After this long and detailed presentation of Dragenheim, a short summary of the other nations.

Ochreil

A strange nation of 3 eyed creatures living in caves. They always looked odd to me, and I have no idea from where their creator got the inspiration …

In any case, it is a nation of size 2 and 3 creatures with 3 eyes. All of them have at least 2 and sometimes even 3 attacks. The size 3 ones have pretty good damage for so many attacks, ranging from 17 to 20. The sacreds on their part have 2 attacks, including a 29 pierce magic damage… all in all, they are very killy with a pretty decent armor (usually 15). You don’t want to stay too long in close combat with them…

However, it must be considered that, despite the armor and good HP (more than 25 for the size 3), all of their units are quite vulnerable to elemental attacks : -3 FR, -3 SR, -3 PR, but +10 CR. So, resistant to cold but bad against everything else. The sacreds are a bit different with +25 CR and +10 PR but -5 FR and -5 SR. The sacreds also have a 5% built-in regeneration, useful against chip damage.

About the mages, there are a lot of different ones with different paths and crosspaths, but they are pretty much all level 1. Some common mages can get random D2 or A2 but you have to get to the cap only to have a native N2 or W2 and other level 2s. They can also get to some level 3, but this is very rare… They can have everything except blood, but F and S are pretty rare. All in all, their overall low magic path makes them not so good combat casters as there are not many good lvl 1 combat spells. I suppose the crosspaths can help for forging or point buffing, but I was very unimpressed overrall. The best I saw was some skellespamming for the D2 randoms, and flying thugs.

Last but not least, every single one of Ochreil’s units have Recuperation. Still a good thing, making them almost impervious to disease and making afflictions less of a problem. However, their best thugs, the Heralds, are cap only and have to fight commander points with the 2 other expensive mages…

Also, I have no idea if they have national items or spells, I just felt threatened by the troops and sometimes the thugs.

Drakonia

Drakonia was the original EA nation on which a civil war erupted, seeing the split between them and Dragenheim. They are a dragon nation, just like Dragenheim, that can also awaken the True Blood with Fire and Nature dragons. However, in spite of those similarities, there are several major differences.

First, of all, their basic troops are really not as good as Dragenheim ones. A lot of humans – slaves – or mixbloods (humans with dragon blood). All or those are overrall plain average human troops. However, the mixbloods have some of the native elemental resistances we can expect from dragons, with +5 FR, CR and PR, and better stats. As such they should probably be the bulk of the armies when magic comes online … you also have amongst them, humans and mixbloods alike, good 2-handed weapon and dual-wielding damage dealers.

The sacreds are decent but nothing like dragenheim ones. Size 3, two decent attacks, decent armor, good elemental resistances like the mixbloods, they can sure hold their ground but won’t break the game. Drakonia can also recruit dragon riders, that ride small drakes like the ones you can summon in conjuration. These can add some poison or fire breath attacks to your army.

About the mages, they have casual F2 and N2, and can get F3 and N3 with the cap-only mages. Otherwise, they have a diversity of other level 1 paths with everything but S and B. The cap-only mages are like the Broodmasters and Bluewings of Dragenheim, but with fire breath (the redwings) or poison breath (the greenwings). So those are pretty good thug chassis, and they can also be transformed into the big bad dragons of their kind with the right spell in Ench 5.

Swarmhive

The first of the hives. Those are giant ants (from size 1 to size 4) that can have some freespawn. Some of the ants are like normal ants, but bigger, and some elite ones can even carry some weapons and shields. Some humans are also fanatically devouted to the hive queens and can be recruited as sacreds (the only human troops, in addition to some human mages and commanders).

About the ant troopers, they have several specific abilities :
– All of them are magic beings, which makes them vulnerable to a number of spells
– Also, they are all naturally blind and so can’t be blinded, making Solar Brillance a cast anytime spell
– Several troops have the “Pincer latch” melee attack : it’s an acid attack that can destroy armor … can be deadly against a thug and I lost some vine shield (and the vine shield wielder) because of that
– A number of them have the “Mental shock” attack. It’s like mind blast, but weaker : the paralyze effect is really short and the damage is capped by 1. Also, both effects are MR negates. However, the real power here is not to kill things (though it can happen), but in that a successful hit on a mage will interrupt your spells. So when fighting against them Antimagic is almost mandatory … when you have 100+ mental shockers in the enemy army it can be a real problem.
– Last but not least, they have several bonuses for siege, both in attack (troops and commanders) and defense (mostly commanders). That can really turn the tide in a war with lots of sieges.

The nation can also grow underwater with some native amphibious troops (but you need to go UW first).

About the mages, they have some nifty human S1/E1 mages with an additional random element (F/W/A). Those are the workhorse or their communions with many options. Then to the more powerful mages, you can have some random E2, native N2 (the cap only Hive Princess) and S2 (the cap only Hive Queen) too. Amongst those, you can have some random S3, rare E3s and the N2 can be N3 in rare cases too. Most of the leaders also have a “Mind blast” attack, like the agarthan mind blast.

Last but not least, they have a leader with the Mason ability. As such, they can upgrade their fortresses to citadels, with 750 defense and +2 commander points ! This means that if played properly they can spam a lot of research mages …. and given some of their siege defense abilities, their mage forts can be pretty tough to crack.

Abolethive

And now Abolethive. They are also an Ant nation, but entirely amphibious and dominated by Aboleths. This means they are like R’lyeh but instead of triton slaves they have ant slaves. As such, they have all the advantages of the ants, as stated above for Swarmhive, including the better forts with +2 commander points, and some of the best mages of EA R’lyeh. Also, they don’t do in humans, only ants and Aboleths.

Compared to Swarmhive, their mage lineup doesn’t have the fancy human mages but a lot more high level S. Many S2, some W2, the best mage you can get is a A1 + W3 + S3 with some randoms that can push him up to S5 or W5. The other mages have also access to most other level 1 paths but this is usually random. They don’t have any E or B however.

But, the main strength of Abolethive compared to swarmhive, is that they can buy in any fort the “Marmecoleth supplicant”. These sacred ants are natural communion slaves … and given you can recruit a lot of them wherever you want, Aboleth can easily gather huge communions that have access to several paths (W/E/N/D/A and sometimes F). And given they are sacred, they can also get a bless which opens additional strategies.

Being slaves is the main drawback of this nations as they usually get a low morale. The leaders have max 12 morale, and non sacred troops have a max of 11, and the freespawn get down from 9 to as low as 7. Quite vulnerable to fear plays, especially for the easy-to-scare mages.

Bandar Log, Ermor

Well, if you are a dominions player, you probably already know what they can do …

About Bandar Log, I never had a border with them and they were killed very early by Drakonia and Swarmhive, so not much to say here.

About Ermor, well, they kill all of their population to transform them into undead beings … scary freespawn to whoever is scared of undeads. Now that I write this AAR, I have already fought Sceleria in another game and had time to devise strategies to beat them. But at the time of this game, I wasn’t confident at all and wasn’t sure how I would deal with them if a conflict ever happened…