Marignon MA balance question

[kerpowski]

Spent my first few games learning mechanics, now trying to understand faction balance. It seems like the Marignon faction in Middle Age is somewhat OP:

• strong priests/inquisitors
  
• cheap crossbowmen
  
• strong, not extremely expensive cavalry
  
• strong forts + siege/defence with architects
  
• assassins

I'm sure I'm missing something here (slower start in early game maybe?) but I can't tell what it is offhand.

[torindechoza]

flagellants are the main selling point

[kerpowski]

Originally posted by Torin:

flagellants are the main selling point

Makes sense, cheap and sacred, but what is the faction's major downside?

[wilson.max]

Marignon has some strong points, but it also has incredibly narrow magic, resource-expensive troops (most relevant during early expansion--you have to either invest in Prod scales or resign yourself to a slowish expansion), and fragile human mages who are also rather expensive. Marignon is good at fire magic, but fire magic is vulnerable to rain counters, and *because* Marignon is so narrow, anyone it might fight knows to be preparing fire counters already, e.g. forging Fire Plate for their own thugs.

In theory Marignon has access to Astral magic too, and to a degree even Earth and Air, but neglecting Harbingers for a second: if you're not using the Fire magic on a Witch Hunter you're just using a hideously-overpriced 185 gold S1 mage. Compare that to a 35 gold Sauromatian Soothsayer: Marignon's astral magic is more than five times as expensive! Earth and air even moreso. Therefore, an enemy who is prepared to deal with fire magic puts you at an extreme disadvantage w/rt magery.

Harbingers bring A3 magic, but they're not exactly cheap, in research or in pearls. And they are Marignon's only real access to a thug chassis; and Marignon can't forge very good gear for them without relying on independents or disciples.

Marignon is a fun nation but they're definitely not OP.

[Gopblin]

The downside is lackluster initial expansion?
Also, not sure how to make flagellants any good. Even with incarnate blesses, they're hardly powerhouses, and you pay through the nose for that. With minor blesses, they're mostly worthless, with the exception of Charge Body hilarity.

[Gopblin]

Also, as pointed out above, Fire is easily counterable. Say, the opponent knows Marignon is in the game, so they take +15 fire resist and +3 MR minor blesses on their sacred troops and mages. What then?

[Arkrow XIV]

Originally posted by Gopblin:

Also, as pointed out above, Fire is easily counterable. Say, the opponent knows Marignon is in the game, so they take +15 fire resist and +3 MR minor blesses on their sacred troops and mages. What then?

You still do communions, or use astral

[Mormacil]

Originally posted by Aird:

Originally posted by Gopblin:

Also, as pointed out above, Fire is easily counterable. Say, the opponent knows Marignon is in the game, so they take +15 fire resist and +3 MR minor blesses on their sacred troops and mages. What then?

You still do communions, or use astral

Severely overpriced for astral magic.

[Gopblin]

Originally posted by Aird:

Originally posted by Gopblin:

Also, as pointed out above, Fire is easily counterable. Say, the opponent knows Marignon is in the game, so they take +15 fire resist and +3 MR minor blesses on their sacred troops and mages. What then?

You still do communions, or use astral

+3 MR. And yeah, a lot of other nations do communions better. Basically, Marignon are strong, but so are many MA nations.

[peterebbesen]

Marignon is a fun mid-tier nation in MA, but one that is easy to play because it has a strong focus.

It has a nice selection of basic troops that cover most needs. The one huge lack is an archer that can fire every combat round; Crossbowmen are all very well and good for hurting armoured units, but when using Flaming Arrows in battle (which you should with all nations that can do so) archers are generally to be preferred.

Its sacreds are mostly decent: Knights of the Chalice are expensive in both gold, recruitment points, and resources for a unit with only 14hp that is easily wiped out by elemental magic, but they can be useful. It gets a summonable angel thug, the Angel of Fury, at a very decent astral cost, and also has access to an overpriced Seraph if an SC is needed in the endgame with the national spell (Advantage, it doesn't require that much astral to summon and comes with a bunch of lesser angels. Disadvantage, it is more expensive in astral pearls than the usual approach of Wishing for a Seraph and GoRring it.)

The sacred that really stands out, apart from the angel thug, is the flagellant due to it getting 2 attacks, having extremely low gold, resource, and recruitment cost, and being recruitable anywhere you have a temple - it is trivial to amass large numbers of them and replace them as needed.

