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Boron said:
Good analysis Alexti .
Those Tien Chi S&A CM's should be almost as good False horror casters than Caelum .
But Tien Chi is not an option :
Tien Chi is seen as the probably weakest nation .
The CM's are capitol only so they can't be used like caelum can because they are not so easy replaceable .
Pythium furthermore could put a mind duel Theurg in the important provinces and so has good chances to kill of a lot of CM's .
Otherwise Tien Chi is just weak .
The main benefit from being air is getting the Airqueens .
We with Tien Chi only would have had no chance to win the researchrace against caelum .
Then vanheim + man can just give their airgems to caelum and they get all 3 airqueens before we can get them .
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Tien Chi's mages are too expensive to use them as seraphs. They just give an access to air to search for air sites, forge few magic items and cast calls of winds (which is very important to counter Caelum's raiders). But taking air for this purpose isn't a must, at least someone on the team is likely to find air-capable indy mages.
To get Air Queen you don't really need air nation, just pool all air gems to air-capable pretender. Conjuration is need for many nations anyway. I guess this strategy will get one out of 3 air queens.
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Boron said:
Marignon DF would have been probably a good idea .
Iirc the map position of marignon was really bad though . At least panther said so .
Our advantage in death , earth and nature is worth [censored] .
For summons blood is way better . For SCs blood + air is better than death + nature too .
Not to forget that you have SCs from the beginning with your Jotun niefelheim .
Weaponwise a bloodthorn or a hellsword is better than a wraithsword too .
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Concerning summons, blood and air gives you better (and more expensive SC). Bane Lords are not as powerful, but they're much cheaper, need little equipment and for the raiding purposes they work just as well as stronger SC. Air doesn't have much summons besides Air Queens, while death (bane lords, wraiths, ghosts, wights and more) and nature (lamia queens, lamia, ivy kings+vine ogres, faerie queens) have a lot of good summons. Plus nature have very nice sort of summoning called charm which allows you to get various SCs (air queens, Ice/Arch-Devils) which you wouldn't be able to get otherwise.
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Boron said:
Death + blood serve similiar roles but until Tartarians/ghostriders/demilichs death is clearly inferior to blood . We likely never get these spells .
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Blood doesn't even have anything comparable to Ghost riders. And tartarian mages are real monsters, and they come in unlimited quantity. The only problem here is to survive until you get death industry running.
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Boron said:
The biggest advantages of your team nations lie in Flexibility , Mobility and most important the option to pick out where to attack very cheap via stealthy van/man armies + caelum drops .
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Mobility, yes, mostly due to Caelum. Taking Van, Man and Caelum wouldn't be practical (too much concentration) and stealth-wise, Pangaea is very good too.
But flexibility comes from the choice of the strategy.
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Boron said:
With Ctis , Tien Chi , Machaka and Ulm we have 4 little liked nations in our team .
Arco is probably a top 5 nation and pangenea + marignon are middlefield .
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I don't know how you making this conclusion. C'tis is a perfect nation for team game, possibly the best one. You can buy D3N mage for 180, plus a random pick. And they have one of the cheapest national researchers (due to sacred), which is also useful on the battlefield. And if it wasn't enough they can just rollover the indies with 0 losses. Opponents are better expect roaming Bane Lords by turn 10. And in a team game they're likely to come properly equipped.
Ulm is not particularly strong by itself, but if he is used as a forger for other 5 nations, it's a huge gem saving.
Machaka is strong nation on its own, both mages and national troops. Part of their strength comes from flexibility of their mages, which is somewhat lost in the team game though.
Marignon, as another specialist nations suddenly gains value in a team game.
Standard theme of Tien Chi is pretty good, but their main strength in their magic versatility, which makes them much less attractive in the team game. Given the set of nations on team A, they still probably need Tien Chi for the air and water, unless they want to take a risk and rely on indies.
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Boron said:
You have with Caelum the probably a bit overpowered nation which is often Banned .
All your nations are very liked . So for your team the decision which 2 nations not to play was quite hard while for us the decision which nations to play was even harder because most of them were worse than your nations imo
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I think it's wrong to evaluate nations for the team on the basis of the regular MP. TC has a weakness in the early game and is likely to fall a victim of a rush. But the same applies to Mictlan. In a team game, nations that come into force early can help and protect other nations which can contribute to the team later. That doesn't work well for TC though, because their strength is in flexibility and for the team game specialization is more valuable. For the same reason Arco, which is one of the best nations, may not necessarily be very good pick for the team.