What is MA Man good at?

[illcat]

I like the theme of the faction, but I'm not really sure what they do well.

[Zonk]

The Knights of Avalon are more mobile than the Knights of Marignon and Ulm (higher MM & forest survival) and have a magic alicorn attack and recuperation. I don't think they need extra buffs. Note that making them sacred would likely result in a significantly higher cost, making them less viable without a bless.

[ÆtherNomad]

Publicado originalmente por Zonk:

The Knights of Avalon are more mobile than the Knights of Marignon and Ulm (higher MM & forest survival) and have a magic alicorn attack and recuperation. I don't think they need extra buffs.

I'd agree if they were recruitable in any fort. Knights of Ulm and Marignon also have their own strengths, and those are definitely more significant than additional mobility... especially since being recruitable anywhere already MEANS being extra mobile (you don't have to make your troups cross the whole map from your cap to the battlefield).

[Zonk]

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

being recruitable anywhere already MEANS being extra mobile (you don't have to make your troups cross the whole map from your cap to the battlefield).

Not really, considering how limited non-capital recruitment of heavy cavalry is going to be.

MM 20 with a survival is really good and lets you move to a friendly province and then attack the enemy.

And of course there's the extra magical attack, higher defence and recuperation. All really good abilities.
MR 13, too. Knights of the Chalice have 12, and Black Knights have 9. And the very high combat speed is great for attack rear (and devastating charges).

There are many ways in which Knights of Avalon are good.

[BoboYagga]

Zonk, I think we talked about this before in Dom 4, but I still think it's a bit weird that the Knights of Avalon say they are decked out in silver, but don't actually wear silver mail. I had changed it in the mod I made which meant 1 less protection but also a decrease in their resource cost.
Anyway, I think I am moving to your way of thinking that they don't need a bless... My big hang up now is dual wielding wardens!! That will be my next mod when I have the time!

[Kref]

MA Man was always considered a weak nation because of their weak magic.
I think you might want to make a blitzkrieg with them to avoid late game as much as possible.
With that you might want to utilize their good infantry and sacreds, knights be damned (still you can experiment with small knight troops in army for attemts to attack rearmost enemies (hopefully commanders) by flanks).
So generally you should look for a strong bless benefitting both wardens and lord wardens. Lord warden is a very thuggish unit - his descent default equipment allows you to give him only misc artefacts or just bless (use cheap monks for that or special water artefact). Main problems of lord warden warfare could be trampling units, if this units are of size 3-4 try to use enlargement artefact.
You have bards, and so you can try to take your opponents by surprise - in one turn start to instill revolts in his producrion centers with about 4 bards for one center and get several provinces with stealthy thugs.

P.S. You should always remember to utilize divine insights of their monks. Give a monk a quill and you get a 9 point researcher for 10 (10, Karl) gold per year. And, with 200 gold for temple, you need just 800 gold to raise your max dominion by one point.

[BoboYagga]

I don't know if I agree. I have not found their sacreds worth a bless. Honestly a scale builds utilizing the Knights of Avalon has given me a really good expansion. From there you should try to move fast to grab another capital or two but their archers benefiting from wind guide and arrow fend plus their buffed troops make for the ideal line to lock up your opponent while the cavalry run to the back, while your mages communion and do all of the really heavy lifting. Or at least that's the strategy I might try, but I haven't done a MP game yet with them so what works against the AI may fail in real life. Though to be honest, I haven't actually tried a bless on the wardens in Dom 5, but it didn't do me much good in dom 3 and 4...

[wilson.max]

Publicado originalmente por Kref:

P.S. You should always remember to utilize divine insights of their monks. Give a monk a quill and you get a 9 point researcher for 10 (10, Karl) gold per year. And, with 200 gold for temple, you need just 800 gold to raise your max dominion by one point.

1000 gold, surely?

Plus you need to defend them from raiders.

[Kref]

Publicado originalmente por wilson.max:

Publicado originalmente por Kref:

P.S. You should always remember to utilize divine insights of their monks. Give a monk a quill and you get a 9 point researcher for 10 (10, Karl) gold per year. And, with 200 gold for temple, you need just 800 gold to raise your max dominion by one point.

1000 gold, surely?

Plus you need to defend them from raiders.

You are going to have forts anyway. Without fort, a good province for temple-monk research is where the lab was found and where is a good province defence type.
Generally the cheapness and no fort requirement of monks is a thing which should be kept in mind - they cost less then many soldiers. It gives some options in domkill attempts, and the counter to undead - demon armies. And blessing of stealthy forces on the enemy territory.

[wilson.max]

If you're building 600+ gold forts on top of your temples, it no no longer costs "just 1000 gold" to raise your dominion by a point--it costs a full 800 * 5 = 4000 gold, unless you can capture the forts from someone else.

Cheap temples don't matter unless you're willing to spam them.

[Fortuna]

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

- Marignon has better knights. Its knights are sacred AND recruitable in any fort, while Man is stuck either with regular knights OR alicorn knights that are cap only and not sacred. So, if you're basing your strategy on knights, Marignon is a strictly better choice.

What if you aren't basing your strategy on knights?

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

- Marignon has better sacreds (no surprise here); Man's wardens are obviously less good than knights of the chalice, AND they are cap only. In addition, Marignon has 3 bonus bless points. So, if you're basing your strategy on sacreds, again, Marignon is a strictly better choice.

