MA Marignon Bless strategy... Feedback is appreciated.

[Drakken]

I took a different tact with MA Marignon and was wondering what people thought of it?

Considering the Knights of the Chalice have the highest defense for any sacred that is not "recruit in the capital only" (by 2 points if I am correct) IMHO it is very beneficial to bump them twice with (3C) bless effect of defense +2 to put their defense at 19 and the paladins at 20. Combine that with blood surge and their defense goes up another point. As long as you have enough knights to not get surrounded (easy enough in a wide single lines) they become almost impossible for any unit to hit them. With a very good protection value, good HP, and decent magic resist they hold up pretty well to archer and spell damage which is their only real weakness. They are strong enough to spread into single lines which makes them less vulnerable to area spells.

If you max bless the Knights of the Chalice they are almost thug worthy by themselves with absolutely no gear on them. Later in the game you can spread them out in small groups of 6-20 all over your deployment area so they all can't be hit with the hard hitting area damage spells. Then they charge so quickly across the field of battle it is tough to block them all. They often catch the mages and archers in the rear.

I have played quite a bit with MA Marignon and a max bless imprisoned Baphomet pretender. I get decent scales for keeping the economy up... Dom4, Turm2, Prod2, Heat1, Growth3, Luck1, Mag1. I can get dominion 7 by just taking one more negative scale or one less positive one. I find my scales a nice balance. Higher Dominion seems easy to get anyway since early on expanding is a piece of cake. I go with F4, C6, E5, As4, B4 with the Resulting Bless: (remember you get 2 bonus points in fire and astral) Attack Skill, Major Fire Res, Defense Skill x2, Reinvigoration, Strength of Earth, Minor Magic Res, Magic Weapons, Major Magic Res, and Blood Surge. These knights hit incredibly hard from the very beginning of the game (you start with all blesses), Blood surge procs easily with their first charge at the enemy. Almost nothing can touch the knights with their defense value and better yet they are at str +6 and att +5 with blood surge and are also wielding magic weapons. They are killing machines that rarely die from the second turn of the game. What is great is that you can mass produce these guys from any fortress with a temple. By the time people have late game magic going you will have so many of these sacreds running around it is hard as hell to counter. I have never played with more than 10 players, so I am not sure how this will perform in a truly epic game... but in a short to average game this faction works very well.

I do not use the flagellants to any real extent. My bless recruitment is saved for mages, priests, and the knights/paladins. Excess resources go to crossbows, halberdiers for fort defense, man at arms for guarding the mages, and the occasional architect to speed up sieges. Knights do not break down walls very well. The biggest weakness I have found so far.

I recently started using this faction with some drain scales and added N5 with the incarnate bless of Recuperation for healing afflictions on the knights and those damned old mages. Strangely, the knights almost never die but still get injured sometimes. As they gain experience they just get even better. The old Marignon mages are constantly getting injured and are a real pain. Not sure yet if the recuperation is worth it. (doubt it actually, but still experimenting) The drain scales have both positive and negative effects as I see it... The drain scales slow early research, but if you concentrate on construction, one in four of your grand masters will have air magic and you can make feathers. Once you get to construction 6 you should have saved so many fire gems that every one of your cheap initiates can forge a pair of lanterns and your research will skyrocket! The heat and drain scales cancel each other out for mages casting fire spells so it is not too fatiguing for your fire mages in your own dominion. All other types of magic casting in my dominion is very fatiguing (heat/drain) and that is not so bad for this faction since spell casting (especially other magic types) is not Marignon's strong point anyway. Last but not least the reinvigoration from the earth magic and blood surge helps the sacred mages and troops to hold up in the heat/drain. Having the knights mounted helps in regard to fatigue as well. I think other factions troops and mages seem to whither towards the end of any longer battles.

Hope to get some feedback on using drain scales like this to help defense against heavy magic users? Thanks in advance for any discussion.

[terve886]

recuperation should not affect old units, so taking it to heal old age aflictions is waste.

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Drakken:

The old Marignon mages are constantly getting injured and are a real pain. Not sure yet if the recuperation is worth it. (doubt it actually, but still experimenting)

I love recuperation, but have kind of soured on it for line troops, as opposed to commanders you can see that little heart on. Too much micro for me to figure out who's wounded after every battle, then remove them and check back every now and then to see if they are healed, then collect them.

Better to minimize afflictions to begin with I think, and regen seems to work better than the affliction resistance in that department.

