Sheaim - no training yard?

Greetings!

Firstly, I must compliment all involved in the concept and design of this mod. It is a wonderful piece of work, and I take my hat off to you. You should be rightfully proud of an astounding achievement!

Let me just say I've not had a lot of experience with the mod. I only downloaded the mod a couple of days ago and have just played the elves and Sheaim, and neither of those to a great degree, so apologies if this is a particuarly noobish question.

Anyway, it seems the Sheaim cannot build the training yard, and this would appear to be the basis of all conventional military (swordsmen, pikemen etc). Does this mean the Sheaim have no conventional military other than archers and catapults?

I know the emphasis of the Sheaim is conjuration, but summoning has its limitations, and there seems no conventional military backup. The pyre zombies are cool, but really not something you want on garrison duty. I wonder if I'm missing something here that seems obvious to everyone else!

What do other Sheaim players out there do?

Build planar gates (available with knowledge of the ether). Then the city will randomly spawn creatures under your control to use as your military. You'll get more units as the armageddon counter rises and as you construct the other buildings needed for creatures (such as carnivals and public baths).

Thanks - I saw the planar gate, but it seemed there were pretty tight limits on the number of demons they'll support (one per tower in the empire?). If I understand it right (er... and it may well be that I don't!) then that makes for a pretty small army. Do you have to use a horde of summoned mobs and pyre zombies around this core of demons?

I'm sure you more experienced players have figured this out already, and I do appreciate the advice. Keep it coming

The higher the AC the more summoned creatures will one gate support. I think it gets maxed out by 4 or 5. Look on the forum, it is somewhere described. I recommend using the search button.

you still have Diseased Corpses along with the Zombies (if you go for AV, of course - I like to go along with the BG sometimes). I often got Mobius Witch from the gate and Tar Demons as well. I'm not a huge army guy, but I've managed to get a decent amount of units, not just a few..

Ah, I think I'm beginning to see now. So I want to dedicate myself to the Sheaim objective of bringing about armageddon? Crank out the black magic nodes, raze cities etc, because the higher the counter, the more power?

I had gone with the Overlords religion, since I could get it with much less effort than the Veil, plus I quite like the Drown and the two Overlords heroes, but perhaps I'm better served working towards the Veil instead (or go Overlords to get established and switch later).

Presumably it would also be a good idea to pick up any heroes or extras I can (the three hill giants from the Pact, Abashi from the dragon cult), though I suppose that applies to any civ.

I'm assuming the usual archery units serve as garrisons, with maybe some planar creatures held back as a homeland defense stack, while most of the demons, catapults and summoned beasties serve for offensive forces. I hadn't played with the diseased zombies (only toyed around with the faction at this stage).

Thanks for the tips, chaps. It would seem the Sheaim need a little tighter management than I thought, but I confess I'm becoming seduced by the promise of absolute power. The power! Hmm... maybe I need to have a bit of a lie down.

The Sheaim will get stronger soon-Tar demons will multiply when defeated.

For some reason, those damned things creep me out, even more so than watching the old zombie flicks.

Well, if you go for OO, you have some stong melee units you can rely on, the Stygian guards (from fanatacism) and Eidolons (from Malevolent designs). So you could get by as Sheaim fine with a lower AC level.
In any case, you will want to use summoners/conjurers; it's much of the reason to play as them.

Make sure you build the Prophecy of Ragnarök.

Chaos Marauders from planar gates are excellent melee troops, especially if you get them nice and early - the Sheaim should be beelining Knowledge of the Ether pretty early for them and to get adepts going. They can still make use of the bronze and iron weapons too (as can tar demons) - forges and metals are handy to beef them up.

Succubi and Chaos Marauders get the weapon upgrades. Tar demons do not. Tar demons are effectively like longbowmen that you get early and for free.

