[Tyrant]

I have to disagree strongly with those who say MA Man does not need help. They often make a go of it in the early game, but nearly always suffer a sudden and thorough crushing later in the game. I have seen this over and over again. I honestly believe that one reason for their frequent early success is that sharks leave them for later because they know that they wipe them out easily in the late game. Their collapse usually happens when they have the misfortune to face a foe with a couple of air mages and mid game research.

They can put forth a pretty formidable force with mass longbows and a ton of mages spewing lightning and soothed by song. But longbows are simple to counter, and lightning is single target- it takes many many mages to kill a full size army with lightning.

Lots of nations are in this situation- they have a powerful tactical combo that eventually becomes obsolete as other player develop counters, but Man's problem is that they have great difficulty coming up with a plan B. Their non-cap mages are very limited and Crones are overpriced, narrow,underpowered, slow, fragile and old. What it comes down to is that they basically have only one type of magic- nature- and no good battlefield mages. Nature magic is fine, but it really kinda lacks lethality. Crones are fine lab mages, but not so good in the field. Two air, which is what they get outside of Crones, gives you lightning and some forging. It's barely possible that you can get 4A on 1% lucky Crone and build some power ups, but failing that and absent astral you need to put air on your pretender to even have a shot at the powerful advanced air spells. Given how narrow your magic is to begin with, this is a painful necessity.

What about the army? Well, there's nothing really wrong with it, but there are many with better, and given it's similarity to knights and longbow indies anyone who can't beat it needs more practice before they play MP.

Many nations have both excellent casters and excellent armies. Most nations have one or the other. Some nations have spiffy national spells. Man has Song of Soothing and excellent spies. Neither of these is a basis for world domination.

Here are three pretty conservative suggestions for improving Man

-upgrade crones by one of the following methods listed in order of power:

1) Give them a second random of the same spec they have now with no cost increase. (weakest upgrade) or

2) Replace +1 100% A/N/W/E with +2 of the same. (This will let them make air power up items and Earth Boots.) or

3) Give them an additional +1 A/S/E/W (this will let them make power ups and do communions with $300 slaves or make Crystals)

I'd like to say limit the age problem as well, but Reno has a good point, it's thematic as can be. They'll just have to Transform.

- Why aren't Knights of Avalon sacred? There is no thematic or balance reason. Man is an old DomII race and DomII nations seldom had two kinds of sacred unit, that's why. Make them sacred.

- Upgrade either the Bard's leadership or the Lord Warden's stealth. As it is now their stealth troops are not stealthy enough to sneak into the kitchen for a midnight snack.

I reiterate that i believe Man's real problem is excessively narrow magic and what they truly need is an upgrade in air and/or a third magic type at high enough level that they can build it up and get something other than Nature going in the late game.