And as the poster above noted, recuperation doesn't work on old people - thanks, Ilwinter. (How about a bless that is aces for old people, and doesn't help young ones? Ever think of that one?)

Anyway the unaging bless works wonders for MA Marignon and Pythium. DIfference between Grand Masters and those H3 priests being around to use in actual battles, instead of hanging out in a lab waiting to die from all those afflictions they get from making it just one more year.

I can see why you want to use the bless points Marignon gets, but that unaging bless really does help Marignon (and Pythium and Shinuyama) a whole lot. I guess you could drop the E on the Baphomet, though the reinvig really helps.

Oh yeah, it is trivial for you to drop Solar Eclipse as Marignon. If you took N4, I think you can get unaging and darkvision. Then every fight you can drop Solar Eclipse, and unless the opponent is undead or Xibalba or Agartha they have huge penalties fighting you.

A little more nichey than pure defense, but maybe F4E5S4N4B4 Baphomet? 2X Attack, Reinvig, Strength, Magic Weapons, Major and Minor MR, Unaging, Darkvision, Blood Surge? Probably get another scale too, since you are taking N4 instead of C6.

[Shinuyama]

just a note, generally water magic is W and astral magic is S (aStral)

using knights of the chalice as small group raiders with a dormant/imprisoned rainbow bless is probably a decent use of them

they'll still lose if the enemy brings anything heavy onto the field, like buffed vitriols or whatever, and like any melee sacred they're vulnerable to being stripped naked and tied up or fed endless skeletons, but focusing on speed, parrying, and damage is a better move than most of the blesses i've seen trying to leverage survivability (prot, hp, regen, invuln, fortitude etc), and against newer players spamming evos they'll be unstoppable

[Shinuyama]

trying to mitigate old age via bless is something i'm very dubious on

Personally I just take the losses of old age in stride and keep moving. It's mostly only relevant if you're gold capped which indicates your plan was bad in the first place (gotta get big not be trapped in a corner in 7 provinces, also why gold scales are so valuable)

[madocs]

Nature magic may increase the old age cutoff if I remember correctly... bit hard to empower a mage simply for that reason though... I just roll with the punches a little with those guys... have to die sometime.

[Nargo]

Bless ain't big enough
I'd max heat since you're a fire nation anyways.
remove luck 1 and magic 1 too.

[Alias]

Originally posted by Drakken:

Considering the Knights of the Chalice have the highest defense for any sacred that is not "recruit in the capital only" (by 2 points if I am correct) IMHO it is very beneficial to bump them twice with (3C) bless effect of defense +2 to put their defense at 19 and the paladins at 20. Combine that with blood surge and their defense goes up another point. As long as you have enough knights to not get surrounded (easy enough in a wide single lines) they become almost impossible for any unit to hit them. With a very good protection value, good HP, and decent magic resist they hold up pretty well to archer and spell damage which is their only real weakness. They are strong enough to spread into single lines which makes them less vulnerable to area spells.

If you max bless the Knights of the Chalice they are almost thug worthy by themselves with absolutely no gear on them.

Is that for MP or SP?

If you'll be playing MA MP, you have to be able to answer the question "what do I do when I meet skellyspammers/skellyreanimators?" Let's presume you have a line long enough for 1 Knight to face 3 skellies at a time. At first he'll have no issue dodging their attacks and any lucky break will likely be stopped by the heavy armor. But as Fatigue piles up from Encumbrance, and quite possibly Rigor Mortis, the Knights will be pushed to about 10 penalty on the defense, and likelyhood of armor-defeating hits will go from 1/36 to 1/6. Blood Surge won't help at all because it won't even trigger on the skellies.

Same thing for "almost thug worthy". The requirements of what is thug worthy are one thing when the thug can maintain 0 Fatigue, and completely another when the thug will be hitting 100 Fatigue.

[Mount Nomad]

Solar weapons help out with skelispam due to sheer attack volume on knights. +Att, Magic Weapons and Solar Weapons are pretty reachable with Baphomet. As mentioned here earlier, Unaging is amazing for older sacred casters as its effects are retroactive (not only do units age slower, they're younger to begin with, which helps with accuracy in particular; you can always go the Eye Pendant route for aging researchers, but that's more of a Yomi thing).

Blood surge is still utilitarian as for non-undead it's quite helpful.

Since the Mari sacreds are recruitable rather than summonable (so have standard recruitment costs + upkeep), always felt like you were better off with a lighter bless and getting decent scales (for more forts / temples, and ultimately more knights).

