Newbie help with EA marverni

[alexti]

Rainbow mage is a good idea, but don't use druids as a chassis. Ghost king is much better choice. You don't want astral on him and you don't need earth or blod either - that will save you some points. Your national mages can search for earth/astral and they can forge some good armour for GK almost immediately. After that rainbow GK can capture indy province, search it, capture another, search it etc. If you research to Blade wind quickly you can throw a lot of mages to cast it, just forge something for them (probably shield in the beginning to minimize casualitites). With your mages you should be able to establish good astral income, so a bit later you can summon golems to act as thugs.

[Gevaudan]

with respect to astral magic...the manual says that Light of the Northern star gives all mages on the battlefield, including enemies, one bonus rank in astral magic. would this not facilitate an astral assasination?

[Gevaudan]

also, does anyone play marverni regularly who can offer some tips?

[Jack_Trowell]

Gevaudan said:
with respect to astral magic...the manual says that Light of the Northern star gives all mages on the battlefield, including enemies, one bonus rank in astral magic. would this not facilitate an astral assasination?

It only give a rank for units that have already at least one.

Non astral mages won't get any bonus.

Same for communion : only known path are boosted (included holy)

[Halancar]

Well, I played Marveni a little in the past, so I'll try to answer :

1) Marveni units are well-rounded, and slightly above average. Unfortunately, they are slightly above average in every stat (hp, strength, attack, defense), which makes them expensive (in gold) and also mean they do not have any super unit around which to build a strategy. So you need to plan for a high turnover of troops, and you need a good cash flow. And they are so well rounded that you cannot really build a specific strategy around them.
I would recommend looking for boosting spells (Legion of Steel, to start with) while working on battlefield strategy (a strong center of noble warriors, javeliners around them, and eponi knights on the flanks on attack rearmost).
Magic research : I would go with alteration (boosting spells) and construction (for middle and late game summoning spells). Of course, another strategy would be to go for thaum 1 (communion) then evocation, and start blasting away.

2) That's a hard question. I would recommend starting with research for a few turns (say, 10 or 12) to get the first useful spells. By that time you should have recruited enough mages to keep on the research while your pretender can go site-searching. But it is a hard call to make

3) Build a paper tiger army. You need to get and stay on top of the army size graph, even if it means parking 500 marverni slingers in your capital. As long as you stay there, the AI will not gang on you. Then you can build a real army and pick them off one by one.
Upkeep-free units are particulary valuables for your paper army. Summon animals (Conjuration 2) would fit a druidic theme perfectly. But if you are rich enough, any unit will do.

4) I would say because dead units do not get tired and recover from afflictions.

5) There is only one way to get a feel for each race's stat, it's to play them. And make sure to watch the battles when facing a race you don't know, click on their troops, take note of the spells used...

6) As has been mentioned, you cannot give one rank in astral to someone who does not start with it.

[SelfishGene]

Marverni are hard because they are (imo) slightly underpowered compared to the common national units in the Early Eras.

They are competitive vs. Ermor, Ulm, Tien Chi and similiar human themed nations. They are rather weak against the more mythical nations like Vanheim, Neifelheim, Caelum, Bandar Log, Ctis and the others.


Eponi Cavalry make your best "tanks". They can't dish out that much damage, but they can stand and take hits while your infantry close. Always make some Sacred Carnutes, mainly for their morale buffing ability, although they add some decent +attack capacity.

Try to tech up to Gifts of Heaven/Blade Winds. Marverni has easy access to Seeing Stones/Astral Windows, so keep an eye on your opponenents. They have a good gem variety and can make mechanical men.

Their trouble is just surviving long enough to be able to use their Druids' potential.

[HoneyBadger]

Try Alexander's Ever-Expanding Tome of Knowledge, one of the first dozen posts I believe has a reference to a "flaming dwarf of death" tactic for Marverni.

Nature bless 9 can be nice for your Boar Lords since berserk accumulates. If I remember right, that gives your Boar Lords a berserk of +7. The regeneration isn't that great though, since you don't have a lot of Hp, so no reason to go to bless 10 with Nature. I also couldn't find any magic items that add further to berserk.

[Gandalf Parker]

Maverni are big on standards and morale boosters. They are built around it.
Also a nice mix of magic.