Man: A Bless nation in CBM 1.92?

[Torgon]

I've enjoyed playing man with a W9N4 bless.

The fatigue is actually rarely an issue. The wardens simply kill things fast enough that they never rack any significant amounts up, and there's always a nice leap frog effect where the guys behind jump in front of those who were on the lines. And once you get in really big battles you always have relief up. An N3 daughter with a mace can cast it and you should have those coming out of your ears.

True they don't have super high base defense, but they rack up stars like crazy. Once they have a couple you're talking about a defense of 17 which makes them very hard to hit, and the little bit of regen makes them very hard to kill. I went with an imprisoned lady of springs, O3C3G3Mis1M1.

Empowering a crone to A4 is really not that much of an issue. True Air gems are very valuable, but as Nightfall has pointed out, an Air booster already costs 25 gems. Just view the empowerment as a double priced booster that you cant switch to a different mage and it seems a lot more reasonable.

You basically have 3 options for guaranteed A4 as man:
1. Empowerment
2. A4 on pretender
3. S4 on pretender

As someone else has correctly pointed out, 1 and 3 are really the only viable options. Taking A4 on a pretender for a nation that otherwise has no use for it is a whole lot more expensive than 60 Air gems (really only 35 if you view it as just forging an extra booster to get another crone to A4).

This build expands FAST. A lord warden and 5 wardens can take pretty much any indi, including barbarians and knights, with minimal loses.

The biggest problem is obviously the lack of magic diversity, and you are hurting in this regard. The key however is to just expand fast, win early wars with your wardens and keep expanding. Man is not a late game powerhouse, trying to cram a little death onto your pretender is not going to make them a late game powerhouse. I say its better to leverage your strength as an early game powerhouse and roll with it. Expand fast and try to find some good indy mages to cover you for diversity. True its a gamble, but even with the buffed wardens man is not a nation you win with without gambling.

And nature is actually not that bad especially when combined with air. One obvious option is false horror and panic spam in conjunction with a few raiding bands of wardens. Or just panic spam in conjunction with kithriotic lion spam (they now have fear, and have been buffed along with the other animals) and are conveniently size four to go along with your size 2 wardens. Air also gives you confusion very early which when spammed by your A2 mothers can create some fun results.

You also have all the big buffs at the end. Fog warriors + relief + mass regeneration + blessing of gaia + a couple weapons of sharpness from the E mothers with boots you've scraped together or foul vapors + serpents blessing + everything else.

[Shardphoenix]

BTW, fire/water also works for Cu Sidhe.

the best 2 for them, in my opinion, would be W9

Mother if Rivers is dirt cheap, but I`ve tried it, and, frankly speaking, wasn`t really impressed with W9 wardens. Their base defence is not that high, and fatigue can be a problem. OTOH, it also works for Cu Sidhe...

or D9

BUT WHY?

frankly spending points on your pretender for A4 just for boosters is worse than just empowering a crone

Only if you have a gem factory stached somewhere. Or play with like 70 sites. You can never have enough air gems when you play as Man.

Originally Posted by Shangrila00

Wardens are kind of hard to heavy bless for. The only thing obvious is E9 for neutral fatigue and super heavy armor. None of the others are obviously beneficial

In fact, N4 is very nice with super-heavy armor, since when you get hit through it, it`s usually only a couple poibnts of damage, unless you are getting hit by a giant.

[Nightfall]

Originally Posted by Shardphoenix

BUT WHY?

Because most people massively underestimate the D9 bless, it is very cheap to get on a master lich, and usefull in a variety of ways.

And a D9 master lich with a couple of extra paths is a great battle caster in it's own right.

[Shardphoenix]

You also have all the big buffs at the end.

What about Antimagic?

[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.