Quantity has a quality all its own.

Your Drain scales would synergize well enough since you have boosters and sacred spam for defense. Magic scales would get you to Fire Elementals and your boosters much faster, but that's more important in larger games. Under 10 players you can rush to a victory - more will require some tech. The best defense against mages in this case though is killing them faster via flanking attacks / chewing through their chaff. Knights kill quickly to begin with.

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Mount Nomad:

Unaging is amazing for older sacred casters as its effects are retroactive (not only do units age slower, they're younger to begin with, which helps with accuracy in particular; you can always go the Eye Pendant route for aging researchers, but that's more of a Yomi thing).

Besides what you have written, Arch Theurgs or Grand Masters/High Inquisitors that have just that little bit of extra move from not being old, old, men has been incredibly useful for me.

[BoboYagga]

the defense is great, but as people have pointed out, big evocations or things that strip away the defense leave them incredably vulnerable. It's good to use them for sure, but make sure that you are also prepared to use leverage big evocations and spells as well.
The people who are worried about your ability to kill skeletons, are clearly forgetting that you are PLAYING MARIGNON!!!! Skeletons are your prefered enemy!!! you have so many different skelly counters that you have no issue with this, like none at all.

[Alias]

Originally posted by BoboYaggatheTiny:

The people who are worried about your ability to kill skeletons, are clearly forgetting that you are PLAYING MARIGNON!!!! Skeletons are your prefered enemy!!! you have so many different skelly counters that you have no issue with this, like none at all.

LOL

Overfed Marignon casually crushed by imperfect Sceleria

[Causk]

i would councel strongly against taking drain. Marignon mages are very one dimensional and you need quite alot of research to get to the better value spells(conj5, ench4 early, constr 6 for research boost, evo 8 later). The witch hunter are very expensive for what they bring and you will be very research constrained if you focus on just them and troops. In my expierence starting in mid game, wars are decided with magic and you cripple your acceleration there with drain. Having a 45 gold 10 rp (with magic 3) research mage is imo one of the nations strengths, even if it will take quite a while of researching until they can contribute to battle magic.

[ncarr99]

Originally posted by Alias:

Originally posted by BoboYaggatheTiny:

The people who are worried about your ability to kill skeletons, are clearly forgetting that you are PLAYING MARIGNON!!!! Skeletons are your prefered enemy!!! you have so many different skelly counters that you have no issue with this, like none at all.

LOL

Overfed Marignon casually crushed by imperfect Sceleria

Marignon still killed 600 skeletons in that battle, so the point of Marignon being able to kill skeletons stands. That battle was lost largely because of such things as Rigor Mortis, which is something of an OP spell, not because Marignon lacks adequate ways to kill skeletons. Plus, Lucid is a fairly expert player, and in general I would guess you won't be against someone quite that good, so that example is hardly a good baseline for how that sort of thing would play out.

[Alias]

Originally posted by ncarr99:

Originally posted by Alias:

LOL

Overfed Marignon casually crushed by imperfect Sceleria

Marignon still killed 600 skeletons in that battle, so the point of Marignon being able to kill skeletons stands. That battle was lost largely because of such things as Rigor Mortis, which is something of an OP spell, not because Marignon lacks adequate ways to kill skeletons. Plus, Lucid is a fairly expert player, and in general I would guess you won't be against someone quite that good, so that example is hardly a good baseline for how that sort of thing would play out.

My advice to new players:

- 600 skeletons are nothing to both skellyreanimator nations and skellyspam nations.

- Rigor Mortis is part of the game, learn to account for it.

- Definitely expect 1+ expert players unless the game is marked as "newbie only"

[sunbeam]

Originally posted by Alias:

- Rigor Mortis is part of the game, learn to account for it.

Well I'd sure like to know how you account for it. It is basically, what ten fatigue per round? Fatigue you can't resist in any way, other than being undead or a construct.

If you don't have any N mages to cast relief (which only delays things, since it doesn't equal Rigor Mortis' fatigue power), what do you do?

I guess you could take reinvigoration twice for sacreds. Even coupled with Relief I don't think you are fatigue neutral if Rigor Mortis is up.

I play LA a lot. Had a lot of games where I never found any lizard shamans or Jade Amazons. Unless you build your pretender to find N sites and summon things like Faerie Queens, and/or build boosters you are going to have a heck of a time even slowing Rigor Mortis down.

So what is your strategy?