Nation Guide for Marverni

[Alpine Joe]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

Agreed.
From what I remember they are normal Druids with more random path spread and extra blood. Which means with the boosters you should have you should have the most versatile blood mage(s) in game. Now, if you only had the slaves.

If you are playing multiplayer, slaves usually aren't that hard to trade for at reasonable rates. Most blood nations will appreciate the hammers you can forge them in exchange for slaves, for example.

[P3D]

If a nation needs a guide how to survive an early rush, it's Maverni. Vulnerable to bless rushes (Kailasa exempt), tramplers and poison archers and awake SC pretender won't deter most of them.

[chrispedersen]

tanglevines are your defense against bless rushes.
Add berserk or wind guide.

[Sombre]

I haven't really seen tangle vines do much against the multiple bless/trampler raiding parties you run into in EA. Catching them with mages without crippling your research etc can be seriously high risk. Not seeing how berserk or wind guide really helps either when you're dealing with multiple groups of pd stompers.

[Edi]

Originally Posted by thejeff

Well, Marveni slingers have shields, which archers don't. You also get more sling bullets than arrows so you can keep firing in long battles. Slings are strength-based, right? So Strength of Giants would help.

But, yeah. Generally inferior to indy archers.

Depends on which indy archers. The Marverni slingers have mapmove 2, which is a rather big deal whenever your movement is not restricted by druids. The tribals and woodsmen have mapmove 2, but the common archers don't.

Originally Posted by thejeff

And I'd love to see recruitable Bloodhenge Druids. Even knowing they're not I'm still disappointed every time I find them and can only recruit normal druids. I think there might be a site? If not there should be.

There is a site named Bloodhenge, but it's a blood site and it's rare (possibly also unique), which means you almost never see it.

[Executor]

Originally Posted by TwoBits

I think the question is, do you need a useful pretender? Or does Marverni (with ultra-scales) have enough in the tank to succeed without one?

Ultra scales can't save you much.
The pretender isn't there to help you defend from those rush nations, he's there to help you expand as quick as possible to get those extra forts with druids up.
Sure they can go without an awake pretender, but your expansion will be much slower, the main army can barely take an average indie province and making another expansion party will take 2-3 turns, and it will still be fragile since Marverni troops aren't top class.

Expanding faster will give you more gold which can be proportional to the extra cash but slower expansion with ultra scales. Does this make sense?


As for luck, I feel it's better to just stick a little blood on the pretender.
The heroes don't cover any other paths that your mages don't have already and if you just want them for the blood it's better to get some on the pretender.

With luck 3 it's a 6% chance you'll get a hero every turn, which means you'll probably wait a long time to get the blood hero.
Empowering in blood is very easy and cheap so I don't think it's a good trade off. Going with misf. 1 or 2 will give you 200 design points more and that something!

[vfb]

I agree with Executor about an awake pretender. Not only do you end up with more gold income, he can take high resource provinces bordering your capitol, allowing you to build more troops or better troops. Same with the luck scales, Marverni PD is actually pretty decent against barbarians, so you don't need to worry too much about bad events.

But I don't think you should put blood on your SC god. The only Marverni SC god it's cheap to add blood to is the Ghost King, and no way can you afford an awake Dom-9 GK even. I really think indy commanders (as cheap as possible) can pull in enough blood for Marverni to dabble a bit and do some sacrificing.

If you want 120 points for scales and an awake SC god who can attack on turn 2, I think you're stuck with (CBM):

A4F4 Dom-6 Phoenix
pathless Dom-9 Wyrm or Manticore (I usually take Dom-10 on a Wyrm & never tried the Manticore)
E5 Dom-5 Cyclops (I've never tried a Cyclops without Awe, but protection is good)
pathless Dom-10 Bull (Haven't tried this either, but looks like it might work)
maybe a Father of Winters (If you can freeze everyone before you take too much damage)

[Calahan]

Originally Posted by vfb

pathless Dom-10 Bull (Haven't tried this either, but looks like it might work)

I remembering trying to get the White Bull to work once as a turn two solo expanding SC, as it has a lot more going for it in CBM than vanilla.

My conclusion -

[vfb]

Oh geez, now you made me go and try it!

It's not so bad, I cleared out 3 provinces
30 mixed heavy/light infantry
30 barbarians
40 mixed atlantians/shamblers

And he didn't die, or get afflicted. Woo hoo! Just wait until he gets a pendant of luck and a girdle.

I didn't even realize he came with N2, actually with Dom10 you can get N3 and have 1 point left or something, and 120 for scales.

[hoo]

Originally Posted by P3D

If a nation needs a guide how to survive an early rush, it's Maverni. Vulnerable to bless rushes (Kailasa exempt), tramplers and poison archers and awake SC pretender won't deter most of them.

I think the answer is in the Thau line. Farstrike takes care of the poison archers, Pan centaurs and the others that defend on high def/quickness. (I know some don't like it, but for rushes before turn 10, it's Marverni's best weapon to me).

By thau 2, you'll have sleep for the tramplers and other low MR critters. As a bonus, you can also berserk your carnutes at the same time.

If you go the good scales route, you should be able to mass a bunch of regular troops with awesome morale and then back them with a few druids.

I'm not quite sure how to stop giant rushes although maybe berserk carnutes with tangle vines. And maybe curse spam (also in Thau) line.