Marignon with the Diabolic Theme

[Spacepain]

Taking some advice from Zen, I'm going to attack this one nation at a time. To start: Marignon with the Diabolic theme.

How should you approach the early game, middle game, and late game?

What pretenders work well with this theme? What magic skills should the pretender have? How would said pretenders be utilized?

How should a standard army be built? What independents should I look to incorporate into my army? What role will summoned creatures play in armies? Which summonded creatures, if any should I work for?

Which form of castle should be used? What sort of domain should you have? Aprox, what should the domain strength be i.e. 1, 2, 3, 4... and so on?

Should I get a prophet early game, or wait for a stronger hero late game? What should I research magically speaking? How should I develop the magical abilites of mages? Which mages should I develop?

Thats a pretty definitive series of questions, don't feel obligated to answer all the questions, there's quite a few of them. I've sort of organized them into related Groups, armies, pretender, magic, etc. Don't even feel obligated to write about an entire group if you don't want to! If all you feel like saying is tossing in a handy two cents like "Marignon with diabolic theme sucks," thats fine with me, just please add supporting evidence.

Zen -
Hopefully I'm still not being to broad.

[Norfleet]

Well, for starters, with the economic hit imposed by forced turmoil AND heat, you're looking at massive starting income losses. This is going to hurt your early expansion, since it will be awhile before you can get a blood economy rolling.

I definitely recommend an SC pretender, therefore.

[Spacepain]

Well as a newbie, fortunately I'm entitled to questions like these: What is SC?

And please, more insightful information on Marignon with Diabolic theme... or as a newb should I find something easier?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by Spacepain:
Well as a newbie, fortunately I'm entitled to questions like these: What is SC?

And please, more insightful information on Marignon with Diabolic theme... or as a newb should I find something easier?

SC is an abbreviation for "supercombatant", basically, a powerful single unit designed to beat the crap out of a lot of regular, and perhaps not so regular, units.

As for more insightful, well, I just started the game. You're going to have to wait until I actually *GET* to the midgame before I have anything insightful to say about midgame. It ain't easy playing 3 games of Dominions II at once!

I guess I have to start.

My Customary Scales when taking Diabolic Faith:

1 Turmoil
3 Productivity
1 Heat
3 Luck
1 Magic

Dominion 5

The reason I take those scales is because A.) I prefer Production over Growth since I will still use Xbows and other national units in order to take early provinces to make up for my lower overall gold income. B.) Luck 3 Since you are forced Turmoil and this is the only way to take advantage of it. C.) Magic 1 to help speed research and make the cheap researchers pay for themselves.

You may want to take more Magic or less of other things, but those are just example scales if I didn't know what I really wanted to do.

For my Pretender, I have a few options. With the scales I have taken and Diabolic Faith's units I avoid Blessing Strategies (I rarely use them regardless).

My usual pick is the Lady of Fortune. She starts with 2 Water, 1 Nature, and I can use her inherent ability for good luck to counter alot of my economic weakness. I then push up to Water 3, and Blood 3 and Nature to 2.

Voila. Now I can use one of the most quickly powerful abilities of Blood with Ice Devils. I also can use my Lady to Search out a few sites in Elements that are mesh very well (Nature for Forgable Items, Water for fighting in opposing /cold/ domain and items).

The factor of having not alot of Dominion means I would use my LoF less as a SC than I normally would. Though it's not out of the realm of possibility after Turn 3 or 4 (Equip with 2 Fire Swords or something, with quickness and Regen, she should be able to mow things down).

I would focus on military expansion and leave blood only to scout hunting until you carve yourself out a good chunk of empire, then throw on a few priests to take care of getting up your Blood Income, when you reach around 3 - 4 in Blood Magic. Key levels might be: Alteration 2, Enchantment 2, Construction 4, Blood Magic 5.

Look and keep track of any astral mages you get/find. As you will need them to forge for you as well as for Astral Probing.

[DLC]

the economical hit on marignon with that theme isn't all that hard since they have a extra 4x15 gold per turn aka known as firegems.

[Sindai]

Originally posted by DLC:
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"Also known as known as"?

[Norfleet]

Originally posted by DLC:
the economical hit on marignon with that theme isn't all that hard since they have a extra 4x15 gold per turn aka known as firegems.

Yes, but then you're deprived of the fire gems, if you alchemize them for cash.

Plus, your fire gem generation is local. Your economic hit from scales is global and affects everything your dominion touches.

[DLC]

meh, in the beginning its good enough to expand if you have a poor economy.

aka is also known as also known as also known as

[Tricon]

I don't mean this in a harsh way, but wouldn't you rather play/explore the game than being told how to play it?

Go ahead and play, if you stumble upon some problems the forum is still there to help.

Diabolic Marignion isn't the easiest theme to begin with. But if it suits your style, go right ahead.