Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?

[Shangrila00]

Presumably Army of Lead cast by the "earth mothers."

Except what earth mothers? More 50 gem empowerments? Presumably what he actually means are troll kings summoned either by one of the extremely rare E2 crones or a E1 crone after another 30 gem empowerment.

Which is the main problem with the proposed strategy. It assumes you'll have enough gems to throw on super expensive empowerments and summons, and still have enough to do what you were actually after in the first place. There are plenty of games where a 60 gem empowerment sets you back 10 turns.

There is no understanding of the importance of timeliness. Which incidently, is also why the S4 path as a means of boosting A up to 4 is also not practical. Man has no native astral access, and it can take most of the game to scrounge up the 75 pearls for starshine cap+ring of wizardry. F4W4 works because Man has little use for fire gems and no critical uses for water.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

Which incidently, is also why the S4 path as a means of boosting A up to 4 is also not practical.

As I have already pointed out, but you ignored, lizardman shaman are a reliable get in MA for a bless nation that can fast expand, and they are worth fighting an early war for.

If you always build your pretender for the worst case, your going to be losing a lot of long boring games.

Also it's almost always better to take S5 than S4 if your taking S, for a lot of reasons.

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

Presumably Army of Lead cast by the "earth mothers."

Except what earth mothers? More 50 gem empowerments? Presumably what he actually means are troll kings summoned either by one of the extremely rare E2 crones or a E1 crone after another 30 gem empowerment.

Which is the main problem with the proposed strategy. It assumes you'll have enough gems to throw on super expensive empowerments and summons, and still have enough to do what you were actually after in the first place. There are plenty of games where a 60 gem empowerment sets you back 10 turns.

There is no understanding of the importance of timeliness. Which incidently, is also why the S4 path as a means of boosting A up to 4 is also not practical. Man has no native astral access, and it can take most of the game to scrounge up the 75 pearls for starshine cap+ring of wizardry. F4W4 works because Man has little use for fire gems and no critical uses for water.

Don't get me wrong. I'm still not arguing that man is a strong nation by any stretch of the imagination. It still has glaring holes.

However, what we're arguing is about the relative strength of various strategies for this weak nation. Basically there are two primary ones we're discussing.

1. A high bless strategy to leverage wardens. Either a water bless or earth bless seem to be the best options both with a little nature thrown in.

2. Some sort of rainbow strategy for magic diversity. With air or astral to get you A4, earth and water to bootstrap you up those paths, death to get that covered, etc.

The standard opinion for man prior to the buffs and recruit anywhere status for wardens was #2. At MM 1 and cap only a bless strat for wardens never made any sense. Now it might. I've tried building both and you end up with about the same scales as long as you're really gearing your pretender to magic diversity.

So what do you really give up going for a bless strat rather than a rainbow?

Not mitigated by indi's
60 Gem Empowerment for Air mother - assuming you don't get an A4 random

Potentially mitigated by indi's
30 Gem Empowerment for an E mother to get earth rolling. Once again assuming you don't get an E2 random.
Guaranteed Astral Access
Guaranteed Death Access
Guaranteed Fire Access

The bottom line is that you're going to find at least a couple of the last category on indi's, especially if you expand fast. So the question really comes down to whether or not you think a strong bless on the wardens is worth 60 air gems and missing a couple of the 2nd category. It's true that if you don't find any indi mages then you're somewhat screwed. But if you do happen on some wizards, or metal orders, or moon mages, or even just some lizard men and some raptors you'll be much better off.

Basically i'll put it this way. The bless strat is high risk, high reward. If you happen on some indies who round out your diversity your going to do very well. If you don't you're going to loose. The rainbow strat is a bit less variance.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Torgon

However, what we're arguing is about the relative strength of various strategies for this weak nation.

To be fair my original statement was that MA Man is, at present, easily the best nation to play a bless strategy with in CBM 1.92 MA.

