Theorycrafting Marverni

[mathematiciansPlayStrategyGames]

So I've been doing some SP testing of Marv and I think I may have a new pretender build that efficiently merges the standard sequani spam and boar spam strats and provides a good segway into late-game magic - covering the Marverni weakness in magic depth.

First lets look at some relatively well-known pretender builds.

1. Thrice-Scaled Boar
Dom7 O3P3C1G3L3M3 Imprisoned Thrice-Horned Boar

This build is able to scrape every last bit of use out of the land it has. But it suffers against heavy cav indies when expanding and easily falls to a bless rush or awake supercombatant pretender. Furthermore, in the late game it will be hampered in reaching the higher level spells by its shallow magic paths. So it has to put all of its dice into a successful midgame stellar cascades assault that seizes enough land and magic sites to last long enough to boost or empower itself into the late game magic apocalypse.

2. Fountain of Bloody Murder
Dom7 T1P1C1G3L3M3 Imprisoned Fountain of Blood with B9

This build is a synergy between the boar and sequani strategies. It makes boar warriors good enough for smashing indies in the early game and can use the savings from less casualties and more land to make almost as many sequani as (1). The blessed boar warriors provide at least something to deter invaders from an early game rush, which gives you more time to diplomatically convince your enemies to kill each other instead of you. You probably want to go Evo6 before Conj6 because it will make your sequani horde capable of defending your borders or attacking a weak foe immediately - rather than having to wait another several months to mass enough boar freespawn from their summoned mothers. In late game the boar freespawn make great meatshields for your magic artillery.

3. Fountain of Clean and Bloodless Murder
Dom7 T2P1C2G2L3M3 Imprisoned Oracle with W9A4

This is a more doctrinaire boar spam pick. Your boar warriors are really good with this build and your boars will trample earlier and more often. The problem is that you have to single-mindedly rush Conj6 and there will be a point of vulnerability where your boar warriors are insufficient for an early-midgame assault and the creation of your first wave of freespawn boars.

4. Sssssupercompatant
Awake Earth Serpent
This is an interesting but problematic choice no matter the supercombatant chassis - but the snake seems the least bad option for a Marverni supercombatant god. The problem is that you either have to sacrifice scales and not go full sequani spam or sacrifice magic and ignore boars (and lose out on a nice bless for your god).

Of these builds, (1) is utterly dependent on a very successful midgame, (3) leaves a dangerous opening for an attack, and (4) more or less requires you to do something many factions do better. (2) Seems the most promising, which is probably why it (actually a slightly different version) was the first build to be suggested to me when I asked for advice on Marv. And it works well. Boar warriors are good for expansion, the sequani multiply, and then the cascades and trampling sacreds steamroll the opposition.

There is just one problem with the Fountain of Blood (and it is fine for there to be one - every faction should have a weak spot). The late game is pretty incoherent. The pretender contributes very little extra once it is released - it is wasted on blood hunting when it should be casting high level blood spells (but can't because you need your research elsewhere). Blood magic is an afterthought for this faction - it only needs a small stream of blood income to boost dominion.

I was looking for three things in my hybrid design:
- It must have good enough scales + early expansion to spam sequani.
- It must have magic paths that synchronize well with high Conj and Evo.
- It should have a good bless for both boar warriors and boars.

So let's try the following:
Dom7 T1P0C1G3L3M3 Imprisoned Demilich with D9N4

It has the holy Marv trifecta of G3L3M3 with only T1 (which works well with luch) and C1 - so it can pump out sequani with +3 research very fast. It has a major-minor bless for its boar warriors that makes badly hurt ones kill more in berserker mode before they die. Its boars wont kill as much without B9 - but they remain effective meatshields for your deadliest weapon - stellar cascades. Death weapons make you a less attractive target for enemies reliant on woundable SCs without inbuilt or easily accessible affliction healing.

You do lose the blood vengeance on your boars - but they trade it in for hurting SCs - and late game SCs are every but as annoying as high level evocation spells.