Blessings come at a strategic cost... scales, mage-oriented blessings, restricting path selection, imprisonment, etc. Knights of Avalon are like weakly blessed sacred knights with none of that cost. I think that Marignon needs that bless bonus to be honest.

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

- Marignon has better priests. Like Man, they can recruit H1s anywhere, except that those H1s are also good commanders, unlike Man's. In addition, they have easy access to H3s, which is very useful both to take thrones AND in a strategy based around sacred units. Once again, Man appears strictly less good.

This is wrong. Man now has very effective combat priests, because every Daughter can join communions. This is easy H3 priests at 195g each. If you have 16 communion slaves, you can get H5's which can up all of your 25g monks to H2's. This should devastate an undead/demon army.

Yes, Marignon still has dying old men it can muster slowly from their capital that can capture thrones. That's a good advantage. I'd rather have spammable temples and Monks than Friars, however. Leadership on either is mostly just for rounding up stray troops, and even to that end twice as many Monks is more useful.

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

- Marignon has better forts, since they have architects. This is a huge advantage: it means more gold, more resources, more rec points, and mostly, more mages. Sure, Man can recruit Logrian Wise Men everywhere, but they are poor mages, while instead Marignon will be able to recruit actually good mages quicker. Again, Marignon seems strictly better.

This is wrong. Marignon doesn't get more good mages at all. First of all, if you examine the effect of bigger forts versus just building more forts with cheap temples, there is not a dramatic difference. Secondly, easily half of all Logrians are useful (E2, E1N1), and the other half can be useful to a degree (E1F1 would be amazing with a communion matrix). Last but not least, every single one of your Daughters (your primary researcher) is combat ready from the beginning. Marignon can either hire clueless initiates or expensive old men to do their research, which is cleary a disadvantage.

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

- Marignon has easy access to communions, just like Man. So obviously, although giving Man communions IS a good buff, it's clearly not enough to make it as good as Marignon.

Man's communions are far better than Marignon's. Marignon needs expensive old men for their communions, and they can die from fatigue.

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

- Marignon doesn't have longbowmen, but Marignon HAS crossbowmen, which is very good as well. So, even when it comes to ranged units, Marignon doesn't have a disadvantage over Man.

I'd agree that both have workable archers. Which is better depends on circumstance.

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

- Man's monk researchers are an interesting mechanic, but clearly a weak one. The facts that they are unaffected by magic scales, are limited by province and require a lab to research means that Marignon, with its better forts, will actually always be above Man on research. Man's only advantage here is that Drain scales are somewhat slightly more tolerable (but running your research on monks only is going to be a huge mistake, with their poor 3 research value and very limited number, so in the end it doesn't matter much, and Ulm is far better at going for drain scales, as well as with knights and forts, by the way).

This is wrong. Even ignoring both Monks and Owl Quills, the cost-to-research ratio for Man and Marignon is remarkably even. Marignon benefits slightly more from magic scales and that is about it.

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

- Man has cheap temples, but... how can you abuse that, really? It's not like Yomi that gets troups for its temples. Man's temples aren't particularly useful.

I'd consider cheap temples at least as useful as large forts. Besides lowering the cost of Fort/Lab/Temple complexes that both nations need to make their best units, cheap temples can combat domkill neighbors and recruit useful Monks while being half the liability if raided. A strong dominion could also be turned to a major advantage with the right global enchantment.

Publicado originalmente por Oneyr:

Considering all this, I very honestly can't see a reason to pick Man over Marignon. What do you think about it?

Communions have made Man's magic much stronger and more flexible than Marignon's, who can only muster F2S1's outside of their capital.

[wilson.max]

Publicado originalmente por Fortuna:

This is wrong. Marignon doesn't get more good mages at all. First of all, if you examine the effect of bigger forts versus just building more forts with cheap temples, there is not a dramatic difference. Secondly, easily half of all Logrians are useful (E2, E1N1), and the other half can be useful to a degree (E1F1 would be amazing with a communion matrix). Last but not least, every single one of your Daughters (your primary researcher) is combat ready from the beginning. Marignon can either hire clueless initiates or expensive old men to do their research, which is cleary a disadvantage.

I agree that it's a disadvantage, but I just want to put in a plug for initiates here: they are not as bad at combat as I once thought, since Marignon always has fire gems to spare anyway. They're just a hassle logistically on long campaigns because they are garbage without a fire gem, so you need a scout or something to carry gems to keep them fueled up with gems, which means that you need to make sure the scout doesn't actually Move instead of Sneak, which will get him killed and waste gems.

But emptying out a research fort in an emergency WILL add a lot of combat power to an army (via Fireballs and Fire Elementals), and emergencies are all you use research mages for anyway.

[Fortuna]

Publicado originalmente por wilson.max:

But emptying out a research fort in an emergency WILL add a lot of combat power to an army (via Fireballs and Fire Elementals), and emergencies are all you use research mages for anyway.

This is not clear to me with MA Man, because your research mages could actually win an entire war should you empty your forts. They don't need to burn through gems (but if they did, the bug army could be a real nightmare). As I've mentioned earlier, you can import monks to pick up the quills so that your research doesn't fall to zero.

Good point about the fire gems though. 1 gem can boost them to F2 for a battle. This could benefit Logrians as well.

[Sombre]

I think it's a pretty common issue with Dominions players that they just keep those mages researching even when they'd be better off moving them into battle. This tends to mean people favour mages which are very high RP efficiency as researchers even if they can't cast worth toffee.