Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I'm having trouble coming up with a Pretender build for Marverni that doesn't completely suck. Of course i have some preconceptions...

First, i think Marverni should take 3 Productivity, because this underpowered nation doesn't stand a chance unless it can really pump out the troops (and even then it might not matter in the long run). I also think they need a fairly reasonable dominion in order to enjoy the fruits of having good scales.

OTOH, i think that a "Rainbow" Pretender with 3 or 4s in many path would be preferable because you'll need lots of summons and magic in order to survive. But in order to get all these things, you need to make the Pretender Imprisoned, which rather defeats the whole purpose of using a site-searching Pretender. PLUS, you HAVE to have blood on your Pretender (and preferably high scales) in order to make any use of the Blood Sacrifice ability....

You can make a 9-path Dragon, except that you have no use for Fire gems and the Nature dragon kind of sucks. And Marverni isn't a very good bless nation...

There are just too many issues that a Marverni Pretender has to overcome, as an Early Era nation.

Or you could wreck the scales and make a Vampire Queen SC Pretender, but this isn't very thematic or unique to Marverni's abilities in any event, since anyone can do that...

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

That's probably a decent idea, so that you can get more Ambibate nobles, which are almost as good as principes.

I can think of few situations in which you'd want a rainbow pretender. A magically diverse nation like Marverni is definetly not one of them. You have guaranteed access to astral, nature, and earth site searching spells, and are likely to eventually have a water 2 druid.

Don't waste your pretender's time by having him search for blood slaves. Use scouts for blood hunting if you need slaves and have no blood mages available.

Realistically, if you aren't planning a bless strategy for a nation, and aren't underwater where you won't have to deal with land-based sacred troops, then I would almost always pick a SC pretender. Doubling your expansion rate is a hard thing to pass up just for a potential minor advantage later in the game. That said, I definetly wouldn't use a VQ, since she's extremely overpriced.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

with marveni you want a sage, and this is why: its not about recruitable troops - clearly they are sub par, but the mages are POWERFUL, so you want some decent evocation and at higher construction levels they can make decent Golem thugs/SCs and armies of mechanical men. At medium enchantment they can make armies of living statues.

I have been tooling around with marveni a lot and this is the only feasible solution i've come up with regarding them...

so you go with a sage,who can help them get the research faster. Give him a little death and he might even be able to replace himself with skull mentors then go around looking for magic sites to power the marveni machine.

alternatively, the SC pretender is very useful as well, since Marveni is very bad at early expansion. so I have to agree with GD there.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Hmm... I'll have to agree with Graeme on this one. You need to take advantage of marveni's battle magic ability. I always recommend a combat pretender (dragon, or a dom 9/10 wyrm/cyclops) for nations with crappy troops. Also you really don't need to blood sacrifice with them either. I tend to ignore that ability completely.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

yeah, forget the blood. for reals.

a Awe-dom prince of death is nice too, cause he's so scary that their morale dips into the negatives.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I don't think Marverni is all that weak, unless you are comparing it to Vanheim or something...

Druids are great, and the troops are not that bad either. I'd take good scales, magic, order and production (or maybe swap order for luck). Having a pretender that can do early expansion would be good.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I'm playing a co-op hotseat game with a friend where he has Marverni. He took a dormant F9 phoenix and enough production to be able to crank out a good number of sacred troops, which he promptly used to squash the indies around him. With hard research and powerful indies, the first 12 turns allowed him to get research up to spec so that the phoenix was usable as an artillery platform against indies by the time it awakened. Don't know how useful that would be in MP, though.

Marverni can make use of several evocation and thaumaturgy based magic strategies, especially when coupled with certain magic and penetration boosters.

The last thing they need is a rainbow pretender.

Edi

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

well, compared to sauromatia, lanka, and yomi (the new races I am familiar with) - (helhiem and vanhiem also, but those guys clean up with recruitable troops.)