I've found that when playing with the Sheim that my army is significantly larger than usual, but of slightly lower quality units due to not receiving +xp or +bonus promotions. Typically I will only be building adepts, ritualists, and archery class units throughout the game. With an AC getting up to the early 70's you'll be producing more Chaos Marauders, Revelers, and Succubi all of which are roughly equivalent to macemen and rangers than you would by having all of those cities building military units.

in the early game rush around pyre zombies are a very frightening force to be reckoned with. whatever you do though , do not use pyre zombies as stacks , they work sooo much better as lone pillagers.

the order of shiam units that you need to watch ...
1 - pyre zombies
2 - conjurers
3 - ritualists
4 - eater of souls

yes yes yes , ritualists are a religious unit , however , in the hands of the shiam they are sick .... and they upgrade to scarey crazy.

daladinn said:

yes yes yes , ritualists are a religious unit , however , in the hands of the shiam they are sick .... and they upgrade to scarey crazy.

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Translation: It's true that you can only use ritualists if you follow a particular religion, but they're very powerful when used by the Sheaim. Also, the unit they upgrade to is incredibly good.

You mean incredibly evil? Still, they are powerful under Sheaim control.

MagisterCultuum said:

You mean incredibly evil? Still, they are powerful under Sheaim control.

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That too.

I'm playing a nice sheaim game now, so I have some tips:

- beeline to knowledge of ether

- build (many) adepts instead of warriors, adepts get promotions with time, promote them with combat V, so they can get even more exp by fighting barbs

- if you can get catacomb libralus wonder, it'll be very useful

- go for necromancy -- build death node, now each of your adepts can summon a skeleton

- build planar gates when economical suitable (they cost as half an early wonder) -- remember that early on you'll need carnival (marauders - very useful, if you get them early, they extremely strong) or mage guild (witches -- their random promotions are nice, I got inspiration spell earlier than I built libraries)

- next step is summoning, which gives you summoners with L2 summons (nightmares, etc.), and veil with religious discipline (ritualists -- their powers are mentioned above)

- finally you want to beeline for eaters of dreams (ethereal call, with good timing you can use infernal grimoire to get it right after soul debt), high priests and inquisitors (almost infinite supply of L3 summons -- try to have a bit diversity in them, because of resistant enemies, at least fire elementals, wraights and pit beasts), try to be faster than shadows appear, who make it much harder for you arcane units (strategies against them are disscused elsewhere)

Meanwhile you have to keep an eye on your economy and technologies connected. There are more things to do. E.g. sanitation is useful for succubi, you can build a dragon, your summons can be stronger through towers.

i have found the sheaim actually perfect for defensive style player. rushing planar gates in every city means you dont have to worry about your defenses and you can fully concentrate on building up your research and keeping others from attacking you while you raise the armageddon counter. if you manage to avoid wars you should have more than enough units in every city sooner or later. rushing all the hero units available also is a good thing to do because you can use them for offense along with eater of dreams and keep the planar gate creatures in defense.

I recall a time when playing the shiem was about the closest thing to vanilla you could get. Fire sure changed them around a lot. Anyways, one thing I would like to add is that I agree go for necromancy and get a death node, by then you should have a mobius witch. Save up a couple of upgrades before hand then spend them to get contagion, nothing better then having an army of demons unless they are fighting a bunch of desiesed units, further you will have access to contagion well in advance of when you should.

Miloe said:

i have found the sheaim actually perfect for defensive style player. rushing planar gates in every city means you dont have to worry about your defenses and you can fully concentrate on building up your research and keeping others from attacking you while you raise the armageddon counter. if you manage to avoid wars you should have more than enough units in every city sooner or later. rushing all the hero units available also is a good thing to do because you can use them for offense along with eater of dreams and keep the planar gate creatures in defense.

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Sounds like you play a bit differently than I do (or use very different settings - perhaps a fast game speed?). At Armageddon counter 75+ I was destroying my own weaker planar gate creatures just to keep my economy level, using almost nothing but Planar gate creatures and summons for attack, and well before I hit 50, 1/2 my attack force (and virtually all the defensive force) was Planar Gate Creatures.

By the way, Chaos Marauder rocks! - No military support cost