Good Pretender design for Marverni?

SelfishGene · #1 February 19th, 2007, 01:53 PM

I think the issue is the difficulty in amassing Ambibates sufficient numbers to survive until such point as you can begin using Druids in battle. Marverni is a "middle game" nation, with a weak early and somewhat weak late game.

So you either make a SC Pretender that can tank and fight for you until you have enough research to use druids, or you pump out huge masses of Ambibates and Eponi cavalry. But if you're rushed in the first 20 turns by anything other than a human nation (Ctis, Pangaea, Kaliasa, ect), you won't have enough troops - or good enough troops - to survive.

On paper Marverni looks ok, but i think they're rather weak in practice. They've only got a couple of decent national units, and have to rely totally on mages/magical gems for anything past the early game. This is hard to do if your fighting one one or two fronts against human opponents....

Gandalf Parker · #2 February 19th, 2007, 02:29 PM

Conversations about balance and weak are hard to have without defining the game abit. To some people, weak is based on small-map player-kill-player games. That defines the total of Dom3 and what makes things good or bad. The game does also support and have large followings for very different game styles that totally change such "weak/strong" comparisons. Solo play, alliance play, large map, low resource, high magic, RPG, Victory point, etc. On a default game (medium map) most of the units have use for as much of the game as others. Early game units get as much play as late game units when you are storming the enemies castle.

I like slingers for a good part of the game. Slingers can cheaply create a sky full of falling rocks, and a damage of 9 isnt bad. The effect can generate a rout in many units. Shooting 15 volleys is nice also. Unfortunately a precision of 10 on the slinger, and a -2 precision on the weapon, makes for alot of misses. I find it handy to give them all to a commander and then break them into 5 squads. Aim boosting spells helps also.

I dont target them at other weak units such as archers as Ive seen many do. That causes them to run up into the battle. I target them at large monsters or cavalry in the hopes of routing them before my infantry has to meet them.

Its not really a late-game tactic when you are entering your enemies castle, and I wouldnt create an army of nothing but slingers. But it does have its uses. Spending one turn to add a commander and many slingers to an army before sending it out can be helpful in situations where you wonder what will get you by that army (such as elephants). Its also a cheap way to create an army that the AI is nervous about attacking.

SelfishGene · #3 February 19th, 2007, 02:49 PM

My ideas about game size are those maps provided to us in the retail package. You can use third-party maps, and i don't think doing this is invalid, but it's not really a part of the game as designed.

The random generator creates "large" maps with 20 provinces per player. Even this means you will have combat fairly early as these maps tend to be blocky with little terrain compared to Jason Lutes's nice designs.

For example, i find playing Marverni in Dawn of Dominions vs. the AI to be a very, very difficult affair. Surrounded on all sides by empires that are, lets face it, better than yours, including a water nation you can't even fight, is a pretty difficult thing! On one or two notches above normal difficulty the AI tends to swarm me before i have a chance to deploy my nice mages in any effective roles.

KissBlade · #4 February 19th, 2007, 03:03 PM

Quote:

SelfishGene said:
My ideas about game size are those maps provided to us in the retail package. You can use third-party maps, and i don't think doing this is invalid, but it's not really a part of the game as designed.

The random generator creates "large" maps with 20 provinces per player. Even this means you will have combat fairly early as these maps tend to be blocky with little terrain compared to Jason Lutes's nice designs.

For example, i find playing Marverni in Dawn of Dominions vs. the AI to be a very, very difficult affair. Surrounded on all sides by empires that are, lets face it, better than yours, including a water nation you can't even fight, is a pretty difficult thing! On one or two notches above normal difficulty the AI tends to swarm me before i have a chance to deploy my nice mages in any effective roles.

The AI is not good indication for strength of nation. Especially since Dawn of Dominions is a scenario map and not balanced in starting locations.

Wish · #5 February 19th, 2007, 03:24 PM

Quote:

SelfishGene said:
My ideas about game size are those maps provided to us in the retail package. You can use third-party maps, and i don't think doing this is invalid, but it's not really a part of the game as designed.

