MA Man in latest CBM

[Foodstamp]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Forgive me. The addition of more tools does indeed make the nation stronger. However, you can't ignore the fact that enticing players toward a dead end isn't somehow counterproductive. I'm mostly worried that people put too much stock into the Hall of Fame and decide that nations need a boost because they aren't winning. The slippery slope of this is that you buff a nation so that new players find it easy to use and experienced players become unstoppable when using them.

Most forget that astral magic can strengthen most of your other paths with ease. One ring of wizardry gets you an earth booster and your second water booster. That same ring gets you to Air 4, which removes that requirement from your god as well. Also, you shouldn't discount the effectiveness of manual site searching, even with only one skill in a path. Blood is handled with scouts. All you need to cover is Fire, Death, and Astral.

Yeah, I'm with you on the synergy though. I mean, Thunder Strike and Soothing Song! Lame! Panic and False Horror combined with stealth units! Suck! They don't even have any solid MR spells like Stream of Life, Sleep, or Confusion. I mean its not like some of the best battlefield buff spells in alteration and enchantment happen to all be nature and air spells. Now if only they could summon a flying ethereal size 6 trampler to deal with lightning resistant troops for one gem a piece, or perhaps a flock of smaller units that all deal armor negating damage.

Lots of times people look at what they don't have more often then they look at what they do have. Sure, I'm all for Man getting a boost to diversity. Still, I'm not so quick to just start throwing astral on a bunch of mages. Particularly astral magic as that might come back to bite you when a real astral nation starts casting mage dual.


Forgive me QM, balancing a nation is harder then I'm sure most understand. Lots of people would just like to see Man suddenly 'fixed' not realizing that even a guru of dominions multi-player can't know the effects of many changes all taken at once.

You could have saved us a lot of time by saying "None of you are smart enough to use the new options properly and anything that follows this sentence is going to be condescending sarcasm."

[thejeff]

Originally Posted by AreaOfEffect

Yeah, I'm with you on the synergy though. I mean, Thunder Strike and Soothing Song! Lame! Panic and False Horror combined with stealth units! Suck! They don't even have any solid MR spells like Stream of Life, Sleep, or Confusion. I mean its not like some of the best battlefield buff spells in alteration and enchantment happen to all be nature and air spells. Now if only they could summon a flying ethereal size 6 trampler to deal with lightning resistant troops for one gem a piece, or perhaps a flock of smaller units that all deal armor negating damage.

I was thinking more of cross paths spells and probably should have been more clear. Obviously both Air and Nature have good spells. Soothing Song would synergize with almost anything. Panic & False Horror is a good combination. The others aren't synergy, just a bunch of good spells.

[thejeff]

"the only reason why this (magic diversity) matters is because people are too busy working out a bless for their thugs to afford the diversity on their god"

Since most didn't bother using the sacreds in vanilla (or past CBM versions), diversity was never a problem before for Man?
You've only got nature and air above 1! The only other paths you even get at 1 are Earth and Water. Everything else has to come off your god. Not just casting and forging, but also any site searching.
You can't even make air boosters with your nationals. Neither of those paths let you expand into other paths with summons.
Your god can't carry the whole nation.

They're not even the best in their age at either of those paths. Which don't even synergize well.

[AreaOfEffect]

So even though you have a good selection of spells, its not good enough because you don't have a really cool cross-path spell?

[Squirrelloid]

What's the fascination with Oberon? He's from Germanic mythology (Aldrich the Dwarf), who became Auberon in French in the middle ages, and from there Oberon in English. He has *nothing* to do with either faeries or England, excepting that Shakespeare included him in a play.

[thejeff]

If you actually read the full line you quoted I said "They're not even the best in their age at either of those paths. Which don't even synergize well."
So yes, they've got good air spells, but Caelum and Vanheim have better mages to use those. They've got good nature spells, but Pan is better at those. And there isn't even anything specific you get access to by having the combination.
My real point is that they don't have either diversity or strength in the paths they do have. If there was strong synergy between those paths that would help counter the lack of diversity and strength.

[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by thejeff

If you actually read the full line you quoted I said "They're not even the best in their age at either of those paths. Which don't even synergize well."
So yes, they've got good air spells, but Caelum and Vanheim have better mages to use those. They've got good nature spells, but Pan is better at those. And there isn't even anything specific you get access to by having the combination.
My real point is that they don't have either diversity or strength in the paths they do have. If there was strong synergy between those paths that would help counter the lack of diversity and strength.

And of course Eriu strictly dominates them as an AN power in MA.

[Kuritza]

Air + Nature = rainbow armor, one of the best armors in Dominions.
Man was seriously nerfed when Lamia Queens got 'death' in their casting requirements. In Dom2, having nature magic meant that you can easily expand into death, blood and astral via lamia queens.
So, perhaps giving Man some wannabe-lamia queen with just nature or nature-air/water/earth casting requirement would be a way to aid the nation.

[Illuminated One]

Originally Posted by Kuritza

Air + Nature = rainbow armor, one of the best armors in Dominions.
Man was seriously nerfed when Lamia Queens got 'death' in their casting requirements. In Dom2, having nature magic meant that you can easily expand into death, blood and astral via lamia queens.
So, perhaps giving Man some wannabe-lamia queen with just nature or nature-air/water/earth casting requirement would be a way to aid the nation.

But rainbow armor needs something with a high natural prot or earth to really work.

Originally Posted by AreaofEffect

Most forget that astral magic can strengthen most of your other paths with ease. One ring of wizardry gets you an earth booster and your second water booster. That same ring gets you to Air 4, which removes that requirement from your god as well.

Hmm, you are correct but getting the RoW in time can be hard without any astral income. Yes, you can let your god search but others can let their god do something else.

[Kuritza]

Originally Posted by Illuminated One

But rainbow armor needs something with a high natural prot or earth to really work.

Or mirror image + luck. +etherealness, if possible.