Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

Taking luck only to maybe get a national hero that has a little blood doesn't sound very productive to me. One would be better off summoning Lamia Queens. I'd take misfortune, you need the points there.



I'd say the hardest thing about Marverni is precisely the Pretender design.
You need good scales, there aren't many negative scales to take to gain some extra points.
You could use a SC pretender very much since your start army is crap, and possibly only Monkey (Kailasa, Bandar Log, Patala) start army is worse.

Having a rainbow mage for research is also important to get the spells you need to protect, body ethereal being the most important IMO.

So, IMO, an awake pretender is a must, relatively good scales too, and those two are hard to combine with no free points.
I'd recommend a PoD or a Ghost King as SC pretenders. You have the most important magic paths, only need death, those two cover the death path. Fire is irrelevant and while air is useful it's not vital.

For a rainbow pretender I'd probably take the sage, rush to conjuration 3, alteration 3 and construction. Get a few firbolgs, equip them, buff them and win a fast war, keep low for a while, research and unleash hell.

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

A Phoenix also works as an awake Marverni god in CBM. Gives you Fire/Air instead of Death. Going with an SC god usually means you'll take Dom9, which is great for blood sacrificing. Indy commander/scout blood hunting is usually sufficient to gather slaves for sacrifice.

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

I've honestly never found phoenix to be worth it awake, he is too inconsistent a combatant until you have Alt 3 to be worth the extra 150 design points

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

In CBM he comes with Phoenix Pyre. You actually don't need mistform, because the way he kills or routs the indies is by getting hit and then blowing up. Sometimes he may not even kill all the enemy, but he'll do enough damage that a few troops can move in and clean up. He's immortal and flies, so you can just fly out from your capitol to the next indy province with positive dominion. You don't need Dom-9 with the Phoenix either, so you can afford Order-3 Prod-3 scales.

Two bugs are nasty for the Phoenix though:

- If you get a 'diseased' affliction, then after you blow up for good you end up with 1HP when you are resurrected in your capitol. I think if you are diseased and have 1HP in late winter then you perma-die even if you are immortal. Unless this has beeen fixed?

- Phoenix Pyre is bugged and occasionally your unit will clone itself after it explodes. If either unit is hit, both units appear to take damage. If you get killed when you are in this bugged state, it's a perma-death, even when you are in positive dominion.

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

I submitted several turns to illwinter with the diseased pretender problem. Since then I have played around 200 turns with a phoenix pretender.

And while the phoenix fix has caused another problem I dont remember - I can confim I no longer see the diseased pretender dying.

I also have not seen the duplicated phoenix again - however, that was even a much rarer occurence.

Phoenix is a rock solid choice for expansion.

Chris tidbit: if you give the pretender the girdle of might, ivyking? helm, and ring of resilience.... you don't lose those items if you die. I like e4 or S4 or B4 depending on national mages as well.

You only lose them if you lose the province.

I will often post the phoenix front with air shield hold hold hold hold Attack Rear.

This saves you 4 turns of fatigue, and is enought to let the phoenix explode 5+ times.

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

I don't remember the stats exactly, Marveni's Blood multi-heroes (yes, you can definitely get more than one) are vastly superior to indie bloodhenge druids, and are definitely worth the Luck!

Anyhow, my favored pretender would be an imprisoned N5 (for Shrouds, and N5 because there were spare points) Divine Serpent, Dom-7, O3P3G3L3M1.

Weaknesses are lack of magic diversity (so site search like crazy, find those Enchantresses, etc.) and potential danger of being rushed.

Strengths are crazy amounts of gold and resources, which can go a long way to mitigating your weaknesses - loads of cheap barechesters to deal with most rushes, and cheap castles and temples to pump out more druids, which will help in fighting and get site searching up an running quite fast.

Luck will pitch in your Heroes and also gems for site searching, maybe even empowering in non-national magic paths.

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

Most immortality, disease and perma-death bugs were fixed in the last patch. You can see it in the progress page changelog and in the Shortlist.

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

Agreed.
From what I remember they are normal Druids with more random path spread and extra blood. Which means with the boosters you should have you should have the most versatile blood mage(s) in game. Now, if you only had the slaves.

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

The question is will taking luck leave you enough points to take a useful pretender?

Re: Nation Guide for Marverni
 

I think the question is, do you need a useful pretender? Or does Marverni (with ultra-scales) have enough in the tank to succeed without one?