The Virtue

[Amorphous]

Originally Posted by Micah

That being said, MA Mari might still be justified in going for a fear build, since they don't have any SC chassis with innate D magic. The Cyclops is still likely a better choice, but a D virtue could at least be considered.

I experimented with it some time ago and it worked decently, but I have not had any opportunity to test it in a real game, so take it for what its worth.

Based on my experiments I recommend having her asleep. As mentioned earlier I just cannot get the performance I need out of her for indie expansion purposes without dom 10. And an awake dom 10 A4D5 Virtue is point-intensive enough that I had real troubles a bit into the game.
The pretender is powerful enough herself, but she cannot be everywhere and she really does not help winning fights when she is not there. You need her to start a death economy and summon chain, which may take quite some time. In all probability she will also need to help with developing an air economy and since you have nothing but the occasional mage with a single earth pick you have to pay premium for everything you forge if you are not able to trade for a hammer. Essentially I was playing Marignon with crappy scales and an absent SC for stretches of the game. Late mid-game or so everything came on-line nicely, but I very much doubt I would have gotten that far against real opponents.

Having her asleep saves me from having to take too much of a hit in the scales-department and though indie expansion is slower, it is no catastrophe, as Marignon can do decently without pretender help against indies.

I would be very much interested to see what a better player could do with it, though.

Originally Posted by Squirrelloid

They're crap for their high resource cost. Might as well get the free 120 points for Sl3 and buy the much more reasonable indies who may be less effective, but also don't require tons of resources to build. I mean, its not like your national troops are going to win you any mid-game wars, and you have an indie expansion unit, so they fill no niche except chaff. Indies are perfectly acceptable as chaff.

I really do not understand this.

First off, nothing prevents you from going for S3 and buying national troops. Sure, you will get less of them, but you will get less indies also.
And if you just want a lot of cheap bodies, your Peltasts are light infantry with shields and javelins for 6 resources. If you want something heavier in MA or LA you have the Hypaspists. They are like indie heavy infantry only with better stats all around - including mapmove 2 and insanely high morale for a non-sacred unit. They are expensive gold-wise, but you were complaining about resources, so that should not be a problem.
In EA there are the Icarid warriors that you have a hard time finding something equivalent to in indie provinces. They do cost a hefty amount of resources, but then again, they are hardly just chaff.

My point here is that resource-wise Arcoscephalean units are not especially expensive for what you get. Of course, if you just look at Myrmidons and Hoplites everything seems to cost a tonne of resources, but those are elite heavy infantry units without widespread equivalents in independent provinces. You do not have to buy those if you do not want them, as there are lower resource national troops to buy.