[Agema]

MA Man is generally believed to be a weak nation, and... it is. Unlike Baalz's guides, this guide is not going to be about great synergies and exciting tricks, because by and large they don't exist. This guide will intend to be about maximising what Man is good at (= not much) and covering the holes in the nation.

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Man benefits a lot from expansion. Grabbing territory quickly is good, as you'll need a lot of money to power your early game and a lot of gems to power your middle and late game. However, for various reasons (see far below) I don't recommend an SC pretender. Luckily, Man's army is mostly up to the task of good expansion against indies and many nations.

Basic battle tactics for Man for the early to midgame should be simple: longbowmen with a melee screen. Longbowmen have good precision (12), good range (35) and good missile damage (13), a decent bunch are quite capable of whittling down the enemy, if not routing them outright then leaving them in poor state for the melee screen to finish. Bear in mind both any shield larger than a buckler and heavy armour will severely dent the impact of your longbowmen. Your melee screen should preferentially be Tower Guard, which are good quality infantry. Axemen are pointless, there's nothing they do that Tower Guard don't do better. Longspears and Spearmen are okay if unexceptional: however, the same high protec troops that make your longbows less effective will also make these guys struggle. If your melee screen fails, Longbowmen themselves have reasonable Att/Def and a shortsword so they stand up better than many missile troops in melee, but with low protec (6) and no shield, they'll do a lot of dying. You should be able to outshoot virtually any other archers, except rare varieties with shields. It's also worth bearing in mind Man's armies are SLOW. Only longbowmen and Spearmen have mapmove 2.

You are not a good target for someone else's rush. Longbowmen can be amassed quickly in huge numbers: their missile fire poses a decent threat to many typical rush troops like elephants/mammoths, hydras and many blessed units. Even if a rusher thinks he can beat you, the risk of heavy casualties may persuade him to find an easier opponent. Cap-only Knights of Avalon and Wardens of Avalon have high damage, good morale and MR, and may pose a reasonable threat to some SC Pretenders early on, and if not spells like Sleep (110 fatigue, MR) and lightning bolt are easily researched and give you some traction against many. Also bear in mind a niche use for Knights of Avalon: they have a magical alicorn attack, which can ruin the day for ethereal and mistform troops and thugs.

There may be some traction in building knights. Ultimately, these guys are extremely hard to kill with missile fire or in melee by average troops, and pack out lots of damage. However, the cost (50 gold & 50 res) makes them a drag to recruit, and you can guarantee when the midgame comes around and Evo starts flying, they'll die just as fast as something far cheaper.

Wind Guide is an obvious spell to cast, and flaming arrows if you have an adequate fire mage handy. Other synergistic tactics are slowing your opponent down to increase exposure to your archers: swarm; tangle vines; even phantasmal warriors. Eventually, your opponents will get spells that make your longbows increasingly ineffective. Arrow Fend and Storm are the obvious ones, but the likes of mist and darkness will decrease accuracy, and protection buffs from E & N will also make longbows struggle as they do not do AP damage (unless you can cast flaming arrows). However, by this time you should be looking at casting Storm yourself anyway, to leverage your Air magic for Thunderstrikes and eventually Fog Warriors, with your longbowmen looking at being at least partially retired. Together with Nature's protective spells against elemental damage, mass protection, mass regeneration and so on you can potentially have a very tough army.

Man struggles for Evo damage. Nature is not good at it. Poison and sleep are short range and your troops are vulnerable as well. Most of your mages will be short of A3 for thunderstrikes, requiring boosters to lay down the smack, so you'll be looking mostly at unit buffs to get the best out of your army.

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Magic

Your basic go-to mage is the mother of Avalon, who comes in three variants: N3 (25%), N2A1 (50%), N1A2 (25%). Although a bit expensive for a researcher at nearly 30gp recruit per res, she has several advantages. Firstly, she's sacred so at least the upkeep is low. Secondly, every one is a decent mage in a fight via N or A (with a thistle mace from Construction 4, you won't ever need a crone to cast the big Nature battlefield spells like mass regeneration, just a N3 mother). Finally, she's stealthy (+0), so she can move around unseen. Once you can cast Storm, the N1A2s can power up with Summon Storm Power and start flinging thunderstrikes. Arguably there's no real point taking Crones into battle until you get larger BF spells and item boosters to make best use of earth, water and air. In fact, you don't need to recruit many crones at all - mothers are perfectly adequate until some more heavy duty air magic is needed later on.

