works well vs the AI is produce lots of necromancers, rush Enchantment 5, and just drown everything in undead. You will have an enormous army of soulless swordsmen that you can replenish losses in a turn or two, while your necromancers spam spells like animate dead and horde of skeletons to really bury your enemies with the dead (but not for long). You can include a priestess (probably made a prophet) to provide archers and build temples while you go.

With the above strategy, you can focus less on making your blessings super cool and probably won't use your national summons much. Instead, you might consider pretender blesses that provide passive boosts to your sacred units (walking abilities for moving over odd province types like mountains, inspirational presence, undead command, spirit sight, etc).

You can also pretty much tank your scales like Ermor when playing this way since you won't care much about your population or productivity.

Super Sacreds This strategy is slower to get rolling that the former, but you can with a little foresight lead the former right into this one. Build your pretender with crazy good bless effects and then try to spam your national summons as often as possible to get large hordes of sacred undead and stick a Seer in your army and watch the fun begin.

(Variant) Frightful Marksmen Build your pretender around a ranged attacker bless (lots of +precision and range from Air) and lots of weapon enhancements from other paths (magic weapons from Astral, fire, frost, or shock weapons from the elemental paths, Withering from Death, Poison from Nature, etc). Then spam Animate Longdead Marksmen like it was going out of style and rain super accurate magic doomsday arrows onto your enemies en mass.

(Variant) Warning Explosive Hazard Build your pretender to punish anyone who strikes or kills your sacred units. Good effects include hot and cold auras, charged bodies, death explosion, etc. Add in some elemental resistances or even Reforming Flesh if you have points to spare.

Proceed to spam animate corpse knight and similar national summons and watch the hilarious bloodbath that occurs when your ranks collide. Tank your scales, take a rainbow pretender (such as master sorcerer) and grab Death Explosion (fire), Charged Bodies (Air), Chill Aura (Water), Fire & Shock Resist (Earth), Minor and Major Magic Resist (Astral), and Reforming Flesh (Death).

Your corpse knights will lumber forward relentlessly. Anything that gets near them is overwhelmed by their overlapping cold auras. Anyone that strikes them causes electricity to burst from the horde. Any of them die and they explode for fire damage in an AoE. Their resistances protect them from domino-dying, and reforming flesh mixes with their natural regen to give them a 20% health regen (making them just soak and soak and soak).

Blood for the Blood God
While Akaia isn't really naturally suited to blood magic, you can definitely fake it by grabbing the vampire queen. In this route you actually push your growth scales hard, and give your vampire queen 6 death, 6 nature, 6 blood scales, and choose stygian flesh, barkskin or recuperation, and strong vitae x6 or strength of the flesh and strong vitae x3.

Plays much as you would normally, except your pretender can immediately set out to shoring up the magic paths you don't normally have access to (nature and blood), and you can empower your other units with blood slaves to create new blood mages. Your vampire queen is quite formidable on her own and immortal, and periodically spawns vampire units under her control (which can be given to your other commanders).

I chose Nature because I think it's pretty fun to grab Thaumaturgy 5 and get Gift of Reason, which can allow you to turn your vampire spawn into commanders, and there's even a few easter eggs for those playing around with Gift of Reason with the nation.

Strong Vitae just combos nicely with the natural regeneration possessed by Corpse Knights, as does Recuperation or Barkskin, and Stygian Flesh makes them all but invulnerable to most mundane troops.