The late game is also better for you. You can summon lamias to branch into death and get low level blood magic for hunting. You gain access to more thug and SC chasses (like wraith lord) - meaning that you can diversify your SC builds better to the circumstances.

I'm curious as to what the community thinks of this build.

Note: This is really the most welcoming game cummunity I've ever found and I wish I hadn't been a lurker for so long.

[Mormacil]

Lategame SC in my experience are rare and Marverni has several other tools to deal with them. Astral gives you Soul Slay and Stellar Cascade Spam. The latter being useless against 0 Enc SCs but again those have other weaknesses. Earth gives you Petrify, which even when it fails paralizes your target. Combine bot to get Gift from the Heavens. Further you got readily access to Golems that can be geared as counter SCs. Taking Death to take on SC is totally unneccesary.

My last succesful build was an Imprisoned N3B3 Master Enchanter | D5O2P3C1G3L3M3.
Now I can agree it doesn't need O2 and it's close to your boar but it has some key differences I think. It's not gonna do battlefield wide evocations. But it's mobile and it can bloodhunt outside your capital. N3B3 gives access to B boosters, from there you can easily break into blood. N5 is also in your grasp easily, so you can get all the way to high N spells like Gift of Health, usefull for when you're mindhunting.

I'd also say without B9 focussing on boarspam is useless. They're to vulnerable to magic to use without B9. Low MR and Prot is just begging for evocations. They lose against Vine Shields, Vine Ogres and other use of your limited N gems.

[mathematiciansPlayStrategyGames]

Your criticism is very informative - but boarspam for me has always been about the meatshield, rather than the damage. Yes, Evoc kills them like flies, but it also kills human infantry like flies. And human infantry is expensive in gold that in the late game could be better spent on more sequani, more druids, more elder druids, and more forts to spam them from. And they are an extremely cost efficient chaff unit because they are summoned as freespawn by Boars of Carnutes.

I am not using boars to kill - I am using them to die and they will take an extra 13HP of damage before they pass away (33HP total, which is way more than humans have). It is disappointing that they lose the blood vengeance, but cascades can shut down magic users as efficiently as their troops.

The death weapons bless is less on their behalf than on behalf of boar warriors. It boosts their damage in early expansion and the SCs which I am most worried about are not late game summons but awake pretenders and sacred giants (especially Niefels). It significantly increases the odds of inflicting a crippling wound like blindness or feeble-mindedness - encouraging SC-rushers to skip my kingdom for greener pastures long enough for the cascades to come online. Even if they attack anyway, boar warriors are the closest thing Marv has to a giant counter and having strong ones makes giants less threatening.

[Mormacil]

I mean, obviously they're only a meat shield, but without the B9 to keep them alive Barechests and Vine Ogres are superior. Sure lategame you run a surplus in your investment but that takes time, time you could spent to wage midgame wars.

As for shutting down magic users, the issue is range. Your need to place your mages quite close to the front to shut down backline evo casters.

I barely if ever recruit Boar Warriors. And my last Marverni game I beaten a Niefelheim while I had C1, he had Illwinter up and I had no bless. I used bows on my commanders to blind or feeblemind his SCs. When I could trap them Stellar Cascade shut them down. But with N9 they tend to outheal mundane damage dealers. Mind Hunters punished any unescorted low MR caster near my borders. Geared Tartarian? Shame if you forgot that amulet of anti magic...