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I used a 4-Fire Dragon in a multiplayer game, thinking i could expand out quickly so that i could bring the magic economy up to speed. However, well, the Dragon got eaten by the bugged Eater of Heroes, but anyway.. i don't think that he would have been able to dish out enough damage to beat Pangaea's really decent Satyr Warriors and huge swarms of Maenads. The other problem with fast expansion is that i'm a paper tiger, and most other nations have stronger troops, so seeing me get big fast makes me the first target. Marverni has some decent potential but you need to survive for 20+ turns unmolested to really bring that potential out. Once you're magic/battle magic economy gets rolling this are easier. It's the early game that all those damn human troops just get in the way.

I like the 9F Phoenix idea.

Personally (imo) all the human themed nations in the Early Era are to a greater or lesser degree weaker than the "mythological" nations available.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

They are not weaker. S&A, Ermor, Sauromatia, etc are all up there for my picks in EA. Maverni not so much because they have no archers but IMO their excellent mages some what shores up that weakness. In base, I would probably go a dom 10 Prince of Death and use high order 3/magic 1 (or 3) with points coming out of misfortune and sloth to power the early expansion drive.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I can't think of any reason that having a sage would help towards this end. The 20 research points he provides is two turns of mage recruitment, and if he's researching, you are expanding half as fast as you would be with a 50 point wyrm.

He's going to find a bunch of sites that you won't be able to use with your national mages, and since he can only forge one item per turn, you're never going to be able to make good use of a rainbow mage.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Can we talk a little more about Prince of Death design? I've definitely had an awake Dom 10 Death 5 PoD take out a couple groups of indeps singlehandedly before items or research, but it seemed like he might have gotten spanked if I'd been less lucky. Would you think sleeping, to get more points and give people time to get a little construction action going, or just throw him out there solo from the get go and hope for the best?

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I often set him sleeping to buy some extra scales and give me a chance to forge some basic armour or weaponry

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

He doesn't need anything. ESpecially for expanding into the crappier indies. Later on you can research and forge some armor + luck pendant.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Yes crappier indies are easier. I tend to play with indies set to 8-9 and,even vrs fairly weak enemies, he tends to pick up a few afflictions in the first few turns which is why i like to get some armour on him.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

heres what I ran recently that really worked - he could take nearly anything but cavalry.

PoD, 9 dom (10 is too dang expensive,) 4 water 4 earth 3 death, juggle scales to your liking.

the water and earth are for increased defense and protection. (he has a little of both already, but the extra +4 to both really helps round him out.)

on turn 2 you have enough to make a black iron breastplate - do so and send him out on turn 3. he is at somewhere around 23-24 prot, and since he flies he can really clean up all the tribes and infantries.

after a little research upgrade his weapon to maybe a frost brand (for AoE) and give him a shield. At some point you can have him casting invulnerability and soul vortex, so you can swap out his armor for a robe of shadows.

it works out pretty good.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Why is soul vortex worth casting on a guy that doesn't generate fatigue? The extra 1 damage/healing per turn seems pretty useless.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Soul vortex affects a rather large area surrounding the caster, you can never have too much healing, and there are multiple ways to cause fatigue to zero encumbrance units.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

well, to eat up the fatigue caused by casting invulnerability

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

In Rpg's, we call it "Crowd control" =).

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

soul vortex + breath of winter results in some sleeping armies around you, which is better armor when you yourself are asleep than any armor in the game

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Each of W4/E4 are worth 122 points for your pretender. Do you really need both? I'd think you could get by with E4 alone, as protection should be worth more against masses of troops, and that those 122 points might be better spent on 3 scales.

I have to admit, though, I'm thinking about him more for MA C'tis, so that might change some of the dynamics.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

every little bit helps. since he isn't really huge on HPs I like to give them some def to avoid as much damage as possible.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Hmmmm... what about 2 scales and increasing death (which is comparatively quite cheap for him)? That way you end up with more fear, which is what is winning the battles (at least for me) against the indeps anyway.

As a neophyte to this game but an old hand at RPGs like Champions, it just hurts my head to leave death at 3 for him and buying high levels of another path for a pretender who is so poor at learning new paths.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

well clearly the details are up to the player. more death is nice, and it increases the morale drops, but it doesn't help you when they do miraculously make their morale roll.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Marverni is definately a weak nation that could do with some love by the developers.

