Thoughts on balancing MA Man

Xietor · #1 June 2nd, 2008, 09:33 PM

He refused. He really wanted Yomi for balance reasons as well.

Ko is smart enough to see the issues that man has. Whether he thinks they warrant an investment of his time is another matter.

Ulm was so bad they were actively hunted like a doorprize at the start of mp games, with the winner being the race closest to ma ulm's capital and the prize being a 2nd capital before the start of the 2nd year.

So Ulm was very bad, and yes, broke. Man is not broke since they can do ok in the early game.

Agema · #2 June 3rd, 2008, 12:29 PM

I've played MA man on MP.

Xietor is right that Man has a lot of deficiencies. Crones aren't quite good enough air mages normally, and the storm-storm power wrecks the longbowmen. They've no great thug tactic - Lord Wardens fall short. They've poor bless tactics, as Wardens are really expensive for what you get - mediocre HP, snail speed movement, unexceptional stats. KOA are horrendously expensive, and still die like dogs when mid-level battle magics fly. Magic paths are limited. Nature can eventually get Death via lamia queens, but it's too little too late.

Your pretender points need to go on good scales, and rainbow magic picks to cover weak magic paths. You might also want your pretender ready for combat ASAP in case you get rushed.

Man makes quick work of independents, and are reasonable in the early game where the longbowmen are awesome. After that, things go rapidly downhill.

Most of his suggestions are fairly sound. I would dispute the need a mapmove 3 leader though. It'd be funky, sure, but Man is an air nation that can make flying boots.

Xietor · #3 June 3rd, 2008, 12:40 PM

My mapmove 3 forest survival commander is thematic in nature as well. Why not a KOA commander? Of course you then have to choose between a crone, a KOA commander, and a daughter of Avalon, but I am sure most players would recruit a few.

They could give Man a decent thug as well as giving them a thematic leader for a group of koas that could strike 3 provinces away.

thejeff · #4 June 3rd, 2008, 01:02 PM

Those are essentially my conclusions as well.

Except to nit-pick that you can't get to Death through Lamia Queens without already having some.

I never tried make Lord Warden thugs, without a bless they didn't seem at all up to it.
I did use some KoA and they did well, especially fog warriored and regenerating, but never had many of them.
A KoA thuggable commander would be nice. More survivable than the Lord Warden. The 3 move is just icing on the cake.

I hadn't thought of using the dogs as stealth raiders. Possible, especially since Mothers are stealthy. Still, they're expensive for what you get, unless you get a bless for them.

I'd disagree with the comments about the Crone's diversity. A chance at 1E or 1W is diverse magic? Water can at least get to 2 for site searching, but 1 Earth is largely useless.
The high Nature is good, but they don't have enough Air for boosters or Air Queens, so the pretender has to cover that.
I'd really like to see a little more magic on the Crones. They really need a decent chance at Air 4. Maybe bump up the 10% random, or have separate 10% chances at Air, Earth and Water.
Or some national mage summons?

I think you can get away with a sleeping pretender, longbows and lightning spam will keep most nations from rushing you right away. That's good because you need the points. Death access, Air boosters, maybe Astral (RoW instead of Air boosters), Earth for hammers and boots would be nice.

Most of the discussion has been about Man as an Air nation, but they've actually got better Nature magic. Is there any way to capitalize on that? I wasn't able to find one. There doesn't seem much synergy between the two. (Though Fog Warriors and Mass Regen makes for long battles)

MaxWilson · #5 June 3rd, 2008, 01:20 PM

Use Nature magic to charm away mages from other nations and increase diversity?

-Max

Xietor · #6 June 3rd, 2008, 02:04 PM

Charm is way down the wrong tree for man though.

Though I likely will not host a game anytime soon, I think the next one I do host will add a KOA commander for man, and remove the crones old age. Not that those changes will in any way put Man on an equal playing field with Pythium, ermor etc., it will help a bit. In fact, they likely will still reside in the bottom 10 percent.

Are there any other n mages, who get no f, d or s magic, that start with extreme old age? Crones or hags are commonly understood as having long life spans(old), but with a mastery of nature magic perhaps that does not necessarily mean they suffer the effects of old age as a normal human does.

thejeff · #7 June 3rd, 2008, 02:25 PM

And Charm is hard to use. It has a range of 20, which makes it almost useless against regular mages, who'll have a wall of troops in front of them. Even if you got in range, I don't think it'll target mages, specifically.

It can be really nice against thugs, if you can spam it to get by the MR. Or if you can get Wind Ride to work.

Jazzepi · #8 June 3rd, 2008, 02:50 PM

Quote:

thejeff said:
And Charm is hard to use. It has a range of 20, which makes it almost useless against regular mages, who'll have a wall of troops in front of them. Even if you got in range, I don't think it'll target mages, specifically.

It can be really nice against thugs, if you can spam it to get by the MR. Or if you can get Wind Ride to work.

Charm is useless against mages. Most of them have lower hitpoints than normal troops. Spells like charm ,paralyze, soul slave, etc all target high hitpoint troops in effect doing the most "damage" based on the number of hitpoints "killed" when the unit is stolen.

They're great against thugs and SCs since they always tend to have 30+ hitpoints which is far and above even normal high hitpoint chaff.

Jazzepi