Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

A what? Daaannngit, speak American.

* googles patzer *

Hmm, so I'm not a newb. That means I just got called a ... You wanker!

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Well said!

I kind of view builds as falling in different categories:

Optimal: Here you are trying to minimize luck as a factor. You're looking for a build that will build on your nation's strengths and cover for their weaknesses.

Viable: This approach can emphasize a certain aspect of the nation, trying to build on that strength at the cost of leaving yourself vulnerable in other areas (especially over the long term). While this approach isn't optimal it can certainly still be a competitive approach. It can also be very fun, allowing you to try something different.

Uncompetitive: This would be going against the grain of the nation, trying to them into something they're not. As an example, at one point I decided I wanted Eriu to become a blood nation - not dabble in blood mind you, but have it as an endgame strategy (note that SDRs were available - even I wouldn't have tried it without them ). Uncompetitive approaches can be fun as well but you're going to need a lot of luck in order to have a chance.

I view playing Man with a level 9 bless as falling into the viable category. It may not be optimal but I certainly don't think it falls into the they can NEVER win category.


The crones are certainly a pain with map move 1 and are fragile but I don't think you can rule out battle use and just confine them to the lab. But if you really need to boost your A2 mothers so they can cast storm the ESN pretender I mentioned can forge a crystal shield.

But I want to loop back to N magic because N is Man's strongest path. What I'm curious about is the 1 in 4 mothers who have N3 and what kind of damage they can do with flood of life (gems/booster required for that one), hex and mass polymorph later in the game. Air magic may have more punch on the battlefield but N is what you're best at and I'm curious just what can be done with those spells. Seems to me there was deliberate effort in the latest CBM to make N a better offensive path, with a special national spell for Man. Was that successful?

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

I think, N already has enough ways to deal with lonely thugs - vine arrow, stream of life (against self-buffing thugs), polymorph, charm... What it lacks is a good, low-level chaff-killer. Flood of life needs a ton of +N to be really effective, Storm of thorns is so high in Evo it may as well be non-existant, poison/sleep clouds need time to work and have friendly fire issues.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

You need to take the pretender sleeping rather than imprisoned for that to matter, and that hurts if you are running a high bless. Man can't take sloth, and pretty much must take Growth 3, so it's hard to squeeze out acceptable scales under those limitations and still have a high bless with a sleeping pretender. What pretender were you talking about? Man has the best E/N bless chasis in the Lord of the Forest, but you can't really affordably add S to that.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Yeah, I was looking at LotF. The old age thing is a pita. This is why the only old age nation I play is Aby and I just put boots of youth on every warlock I recruit.

How about a sleeping Arch Druid (another excellent pretender, though sadly you won't have meese manning the walls of your forts) with A2E9S2D1N4 dom 6 and completely neutral scales. Pay for growth with temp scales. Would really like to get magic 1, though. And it bugs me a bit that you can't boost your way to rings of sorcery but it does open up some nice stuff like hidden in sand.

One other factor here: forest of the ever young will knock 40 years off the caster's age, which will cover most of your mages with one casting. Costs 2 gems and gives you 10% insanity. That give you a bit of a safety net since you could have the mages that get bad afflictions cast it and then have daughters heal them up.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Hm, what for do you need A2 there?

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Had 8 points left and couldn't do anything else with them. :p

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

For the same cost you can get sleeping E9N4S2 Lord of the Forest. You loose 1D, but get lots of chaff and titan-sized chassis, vulneurable to Mind Duel - but still able to do some thrashing against non-astral nations.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

15%, IIRC.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

You could also use transformation to deal with old age. But what old age really? Crones start with N3 and will get N4 like 31% of the time. For the ones with N3, transformation is always an option. Probably better than the forest of the ever young as it also gets rid of the upkeep.

No, the only thing that is mandatory for MA man is production scales.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

I like them both a lot. The LotF's chaff is really useful to protect forts and act as decoys on the battlefield and he's certainly capable of acting in an SC role.

