[Torgon]

You don`t really need a heavy bless for stealth-raiding with 17 base prot. units.

True wardens can raid with out the bless. But bless allows you to raid with 1. Much lower numbers 2. With almost zero attrition.

Additionally, its not just about raiding, its also a matter of taking said raiding parties and recombining rapidly into a very hard hitting force to which a heavy bless provides a significant multiplier.

So what? Eriu can have even better stealthy force in their thugs.

Yes, Eriu has good stealth thugs. So what? Why do I care about what Erie can do with their thugs. Last I checked we were talking about relative power of two different builds for man. We can get back on the subject of man's relative power vs. other nations, but I think we both agree there. They're a relatively weak nation compared to many others. Not disagreeing about that.

As long as you go without mages, yes. "Chicken isn`t a bird" as they say in my country. Mother of Avalon isn`t a real combat mage,

I think you're underestimating the strength of mothers in a fight. Here's basically everything you can do with them:

Sprites, Swarm, Hex, wooden warriors/mass protection, false fetters, false horror, wind guide, fog warriors, sleep cloud, breath of the dragon, poison cloud, stream of life, flood of life, storm of thorns, lightning bolt, orb lightning, thunderstrike, storm, wrathful skies, haste, all your spellsongs, poison ward, relief, serpents blessing, mass regen, siren's blessing, thunder ward, arrow fend, mass flight, storm warriors, confusion, panic, sleep, charm, growing fury

Now some of these require a nature booster, an air booster, or an air booster + summon storm power, but what else do want them to be able to do. This is list isn't a load of useless combat spells. And mothers are cheap, sacred, and stealthy, so you'll have a crap ton of them running around.

However, I won't argue that they're are better combat mages out there, of course there are. However, even if the mothers didn't have as much they could do they're all you have outside of the cap. You have to work with whats given to you. Obviously its nice to have a few crones around, but their numbers are always going to be limited.

you need couple A3 crones, and crones have mapmove 1.

So what, cloud trap them in prior to important fights, give them boots of flight if you have an important one you need to move around the battlefield. Also you're main armies moving at mapmove one anyway as it takes territory. Flexibility is important for reaction forces and reinforcement.

Dramatically? Well, if map consists of forests and nothing else - then yes.

I've run into numerous situations where a forest was blocking retreat or reinforcement. The difference between one turn of movement and two turns can be pretty dramatic.

What high-protection targets are we talking about? If you run into Ulm early on - you`d better use knights anyway. Black Guardians obliterate wardens. And if you`ve taken a rainbow instead of high-bless - later on you can deploy a couple boosted crones with Destruction/Weapons of Sharpness. That`ll do you much more good against high-protection targets, while even with high E bless you risk your pretender to be late for the party.

Ulms not the only nation with high protection units.

Arco: hoplites or heart companions, 17 prot. Knights do 1 damage on average, wardens do 4

Ermor: Praetorians or Triarius, 17 prot

Marignon: Knights of the chalice or men at arms, 17 or 15 prot

Abyssia: 16 prot on all heavy infantry

Jonthiem: 17 prot on almost all their giants outside of militia

I could go on. Many of these are good units for these nations and will show up in their armies. 21 vs. 18 damage basically quadruples your damage output. Against slightly lower but still decent protections of around 14 or 15 it doubles your damage output. And a square of knights only gets 2 attacks at 18 damage after the first strike, the other two are only at 12. Wardens get 3 at 21. This is hardly insignificant.

Also you can boost your crones without taking a rainbow. Find some E2 indi, an E2 merc, or just suck it up and empower for 30 gems. You're still basically saying that a 30 gem investment that you wont even have to make in most cases is so expensive as to outweigh any benefit you get from a bless.