[SelfishGene]

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....