Crones. These are your high-power mages: Good N, moderate A, weak E/W possible, and arguably the worst highest-tier mages in the game. They are physically feeble. Ruinously, they have old age. Also ruinously, they have a mere 0.6% chance to luck onto A4, W2 or E2, which means essentially none will be happening. That means no A boosters (thus you missing on high level Air); no E boosters, and no W boosters until Construction 6 which is getting a bit too late. Never fear, if no useful indies or your pretender can rectify this, use empowerment, it's only 30 gems from 1-2. You might want to consider boosting a W/E indy without old age if you have one, and they'll do the site searching and forging. Boosting A3-4 is horribly expensive in gems, there are less wasteful ways to do it (see below). However, with the A boosters you're now in line for the elemental royalty, big Air rituals, and you can slap down Fog Warriors on the first turn without needing Storm/Summon Storm Power, which is one fewer turns for your entire force of low HP mages to be annihilated by rain of stones/earthquake/etc. A crone with E boosted to 2 by whatever means can summon earthpower and cast Rain of Stones and decent E units buffs herself. Man would benefit massively from the global Gift of Health, which can be easily cast, and preferably with a lot gems to keep it up. It'll both assist your frail mages and deal with some afflictions, and be a big bonus to your hard working troops, as your army will probably be doing a lot of hard work. Another note for ANW crones is that eventually W+N = clams for astral pearls.

The other big problem apart from their crappy ever-dying crones and lack of magical versatility in magic is absolutely no national Astral, Blood or Death. This can cripple you in the late game, to avoid it you'd need to chance upon some useful indies, and I recommend no-one leaves that sort of thing to chance, particularly because if it happens late, even by the time you get started you'll be far behind the curve. Your Pretender really should be making up for this deficit.

You get to recruit Daughters of Avalon at the capital. I don't see much point in their existence. I guess if you don't have the gold for a crone or it's late in the year and the thought of buying a crone who may get a nasty affliction a turn or two later is too depressing to contemplate, you don't want a Lord Warden, and for whatever reason don't want a mother (despite her being far superior except research cost effectiveness), knock yourself out. You certainly deserve to be knocked out.

Man has some really useful few "Song of..." national spells hiding away, three small radius AoEs accessible through N1: a healing spell, a morale-boosting spell and a fatigue reduction spell. All nice and good, but that fatigue reducer is great. Lay down the spell spam, and Oh look! Any old nature mage(s) can be sitting right behind them casting their fatigue away. Lovely.

With healthy N income and good research, Man should look at Mother Oak and Gift of Health as priorities. Mother Oak may be more important, as if you take Gift of Health and someone else takes Mother Oak, they'll get a N gem income sufficient to overpower your GoH pretty easily. Here, getting there first with fast research is again crucial.

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Bless?

Man is not a good nation for blessed troops, it's simply not worth damaging scales and magical diversity to make a good combat bless. Wardens of Avalon are cap-only, unexceptional for the expense, and can be easily messed up by mid-level Evo. Lord Wardens cannot self-bless, do not have amazing stats, and have no other abilities but the bless you give them, so they're just not good thug quality. They are good ambidextrous, at best consider giving them a couple of cheap magic weapons and mix them in with other melee troops, they'll add a lot more oomph to the unit they're mixed with and the surrounding troops will offer some protection. They're also competing with your big mage, the Crone of Avalon, for recruitment at the capital. Your mages, however, are sacred. The only bless that looks particularly attractive for them is Earth, for reinvigoration. That said, you'll still need to cart round monks or your prophet to get your mages blessed.

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Thugs/SCs

You don't have any. Okay, that's a bit harsh. With some boosters to Air, you can get the elemental royalty eventually. Nature will get you Sleepers, although they aren't that big an improvement on your Lord Wardens. Ivy Kings may suffice later on, but beware them having no Helm slot. You do have lots of N3 mages, so you have got the opportunity to Charm enemy thugs and SCs, particularly useful if your opponent has skimped on MR boosters. Not only that, but you've got N3A2, which means potential cloud trapezing charmers, so you could catch some thugs/SCs, although any opponent worth his salt will probably hammer that square with simple assassination spells and you would be saying goodbye to plenty of your charm brigade. Man has a number of national heroes which may turn up at your capital's gates, all of which from my experience have been extremely forgettable.

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Infrastructure.

Man can do a lot with money, so your scales should be geared towards it. Except for on Farmland provinces (Fortified Cities), all Man's castles are 800gp and quick to build, so you have few problems rapidly hammering them out. Fortified Cities might need a high initial cost, but on a high income province you'll earn your money back very quickly, so don't discount them entirely. Also, Man's temples cost only 200gp, so it's very quick and easy to make plenty, you should think about doing this soon. You can use cheap temples two ways: firstly with high Dom to push your Dom rapidly, if at war maybe also making use of your stealthy H1 monks to undermine your enemy's Dom. Alternatively, take a low Dom to save design points and rely on extra temples to keep you competitive. Tower Guard get +1 defending in a siege, and Nature mages give supply. You can therefore potentially hold an army up for a long time besieging you without starving. If you can't save the castle, as your mothers are stealthy, they can hide, sneak off and fight another day when the end finally arrives.

Man's PD is... not good. They are least plentiful: you get 1 militia, spearmen and slinger per point. Not until 20+ do you get tower guard and longbowmen, but once you've got 20PD you're basically throwing good money away for little purpose on PD.

