A quick question about Man

[Pocus]

Elite warriors are pretty good IMO, can be raised in masses because of their low resource cost, and can be produced everywhere.

They are costly, and suffer from a very low protection. Sure they pack quite some punch, and have good morale, but they are very frail. If you have no gold problem, then I understand that they are better than any other troops that Ctis can field, with perhaps swamp guards with reliefs from time to time.
Anyway, I dont like them much, because when I play C'tis, it bother me to recruit only savage lizards, whereas you are supposed to reign over a nation of Lizardmen. See you have 4 (or is 5) subtypes of lizardmen troops, and you would rely mostly, if not exclusively on the elite warriors? It talks about how the lizardmen are under balanced.

- their sauromancers cost 180 gp (normal cost of many 'big' national mages), *but* they are only 3-1-? where as the others are 3-2-?

NGF :
I fully agree with JO's analysis on this

Ok, they are average and not particularly bad. I must have the bad habit to compare things to Caelum, which generally add insult to injury with his better troops.

{cold provinces and extra fatigue}
You mean, no counter *early* - Enchantment research is a big priority for C'tis, because of all these reanimation spells, ant it gives you Relief as well (better used by communion-leading shamen - with 2 masters and 4 slaves, fatigue isn't a concern anymore).

And even if their masters do suffer from cold, don't forget their undead creatures are immune to cold effects. If Caelum is a problem, retaliate with spectres, ghosts, behemoths, and hordes of lesser undeads ;-)

How you goes to discard that easily the problem! For relief you need nature 3. Simple, I *just* have to field 5 shamen. So fool I'm to not have my bag of dessicated shamen with me, everywhere I go, with any forces, even medium to small ones. Promised, I wont do twice the error

Ok granted, for big battles you have the shamen. Just check what will happen after the fifth round? Last time I checked, AI seldomly if never cast relief, and revert to howl. Then the fatigue hit, and starting with round 8, the penalties on your units are pretty severe.

My point is the battle of cold versus heat is largely dominated by cold, because of this handy wolven winter. And with Cold blood, C'tis is even in worse shape than any other nation. Even if you manage to have an ample suply of death gems, I dont think that all your units will be summoned ones. You will have Ctissian mages and lizardmen, and they will be crap soon in cold.

{lizard king}

I do. 17 hp isn't much, but at least that's enough to survive a Seeking Arrow or FFTS or MW, in my experience anyway. And they have an impressive leadership rating, which is good to keep the low morale lizards in line

I reckon that the 17 hp are handy for those arrows. Aside that you pay a level 4 priest for 280 gold. Seems overpriced to me. Can I remind you that Marignon has a level 4 priest, fire 1 magic user for 210 gold?

don't like the priest-mages much anyway. I want my big priests to stick to Fanaticism (especially with C'tis ;-)

I agree with you that priest mages always seem to cast the wrong spell Still I find the Ctissian priest costly for a nation which is supposed to be very good at that.
I notice that the Hierodule did not appeal comments from you.

You just have to admit that more than half of the units or leaders are underpowered, and I promise that we will find some time for this Marignon/Arco duel

oops sniped the Ermorian part... Have you played against Ermor commanded by Wendigo (Pepe M.). I think you would change your mind about Ermor.

[st.patrik]

So it's the same in Dom II - ok. But could you tell us why Man has so many units only recruitable in their capital? And is that fact open to re-consideration?

I think the main problem (for Man & perhaps C'Tis) is that if you want to use your home province troops you are forced into taking a high administration castle. That's the cost here. Your pretender's abilities and dominion are limited because of what seems to me to be a somewhat random decision to make not one, but two of your best troop types in your home province, not to mention mages for Man.

I think it's totally reasonable to have a high-end unit type and or an elite mage built only in your capital - just like Abysia, Pythium, Ulm, Arco, Pangaea, Vanheim, Jotunheim, and Marignon. All of these have maybe one unit type and or one or two elite mages limited to their home province. C'Tis seems excessive, having 2 elite troop types, and Man seems even more excessive, having 2 elite troop types and all their mages.

So is there a reason for this? Is there a corresponding advantage to the disadvantage of having to take an (expensive in design points) high admin. castle in order to field your best army? If so, what is it? And finally, is there a chance this will change?

p.s. BTW I agree that Knights are more cost effective than Knights of Avalon, which makes large-scale production of the latter redundant. In that case, could Wardens be produced outside of the capital? There's no redundancy with an existing unit there - Man's Infantry (aside from Wardens) isn't very good.

