Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?

[Shangrila00]

I don't think that's how damage with exploding dice rolls works. It would make the B4 bless as good as the W9, at 50% greater damage. Do we have a mathmatician here?

In any case, any well played Man will have both knights and Wardens, and longbowmen too regardless of bless. It's just relative proportions that change. It's not like Mictlan where the bless multiplies the effectiveness of the entire army and extends to the endgame summons.

And making that list of battlemagic useable as early as possible is one of the major arguments against a high bless. Take flaming arrows, which is only available off a pretender, despite being obviously ridiculously good with Man, who on top of great archers, has excellent research (cheap forts, cheap temples, efficient sacred researcher), and some interesting national spells in enchantment. Like Song of Power which you left out of your list, and Man's the only nation that has it and can actually make good if unpredictable use of it, with its expendable N3s. I've had some success with a F4A4 Phoenix in tests. Okay, it does very little either for diversity or bless, but it does give you early high air magic, and it's pretty much ideal for supercharging your archers with the mobility to support more than one archer army if necessary.

As a sidenote, how good are sprites? I've never actually used them since you can't script them. Is it worth summoning a Faery Queen just to chain summon sprites that you can script?

[Torgon]

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

I don't think that's how damage with exploding dice rolls works. It would make the B4 bless as good as the W9, at 50% greater damage. Do we have a mathmatician here?

So damage is STR + weapon damage + DRN (two exploding 6 six sided dice)

Protection roll is protection at location + DRN

Defender takes damage in hit points equal to the difference. So yes, you are correct that when STR + weapon = protection the expected value of the damage is greater than 0 since the lower half of the distribution is cut off.

Use a little monte carlo with protection of 17. Str + weapon = 18 has an expected value of around 2.66. Str + weapon = 21 has an expected value of 4.75. So around 180%, about double the expected damage output.

So you're correct, I overstated the effectiveness. It just about doubles your damage vs. protection 17 forces. Against protection 12 forces its 6.45 vs 9.23.

In any case, any well played Man will have both knights and Wardens, and longbowmen too regardless of bless. It's just relative proportions that change. It's not like Mictlan where the bless multiplies the effectiveness of the entire army and extends to the endgame summons.

Agree 100%. I just find that KoA out of the cap generally fill all the need I have for knights when I've played with a high bless. And yes, archers are still definitely worth recruiting in the right circumstances.

Like Song of Power which you left out of your list, and Man's the only nation that has it and can actually make good if unpredictable use of it, with its expendable N3s.

I had it in there. Just said all the spellsongs rather than listing all of them. IMO SoP is just really hard to use effectively, as you have to script and set it up perfectly or its just an unmitigated disaster. It seems like a cool spell, but I've never been able to use it in practice unless i was just going up against someone who didn't remember that man has it. If you've found a way to make it effective I'm all ears.

I've had some success with a F4A4 Phoenix in tests. Okay, it does very little either for diversity or bless, but it does give you early high air magic, and it's pretty much ideal for supercharging your archers with the mobility to support more than one archer army if necessary.

Phoenix is good. It just seems like that build makes man just as much of a one trick pony as the bless option. And its a trick thats much more easily countered than just a load of heavily armored, high damage, high stat stealth wardens.

[Shangrila00]

Originally Posted by Torgon

Phoenix is good. It just seems like that build makes man just as much of a one trick pony as the bless option. And its a trick thats much more easily countered than just a load of heavily armored, high damage, high stat stealth wardens.

Well, it's countered by researching to evo 5, or more completely enchantment 6 for nations with air magic. Nations without air magic are kind of **** out of luck if they rely on mass armies and isn't Abyssia. By the time you get to Evo 5, sacred troops in the direct combat role are pretty much obsolescent anyway against most nations, except for Eagle Warriors and EA TC's Wot5E, and as stealth raiders, they have until evo 6 and mind hunt for full effectiveness.

I see it as basically the same as high bless Man. Weaker year 1, though Man's still a terrible rush target, but otherwise high power to roughly the same point. Better against nations without air magic but with strong astral, like Bandar Log, worse against someone like Eriu, but overall even. However as mentioned, even after flaming arrows gets countered, the Phoenix does have some solid uses, more so than a high bless pretender in Earth or Water at least.

Regarding Song of Power, it's no game changer obviously. But you'll have diseased crones not worth rejuvenating. Script mirror image, mistform, flight, attack, Song of Power for some shenanigans against high value sacred armies. Later in the game, N3 mothers plus fog warriors can do much the same thing on a larger scale. Easy enough to counter, but good for a surprise.