MA Phlegra

[Kamiyama]

I've been kicking around the idea of making a pretender for MA Phlegra that can cast Enchanted Forests.

9 Dominion
5+ Nature magic (could use treelord staff or vine mace to boost)
Maybe 4F and 4E to cast Gigantomachia (though a Phlegran Tyrant could do it)

They have a 95 gold priest unit with adept researcher that has 9 research. I'm thinking of taking 1 magic scale to buff him to 10 research, and recruiting them everywhere I can to research quickly.

Build 5 temples, kick yourself up to 10 dominion
Recruit researcher army of priests
Cast Gigantomachia
Cast Enchanted Forests
Set your priest army to preach
Watch as your dominion crushes the map

Problem is that I end up with a dormant or imprisoned pretender. This means you face early game with just your recruitable troops.

So Phlegra doesn't start with a scout. Your "scout" is just a cyclops with a club. Doesn't sneak at all. So you have to pick a province and hope you win.

The thing with giant nations is you recruit your best troops so slowly, if you attack with a meh army and get wiped out - you've set yourself back for months. You basically lost the expansion game and probably the whole game too.

If you wait to build up a solid force, the same thing. You're expanding slower than the competition. The dude with the awake dragon has 20 provinces when you have 4 or 5.

I like the idea but I don't think it's workable. Am I wrong?

[Kamiyama]

I guess I just suck at early game without an awake expander.

I can do it with some civs. Say Uruk. They have awesome chunky troops that just stomp the barbarians.

[Kamiyama]

Since Phlegra's dominion increases unrest, should I take a turmoil scale to double down on this? It could make spreading my dominion hurt the enemy more.

[Kamiyama]

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2550111682

This is what I'm looking at right now

Mother of Monsters
Dormant
2D, 5N, 1B
-1O, 3P, 0H, 3G, -3F, 1M

She has arms so she can make and equip a treelord staff

I have to figure out their early game

[Kamiyama]

I was doing okay up until this happened
https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2550160384

Helotes are meh. They do okay versus barbarians but against knights they got creamed.

[TheMeInTeam]

I don't think enchanted forests is worth building around, even with dominion conflict bonuses. Conjuration 9 is a long way away, it's not high priority for Phlegra, and even if you do put this up opponents can dispel it if it's a problem, though if they're preached up or have high dominion it might not be a problem for nations you care about anyway.

You have most magic nationally. You might want E/S crosspath on god. This lets you make golems to screw with mind hunt and use antimagic in fights. It also allows slave matrixes, and shepards make excellent turbo slaves (your auto-slaves let you get big buffs off, but fatigue load is a big problem for them).

[Imperialus]

Phlegra has a bit of a slow burn in the early game. I've only played them in MP once, but I still did quite well.

Paths were:
D5 N4 B1. I'd probably rework the Nature/Blood balance if I did her again, but that's probably more of an MP thing since you want to be able to boostrap into blood if necessary and it's easier to do with at least B2 or B3. Again, for MP at least you probably don't want S on your pretender without national astral mages since you're one magic duel away from a dead pretender in that case. Bless didn't matter much since Phlegra has 1 priest.

Scales were:
D6 T3 S1 H3 G3 L3 M2

First six months I recruited Gigante warriors and Phlegran Tyrants out of my cap. I rounded out any extra recruitment capacity with Helot Warriors. I used my starting army to hit nearby weak provinces (anything with Cavalry of any sort was avoided). My first Tyrant rolled out with his gigantes, re-enforced the starting army on turn 3 and went from there. Second tyrant parked himself in a nearby worthless province and started freespawning helots. Third Tyrant took all the new Gigantes and all the Helots Tyrant 2 recruited and just started facestomping.

After that I started making Trophimos Sages to start my research, first focusing on Alt to 3 for basic thug buffs like Ironskin then went down to Ench 4 for flaming arrows because my main combat Tyrant was an F random. Helot warriors are ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ terrifying with flaming arrows. Pick up Const 2 at some point for some basic gear.

Once you have your three tyrant led armies up and running you are in a very strong position. With a E2 random sage you can get Earth Might up and start casting all the basic earth buffs on your crappy freespawn helots. 2nd fort recruits Shackled Mages for research monkies and to form the base of your communions once you start needing to cast bigger spells than the Sages can manage. Recruit Shepard Shamans who freespawn goats to feed your army and before you know it you are winning attritional wars against Ermor.

Keep recruiting Tyrants and Smiths from your cap. The most valuable Tyrants are the F4 and D2 flavours since F4 is a fantastic combat caster and the D2 ones are some of the best SC's in the middle age.