[iainuki]

Pretender Design

As always, there are two ways to design a pretender for a nation: cover its weaknesses or enhance its strengths. One significant weakness is that Marverni does not have a notably strong early game, and as Baalz notes, taking an awake combat pretender compensates for that, but there aren't many Marverni-specific considerations in designing such a pretender, so I won't cover that here; I suggest some more general guide on SC pretender design.

While druids are a strength, their cost is a weakness, so Marverni needs to generate significant amounts of cash. I haven't made an intensive study of the Turmoil+Luck versus Order+Misfortune gold generation question. However, I will note that Marverni has some clear reasons to prefer the Order+Productivity+Growth combination even at equal gold: druids are old and the Growth scale helps keep them in better health; some nature spells benefit from Growth; Marverni needs resources to build Carnute nobles and Marverni bare chests, instead of druids; and because it fields massive mortal armies, they need supplies, again benefiting from Growth. Thus, I tend to agree with Baalz that Marverni needs good scales; also, the Order+Productivity+Growth combination becomes stronger the longer the game goes on, and as Marverni is not a great rush nation, combining the two creates some synergy. In general, I don't think taking too much misfortune is a good idea: it costs the use of heroes and undercuts Growth because of the myriad province disaster events that kill population. However, I will play Misfortune 1 or 2, and note that Boars of Carnutes have fortune teller (15) when they become available, allowing you to protect yourself from Misfortune events to some extent. Finally, taking a positive magic scale can quite help Marverni's research, because 4 research per gutuater isn't much and 8 per druid isn't much better.

Marverni has easy access to astral, nature, water, and earth, so there is not much point in taking those paths on your pretender as well. It benefits most from adding blood and air, with an honorable mention to fire. Air has great items for druids, including eyes of aiming and robes of missile protection, as well as great spells for buffing large armies, like wind guide and arrow fend; it also opens spells and items offering resistance to lightning, giving Marverni access to defenses against all elements at reasonable levels of research. Druids and gutuaters can both make blood sacrifices, offering Marverni the option to dominion-push, but it has no native blood access so blood-hunting is trying: having blood magic on your pretender gives you enough slaves so you can sacrifice freely and opens the possibility of using blood in e.g., forging. However, in general, using true blood magic doesn't pay off that much for Marverni. Fire offers the brutal flaming arrows, which affects javelins as well, and some evocation spells that complement those available from earth, both in timing of availability and effect type. Death does not offer a whole to Marverni when you splash it on your pretender.

As for bless strategies, there are not many synergies available. Boar warriors have shields, so don't benefit much from the minor air bless; lose defense when berserk and *want* to get hit so they can go berserk, which work against the major water bless, in addition to the danger of fatigue; don't receive any particular benefit from MR or twist fate from the minor/major astral blesses; and don't have enough hp for the minor nature bless to do much and can already go berserk, so don't benefit as much from the major nature bless. Marverni boars benefit more from several of these, especially the air bless and nature bless, but don't benefit at all from the major earth bless because they don't wear armor. Meanwhile, the major earth bless is less good than it looks for boar warriors because berserk counts as "natural" protection and stacks less well with high levels of armor. Thus, the remaining blesses that aren't antisynergistic with boars or boar warriors are fire, blood, and death. Because Marverni benefits so much from good scales and doesn't have any dual blesses with strong synergies, it is generally just not worth taking the negative scales to get a dual major bless. However, it can be useful as a surprise strategy, since most people would not expect a bless-rush from Marverni.

Approaching the Game

Early Game

Marverni needs to expand as much as possible early on: unlike some nations, it can't afford to sit in a corner and research its way to victory. However, almost as paramount for Marverni is to avoid early wars, since early Marverni only has some decent infantry to compete with the various bless rushes and powerful capitol-only troops other nations can field. The one exception is if you chose a supercombatant pretender, in which case you can expand and engage in early conflict according to what your supercombatant can manage. For conquering independent provinces, Carnute nobles are the soldiers of choice as they won't take many casualties from the independents when managed right; Marverni can also benefit from supplementing with mercenaries, depending on resource and cash limitations, to speed up conquest. For supplemental casters, the usual options are gutuaters casting tangle vines (Conjuration 1) or druids with earth meld and earth might (Alteration 1). I prefer to make my first prophet either the starting Marverni scout or a first-turn recruited Sequani stargazer: the former has stealth for spreading dominion and making a noncaster prophet gives you some additional casting power in the opening, but a stargazer prophet has astral access so can use a crystal shield, power of the spheres, or communions to boost holy for purposes of banishment or casting fanaticism. Even for subsequent prophets, there are no real better alternatives unless you find an appropriate independent.

Unlike some nations, Marverni need not rely on its capitol, and with its cheap forts and temples, it's to Marverni's advantage to throw up another fort early so as to double its potential caster recruitment, usually a druid for combat and purposes like crafting dwarven hammers with a gutuater for research with adequate cash. I tend to choose the position most on strategic considerations, but I'll note that some independent troops are on a par with Marverni's main troops and can add some useful diversity. One other consideration is that the plains fort that Marverni can build, the motte-and-bailey, has the best administration value, at 20.