Still my most succesfull use of Marverni was this:
Niefelheim lost 298 of their 303 warriors. Two Mages of Spring, two Frost Fiends and a Yeti escaped.
We lost an Elder Druid, 4 stargazers, the Camazotz, 3 ghouls, a wolf, 3 Spring Hawks, 10 Dispossessed Spirits. We gained 126 units.
The stormed a long besieged castle. We hit them with several Master Enslave on turn 1, by the end of turn 2 his army started to rout. The Elder Druid and the Stargazers exploded as Communion Slaves. I had a squad of 8 Elder Druids decked in gear, Rune Smashers and all. Four were slaves and four were masters with matrixes. They were my tactical nuke to defend my border in big battles. It was a satisfying battle :P

[mathematiciansPlayStrategyGames]

Your anecdote certainly covers late game warfare; I neither need at all or use much the boar warriors late in the game - we are talking Year 1 here, not Year 3: before you have the cascade communion, before you have massed Elder Druids or gotten a strong gem economy or even researched cascades. The goal here is to have something to serve as a stopgap measure if Niefelheim decides that you are first on the menu for its rush - and if that happens you need something with teeth to supplement your spam while your stellar cascades manhattan project rushes toward completion. As an added bonus, boar warriors with armor piercing death weapons and tons of extra HP before death do a great job of killing indies.

[Staythecourse]

I never really bought B9 boars. There are just too many ways to get around it with MR that low. For me, boars are mainly good for being meat chaff . . . that also roll over size two enemies. Boars in sufficient numbers really mess up nations like Ulm, without gaining much at all from B9.

Actually, I just don't buy B9 in much of anything. I think it's hugely overrated on everything besides sacred demons, Mictlan/Xibalba/Lanka, and as a part of MA Ermor's tribless.

[Ica]

I feel like the only point with B9 boars is that they can punish your opponent for using some strategies that your Stargazers are very weak against (RoS and so on). I don't anyway think that there's any way to make boars actually good in combat. They'll always suck. B9 at least makes them sometimes hurt someone when they die.

That being said, I've always played Marverni with full scales and it's felt pretty good.

[Red Bat]

Not the biggest fan of Marverni in general, but I wouldn't think you'd get much use out of boars without B9 at least. I also disagree with the blood fountain idea that gets thrown around a lot. Marverni has no H3 mages and your prophet can't be everwhere at once.

I wouldn't use either of the two guides you mentioned as anything more than a general guideline. Both are fairly old, and having read both I don't think either are really optimized.

You could go Lord of the Wild with B9 and either N4 or N9, which turns your boars into pretty useful evocation catchers. That's about all you can expect out of them though. Still, whatever bless you get for the boars, will also be used for your boar warriors, which is something to keep in mind, as B9 N9 is useful but far from the best bless for boar warriors.

Marverni really wants magic scales and at least growth 1. Preferably some production as well. You also need decently high dominion for boar spam or boar warrior spam to be effective. So you are probably better off going with a single major bless and a minor bless. Marverni's basic troops and even their mages cost very little gold, so you can pay for some of this with turmoil 1-2.

You could also forget the boars entirely and just get W9 for your boar warriors, which lets you take a few more scales. W9 boar warriors are very cost effective expanders. This also lets you afford magic 3, which will get you stellar cascades really quickly thanks to all the sequani you make.

Another thing you could do, is use Thrice Horned Boar as an awake expander with awe. You can again tank Turmoil to pay for this, but your scales will not be ideal and you don't have much reason to make boars or even boar warriors. However you can get a fort up faster in most cases, and will have a lot more provinces.

I could be wrong about this, but I don't think boars benefit from death or fire weapons because of trample. So that bless is wasted on them.

[Ica]

I'd really avoid taking an awake expander as Marverni. I feel like the nation already expands very well and should have no issues getting 15-20 provinces during the first year if you have production scales. More provinces than that and your neighbours will gang up on you, and there's a point in the early game where you're very vulnerable against that.

[Red Bat]

Originally posted by Ica:

I'd really avoid taking an awake expander as Marverni. I feel like the nation already expands very well and should have no issues getting 15-20 provinces during the first year if you have production scales. More provinces than that and your neighbours will gang up on you, and there's a point in the early game where you're very vulnerable against that.

Yeah they don't get much out of an awake expander as a lot of other nations such as Arcocephale. How effective it is depends on the meta of the multiplayer community you happen to be playing with. But it's certainly a viable alternative given that Marverni can afford to tank at least one scale to pay for it.