What bugs me is why as this nation got no national spells?

This nation could really do with some good national spells to make it worth playing.

Even the magic is pretty pathetic when compared with other EA nations, the troops are rubbish, the sacreds naff, may as well not exist if you ask me...

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

well they have the best arcane mages in the early era... thus they are best suited to have late game master enslave squads.

they are well suited to make golem thugs, and their sacreds are bersekers with shields, which makes them rather viable for bless strats.

You are right though, they could do with some nation spells.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I don't see how you can say that Marverni has pathetic magic. You get Earth 4 and Astral 4 mages before booster items, both good paths, and Druids aren't even capital only.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

So you can recruit the 380gp druid at any fortress? Oh thats interesting...

E4 and S4 is good but 380gp is expansive, so your not going to have many. Also is earth/astral a good mix? What nastiness could you do?

In MP, I believe many consider this nation weak, also I cannot remember a game where they have done well or even figured amongst the top nations.

I suspect because of there poor troops, putting together a reasonable size empire will be difficult and they could be easily overrun early on by nations with better sacreds/national troops.

I will say one good about them, perhaps a good nation to play SP against Helheim, Vanheim, Nielfelheim and Caelum on impossible if you want a challenging game!

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

earth/astral gives golems and earth and astral(separate) have some very nice items and artifacts.

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.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Have you ever tried to mass chariots...? not to mention by the time they get enough numbers of them, you should easily be able to get some battlemagic. Personally if you're building high gold high resource units, they better do something besides kill a few units and then rout themselves. Also it's not that difficult to defend against chariots between mercenaries and eponi knights.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I know in multi my Marerni hordes (bolstered by some 80 indie archers) were very easily routed by a Pangaea with hordes of Warriors/Revelers, Maenads, and those trampling bull guys whom name escapes me at the moment. Minotaurs?

Chariots are much harder to mass than the Minotaurs but have better armor and defence, so i imagine they would work similarly. Perhaps not.

I've never built Chariots in multi as i've never had the opportunity. Previously, in Dom2, Chariots always sucked. In the Early Era, they are not, perhaps, quite so bad.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

I disagree with this since the game is heavily designed to be modded and for maps to be created for it. The functionality for 3rd Party maps are really built right in - even the ability to generate your own without any hassle. I think all that is exactly part of the game, as designed.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

1) They had berserkers, you didn't.
2) By the time, the game has reached the "hordes" stage, you should've had blade wind.
3) If you're worried about tramplers, use eponi's. Script your archers to "fire archers" Your cav should be scripted to "target large monsters" to engage the minotaurs.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

Turn 12ish i should have had blade wind? I suppose that's fair criticism...

And, btw, i had mostly Eponi, with archer and ambibate support.

Re: Good Pretender design for Marverni?
 

At turn 12ish, your wars should be conducted mostly by raiding, especially because you're a stronger magic nation than he is. Colliding with his army at that time is stupid because even if you win the battle, you're taking way higher losses than you need to without magic support. In order words, you won't get any decisive victories. The only time this is different is if he's gunning straight for your capital in which case, you have home field advantage because 1) you know where he's going to go.
2) You can still raid off his backline making him either have to split his army or take losses in provinces.
3) you can buff your own army up with pd.
4) your reinforcements are faster than his.
If you had pumped roughly equal amounts of gold into your army vs his, you should not have been routed if you scripted properly. Turn 12ish, you should be getting blade wind soon anyway. The more likely scenario is his minotaurs trampled your infantry while your eponi got tangled up into his mass of revelers/maenads.

There's no reason not to gun up the evocation tree with Maverni unless you're getting buffs for your combat pretender. In which case, where the heck is he if you're trying to fight a decisive battle? With that said, even around turn 12ish, Blade wind shouldnt' be that far out of reach. It's only 360 research, and you should be building nonstop druids starting around turn 6-8.

Lastly, there's always the off chance that you routed earlier than normal just because you got unlucky. Since he was using mostly berserkers, the battle could've went either you wiping out a large chunk of his army or you routing way earier than you should. But them's the breaks, as they say =\.