I consider the following research levels approximately marking the transition to the midgame: conjuration 3 for summon earth power, alteration 1 for eagle eyes, evocation 5 for blade wind and gifts from heaven, enchantment 3 for strength of giants, and thaumaturgy 3 for teleport. It is not always best to go straight for these spells and certainly not in a linear order--for instance, often some construction is worthwhile, though it is not worth a beeline. My "default" research path looks like conjuration 1, thaumaturgy 1, evocation or enchantment 3 followed by the other, thaumaturgy 2, evocation 4, conjuration 3, alteration 1, and evocation 5. However, there are so many possible variations, especially since Marverni is not locked into a certain strategy and can take advantage of a lot of different counters, that it's hard to give good general advice.

Midgame

Once you have two or three forts, a healthy number of druids, and most of the research mentioned above done, you've entered what I consider the Marverni midgame. The midgame is where Marverni is strongest, I would argue, because the crazy stuff in the endgame has not yet obsoleted their human troops, but they also have enough druids and research that the power of their good path combinations can tell, and moreover, if you chose good scales as I recommended, the advantages of the Order+Productivity+Growth combination will give you much more cash than nations with negative scales. During the midgame, Marverni wants to either win the game or establish a strong position for the endgame.

The best general answer on how to choose targets for expansion is "diplomacy." You want to prey on the weak and control the strong, but more important than either is to find allies and kill people who refuse to cooperate with you. Aside from that, though, Marverni has a lot of flexibility in the choice of targets: with enough research, appropriate choice of druid spells can counter almost anything so there's often no tactical reason to prefer to attack particular nations. However, ceteris paribus, nations with neutral or growth scales will add more to your own assets and are more of a threat in the endgame so you should go after them first; the other thing to watch out for are other nations with good endgame magic, so you can halt them before they get to that point.

Marverni should often aim to get a blood economy going in the midgame, with a few druids empowered for forging items and a few gutuaters empowered to act as blood hunters. The easiest way to get started is to put blood on your pretender or find a province with independent blood mages, usually amazons, but if you didn't do that, find an independent scout province and start hiring and blood hunting until you can empower and break in. I do not often research blood magic with Marverni, since I prefer to use the blood slaves for sacrifices and forging, but some blood magic can provide a useful supplement to your other paths if you want to make the investment.

Baalz has some good suggestions for midgame tactics for Marverni, including teleporting druids. While druids with province defense support can rout impressively large armies, I've had some trouble teleporting in and routing the PD before something reaches me. Thus, I tend to be a bit more conservative than Baalz and use teleporting druids in pairs, with bottles of living water and swarm to delay the defenders while the druids kill them with blade wind or gifts from heaven. At construction 4, boar lords can help speed up conquest by capturing lightly-defended provinces, and while they can't teleport, they fill the role of blockers for evoking-druids well.

During the midgame, the most advantageous research for Marverni tends to shift from combat spells to rituals and construction for items. The biggest goal is without question construction 7, which offers forge of the ancients, the casting of which is tantamount to declaring "I'm going to try to win the game now" but may still be worth it; golems; and weapons of sharpness. Enchantment 5 deserves an honorable mention for gift of health, which is also quite powerful for Marverni because it all but eliminates aging problems for druids. Also, conjuration, construction, and enchantment together offer some magic diversification potential that Marverni is well-equipped to take advantage of. Meanwhile, evocation offers few compelling spells above level 6, and alteration does not have many useful spells between 1 and 4 for Marverni, only a handful at 4 and 5, and then another gap between 5 and 8.

Endgame

Most games, in my experience, don't make it this far, but for completeness' sake, I will give a brief overview. While good scales and Marverni's general abilities should give it a strong resource base for the endgame, the major problem it faces is that mortal armies become more and more obsolete as various supercombatants and mass-kill spells become common. Now, Marverni is better-equipped than most nations to deal with this problem, because it has great army buffs that counter some of these problems and mitigate others, but it also has no intrinsic tools for playing that game, with no notable supercombatants of its own, whether recruited or summoned. Thus, how well Marverni handles the endgame depends on how well it can juggle spells to counter its opposition and assemble abusive combinations.

There are two standard methods of obtaining supercombatants for the endgame, tartarian gate and wish, along with the unique summons. Marverni, obviously, manages better at wish, since it can forge clams and cast wish without any independent mages at all. You will want to start your clam-forging operation during the midgame to ensure you have enough astral pearls when you finish research on the high-end spells. Once you have the gems and research to cast wish, wish for pretender chassis and use gift of reason to mass-produce supercombatants. Unfortunately, this method is more expensive than getting tartarians, though usually pretender-chassis supercombatants are higher-quality and wish has a better variety of other potential uses.

For army buffs, enchantment and alteration offer the most powerful high-end spells. In addition, at level 9, both of them have insanely powerful rituals: wish, which besides supercombatants can produce massive quantities of gems and blood slaves as well as taking specific artifacts from other players; nature's blessing, which will end all your cash problems forever; and astral nexus, which is more or less a game-winning move on its own if you can keep it up. Thaumaturgy gives essential mobility spells, and also has a few powerful combat spells of its own. Construction 8, for artifacts, offers some of everything if you can get there first. Finally, conjuration becomes the ultimate magic-diversity school and offers tartarians at level 9, if you've branched out into death magic, as well as the unique summons, most of whom also have supercombatant ability.