Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

In reviewing Conquerers of the Sea, it seems that, while it's a flavorful theme, it just doesn't come off as a viable choice in 99% of multiplayer games, certainly by comparison to other Marignon options. You might catch somebody by surprise with it, but otherwise it's considerably weaker than its base counterpart.

Does gaining Sailing really make up for the loss of a level of magic (2 Air vs. 3 Fire, rest balances out), two tiers of priestdom (no lvl 3, no lvl 4), the loss of your national spell (Holy Pyre can't be used by any national units), and the loss of your most powerful sacred unit?

Seriously, how does this balance out? What am I missing here and, if I'm not missing anything, what might be done to beef it up a bit?

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

2 Air 2 Astral 1 Random at 200 can be better than 3 Fire 2 Astral 1 Random at 270. Chartmakers make good communion slaves.

Air magic with communion is scary.

[ April 22, 2004, 17:52: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

But more scary than Fire with Communion on top of a better set of Priests and the other advantages I listed? If so, why?

Again, this isn't a gripe. I'm just not able to see the balance of my own accord. Consider it a cry for help. http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/images/icons/icon7.gif

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

Pros:

- the best mage has OK skills and is recruitable everywhere.

- the Chartmaker is more versatile than the Initiate and a better candidate than the Witch Hunter for communions.

- Air magic is better than Fire overall.

- tolerates Drain better than the main theme (Chartmakers can forge Quills early).

- Sailing OFC. Not an earth-shattering ability but very handy on the right map.

Cons:

- the starting spell (Holy Pyre) is useless. At least that should be fixed (a scrying or weather spell would make more sense).

- no KotC, but this isn't a huge drawback IMO.

- not as much early extra income from alchemy.

- Flaming Arrows is harder to get and was a wonderful power-up for crossbows.

- the Missionary is more expensive than the Friar and less useful.

- the 2 mundane leaders are thematic but not very useful.

Overall I think CotS is almost as good as the main theme. I rather like it.

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Wind Guide is a nice substitute.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Communion backed Air seems much better than Fire, and base Marignon lacks the 90 gold communion slave that CotS has in the Chartmaker.

[ April 22, 2004, 19:28: Message edited by: Teraswaerto ]

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nice but not as good.

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I really can't see why. When I use communion with CotS it's rather to boost the other magic paths.

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

Wind Guide + Orb Lightning or Thunder Strike.

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

Communion Packed Orb Lightning and Thunder Strikes along with Air Elementals (With how the game uses gems now, you can get the most out of each Elemental summoning for 1 Gem a piece if you use Communion).

Also don't forget Cloud Trapeze as well as easy access to large #'s of Flying Units. The ability to Communion makes the lack of a pure 3 Fire less cumbersome to overcome, but unless you get lucky you will more than likely have to wait a little longer than turn 10 for Flaming Arrows (the benchmark for Marignon).

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You don't need a communion for Wind Guide. And Orb Lightning, huh? Communion-backed Orb Lightning isn't as tempting when the guys you're using as communion slaves can cast Orb Lightning themselves. 8 Chartmakers slaves will give +3 bolts to each master, but you're losing 8 bolts when doing this. Make that 16 if you're using Storm Power. You need a lot of communion masters to make up for the loss - and the more masters, the more likely you'll lose your slaves to exhaustion.

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Nice but not as good.

</font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Actually CotS does have one conspicuous advantage over "normal" Marignon. It gets Marignon's fire path heros. Both the cardinal and Tomaso can cast flaming arrows (communion optional for the latter), which in concert with wind guide is quite a bit of fun.

That being said, I think the Royal Chartmakers should be given some extra buff, (perhaps a reduction in the chance of bad events in their location?) Unlike normal Marignon's High Mages...They aren't sacred, so you wont have very many that aren't devoted to communion mastering.

Be nice to make them slightly useful on their own.

Though Orb lightning is nice once you have a precision enhanced communion horde... surviving that long is nontrivial, against competent opposition.

Also it seems that the communion abuse is at present the only viable long term startegy for CotS, (at least more so than standard Mary) which is not really ideal.

Especially given the fire path advantage outlined above is arguably a bug.


Rabe the LoF/MotD Admirer

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

Depends on how many you are communioning for what. You can go overboard (I consider 8 more than likely overboard, I rarely communion with more than 4 as a generality, though there are exceptions). But that doesn't mean that, that option is availiable and viable and adds another dimension to them.

Obviously it is the Random that provides Communion with it's most versitility, but you can't ignore the fact that you can utilize Communion backed Level based spells on need.

[ April 22, 2004, 20:47: Message edited by: Zen ]

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I don't see that as good enough to justify saying that Air gets more from communion than Fire. the Orb Lightning part I already replied to. Thunder Strike don't get as much from communion as, say, Astral Fires. Communion-backed Air Elementals are good, but only until you get False Horrors which you can summon for free in droves (and if you're pushing for Wind Guide you might as well buy those 2 extra Alteration levels).

Quote:

Also don't forget Cloud Trapeze

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">I like it and use it a lot, but in that case it's a bit redundant with astral magic and Teleport.

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Astral 2 mages need a skullcap to teleport, while air 2 mages can cloud trapeze, so it's not really redundant.

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">Astral 2 mages need a skullcap to teleport, while air 2 mages can cloud trapeze, so it's not really redundant. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">That's why I said 'a bit'. It's surely more redundant to CotS than it is to Caelum or Vanheim.

[ April 22, 2004, 21:05: Message edited by: Nagot Gick Fel ]

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

Mary standard theme have witch hunter and gran master sacred ... so reduced unkeep ... whis is very important I believe.

Re: Conquerers of the Sea - The new Blood of Humans?
 

<font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">You don't need a communion for Wind Guide. And Orb Lightning, huh? Communion-backed Orb Lightning isn't as tempting when the guys you're using as communion slaves can cast Orb Lightning themselves. 8 Chartmakers slaves will give +3 bolts to each master, but you're losing 8 bolts when doing this. Make that 16 if you're using Storm Power. You need a lot of communion masters to make up for the loss - and the more masters, the more likely you'll lose your slaves to exhaustion. </font><hr /></blockquote><font size="2" face="sans-serif, arial, verdana">The Wind Guide is for precision, I didn't mean that communion was a requirement for it.

Thunderstrike is fatigue heavy, and the spell AI often casts Orb Lightning on it's own after the script ends. IMHO, communion works better than to have the Chartmakers cast Orb instead.