But the archdruid has virtues as well. Map move 3, stealthy and recuperation. So with this build you can get some early mind hunt protection (without the risk of magic duel), a couple extra paths, and later if you can get an elixir of life and cast ritual of returning you can use them in battle and they'll heal any afflictions if they are "killed" (admittedly, this last point is a lot more appealing to Eriu, which doesn't have national healers like Man does).


I was getting 10% in my tests, with each casting increasing it by another 10%.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Some random ramblings from me here:
-Currently still playing E9 MA Man (with some fairly positive scales and an imprisoned lord of the forest). I did rush Alteration 5/const 4 for a very early mother oak, as the number of heavy N nations was limited in this game. This plan worked out well
-Largely using Sleepers with Vine Shields and Frost Brands as Thugs so far. And 18N5W those arent overly expensive, but significnatly improve your damage output.
-Man can do the "position in the back on guard commander and attack in turn 5" things perhaps better than imho any other nation. This is due to Song of Quickness, and the ability to summon targetting friendly chaff. Your longbows can also hit people from really far away.
-Wrath of Avalon gives you a slightly more cost efficient way to get High HP chaff, and the Moose help a ton too.
-I had Magic one scales, and otherwise money scales. At the moment I am leading in research, although MA Ulm just put up the Forge.
-If you ever get access to the Wizard Mercs, get them! In the absence of true A4, Crystal Shields improve everything by a loving ton.

While MA Man is a competitive nation, the following issues are significant:
-I have around 8ish castles, only about 2 of them can actually recruit 9 wardens a turn, at Prod 3 Scales. Mictlan can fairly easily outproduce me in Sacreds, and I dont have a lot of ways to get fire resistance against them.
-I was fighting Shinu and Machaka early, while there may have been some value in handing out some frost brands to warden commanders in general, this clearly seemed like a poor choice against Skellie Spam.
-E9 Wardens have counters, but Skelli Spam is not among that. Heavy evocations are something else, but wardens are usually tough enough to survive one direct hit.
-Blessing stuff is a major problem. I could partly mitigate it by buying lots and lots of indie priests (and finally getting Zon Priests who are H2 and can get H3 via a Crystal Shield).

My Wardens are a nice asset, as is High E on my pretender (which helps a ton into getting E, and the pretender can forge boot+Ring which allows certain crones to get Gargoyles), I also liked having a highish dominion.
I would believe however that a rainbow may be better longterm, as the f.e. total lack of Death hurts.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

If your using wardens rather than knights, neutral is enough, barely enough, but enough.

Production 3 is certainly worthwhile currently though.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Now add Gift of Health to the mix - works really well with Wardens. And Crones. And everything, in fact. You`ll also pick some nice spells on the way there. :)

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Some random ramblings from me here:
-Currently still playing E9 MA Man (with some fairly positive scales and an imprisoned lord of the forest). I did rush Alteration 5/const 4 for a very early mother oak, as the number of heavy N nations was limited in this game. This plan worked out well
-Largely using Sleepers with Vine Shields and Frost Brands as Thugs so far. And 18N5W those arent overly expensive, but significnatly improve your damage output.
-Man can do the "position in the back on guard commander and attack in turn 5" things perhaps better than imho any other nation. This is due to Song of Quickness, and the ability to summon targetting friendly chaff. Your longbows can also hit people from really far away.
-Wrath of Avalon gives you a slightly more cost efficient way to get High HP chaff, and the Moose help a ton too.
-I had Magic one scales, and otherwise money scales. At the moment I am leading in research, although MA Ulm just put up the Forge.
-If you ever get access to the Wizard Mercs, get them! In the absence of true A4, Crystal Shields improve everything by a loving ton.

While MA Man is a competitive nation, the following issues are significant:
-I have around 8ish castles, only about 2 of them can actually recruit 9 wardens a turn, at Prod 3 Scales. Mictlan can fairly easily outproduce me in Sacreds, and I dont have a lot of ways to get fire resistance against them.
-I was fighting Shinu and Machaka early, while there may have been some value in handing out some frost brands to warden commanders in general, this clearly seemed like a poor choice against Skellie Spam.
-E9 Wardens have counters, but Skelli Spam is not among that. Heavy evocations are something else, but wardens are usually tough enough to survive one direct hit.
-Blessing stuff is a major problem. I could partly mitigate it by buying lots and lots of indie priests (and finally getting Zon Priests who are H2 and can get H3 via a Crystal Shield).