So MA Marignon is best played with either a strong offensive blessing to get the most out of Flagellants or as scales/blessing focusing on the knights and the thugs; The Dom5 changes and the bonuses to astral blessings makes going with Etherealness + offensive fire blessing very, very, tempting as that would provide Flagellants all the defense they need since there are only few enemies in MA wielding magic weapons. Then again, loading down on offense and giving them swiftness might also be nice. But experiment. It is not the only way to go.

So those are all nice things; The troops aren't the best in MA by a fair shot, but they are decent and one can get good use of blessings.

And there's one thing you do better than most others in MA: Destroy undead.

Assassins are of course a nice option to have; They are not particularly good assassins, but only a few nations get them natively at all, so definitely a plus.

On the flip side, one of the things that makes MA Marignon easy for new players is also its greatest weakness: it is a very narrow nation in terms of magic.

You've got holy, astral, fire, and more fire, and that's about it apart from a smidgeon of air and earth on about half of your slow-to-recruit capital-only Grand Masters. While fire and astral are both very useful in combat and have nice rituals and can craft nice items, indeed, astral is often considered the strongest end-game magic, it is still only a very limited selection that leaves huge holes in the magical capabilities of the nation.

To make it worse none of the two paths it is good at is one of those good for climbing the summoning pole and diversifying into other magics - that's what death and nature are great at and you don't have either unless you get it on your pretender or get lucky with independents.

You are seldom faced with existential questions regarding how to use your mages (flaming arrows, kill it with fire either alone or in communions, mass soul slay, master enslave, whatever), but this also means you have very limited options for buffing the defenses of your armies, leaving them vulnerable to most types of magic while many of your magic options are severely degraded if an enemy brings fire magic counters such as resistance enchantments, rainy weather, hitting important provinces where large fights will occur with murdering winter to kill the temperature scale before combat etc.

The latter issue with magic counters is mostly a multiplayer issue, though, because any human player fighting Marignon - or about to do so - will know what counters to bring to the fight if possible. The AI is not that competent.

[Vini]

Wouldn't exploding flagellants be a nice strategy?

[Fleshbits]

I plaed them in my first game and they didn't seem stronger or weaker than any other faction I tried. However, I am a super noob.

Everyone has some strong points and some weak points.

[dyslexicfaser]

Originally posted by vini.jc:

Wouldn't exploding flagellants be a nice strategy?

Sure, if you want to mess around in SP. Take 10 fire resist though, or the first arrow will light off your flagellant army in a glorious chain fireball that will hurt no one.

[Fortuna]

Originally posted by dyslexicfaser:

Sure, if you want to mess around in SP. Take 10 fire resist though, or the first arrow will light off your flagellant army in a glorious chain fireball that will hurt no one.

Unfortunately, even with 10 FR your army will be rather prone to violent vaporization.

[blackwizards]

Originally posted by Fortuna:

Originally posted by dyslexicfaser:

Sure, if you want to mess around in SP. Take 10 fire resist though, or the first arrow will light off your flagellant army in a glorious chain fireball that will hurt no one.

Unfortunately, even with 10 FR your army will be rather prone to violent vaporization.

Maybe you could just deploy them in tiny groups of 6 or even smaller. Your armies will have tons of witch hunters anyways, so there's no harm in having a lot of individual squads. You can even do more than 2 squads of flagellants per witch hunter, it's not like the morale penalty is gonna matter much. Definitely still more of a gimmick than a winning strategy though.

[Gopblin]

Originally posted by peterebbesen:

...
The sacred that really stands out, apart from the angel thug, is the flagellant due to it getting 2 attacks, having extremely low gold, resource, and recruitment cost, and being recruitable anywhere you have a temple - it is trivial to amass large numbers of them and replace them as needed...

Flags only have one attack, 8 AS / 6 DS, 9HP, Prot 0, and 75% of them start with afflictions. It seems really hard to do a sacred rush with them.

Also, for pure Flag strategy, Luck would be a far better route than etherealness because virtually any blow is gonna kill a Flag (so the same 75% protection), but unlike Etherealness, Luck is not canceled by magic AFAIK, and it's WAY cheaper to get. Actually, Death Explosion + Luck may be interesting because Luck should protect from explosions...

Quick tinkering gave me incarnate Baphomet F6S6B1 Dom 7 P3H3G1L3D3, with Major Fire Resist, Death Explosion and Luck as blessings. I think Death Explosion is much better way of killing with Flags than Flaming weapons would be, due to Flag's low attack skill and one attack, and Major Fire resist+Luck should mitigate chain reactions.