Advice for MA Man

[cleveland]

Their temples cost 200g & they have stealthy preachers.

An alternate, albeit difficult strategy (I tried unsuccessfully to pull this off in MP, but I was a total newb then) is to fight a Dominion war.

Offense: Take a domstrength10 pretender, spam temples & cheap forts, crank out monks to stealth-preach in enemy lands.

Defense: Crank out max longbows each turn. Garrison them @ high concentration on the boarders, supported by substantial PD (i.e. 20+). When attacked, the protection/berserker-buffed PD form the offensive line, while the longbows chew up the defenders (defense gets first shot, afterall).

Rely on wind guided longbows through the midgame, then fog-warrior-ed kinghts.

[Zeldor]

cleveland:

Arrow Fend really negates all your longbowmen. I have tested it in that game

Long distance run with Man should be Gift of Health [to have mages alive], Charm [the only really useful spell your crones can cast] and Dark Skies. Dark Skies could work great with that dominion spreading. Btu remember - we played on higher gold than normal, so it was easy to spam temples. I guess the one that took Man over you didn't make enough knights and his mages were well... dead due to old age, so he couldn't field many of them.

[Jazzepi]

ano said:
Well, I don't think that A4 is as important as you describe. Definitely it is but I find building the whole strategy around it a bit lacking.
MA Man can expand rather quickly using longbowmen so they don't really need an awake sc. I would suggest the following build:
Earth mother N4E4, dormant, Dom 6
Order 3
Prod 1
Growth 2
Misfortune 2
Magic 3
Earth mother may not be very great as it is, but it can be a very potent fighter when you give her winged shoes and enough reinvigoration and casting invulnerability at alt5 (which is your first main goal due to wind guide and mother oak). Your second goal will be gift of health and foul vapors at Ench5. Both these goals (including thau2 and const4) can easily be reached with magic 3, rich dominion and rather fast castle building or researching with tribal shamans. Bless effects are perfect to keep you sacred old mages alive (when a crone becomes diseased, just use her as a battlemage) and for extra reinvigoration in battle (in addition to soothing songs for which tribal shamans are perfect).
Wardens, IMO, are not worth using heavily due to strategic movement 1. They may be completely useless if you start in the corner - bringing them to front will take ages (you may use faery trod, but I'm not sure it is worth doing). You have perfect archers and very good cavalry. If you expand quickly and keep that advantage, I'm sure, you'll be able to find the way into air boosters (either being lucky to have A4 crone or using trade). Btw, with such build and being lucky to find some nature sites, it is definitely possible to have mother oak and gift of health active at the end of year 2.

I thought I was right about my general impression of crones almost never getting A4, so I went ahead and checked.

Crones have these starting paths (A2N3)
They random once for (AWEN +1 100%) and (AWEN +1 10%)

I believe you can do 1/4th times 1/10th times 1/4th to get the amount of crones that will have A4.

%0.625

That percentage means that if you build 200 crones, 1.25 of them will have A4.

So, yes, you really, really need A4 on your pretender. You can't rely on such a small percentage of you crones having A4.

Jazzepi

[ano]

Yes, it is hard to get. That's why I said about being lucky. I don't rely on this, certainly. However, I think that air booster can be got when you really need it. Either from trade (Vanheim, Eriu and Caelum have A4 quite often) or from that rare crone, or at least you may empower for 60 gems. I consider this being quite real in the long run. Anyway, I think that having fast expansion, good combat pretender and very useful bless is more important than being sure you have A4 for air boosters, staff of storms and whatever else you need.

[Zeldor]

Jazzepi:

I got like hmm... 3-4 A4 crones in 35 turns, so it is not so bad But yep, it all depends on your luck.

[Meglobob]

I played Man in MP once and after 60 turns still had no crones with A4.

Also, no one would trade a A4 item,why should they? When it would have made me far more powerful.

Fog warriors alone is worth it to put A4 on your pretender and there are lots of other air spells which are extremely useful.

You can have your cake and eat it however. You can have a dormant E9 A4 Cyclops, with Order 3 Misfortune 2, dom 5-6.

So after a year you get a SC god, A4 for boosters and the E9 and A4 bless for your sacreds. Plus you can cast gargoyle + gift of reason for tough thugs and your SC god can drop in on anyone with cloud trapze and cast multiple earthquakes/rain of stones to destroy entire armies. Also the Forge/Earth Deep Blood Well is available to you.

You can use transformation on your important crones or cast gift of health.

[Jazzepi]

ano said:
Yes, it is hard to get. That's why I said about being lucky. I don't rely on this, certainly. However, I think that air booster can be got when you really need it. Either from trade (Vanheim, Eriu and Caelum have A4 quite often) or from that rare crone, or at least you may empower for 60 gems. I consider this being quite real in the long run. Anyway, I think that having fast expansion, good combat pretender and very useful bless is more important than being sure you have A4 for air boosters, staff of storms and whatever else you need.

My point was that MA Man has no way to increase their magic diversity. Early expansion doesn't help you at all in the late game when you get crushed by nations using a full range of magic items/spells/summons. Because you need both A4, and a way to diversify your magic, naturally leads to the choice of a prismatic pretender. Having a rainbow mage as a pretender is not just for the A4, in fact if you had a reliable way to produce A4, I would say you should drop it off the pretender.

Good players simply won't trade you air boosters if they're going up against you. This happened to me when I was playing in Aramadillo.

Here's a new build taking into account the fact that you can spam Auspex and Haruspex with other people. Then you can build a crystal coin, and starshine skullcap on an S4 pretender to get to rings of wizardy, which can then be given to an A3 crone, which you'll have quite a few of, to get them to A4 to boost with.

Great Enchantress
Dormant
DOM 5
O 3
P 0
H 0
G 1
Misfortune 2
Magic 1

MAGIC PICKS
F1
W3
E4
S4
D4
N1

This build is probably a bit better than my earlier one. Combined with your pretender, haurspex and auspex you will search your provinces for every E/D/S/N/A and 95% of the W sites while still picking up a *little* fire. Just enough income to let you forge key items. Possibly, if you get lucky enough, you could build the D/F skull for +1 fire, use ring of wizardy, and maybe a staff of the elements to summon either the king of banefires or king of elemental fire, though this is sort of an off chance.

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

I'm going to have to go with Meglobob here. You miss out on some magic diversity compared to the rainbows, particularly the powerful death and astral magic, but I love earth magic and the cyclops. Your pretenders also pretty much a more powerful(magically much more so), non-undead version of the Tartarian E3A2 Cyclops who is very powerful.

[Jazzepi]

Shovah32 said:
I'm going to have to go with Meglobob here. You miss out on some magic diversity compared to the rainbows, particularly the powerful death and astral magic, but I love earth magic and the cyclops. Your pretenders also pretty much a more powerful(magically much more so), non-undead version of the Tartarian E3A2 Cyclops who is very powerful.

I'm bad with midrange pretenders like Meglobob was suggesting, but I'm sure it's good.

I still don't like the extreme lack of access to astral and death, but what can you do ;P

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

You do miss it, but not as much as you would think. And the E9A4 Cyclops is a great combatant and an insane battle mage. Like Bob said - cloud trapeze into battle and cast a few rain of stones/earthquakes to wipe out armies. Preferably rain of stones first to kill those mages.