My Wardens are a nice asset, as is High E on my pretender (which helps a ton into getting E, and the pretender can forge boot+Ring which allows certain crones to get Gargoyles), I also liked having a highish dominion.
I would believe however that a rainbow may be better longterm, as the f.e. total lack of Death hurts.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Did you find sleepers more effective than lord wardens? Sleepers have 3 more HP but otherwise they seem very similar.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

I have some kind of inbuilt thing against using recruitable human thugs somehow. Propably a blowback from a lot of failed attempts at thugging with Ulmish Black lords :)

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

I think, blessed Warden Lords should be more effective than Sleepers.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Care to elaborate? Not everyone has a chance to get on the IRC channel. Wouldn't mind hearing some other opinions especially if they come from vets.

I'm personally of the opinion that you're not allowed to insult people for ignorance if your also not willing to try to do anything about it.

It would also be nice if everyone turned down the heat a little bit in this conversation. We are talking about a game with little men who cast magic spells after all (a very fun one but still a game). Lets try to have fun.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

But does minimizing luck really = optimal? Just because you're minimizing luck doesn't mean you're maximizing the number of times you win.

Seems like this would be accurate with a relatively strong nation. Sure if you minimize the luck involved you'll end up in a good position every time. However, with a weaker nation you may actually want to play to the high risk strategies. Your downside is always limited: the worst that can happen is that you loose, and I'd rather loose fast than loose slow.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Man going high-bless seems to be a high-risk low-reward strategy - Man already has very good knights (not only Knights of Avalon, but regular knights too) and great archers. Adding another hard-hitting high-prot unit doesn`t seem to add much tactical flexibility even in the beginning, besides knights and wardens have similiar counters.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

There are multiple differences between knights and wardens.

The biggest one is stealth. Stealth is one of the most powerful abilities in the game. And the warden is one of the most powerful recruit-able units with this ability. Only one that I can think of that might beat them out are revelers. A few lord warden led raiding parties can be a huge pain in someones side during a war.

Second, they're sacred, this gets you the bless but almost as important it gets you cheap upkeep. If your relying on knights and archers alone your upkeep is quickly going to become a serious problem.

21 vs. 18 standard damage. May not seem like much but it's important vs. higher protection units. True knights have the lance strike but that can be easily countered with a screen of cheap chaff.

Higher MR. 14 vs. 10.

Knights of A do have the magical Alicorn attack, which is pretty important, but then you don't have to choose between knights of A and wardens. You can have them both.

Additionally, as long as you leave your regular knights and archers out of the mix you have entire armies with forest survival, which depending on the map can dramatically increase you're flexibility.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

I think minimizing luck was poorly phrased - it would have been better to say not relying on luck.

Perhaps more to the point: being able to change gears and not putting all your eggs in one basket. I mean, Man has some nice units - they're not like Mictlan where the sacreds are head and shoulders above the rest of the lineup (and where you can segue into excellent summons that require only blood slaves, not gems). Nightfall and I both used one level 9 bless and a pair of 4s in our builds. Changing his D9 bless to a D4 will buy him four scales (and still give a nice entry into D magic as well as combo path spells like hidden in sand and lamias). Changing my E9 to E4 would buy *6* scales - that will buy you a lot more mages (faster research, more combat magic) and a lot more of your other troops. Redirect some of those points to better magic diversity as desired.

So that's why I don't think a level 9 bless for Man is optimal. But it's certainly playable and fun and honestly things will get boring if everyone goes for scales/magic diversity/light bless builds.

This discussion is getting me interested in playing Man since they've got a significant stealth aspect (my favorite part of the game). I just don't know if I have the patience for dealing with old age on the crones...

