Thoughts on balancing MA Man

[jimkehn]

I agree, Aezeal. Man is pretty strong. Blessing the Sacred Wardens (or whatever) with F9W9, they are killing machines.

[Twan]

A double 9 bless for a nation without temperature preference (nor drain tolerance nor young good mages to take death nor bonus for turmoil, etc) and mapmove 1 capitol only ressources intensive sacred !? Out of blitzes do you really recommand that ?

Now it's true that whatever sacreds are good with a F9/W9 bless, but there are better nations to take that.

[Xietor]

First, we are talking about man as a viable MP race. Man may be good in sp. But I think there is a consensus among veteran players in mp games that Man is among the weakest. That was not always the case, as Ulm used to occupy that lofty perch.

Now if Man is boosted, one could argue, it becomes a never ending circle, with the "consensus" weak nation needing a boost. As I stated at the start, Man is not a broken race.

It is a weak race, likely the weakest of the ma land races now. Having no s or d mages, it will never be among the top races, but it could be more fun to play, and more competitive. with a few tweaks.

[MaxWilson]

Summon Air Power is unfortunate in that you need a storm to cast it. Not only does that mess with Longbowmen, it hurts precision on mages too.

-Max

[chrispedersen]

thematic suggestion:

Allow the Forest wardens to use Fairy Trod (or similar).
Allowing them to transport an army to a forest location.

Solves a bunch of issues: aka movement- and stays thematic.

Secondly, regarding Forest Lord.
It has long been a beef of mine that you can do nothing fundamentally to change terrain.

I would like a forest lord to be able to spend a turn (or more) like building a castle - to be able to 'Grow Forest'.

Along the same idea, the lady of springs should be able to convert wasteland to barren, or barren to plains.

A being of Fire - the Moloch - maybe should be able to despoil the land - making it wasteland.

To be truly thematic - you could have sprites,ents, and other forest creatures, contribute to the greening of a territory - and do it like seiging - the territory changes once a sufficient number of points are generated.

[Dedas]

It would mean immense work to have a different map layer for every change imaginable to a map. And it would be kind of lackluster to just change the terrain type without changing the actual map.

[MaxWilson]

That would also require reallocating the magic sites, because they're restricted based on terrain type.

-Max

[thejeff]

Twan said:
- using air magic with a lot of crones on the battlefield spaming thunder strikes -> to cast more than 2 per fight they need a storm for summon storm power, and a storm make longbowmen quasi useless, it's the worst ever "synergy" in the game ; also crones being mapmove 1 you'll have to move slowly, or use gems to cloud trapeze them where they are needed

While I largely agree with your assessment, I will add that the 1/4 of your crones with 3 Air will spam Thunderbolt indefinitely, they just need a bunch of Bards playing Soothing Songs. 10 or so will cancel out fatigue from a Thunderbolt. Worth it in any large battle.

It's also worth noting that not only does Storm make bows useless, Crones can only cast it with boosters or gems, nor can they make Air boosters. You need to design your pretender to forge Air boosters.

[mathusalem]

so, just make a nationnal Summon Air Power that doesn't need Storm is perhaps an idea ?

[chrispedersen]

Nah, no need to change magic sites. Publish the event, let it be known that the FLord increased the power of the growing forest (sic).. and it explains why you have atypical magic.