I disagree with this since the game is heavily designed to be modded and for maps to be created for it. The functionality for 3rd Party maps are really built right in - even the ability to generate your own without any hassle. I think all that is exactly part of the game, as designed.

KissBlade · #6 February 19th, 2007, 02:57 PM

Quote:

SelfishGene said:
I think the issue is the difficulty in amassing Ambibates sufficient numbers to survive until such point as you can begin using Druids in battle. Marverni is a "middle game" nation, with a weak early and somewhat weak late game.

So you either make a SC Pretender that can tank and fight for you until you have enough research to use druids, or you pump out huge masses of Ambibates and Eponi cavalry. But if you're rushed in the first 20 turns by anything other than a human nation (Ctis, Pangaea, Kaliasa, ect), you won't have enough troops - or good enough troops - to survive.

On paper Marverni looks ok, but i think they're rather weak in practice. They've only got a couple of decent national units, and have to rely totally on mages/magical gems for anything past the early game. This is hard to do if your fighting one one or two fronts against human opponents....

In practice, they're no weaker than any other non archer nation that doesn't rely on blesses. I don't see how you're even having trouble against C'tis "rushes" unless they're going a dual 9 serpent dancer on you, their troops are mostly just hoarding waves of trashy units, a practice that Marveni can replicate. Especially because slings and javs are very much underestimated in EA IMO. Also, aside from heavy blessers, I can't think of any situation where your nationals will get completely outpowered by another's. If you're going to complain about someone else's pretender though, well if someone spends 300 + points in their pretender compared to you, they deserve some sort of advantage, non?

On paper, Maverni looks like an average balanced nation because in practice, they are a well balanced average nation. Your main problem is you're probably comparing them to NOT well balanced nations. (Niefel/Hel/Lanka coming to mind for one ...)

SelfishGene · #7 February 19th, 2007, 02:58 PM

Er., chariots? Trampling units eat Marverni for breakfast, and aren't EAs Ctis Chariots fairly decent? (Good morale?)

Chariots are one reason why i love EA Tien Chi

. (Excellent artillery casters are another).

KissBlade · #8 February 19th, 2007, 03:07 PM

Quote:

SelfishGene said:
Er., chariots? Trampling units eat Marverni for breakfast, and aren't EAs Ctis Chariots fairly decent? (Good morale?)

Chariots are one reason why i love EA Tien Chi

. (Excellent artillery casters are another).

Have you ever tried to mass chariots...? not to mention by the time they get enough numbers of them, you should easily be able to get some battlemagic. Personally if you're building high gold high resource units, they better do something besides kill a few units and then rout themselves. Also it's not that difficult to defend against chariots between mercenaries and eponi knights.

SelfishGene · #9 February 19th, 2007, 03:13 PM

I know in multi my Marerni hordes (bolstered by some 80 indie archers) were very easily routed by a Pangaea with hordes of Warriors/Revelers, Maenads, and those trampling bull guys whom name escapes me at the moment. Minotaurs?

Chariots are much harder to mass than the Minotaurs but have better armor and defence, so i imagine they would work similarly. Perhaps not.

I've never built Chariots in multi as i've never had the opportunity. Previously, in Dom2, Chariots always sucked. In the Early Era, they are not, perhaps, quite so bad.

KissBlade · #10 February 23rd, 2007, 03:35 AM

Quote:

SelfishGene said:
I know in multi my Marerni hordes (bolstered by some 80 indie archers) were very easily routed by a Pangaea with hordes of Warriors/Revelers, Maenads, and those trampling bull guys whom name escapes me at the moment. Minotaurs?

Chariots are much harder to mass than the Minotaurs but have better armor and defence, so i imagine they would work similarly. Perhaps not.

I've never built Chariots in multi as i've never had the opportunity. Previously, in Dom2, Chariots always sucked. In the Early Era, they are not, perhaps, quite so bad.

1) They had berserkers, you didn't.
2) By the time, the game has reached the "hordes" stage, you should've had blade wind.
3) If you're worried about tramplers, use eponi's. Script your archers to "fire archers" Your cav should be scripted to "target large monsters" to engage the minotaurs.