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

It's worth mentioning that mothers of avalon can add some punch to your raiding parties. The sacreds probably won't need it, even with just a light bless, but it's a nice boost for woodsmen raiding parties.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

If you really want stealth, there's nothing preventing you from buying some wardens even without a bless and using them for the stealth aspect. They don't even really need a bless to be decent PD raiders. They'll suffer more attrition that way though.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Torgon:
Yes, but...
You don`t really need a heavy bless for stealth-raiding with 17 base prot. units.
So what? Eriu can have even better stealthy force in their thugs.
As long as you go without mages, yes. "Chicken isn`t a bird" as they say in my country. Mother of Avalon isn`t a real combat mage, you need couple A3 crones, and crones have mapmove 1.
Dramatically? Well, if map consists of forests and nothing else - then yes.
What high-protection targets are we talking about? If you run into Ulm early on - you`d better use knights anyway. Black Guardians obliterate wardens. And if you`ve taken a rainbow instead of high-bless - later on you can deploy a couple boosted crones with Destruction/Weapons of Sharpness. That`ll do you much more good against high-protection targets, while even with high E bless you risk your pretender to be late for the party.
Valerius:
What for? You need only 2D for lamias and climbing up D ladder. Do you think doubling affliction chance of a melee unit is worth the points?

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

True wardens can raid with out the bless. But bless allows you to raid with 1. Much lower numbers 2. With almost zero attrition.

Additionally, its not just about raiding, its also a matter of taking said raiding parties and recombining rapidly into a very hard hitting force to which a heavy bless provides a significant multiplier.

Yes, Eriu has good stealth thugs. So what? Why do I care about what Erie can do with their thugs. Last I checked we were talking about relative power of two different builds for man. We can get back on the subject of man's relative power vs. other nations, but I think we both agree there. They're a relatively weak nation compared to many others. Not disagreeing about that.

I think you're underestimating the strength of mothers in a fight. Here's basically everything you can do with them:

Sprites, Swarm, Hex, wooden warriors/mass protection, false fetters, false horror, wind guide, fog warriors, sleep cloud, breath of the dragon, poison cloud, stream of life, flood of life, storm of thorns, lightning bolt, orb lightning, thunderstrike, storm, wrathful skies, haste, all your spellsongs, poison ward, relief, serpents blessing, mass regen, siren's blessing, thunder ward, arrow fend, mass flight, storm warriors, confusion, panic, sleep, charm, growing fury

Now some of these require a nature booster, an air booster, or an air booster + summon storm power, but what else do want them to be able to do. This is list isn't a load of useless combat spells. And mothers are cheap, sacred, and stealthy, so you'll have a crap ton of them running around.

However, I won't argue that they're are better combat mages out there, of course there are. However, even if the mothers didn't have as much they could do they're all you have outside of the cap. You have to work with whats given to you. Obviously its nice to have a few crones around, but their numbers are always going to be limited.

So what, cloud trap them in prior to important fights, give them boots of flight if you have an important one you need to move around the battlefield. Also you're main armies moving at mapmove one anyway as it takes territory. Flexibility is important for reaction forces and reinforcement.

I've run into numerous situations where a forest was blocking retreat or reinforcement. The difference between one turn of movement and two turns can be pretty dramatic.


Ulms not the only nation with high protection units.

Arco: hoplites or heart companions, 17 prot. Knights do 1 damage on average, wardens do 4

Ermor: Praetorians or Triarius, 17 prot

Marignon: Knights of the chalice or men at arms, 17 or 15 prot

Abyssia: 16 prot on all heavy infantry

Jonthiem: 17 prot on almost all their giants outside of militia

I could go on. Many of these are good units for these nations and will show up in their armies. 21 vs. 18 damage basically quadruples your damage output. Against slightly lower but still decent protections of around 14 or 15 it doubles your damage output. And a square of knights only gets 2 attacks at 18 damage after the first strike, the other two are only at 12. Wardens get 3 at 21. This is hardly insignificant.