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Stealth

MA Man is also sneaky. But unlike their quasi-forebears Tir na Nog and cousins Eriu, they're not very good at it - building a strategy around it is unlikely to work. Your only stealthy troops are Wardens, they are tough and destructive enough that small groups should defeat low to middling PD - crossbows are your biggest worry. Remember you can send stealthy H1 priests to bless them and add add magic support from your stealthy Mothers. You can often find other indy stealthy units, of course. Monks could potentially strip Dom from provinces to give you an advantage there, but I don't forsee that being a huge use.

The most potent weapon in your stealth arsenal are Bards. Massively stealthy (+30), they can cause unrest. Before starting a war with an opponent, you could send several of these over to their capital and raise unrest, ideally to 100+. Your opponent will not only have no income from their most valuable province but can't raise any units, especially his cap-only. Painful. Maybe kickstart the unrest with locust swarms as well, and if you've got enough bards, try shutting down some other key provinces too. It detracts from mage recruitment to make these guys, but hopefully you should have more castles and can dedicate one to pumping out stealthy units. Particularly early on you will really cripple your opponent early on if you shut down their capital. When not causing unrest, they can either scout or preferentially research. In battle, they'll be great for removing fatigue from your real mages with song spells.

Your national scouts, foresters, also have a patrol bonus: only 7, however. If you can't afford anything better in a fort think about it, but I don't think it's sufficiently advantageous to detract from building something more useful like Mothers otherwise.

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Pretender design. Pretender design is particularly critical to MA Man. Unlike many nations, I don't think you don't have a lot of options available to you as you're so busy compensating for weaknesses.

Okay, we need money and we need to minimise crone loss, so Order-3 Growth-3 is a good start. We need to get some end-game magic available, so take D2 minimum. With various summons and boosters, that'll get you to D7 and tartarians eventually. Death can also get you thugs in the form of banelords and wraithlords readily. The other general advance would be getting astral going. A simple S4 will do this: Starshine Skullcap - Ring of Sorcery - Ring of Wizardry. RoW, incidentally, can be passed to an A3 crone so she can produce A4 Air boosters, and you shouldn't have many problems doing whatever you like with Air from then on. You don't need an SC pretender, because as previously discussed Man is not an easy rush target. After that, your pretender should expand your magical versaility as much as possible, that means a rainbow, and that means a human-sized one. Similarly, more magic paths means more chances of useful indy mage sites, further expanding versatility. I'd take the Great Enchantress: she's got your astral, the Earth is good to get your E going and access to crystal stuff, buying new paths is cheap and she gives you freebie astral pearls (and what's not to like about that?). Man's pretender is important for our development, and ideally should be awake.

You can make up points as follows. Drain scales actually wouldn't be too painful up to -2. Your basic mages, Mothers, get 5 research so it's only a 20% efficiency loss, better than many. You should have lots of gold and are planning to build castles and hence mages like crazy, so should have more than your opponents to balance the drain. You can forge some owl quills if you're really worried. Misfortune up to -2 might be also be a good idea: your order scales should cover some of the punishment. Cold/heat to -1 is viable, but no more as it's hurting your income (supplies are not a problem with nature mages). Sloth is also viable, but tower guard need 18 resources each, Wardens 28, and it's detracting from money again, so more than -1 might not be a good idea.

Using this basic template, we could have a minimal build awake Great Enchantress, F1W1D2E2S4, Dom-5, Order-3, Growth-3, and your choice of three scale point negatives into Sloth, Drain, Heat/Cold and Misfortune. Use heavy temple building to make up for lowish Dom, her job is to search sites (manually at first to get income going, spells later?) and then switch to construction, meanwhile she'll have a little pot of S pearls building away. The F/W magic can be exchanged for anything (E3, or 2 single paths in ABFNW), I just think FW gives more utility for forging, searching and summoning. With E2 she can create Earth Boots and Dwarven Hammers quickly, and crystal gear if you want it. Earth boots can be offloaded to E1 crones so they can site search earth. In the case of someone rushing you, the extra research may be a godsend for some extra spellpower. Your pretender may also provide a vital ace up your sleeve for crunch battles by supplying spell path alternatives your opponent may not be prepared for (eg. Flaming arrows). Boots of Flight and teleport give her plenty of manoueverability.

At your discretion you could have up to six negatives (Sloth 1, Cold 1, Misfortune 2, Drain 2). This gives you up to 120 points which can be used to boost magic versatility, maybe to acquire a light bless for your mages, or a stronger Dom. Getting your death and astral income going is particularly important, you'll be needing plenty of it ready for the mid and endgame, particularly considering development costs with forging and summoning your way to greater capability in both along the way. Consequently, increasing both paths may be a good idea to reduce such costs.

NB// Chrispedersen thinks it's better to improve scales by taking the extra points from a dormant pretender, read his comment below.