List top 3 MA MP races

[Shovah32]

Rlyeh and shinuyama are both pretty good due to their strong magical powers and good ranged armies(mind blasters and cheap flaming arrows respectively) and i would rate them among the top. My third choice is a little harder but i would probably go with Ctis.

Ctis has good death and nature access aswell as some water and astral(or good astral with couatl). They have fairly good general purpose troops(heavy infantry and elite warriors), great skele spam capability, poison slingers who work great with skele spam, good national summons, strong priests, great assasins and a very good dominion(40 free points from heat, income bonus for themselves, income penalty for others, disease for living, non cold-blooded troops).

For a miamasa pretender a Dom9(10 is too expensive) Prince of death works great. His death magic fits in with the national magic, the national mages can forge a variety of useful items, the PoD is a great early game expander, raider and late game SC and is also immune to the disease dominion(which spreads quickly with dom9).

[Xietor]

Ctis is not in my top 3 for a couple of reasons.

They have no ranged troops, and cannot effectively augment their troops with independents(because they are not immune to disease). Mercenaries can be used, but they also get diseased, which s not too bad since you use them for 3 turns.

If you play a map with lots of water squares, Ctis cannot defend those against water races too well. Its dominion kills off the indies you purchase.

Ctis sacred is weak, and their best infantry is just sufficient. Poison slingers have short range, and many times you poison your own troops.

They do have awesome priests. When I play Ctis i use a dom 10 awake Wyrm for early expansion. He can solo provinces, sea or land, on turn 2. Cash never seems to be a problem for ctis, marsh masters mages do not have old age, are good researchers, and ctis has access to many magics.

[Shovah32]

A dom10 wyrm costs the same as a dom9 5 death PoD who is more viable late game due to slots yet still a very capable expander. The poison slingers are fairly good ranged troops and should be used with undead to avoid friendly casualties, the undead can also be used for underwater expansion and defence. Their sacreds may be weak but their national summons are tough and i wouldnt say their national troops are just sufficient; they have high prot infantry with shields, poison slingers who can work with undead and, of course they also have the elite warriors and runners who are very dangerous.

[Xietor]

I agree Ctis is tough.

Just not in my top 3. You said they were your 3rd pick as well, so we may not be disagreeing that much.

I cannot see Ctis>Ermor, but that is just me. Can take POD with ermor as well, better sacreds, infantry that is tougher, does not rout often(problem with ctis), better battle mages, good priests, plenty of death and astral abilities.

[DrPraetorious]

No-one mentions Machaka?

You have no national spells (because they are a source of weakness and indolence), you have only hatred, malice and violence.

You have no astral magic, which is unfortunate, but otherwise your magic is extremely strong and versatile, especially when it comes to delivering your message of the aforementioned hatred and malice.

You get spider riders! They pwn u!

Your biggest weakness is that you don't get water pretenders but you really want W9.

My suggestion:
try an imprisoned great sage with 3A,3S,9W and 4N. Dom 5, 3 Order, 3 Heat, 2 Misfortune, 1 Magic.

[Shovah32]

Until you get up to nether darts i personally would say ctis has the advantage in battle magic due to skeleton raising.

Ctisian troops do more damage than those of ermor and ermors only high prot troops(17, a number which is matched by the generally superior swamp guard) suffer from old age and so are slow, weak and quick to tire. Ctis has superior ranged firepower imo(both nations has javelins, ctis has poison slingers), both nations have standards.

Ermor suffers from its best mages being capitol only which is a big deal in larger games and ermor only has regular assasins.

Imo ermor only has 3 real advantages:
1)Tower shields, these make their troops difficult to harm with missile fire but a screen of swampguards can do the same job unless the enemy is firing into combat.
2)Reanimation. If i have a castle i'll be making mages rather than cultists and generally have better things to do with my mages than make a few skeletons per turn(and ctis can also raise alot in battle)
3)Astral magic. While ctis can get the same levels in astral as ermor due to couatls(meaning they have the same astral summoning/forging abilities) they cant get it in anywhere near the numbers ermor can. They also dont have access to nether darts but have skele spam and various other death and nature spells.

edit:I was considering machaka but they are either very lacking early game or quite weakened later due to scales. They almost require an awake pretender to survive on smaller/crowded maps(yes you can have a big bless but those spiders are expensive) and take a while to start up.

[Xietor]

I will add that my personal favorite is Pangaea. They have several features i like.

1. Recuperation_This is a very good trait, all the more some in that it does not require management like the priestesses of arcos. or pretenders, fairy queen, chalice etc.

It shines in fights against Ctis, where disease does not ravage them. It allows troops to get 3 stars exp routinely, since they shake off injuries and disease.

2. They have 4 nice heroes with no mod needed. I like heroes.


3. Their troops have a lot of hps, and many very capable troops at low resource cost. The centaur longbow, 30 gold 4 resources. While Pangaea's troops are quite expensive, they do not die a lot.

4. Wide variety of troops. Tough low cost infantry(high resource however), armored calvary(high resource), centaur longbows, berserk infantry, calvary, and tramplers.

5. With a double 9 bless, tough sacred, but it is capital only(:

6. decent priests.

7. no old age problems.

8 access to blood.

9 king of nature magic, with access to earth and death, though no death mages.

10 Stealth troops of wide variety, so you could assault an enemy capital. Stealth preaching.

11. 3 great thematic pretenders, all with recuperation.

Disadvantages:

1. castles only get 30 admin., worst in game. makes it tough to get the armored troops when take sloth.

2. Expensive troops.

3. Expensive mages for research(350 gold), only 1 mage, the pan. Poor variety of magic.

4. nature is not the best combat spell line.

5. National summons limited to a death theme. reanimating
manikins kills population, carrion woods kills population.

6. no assassins or spies.

7. pd=average

8. mages cast touch of madness on ranged troops, other mages, basically anyone in range. And they seem to like that spell!

9. only sacred is capital only. Sacred not worth cost without huge bless.