Also you can boost your crones without taking a rainbow. Find some E2 indi, an E2 merc, or just suck it up and empower for 30 gems. You're still basically saying that a 30 gem investment that you wont even have to make in most cases is so expensive as to outweigh any benefit you get from a bless.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

I don't think that's how damage with exploding dice rolls works. It would make the B4 bless as good as the W9, at 50% greater damage. Do we have a mathmatician here?

In any case, any well played Man will have both knights and Wardens, and longbowmen too regardless of bless. It's just relative proportions that change. It's not like Mictlan where the bless multiplies the effectiveness of the entire army and extends to the endgame summons.

And making that list of battlemagic useable as early as possible is one of the major arguments against a high bless. Take flaming arrows, which is only available off a pretender, despite being obviously ridiculously good with Man, who on top of great archers, has excellent research (cheap forts, cheap temples, efficient sacred researcher), and some interesting national spells in enchantment. Like Song of Power which you left out of your list, and Man's the only nation that has it and can actually make good if unpredictable use of it, with its expendable N3s. I've had some success with a F4A4 Phoenix in tests. Okay, it does very little either for diversity or bless, but it does give you early high air magic, and it's pretty much ideal for supercharging your archers with the mobility to support more than one archer army if necessary.

As a sidenote, how good are sprites? I've never actually used them since you can't script them. Is it worth summoning a Faery Queen just to chain summon sprites that you can script?

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

So damage is STR + weapon damage + DRN (two exploding 6 six sided dice)

Protection roll is protection at location + DRN

Defender takes damage in hit points equal to the difference. So yes, you are correct that when STR + weapon = protection the expected value of the damage is greater than 0 since the lower half of the distribution is cut off.

Use a little monte carlo with protection of 17. Str + weapon = 18 has an expected value of around 2.66. Str + weapon = 21 has an expected value of 4.75. So around 180%, about double the expected damage output.

So you're correct, I overstated the effectiveness. It just about doubles your damage vs. protection 17 forces. Against protection 12 forces its 6.45 vs 9.23.

Agree 100%. I just find that KoA out of the cap generally fill all the need I have for knights when I've played with a high bless. And yes, archers are still definitely worth recruiting in the right circumstances.

I had it in there. Just said all the spellsongs rather than listing all of them. IMO SoP is just really hard to use effectively, as you have to script and set it up perfectly or its just an unmitigated disaster. It seems like a cool spell, but I've never been able to use it in practice unless i was just going up against someone who didn't remember that man has it. If you've found a way to make it effective I'm all ears.

Phoenix is good. It just seems like that build makes man just as much of a one trick pony as the bless option. And its a trick thats much more easily countered than just a load of heavily armored, high damage, high stat stealth wardens.

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

A4 on pretender frees up some A gems for guided arrows or wyverns. F4 gives you Zmey, and a head slot on phoenix means cheaper F5 for fire kings and, eventually, emberlords (if you need them).

Re: Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?
 

Well, it's countered by researching to evo 5, or more completely enchantment 6 for nations with air magic. Nations without air magic are kind of **** out of luck if they rely on mass armies and isn't Abyssia. By the time you get to Evo 5, sacred troops in the direct combat role are pretty much obsolescent anyway against most nations, except for Eagle Warriors and EA TC's Wot5E, and as stealth raiders, they have until evo 6 and mind hunt for full effectiveness.

I see it as basically the same as high bless Man. Weaker year 1, though Man's still a terrible rush target, but otherwise high power to roughly the same point. Better against nations without air magic but with strong astral, like Bandar Log, worse against someone like Eriu, but overall even. However as mentioned, even after flaming arrows gets countered, the Phoenix does have some solid uses, more so than a high bless pretender in Earth or Water at least.

Regarding Song of Power, it's no game changer obviously. But you'll have diseased crones not worth rejuvenating. Script mirror image, mistform, flight, attack, Song of Power for some shenanigans against high value sacred armies. Later in the game, N3 mothers plus fog warriors can do much the same thing on a larger scale. Easy enough to counter, but good for a surprise.