Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Ambibate Nobles are comparable to MA Principes. 12/15 protection instead of 11/18, shield instead of tower shield, broadsword instead of shortsword, less morale and encumberance. I think they're rather good for EA. I might use Marverni Nobles if I was in a hurry, or tight on money. The Eponi cavalry look as decent as any non-sacred, non-knight cavalry.

The standard-bearers are vulnerable to both melee and missile fire, though, but you might be able to use your melee commanders instead. They have standard, except for Boar Lords.

The non-noble warriors aren't good. Berserker types aren't worth their price due to their attack/defence skills being lower and due to an inferior weapon. Slingers aren't useful after very early game.


EDIT:

As for Earth/Astral, the useful spells and items are:
Crystal Coin (+1 S), Gifts from Heaven, Golems, Gate Stone as far as artifacts go, and then all the Earth spells and the Astral spells. Earth Power gives reinvigoration, which can be nice even if the Druid isn't scripted to cast other Earth spells.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

This sums up what pretty much what everyone is saying about Marveni, good late game potential.

However, how can you get to that stage in MP, when you are in most games going to end up dead by turn 30 due to being a very weak nation early on?

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

380 is expensive, but they are sacred so upkeep isn't so bad. With good scales it's not that hard to recruit Druids in multiple forts.

Marverni can also use communion well, with the Stargazers as slaves.

There are all sorts of fun stuff you could do with teleporting Druids.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I don't believe anyone would call Maverni a /weak/ nation necessarily. Granted they aren't top tier with Hel/Niefel/Lanka but their principe clones are very usable and earth/astral is about the best mix of battle magic you can hope for. You have Blade wind (king of EA battlemagic) as well as astral magic + Gifts of heavens against the SC's and heavy troops. Add that to it's non cap only status as well as sacred and you have one scary magic force.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I think the issue is the difficulty in amassing Ambibates sufficient numbers to survive until such point as you can begin using Druids in battle. Marverni is a "middle game" nation, with a weak early and somewhat weak late game.

So you either make a SC Pretender that can tank and fight for you until you have enough research to use druids, or you pump out huge masses of Ambibates and Eponi cavalry. But if you're rushed in the first 20 turns by anything other than a human nation (Ctis, Pangaea, Kaliasa, ect), you won't have enough troops - or good enough troops - to survive.

On paper Marverni looks ok, but i think they're rather weak in practice. They've only got a couple of decent national units, and have to rely totally on mages/magical gems for anything past the early game. This is hard to do if your fighting one one or two fronts against human opponents....

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Conversations about balance and weak are hard to have without defining the game abit. To some people, weak is based on small-map player-kill-player games. That defines the total of Dom3 and what makes things good or bad. The game does also support and have large followings for very different game styles that totally change such "weak/strong" comparisons. Solo play, alliance play, large map, low resource, high magic, RPG, Victory point, etc. On a default game (medium map) most of the units have use for as much of the game as others. Early game units get as much play as late game units when you are storming the enemies castle.

I like slingers for a good part of the game. Slingers can cheaply create a sky full of falling rocks, and a damage of 9 isnt bad. The effect can generate a rout in many units. Shooting 15 volleys is nice also. Unfortunately a precision of 10 on the slinger, and a -2 precision on the weapon, makes for alot of misses. I find it handy to give them all to a commander and then break them into 5 squads. Aim boosting spells helps also.

I dont target them at other weak units such as archers as Ive seen many do. That causes them to run up into the battle. I target them at large monsters or cavalry in the hopes of routing them before my infantry has to meet them.

Its not really a late-game tactic when you are entering your enemies castle, and I wouldnt create an army of nothing but slingers. But it does have its uses. Spending one turn to add a commander and many slingers to an army before sending it out can be helpful in situations where you wonder what will get you by that army (such as elephants). Its also a cheap way to create an army that the AI is nervous about attacking.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

My ideas about game size are those maps provided to us in the retail package. You can use third-party maps, and i don't think doing this is invalid, but it's not really a part of the game as designed.

The random generator creates "large" maps with 20 provinces per player. Even this means you will have combat fairly early as these maps tend to be blocky with little terrain compared to Jason Lutes's nice designs.

For example, i find playing Marverni in Dawn of Dominions vs. the AI to be a very, very difficult affair. Surrounded on all sides by empires that are, lets face it, better than yours, including a water nation you can't even fight, is a pretty difficult thing! On one or two notches above normal difficulty the AI tends to swarm me before i have a chance to deploy my nice mages in any effective roles.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

In practice, they're no weaker than any other non archer nation that doesn't rely on blesses. I don't see how you're even having trouble against C'tis "rushes" unless they're going a dual 9 serpent dancer on you, their troops are mostly just hoarding waves of trashy units, a practice that Marveni can replicate. Especially because slings and javs are very much underestimated in EA IMO. Also, aside from heavy blessers, I can't think of any situation where your nationals will get completely outpowered by another's. If you're going to complain about someone else's pretender though, well if someone spends 300 + points in their pretender compared to you, they deserve some sort of advantage, non?

On paper, Maverni looks like an average balanced nation because in practice, they are a well balanced average nation. Your main problem is you're probably comparing them to NOT well balanced nations. (Niefel/Hel/Lanka coming to mind for one ...)

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Er., chariots? Trampling units eat Marverni for breakfast, and aren't EAs Ctis Chariots fairly decent? (Good morale?)

Chariots are one reason why i love EA Tien Chi http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/smilies/happy.gif. (Excellent artillery casters are another).

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

The AI is not good indication for strength of nation. Especially since Dawn of Dominions is a scenario map and not balanced in starting locations.