Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

It's really unfortunate that Marignon doesn't get that one female titan chasis with E/N. What chasis are you using? It's really hard to get E/N blesses and also dom10 at a reasonable price. There's the Lady of Love pretender with N2 and W, and you can imprison her for a W4E4N4 bless, dom10 and +4 scales. It's also 0 points remaining, which is satisfying, but the scales are kind of bad for a nation that won't get much use out of the bless before late game, and it's painful not being able to get the astral rings. You can't forge the elemental staves either, so no rings means even summoning Harbingers won't get you to Robes of the Magi. Having either ring or robe lets you get to the other, but not having either... I guess you could summon all the Arch Devils to get the one with S3, but that's a lot of slaves for rather mediocre units for Mari who already has all the fire they want, and there's no guarantee you would be first to them anyway.

And the bless is hard to use even late game. Fallen angels with that bless are bonafide SCs but they can't self bless. You could team it up with a Harbinger, but you can't guarantee having the pearls to pair Fallen Angels with Harbingers.

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

Cool thing about Marignon: they have easy access to both feathers and lightless lanterns, and can even swing by skull mentors should they really wanna. And since those Fallen Angels are gonna want some gear anyway...

Not just scouts: spies. And assassins.
OK, so assassins are something of a waste of time, but a surprise spy onslaught coupled with Rain of Toads spam can really mess someone up, particularly other blood nations. Finding spies at 200 unrest is non-trivial if you can't mindhunt them (which Mictlan, Jotun, Midgard, Abysia and Ulm will have a hard time doing).
More evil yet, Marignon can also send Dream Horrors on top of all that if they get lucky and score an S2 Geotic for some added insult: good on you, you found the spies ! Now you get to eat blood vengeanc'd astral claws !

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

Kobal2, I meant spies, sorry about that :D. Never really use that much research boosters myself, so that is why I disregarded that.

Blessing your SC's isn't that hard, you have recruit everywhere h2 units. Just boots of flying. Blessing, smite script. And hope they survive.

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

Thanks for all the responses! I've definitely got alot more to think about, espcially with pretender design. Most of the guides I read were recommending an awake expander SC, so that's the path I though I'd need to go down. Normally I'd go with an imprisoned rainbow with good scales (or an imprisoned SC with insane scales). So I'm definitely going to have to rethink that.

Also, I've been reading that feathers have been buffed. How good are they now? Mathwise, they seem poor choices for research compared to lanterns and mentors.

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

They give reinvigoration or encumbrance reduction or something like that.

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

They give -2 Encumbrance at half the cost of the armor that does the same. So there are niche uses of pushing something down to encumbrance 0. I like forging a few to get a little bonus research early, but mainly to give a few mages with crystal shields the equivalent of 4 points of reinvigoration. This can be useful if you have good sacreds, but only have holy 2 mage priests, like EA Tien Chi. Not so much an issue with Marignon, but I can see some fun with prophetizing a high inquisitor, and giving it a crystal shield plus owl quill for endless H5 banishment against say Ermor at construction 2.

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

They are indeed worse than lanterns on an RP per gem basis... but they come much earlier (they're research 0 in CBM), so the actual number of RPs you can milk out of one Owl Quill compared to one Lightless Lantern over the course of the game is comparable (to a point), and you can't really put a price on getting crucial research online earlier. Think of it like overtaxation: over an infinity of turns it's very wasteful, but in practice money NOW is much more valuable than money tomorrow (because with money NOW you can build an army to seize even more income). Same goes for RP.

They also have been buffed to reduce the encumbrance of the carrier, which can actually be better than providing reinvigoration for SCing purposes (e.g. on Quickened people) so when you're done using them for the RPs you can always stick them on something nasty.

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

I see, so you use can spend some gems for some early research and transition them as some cheap reinvigoration? Interesting.

I've been hearing conflicting opinions on Order/Production and Luck/Misfortune. Is there a reason for me to got Luck/Turmoil? In general, I find that more gold=more mages/castles/potential units=more of everything. I understand that Luck helps with getting national heroes, and by also providing a source of gem income, but is it that significant? And the initial gold boost helps hypercharge expansion, which is always a plus.

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

Luck/turmoil is a popular option for nations who blood hunt a lot and early. You dont get any gold from provinces that are being hunted anyhow. Still, most people that does luck builds tend to take order 1/luck 3 if they can afford it as the order help you get better events. Namely gold and fort events.

Re: LA Marignon Questions
 

Thing is though, you only get 3/4 events a turn. Luck determines the proportion that will be good or bad, while scales other than luck determine what kind of good and bad events you get, but can't get you any more. Assuming luck 3, taking order 1 means your good events will tend to be money related, but that means fewer gem events compared to turmoil 1. Getting a thousand gold event letting you pop down an extra fort, or just straight up getting a fortified city by event in year 1 can be pretty huge, but money events stop being useful later on and you'd prefer the gem events.

Marignon is pretty cheap to run, enough so that I think it can do without the order 1.

Magic is another scale that plays interestingly with luck. At magic 3 (some of the events are at magic 2, but nobody would take that) you can get a bunch of mages in events that can significantly increase your diversity, as well as a lot of magic item events. That's really random though, sometimes you get a staff of elemental mastery, other times you get an amulet of the fish...as a land nation. This is pretty much unimportant for Marignon because of your superb existing diversity. As another nation though, turmoil/magic/growth can get you a bloodhenge druid. You'll only get it maybe 1/2 your games with those scales, but getting it early and breaking into blood can be pretty huge.