Re: Which nations need help?
 

Is there any good reason why Ulm shouldn't get Tempering the Will at Thaumaturgy 0?

-Max

Re: Which nations need help?
 

You can do all that, Baalz, but you're still going to be at a big disadvantage. They're not a totally useless nation, I'll give you that, but the things they are good at are not good enough to win the game against a really powerful nation, unless you're a lot better than the person you're playing against.

You can use the submarine/battleship analogy, but they're like having a navy that's made up of a handful of submarines, iron-clads, and primitive canoes, and pitting them against a modern navy--maybe without subs, but with battleships, helicopters, aircraft carriers, support vessels, the whole works. The subs might be very effective-at certain tasks-but they are still going to have a hard time fielding all those depth-charges and sonar scans.

Re: Which nations need help?
 

Why should they pay through the nose for their One Good Thing? The Druids have 6.1 magic paths and 2 priest levels for 380 gold. They have no other abilities except for blood sacrifice (worthless). They don't even have forest survival!

The Early T'ien Ch'i Celestial Master, to take an extreme example, has 7.1 paths and 2 priest levels for only 250 gold. 130 gold less, and he can fly as well.

The Yomi Dai Oni is a fully fledged SC with 8.1 paths, 1 priest level and a truckload of special abilites. He's 500 gold, only 120 more than the druid.

Re: Which nations need help?
 

If I were going to fix R'lyeh, I'd give them the ability to recruit enslaved sea-trolls (capital only), and do something to make all those free-spawn atleast somewhat effective offensively-like make a level 0-2 national spell that makes them all slightly poisonous (1 point of damage).

It'd also be nice if the sacred aboleth recruitables had a counterpart to the Mind Lords

As far as national spells-I'd do spells that summoned Polypal Mothers who could produce stronger types of spawn-one that's amphibious, another one that has weapons-grade (low level) life-draining, a third that has mild poison, a fourth that can "fly" underwater", and a fifth with slight regeneration, and maybe a spell that "mutates" all your troops into more effective forms-give them one point of (improveable) Un-natural armor or a water-version of Breath of Winter or Moss Body (can that be cast underwater? I'm at work) or makes their natural attacks armor-piercing, without increasing the damage, or makes them all sacred-since sacredness probably is different for an Aboleth than for a human. I think that would be neat. Naturally, these spells would be tailored to be cost effective when you use them on masses of spawn, but very inefficient for any other use, for balance.

Please Note: some of these ideas, I'm actually using for mod nations that I'm working on, but my wife and I are in the process of buying and moving into a house, and I have neither the free time nor the concentration to get them out any time soon, so feel free to use these, I just might come back later and use them myself.

Re: Which nations need help?
 

You missed one critical advantage of the druid over both, it's not capital only. Also, raw number of paths is a bit misleading, other than for site searching 1-2 paths at high levels is far better than 3 or more all over the place.

As far as new national spells for Marverni, you might want to wait and check out the new summons IW a has cooking for them, according to the progress page.

Re: Which nations need help?
 

The Celestial Master has more magic paths, but they're scattered all around (a single 4 is in many ways more useful than a couple of 2s) and he is capital-only. I agree, though, that the Druid seems overpriced compared to the Ktonian Necromancer, the Dai Oni, or the Sauromancer.

-Max

Re: Which nations need help?
 

Druids can also do a nice communion with a bunch of stargazers. It's a problem surviving in MP to the point where you have multiple castles.

Some national summons like Cu Sith or Agartha's Earth Elementals would do wonders to help them out. A mid-level summonable researcher would be great too, since Marverni cannot craft any research items. Right now, not taking Magic-3 scales with Marverni is suicide.

Re: Which nations need help?
 

The Marverni druids are lethal once enough magic is researched. Because of their astral magic and high communion potentianl they are one of the best mages in the game. Their main weakness is no air magic, and air magic is often a needed defensive magic.

Re: Which nations need help?
 

A large communion with summon earth power and bladewind/gifts from heaven/soul slay as required is always nice, particularly if you pretender was an awake cyclop(fast expansion, earth bless grants even more reinvig)

Re: Which nations need help?
 

While MA Pangaea is not a "weak" race, their national summons
are all around a death theme which is not really their main theme, which is nature.

It would be nice if Pangaea had a unique national summon that was unrelated to a death theme. Maybe a level 5 conj summons of a pure forest type unit.