That has kind of gotten lost by the fact that it hasn't been addressed in that context; being that none of the bless nations in MA are considered top tier.

[kianduatha]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

To be fair my original statement was that MA Man is, at present, easily the best nation to play a bless strategy with in CBM 1.92 MA.

That has kind of gotten lost by the fact that it hasn't been addressed in that context; being that none of the bless nations in MA are considered top tier.

A little birdie told me to say "MA Ermor."

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Nightfall

To be fair my original statement was that MA Man is, at present, easily the best nation to play a bless strategy with in CBM 1.92 MA.

That has kind of gotten lost by the fact that it hasn't been addressed in that context; being that none of the bless nations in MA are considered top tier.

MA Mictlan is still very much a top tier bless nation, vastly better than Man in every way. Honestly, Jags in the cap and eagles out is better than the other way around, since eagles are best mid and late game, and you still have all the jags you want early. It takes a bit more work for MA Mictlan to get to all those lovely sacred blood summons, but the nature jaguar summons are still quite a bit more decent than Cu Sidhe.

Vanheim and CBM Bandar Log are easily better bless nations than CBM Man. Sure, Ashdod no longer has good sacred troops, but their sacred commanders are still worth a high bless, same for Eriu.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

MA Mictlan is still very much a top tier bless nation, vastly better than Man in every way.

You are just plain wrong; CBM 1.92 wardens are better than jags and eagles in EVERY way.

They are harder to counter, have better attack and defence, better morale, better magic resistance, suffer less attrition and do more damage.

Mictlan may have wider path access, but it's even harder to get them up to usefull levels and blood with MA Mictlan without rods only works if your opponents are asleep or if you build a pretender to get you into blood; which means no bless.

Vans and Tiger Riders may seem to be comparable bless chassis to wardens, until you realise that your going to have at least twice as many wardens to work with.

[Shangrila00]

Oh for God's sake, again, bless nations need a good sacred, but that's not all they need. Mictlan has low resource needs, free points from temp preference, wide magical diversity allowing for an imprisoned pretender at little cost, and recruitable flying H3s. In addition, it has tons of sacred summons that benefit from exactly the same blesses as its recruitables, and which can take over in the late game.

Bandar Log has as many problems as Man blessing its sacreds, but again, low resource requirements, and free points from temp. Its magical diversity isn't the greatest, but what it has is far more useful, with communions and mind hunt. And like Mictlan, it too has tons of sacred summons for the end game should it manage to bootstrap into blood.

Vanheim has sacred thuggable commanders for when its sacred troops stop being the greatest. Ashdod and Eriu don't actually have good sacred troops, but their commanders are thuggable very early with a good bless.

And wardens are harder to counter? How do you think sacreds are countered? Evocations murder wardens as well as it does anything else. Jags and Eagles on the other hand, are harder to deal with using evocations since the former has 2 lives and the latter has flight. The other nations listed all have thugs/SCs/high hp summons to lean on once evocations make human hp sacreds obsolescent. What does Man have?

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

Mictlan has low resource needs, free points from temp preference, wide magical diversity allowing for an imprisoned pretender at little cost, and recruitable flying H3s.

The slight points advantage doesn't even make up for the inferior choice of pretender chassis.

And you don't need flying H3's to run bless strategies, it just makes things a little easier if your lazy.

Those Couatl's that your relying on to bless by the way can and will be taken out by a decent player. Possibly before they get divine blessing off; you should be using priest kings.

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

The other nations listed all have thugs/SCs/high hp summons to lean on once evocations make human hp sacreds obsolescent.

Getting much mileage out of the Mictlan, Ashdod or Bandar Log summons without an awake blood pretender or clams in CBM is a pipe dream; your not going to get them in numbers or early enough.

Vanheim and Eriu thugs scale into mid game a bit better, at the cost of gems, but the wardens catch back up when battlefield enchantments come in.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

How do you think sacreds are countered?

Against Mictlan? Indy slingers will do the job.