Good Pretender design for Marverni?

SelfishGene · #1 February 13th, 2007, 07:40 PM

I'm having trouble coming up with a Pretender build for Marverni that doesn't completely suck. Of course i have some preconceptions...

First, i think Marverni should take 3 Productivity, because this underpowered nation doesn't stand a chance unless it can really pump out the troops (and even then it might not matter in the long run). I also think they need a fairly reasonable dominion in order to enjoy the fruits of having good scales.

OTOH, i think that a "Rainbow" Pretender with 3 or 4s in many path would be preferable because you'll need lots of summons and magic in order to survive. But in order to get all these things, you need to make the Pretender Imprisoned, which rather defeats the whole purpose of using a site-searching Pretender. PLUS, you HAVE to have blood on your Pretender (and preferably high scales) in order to make any use of the Blood Sacrifice ability....

You can make a 9-path Dragon, except that you have no use for Fire gems and the Nature dragon kind of sucks. And Marverni isn't a very good bless nation...

There are just too many issues that a Marverni Pretender has to overcome, as an Early Era nation.

Or you could wreck the scales and make a Vampire Queen SC Pretender, but this isn't very thematic or unique to Marverni's abilities in any event, since anyone can do that...

Graeme Dice · #2 February 13th, 2007, 11:24 PM

Quote:

SelfishGene said:
First, i think Marverni should take 3 Productivity, because this underpowered nation doesn't stand a chance unless it can really pump out the troops (and even then it might not matter in the long run).

That's probably a decent idea, so that you can get more Ambibate nobles, which are almost as good as principes.

Quote:

OTOH, i think that a "Rainbow" Pretender with 3 or 4s in many path would be preferable because you'll need lots of summons and magic in order to survive.

I can think of few situations in which you'd want a rainbow pretender. A magically diverse nation like Marverni is definetly not one of them. You have guaranteed access to astral, nature, and earth site searching spells, and are likely to eventually have a water 2 druid.

Quote:

PLUS, you HAVE to have blood on your Pretender (and preferably high scales) in order to make any use of the Blood Sacrifice ability....

Don't waste your pretender's time by having him search for blood slaves. Use scouts for blood hunting if you need slaves and have no blood mages available.

Quote:

Or you could wreck the scales and make a Vampire Queen SC Pretender, but this isn't very thematic or unique to Marverni's abilities in any event, since anyone can do that...

Realistically, if you aren't planning a bless strategy for a nation, and aren't underwater where you won't have to deal with land-based sacred troops, then I would almost always pick a SC pretender. Doubling your expansion rate is a hard thing to pass up just for a potential minor advantage later in the game. That said, I definetly wouldn't use a VQ, since she's extremely overpriced.

Wish · #3 February 14th, 2007, 01:06 AM

with marveni you want a sage, and this is why: its not about recruitable troops - clearly they are sub par, but the mages are POWERFUL, so you want some decent evocation and at higher construction levels they can make decent Golem thugs/SCs and armies of mechanical men. At medium enchantment they can make armies of living statues.

I have been tooling around with marveni a lot and this is the only feasible solution i've come up with regarding them...

so you go with a sage,who can help them get the research faster. Give him a little death and he might even be able to replace himself with skull mentors then go around looking for magic sites to power the marveni machine.

alternatively, the SC pretender is very useful as well, since Marveni is very bad at early expansion. so I have to agree with GD there.

KissBlade · #4 February 14th, 2007, 03:28 AM

Hmm... I'll have to agree with Graeme on this one. You need to take advantage of marveni's battle magic ability. I always recommend a combat pretender (dragon, or a dom 9/10 wyrm/cyclops) for nations with crappy troops. Also you really don't need to blood sacrifice with them either. I tend to ignore that ability completely.

Wish · #5 February 14th, 2007, 03:57 AM

yeah, forget the blood. for reals.

a Awe-dom prince of death is nice too, cause he's so scary that their morale dips into the negatives.

Teraswaerto · #6 February 14th, 2007, 04:59 AM

I don't think Marverni is all that weak, unless you are comparing it to Vanheim or something...

Druids are great, and the troops are not that bad either. I'd take good scales, magic, order and production (or maybe swap order for luck). Having a pretender that can do early expansion would be good.

Edi · #7 February 14th, 2007, 08:00 AM

I'm playing a co-op hotseat game with a friend where he has Marverni. He took a dormant F9 phoenix and enough production to be able to crank out a good number of sacred troops, which he promptly used to squash the indies around him. With hard research and powerful indies, the first 12 turns allowed him to get research up to spec so that the phoenix was usable as an artillery platform against indies by the time it awakened. Don't know how useful that would be in MP, though.

Marverni can make use of several evocation and thaumaturgy based magic strategies, especially when coupled with certain magic and penetration boosters.

The last thing they need is a rainbow pretender.

Edi

Wish · #8 February 14th, 2007, 01:04 PM

well, compared to sauromatia, lanka, and yomi (the new races I am familiar with) - (helhiem and vanhiem also, but those guys clean up with recruitable troops.)

SelfishGene · #9 February 14th, 2007, 01:15 PM

I used a 4-Fire Dragon in a multiplayer game, thinking i could expand out quickly so that i could bring the magic economy up to speed. However, well, the Dragon got eaten by the bugged Eater of Heroes, but anyway.. i don't think that he would have been able to dish out enough damage to beat Pangaea's really decent Satyr Warriors and huge swarms of Maenads. The other problem with fast expansion is that i'm a paper tiger, and most other nations have stronger troops, so seeing me get big fast makes me the first target. Marverni has some decent potential but you need to survive for 20+ turns unmolested to really bring that potential out. Once you're magic/battle magic economy gets rolling this are easier. It's the early game that all those damn human troops just get in the way.

I like the 9F Phoenix idea.

Personally (imo) all the human themed nations in the Early Era are to a greater or lesser degree weaker than the "mythological" nations available.

KissBlade · #10 February 14th, 2007, 04:03 PM

They are not weaker. S&A, Ermor, Sauromatia, etc are all up there for my picks in EA. Maverni not so much because they have no archers but IMO their excellent mages some what shores up that weakness. In base, I would probably go a dom 10 Prince of Death and use high order 3/magic 1 (or 3) with points coming out of misfortune and sloth to power the early expansion drive.