Advice for MA Man

[ano]

Well, I don't think that A4 is as important as you describe. Definitely it is but I find building the whole strategy around it a bit lacking.
MA Man can expand rather quickly using longbowmen so they don't really need an awake sc. I would suggest the following build:
Earth mother N4E4, dormant, Dom 6
Order 3
Prod 1
Growth 2
Misfortune 2
Magic 3
Earth mother may not be very great as it is, but it can be a very potent fighter when you give her winged shoes and enough reinvigoration and casting invulnerability at alt5 (which is your first main goal due to wind guide and mother oak). Your second goal will be gift of health and foul vapors at Ench5. Both these goals (including thau2 and const4) can easily be reached with magic 3, rich dominion and rather fast castle building or researching with tribal shamans. Bless effects are perfect to keep you sacred old mages alive (when a crone becomes diseased, just use her as a battlemage) and for extra reinvigoration in battle (in addition to soothing songs for which tribal shamans are perfect).
Wardens, IMO, are not worth using heavily due to strategic movement 1. They may be completely useless if you start in the corner - bringing them to front will take ages (you may use faery trod, but I'm not sure it is worth doing). You have perfect archers and very good cavalry. If you expand quickly and keep that advantage, I'm sure, you'll be able to find the way into air boosters (either being lucky to have A4 crone or using trade). Btw, with such build and being lucky to find some nature sites, it is definitely possible to have mother oak and gift of health active at the end of year 2.

[llamabeast]

I played a 4-player game as MA Man once, and won with Fog Warriors being my super-weapon. It takes some serious researching, but once you have it your knights are ridiculously tough (almost unkillable by mundane things, and have at least two lives even against spells). So I think keeping that in mind as a target is a good idea. Also on Alteration you get Mother Oak, which is always handy. Actually I've just remembered the other main part of my strategy, which came in before Fog Warriors, was mass-producing Vine Ogres. Man can do that very well, and they're good value (with the vine circlet thing).

[Zeldor]

Crones can have A4, so you don't need it on pretender. Though they are really really old and they die fast so you do not want globals with them, unless you can make them young.

[llamabeast]

Yes Zeldor, you're right about the crones. I'd forgotten but my pretender in that winning game was just a no-magic wyrm.

[Jazzepi]

ano said:
Well, I don't think that A4 is as important as you describe. Definitely it is but I find building the whole strategy around it a bit lacking.
MA Man can expand rather quickly using longbowmen so they don't really need an awake sc. I would suggest the following build:
Earth mother N4E4, dormant, Dom 6
Order 3
Prod 1
Growth 2
Misfortune 2
Magic 3
Earth mother may not be very great as it is, but it can be a very potent fighter when you give her winged shoes and enough reinvigoration and casting invulnerability at alt5 (which is your first main goal due to wind guide and mother oak). Your second goal will be gift of health and foul vapors at Ench5. Both these goals (including thau2 and const4) can easily be reached with magic 3, rich dominion and rather fast castle building or researching with tribal shamans. Bless effects are perfect to keep you sacred old mages alive (when a crone becomes diseased, just use her as a battlemage) and for extra reinvigoration in battle (in addition to soothing songs for which tribal shamans are perfect).
Wardens, IMO, are not worth using heavily due to strategic movement 1. They may be completely useless if you start in the corner - bringing them to front will take ages (you may use faery trod, but I'm not sure it is worth doing). You have perfect archers and very good cavalry. If you expand quickly and keep that advantage, I'm sure, you'll be able to find the way into air boosters (either being lucky to have A4 crone or using trade). Btw, with such build and being lucky to find some nature sites, it is definitely possible to have mother oak and gift of health active at the end of year 2.

I thought I was right about my general impression of crones almost never getting A4, so I went ahead and checked.

Crones have these starting paths (A2N3)
They random once for (AWEN +1 100%) and (AWEN +1 10%)

I believe you can do 1/4th times 1/10th times 1/4th to get the amount of crones that will have A4.

%0.625

That percentage means that if you build 200 crones, 1.25 of them will have A4.

So, yes, you really, really need A4 on your pretender. You can't rely on such a small percentage of you crones having A4.

Jazzepi

[ano]

Yes, it is hard to get. That's why I said about being lucky. I don't rely on this, certainly. However, I think that air booster can be got when you really need it. Either from trade (Vanheim, Eriu and Caelum have A4 quite often) or from that rare crone, or at least you may empower for 60 gems. I consider this being quite real in the long run. Anyway, I think that having fast expansion, good combat pretender and very useful bless is more important than being sure you have A4 for air boosters, staff of storms and whatever else you need.

[Jazzepi]

ano said:
Yes, it is hard to get. That's why I said about being lucky. I don't rely on this, certainly. However, I think that air booster can be got when you really need it. Either from trade (Vanheim, Eriu and Caelum have A4 quite often) or from that rare crone, or at least you may empower for 60 gems. I consider this being quite real in the long run. Anyway, I think that having fast expansion, good combat pretender and very useful bless is more important than being sure you have A4 for air boosters, staff of storms and whatever else you need.

My point was that MA Man has no way to increase their magic diversity. Early expansion doesn't help you at all in the late game when you get crushed by nations using a full range of magic items/spells/summons. Because you need both A4, and a way to diversify your magic, naturally leads to the choice of a prismatic pretender. Having a rainbow mage as a pretender is not just for the A4, in fact if you had a reliable way to produce A4, I would say you should drop it off the pretender.

Good players simply won't trade you air boosters if they're going up against you. This happened to me when I was playing in Aramadillo.

Here's a new build taking into account the fact that you can spam Auspex and Haruspex with other people. Then you can build a crystal coin, and starshine skullcap on an S4 pretender to get to rings of wizardy, which can then be given to an A3 crone, which you'll have quite a few of, to get them to A4 to boost with.

Great Enchantress
Dormant
DOM 5
O 3
P 0
H 0
G 1
Misfortune 2
Magic 1

MAGIC PICKS
F1
W3
E4
S4
D4
N1

This build is probably a bit better than my earlier one. Combined with your pretender, haurspex and auspex you will search your provinces for every E/D/S/N/A and 95% of the W sites while still picking up a *little* fire. Just enough income to let you forge key items. Possibly, if you get lucky enough, you could build the D/F skull for +1 fire, use ring of wizardy, and maybe a staff of the elements to summon either the king of banefires or king of elemental fire, though this is sort of an off chance.

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

I'm going to have to go with Meglobob here. You miss out on some magic diversity compared to the rainbows, particularly the powerful death and astral magic, but I love earth magic and the cyclops. Your pretenders also pretty much a more powerful(magically much more so), non-undead version of the Tartarian E3A2 Cyclops who is very powerful.

[Jazzepi]

Shovah32 said:
I'm going to have to go with Meglobob here. You miss out on some magic diversity compared to the rainbows, particularly the powerful death and astral magic, but I love earth magic and the cyclops. Your pretenders also pretty much a more powerful(magically much more so), non-undead version of the Tartarian E3A2 Cyclops who is very powerful.

I'm bad with midrange pretenders like Meglobob was suggesting, but I'm sure it's good.

I still don't like the extreme lack of access to astral and death, but what can you do ;P

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

You do miss it, but not as much as you would think. And the E9A4 Cyclops is a great combatant and an insane battle mage. Like Bob said - cloud trapeze into battle and cast a few rain of stones/earthquakes to wipe out armies. Preferably rain of stones first to kill those mages.