What's the best 100 gold National mage?

[st.patrik]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

quote:

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Originally posted by st.patrik:
daughters of Avalon rock - equipped with a thistle mace she can cast pretty much most battlefield nature spells out there, including the really important ones: mass protection, relief, charm, poison cloud. At the same time at 80 gold she is much more expendable than the 230 gold crone, so it's not the end of the world if you lose a few.

A few what? Mace-wielding DoAs? How much is a Thistle Mace worth? If you, like me, assume a gem is worth 10 gold, it raises the DoA + TM combo to 180 gold, only 50 gold short to a Crone who gets 3 extra magic skills for the difference. I wouldn't say this combination is so expendable.

Re Mass Protection - you only need one per battle, so no reason to recruit DoA en masse, if at all IMO.

Re Relief - Man doesn't need it as dearly as other nations, it has access to spell songs as soon as turn #1. Actually I prefer to use Bards and Soothing Song, since Relief casters often 'forget' to cast what you want them to cast. OTOH, if you have Mass Protection up, mix Bards in your mage Groups and they won't have anything to cast but Soothing Song while the enemy is far, and they'll protect your other mages with Tangle Vines when he comes close.

There's another reason that makes me prefer Bards to DoAs: there's a great synergy between their Stealth +30 and mages who can cast Cloud Trapeze, since both type of attacks (unsneak/magical movement) will link in surprise raids.

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Well if you're comparing them 'out of the box' you're right - but I think the potential the DoA has to meet most all of your nature battlefield magic needs counts for something when you stack them against one another: potential does count for something.

Plus which, magic resources sometimes are plentiful when money is short, in which case mace-wielding daughters are a much better idea than non-mace-wielding crones for those nature spells.

As far as Mass Protection goes, you're right of course, it's a one shot spell. Relief I would argue is valuable even with soothing song available, since it provides more reinvigoration, and to a larger group (i.e. everybody).

If you're using a poison strategy much, poison cloud is a worthy use of DoA, and Charm is a pretty fun thing to have multiple mages casting at the same time.

In other words, what I'm saying is that Daughters are the nature magic workhorse of Man, and they do the job great IMO.

[ June 07, 2004, 20:57: Message edited by: st.patrik ]

[DLC]

i just like the marignon & abysian 1 B mages

[PvK]

Originally posted by Nagot Gick Fel:

quote:

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Originally posted by st.patrik:
daughters of Avalon rock - equipped with a thistle mace she can cast pretty much most battlefield nature spells out there, including the really important ones: mass protection, relief, charm, poison cloud. At the same time at 80 gold she is much more expendable than the 230 gold crone, so it's not the end of the world if you lose a few.

A few what? Mace-wielding DoAs? How much is a Thistle Mace worth? If you, like me, assume a gem is worth 10 gold, it raises the DoA + TM combo to 180 gold, only 50 gold short to a Crone who gets 3 extra magic skills for the difference. I wouldn't say this combination is so expendable.
...

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An important consideration, but not entirely accurate, since the "virtual gold" of gem investment in items does not have any maintenance cost, while the actual gold cost of crones does. Also, if you win but lost someone carrying an item, there's a chance worth considering that you can recover the item intact. On the other hand, you could be handing it to the enemy if they win, although the value of that depends on who they are. I once had an Ettin mercenary who took a Thistle Mace as a war trophy and wouldn't let go of it, using it in place of his giant club... another classic pricelessly comical yet believable Dom II moment.

Anyway, good points on both sides. It boils down to play style - each approach has its merits and costs.

PvK

[ June 07, 2004, 23:12: Message edited by: PvK ]

[archaeolept]

hey, where's the lizard love?

110 bucks, sacred, communionable, and able, as such, to cast relief et. al.

maybe not the best the best, but damn useful all around.

[Teraswaerto]

I save my lizard love for the Sauromancer and the Empoisoner. Recruiting a Shaman is no fun since any time you could recruit one you can choose one of the other two instead.

[Karacan]

But the other two can't curse that nasty icedevil rampaging your provinces.

[Scott Hebert]

Teraswaerto,

If you're talking about C'tis, sure. Though the fact that the Shaman is sacred should count for something. Also the fact that he can cast the Astral site-searching spell and, later, Summon Couatls shouldn't be overlooked. Finally, for C'tis, it offers the only easy Communion possibility.

Another consideration is that you can also find Shamen in Independent provinces.

I like the 'alternate' Shaman for Desert Tombs now, though. One Skull Staff (which the Sauromancers can forge), and he can summon Banefire Archers. I do like how IW tied Desert Tombs so much to Banefire.

Scott

[Blitz]

hey, where's the lizard love?

110 bucks, sacred, communionable, and able, as such, to cast relief et. al.

maybe not the best the best, but damn useful all around.

There's a lot of good mages at 110-120 that weren't included... maybe a new poll for the under 150 crew?

As for the Shaman... great unit, but the Seithkona is 20 gold cheaper and comes with death magic too.