Guide to Marverni

[Trumanator]

How many gems does it take to summon and equip it? If its fairly low I could see it just as a raider, or a thuggish supplement to your army. Its not like its mean to take on a serious army with mage support.

[st.patrik]

Originally Posted by Trumanator

How many gems does it take to summon and equip it? If its fairly low I could see it just as a raider, or a thuggish supplement to your army. Its not like its mean to take on a serious army with mage support.

7 nature gems to summon, 5 astral for MR-boost, 10 nature for regen (if you don't have a nature bless, or if you want to stack). So if you have a dwarven hammer and give it those two items you're talking 14 nature gems and 3 astral.

However, I prefer a nature bless and would rather summon another boar than equip each with a ring of regen.

I also don't think you need prot. items - trust instead to regen and not getting hit often due to ethereal & luck. Of course it is always nice to have more slots...

Like I said before though, if you really want to kill these guys you'll find a way, but in the mean time they could cause a lot of damage. The real benefit is that it's a fairly low cost.

[Trumanator]

that is pretty cheap. And while you wait to build up a critical mass you can have them sit around summoning little boars.

[MaxWilson]

Originally Posted by JimMorrison

It's because of the way it's coded - to insure that the blessed get boosted on both Body and Head protection (or only one or the other, if applicable).

This leads me to believe that anything that has a Prot or Def rating (that's not a weapon or shield) would get it - Krupp's Bracer, Cat Charm, and even Stone Bird, Flying Trident, and Gift of Kurgi.

I haven't tested all of those, but since the Cat Charm is purported to give the bonus, and only lists Defense.....

E9 Cat Charm does not give +4 Prot. In retrospect this doesn't surprise me because Prot 0 Robes also do not give the bonus although Prot 3 Robes do. (IIRC Ktonian Necromancers have the Prot 0 version).

-Max

[Baalz]

In light of testing VBF did I want to revise my estimation of how effective blood sacrificing is. Here's the thread in question: http://forum.shrapnelgames.com/showt...454#post696454

So, each slave you sacrifice causes 2 temple checks. That means my suggested 5 druids teleporting in with jade knives would have the effectiveness of 45 temples in a tightly concentrated area using 1200 gold in temples. That's a three turn KO in the right situation.

Turn 1: 5 temple druids teleport around the enemy capital while golems, more druids, etc teleport onto the capital wiping out the PD and sieging it.

Turn 2: Temples go up, capital siegers retreat

Turn 3: All the temple checks from blood sacrifice go off *before* anybody in the capital can attack any of the temples.

Well, since the enemy capital is likely to be domed you might need to use something more sneaky like flying in a golem or using something stealthy. Naaaaaasty potential.

[hoo]

For teleporting, what about adding some stone idols so you can immediately drop dominion even before you start building/sacrificing. Easy to build for Marverni too.

It was mentioned earlier, but Farstrike is a spell that can stop a lot of early rushes. It's Thau 1 and you can hit for (25+ (and in emergency you can craft the bear claw talisman (con0) to hit for 30+). Farstrike also has excellent range (50) and precision (5) So if you get attacked by say turn 7, you'll have far strike and should have hopefully at least 1 druid to hit hard. So your hordes of cheap troops backed by farstrike should make Marv a bit harder to rush than other nations.

[Sombre]

1 guy farstriking isn't going to make much difference unless you're being rushed with low hp expensive units.

[MaxWilson]

No, but 7 druids farstriking might. That's about as much precision/damage as Lightning (more vs. low-armor EA units). The real question: Lightning ignores shield parry even though it's not Prec 100. Does Farstrike ignore shield parry too?

(Yes, I know Farstrike is Prec 100 in CBM.)

-Max

[Illuminated One]

It was once.

I don't know if it's the shield but it's possible to resist farstrike even with 100 precision.

[Sombre]

In cbm I see farstrike miss a lot. It often appears to hit, but still misses, so that's either shields or not hitting somehow despite hitting the square. The stats on farstrike look good but in cbm right now it doesn't seem anywhere near as good as lightning bolt to me.