[ywl]

Originally posted by Pocus:

oops sniped the Ermorian part... Have you played against Ermor commanded by Wendigo (Pepe M.). I think you would change your mind about Ermor.

I heard of the legend, just wondering what kinds of maps when that happened? Large vs small? Crowded vs spacious? Magically and economically rich vs poor?

The reason is no matter what parameters I tried, Ermor always lagged behind except for a large number of useless undeads.

The only *possible* exception that it has a chance is when the map is large enough and people leave Ermor alone for a long enough time.

Ermor's pretender would be a very good mage but they have slow research. Consequently, it takes a longer time than usual for them to create your usual Uber-combatants. There are cheap way to crank out budget super-combatant, e.g. Gargoyle, but you might not have the right gems. The only fail-safe cheap combatant is the Ice-Devil but you'll need to depend on blood hunt.

With more experienced players in a MP game, people would be happily crave you up for your gem income way before you can defense yourself (e.g. turn 20 to 25). Your undeads are not enough to be a deterent. You could in theory avoid that by not finding out the gem sites, but then half of the advantages of your pretender would be gone.

[johan osterman]

Originally posted by st.patrik:
So it's the same in Dom II - ok. But could you tell us why Man has so many units only recruitable in their capital? And is that fact open to re-consideration?

I think the main problem (for Man & perhaps C'Tis) is that if you want to use your home province troops you are forced into taking a high administration castle. That's the cost here. Your pretender's abilities and dominion are limited because of what seems to me to be a somewhat random decision to make not one, but two of your best troop types in your home province, not to mention mages for Man.

I think it's totally reasonable to have a high-end unit type and or an elite mage built only in your capital - just like Abysia, Pythium, Ulm, Arco, Pangaea, Vanheim, Jotunheim, and Marignon. All of these have maybe one unit type and or one or two elite mages limited to their home province. C'Tis seems excessive, having 2 elite troop types, and Man seems even more excessive, having 2 elite troop types and all their mages.

So is there a reason for this? Is there a corresponding advantage to the disadvantage of having to take an (expensive in design points) high admin. castle in order to field your best army? If so, what is it? And finally, is there a chance this will change?

p.s. BTW I agree that Knights are more cost effective than Knights of Avalon, which makes large-scale production of the latter redundant. In that case, could Wardens be produced outside of the capital? There's no redundancy with an existing unit there - Man's Infantry (aside from Wardens) isn't very good.

There isn't allways an easy explanation for all features, sometimes forgotten features are rediscoverd, in the case of Man the reasons the troops that are recruitable only in Man is so is probably because it seemed to fit the descriptions. That said I do not think that Man is as disadvantaged as you seem to think. Their tower Guuards are decent heavy infantry, if you test them in the dom 1 battle simulator they will hold their own fairly effectively costeffective wise, they just aren't as spectacular as some other troops. The cost of their mages are ok, and they are fairly powerful, they have access to arguably the best heavy infantry in the game, they have spies´, they have extra good longbows that are a boon in the early game. I agree though that Man isn't the strongest nation in the game, but I think they are strong enough to still be competetive.

[MStavros]

Ermor sucks in multi. It's very easy to annihilate them with the right tactics, since they are a unique nation.

[ywl]

Originally posted by st.patrik:

p.s. BTW I agree that Knights are more cost effective than Knights of Avalon, which makes large-scale production of the latter redundant. In that case, could Wardens be produced outside of the capital? There's no redundancy with an existing unit there - Man's Infantry (aside from Wardens) isn't very good.

Man's tower guards have 13 protection, lower than your usual heavy infantries. However, I don't think they're as handicapped as they look.

The problem is if you have a bard among them, they'll usually cast "Protection" (Alteration 3). The spell has low fatique and give Bark Skin to a few of your units, raising their protection by 7 (to 20). Or they might cast "Tangle Vine" and lower the defense of their opponents to 3. They can also cast spell songs to remove fatique, restore some hitpoints.

Of course, it would be nice if the protection of Tower Guards is increased to 15, corresponding to Man-at-Arm of Marignon. But then, Man-at-Arm does not have a defense bonus. And Marignon can't easily boost the protection of their as easily ("Body Ethereal" has a shorter range, and Bard is a very cheap unit). I don't really know where the balance lies.

[Nagot Gick Fel]

Originally posted by Pocus:

oops sniped the Ermorian part... Have you played against Ermor commanded by Wendigo (Pepe M.). I think you would change your mind about Ermor.

Yep, I met him twice, and yep, I admit he's a good player. And nope, I won't change my mind ;-).