[Squirrelloid]

Originally Posted by Jarkko

Man has good troops at 11gold 10 resources comparable? Damn, I must have missed those! What are those troops called again? What are the TC troops called with comparable stats to firbolg who cost 11 gold and 10 resources, as I seem to have missed those too?!

*When* did you see Eriu field massed firbolgs supported by airmages? What game was that in? The Eriu I see from game to game field Daine Sidhes and get steamrolled, and people wonder why.

Man fields their HP7 Prot0 old age crones to cast false fetters? Right yeah, I would like to see that

At the same cost? Of course not. But Man takes Pr3, something Eriu would never do, so the higher resource cost is acceptable. Not to mention its Knights of Avalon are quite good, not just acceptable assuming they have mage support. Even their regular knights are pretty good, and the wardens are worth a bless now that they're recruit anywhere.

Heck, most of the time I see Eriu load up on sloth.

Mothers can also be A2, fwiw. But Man doesn't even need false fetters to have a pretty decent early game. But it certainly could use them if it entered a really early war.

By the time you field a shadow vestal army backed by longdead horsemen, I have Fire Drakes supported by Shadow Bolt and fire evocations. The vestals make a nice crispy sound when their 9 HP burn to the massive Evocation 1 Fire Darts (not to mention the slightly more research requiring fire evocations). You know what the funny thing about shadow bolts is? Undead are immune to it. You know who the AI targets with shadowbolts? Oh yeah, those non-undead commanders you brought along.

F9W9 Eagle warriors vs Fire Drakes, let me snigger a bit if you think the feathery fellows stand a chance in the flames of hell (sic!). If it is the very early game, when the fire drakes are not available yet, then yes Eagle warriors would be a problem for Machaka, but that would be quite a horrible map to play on if you get overrun by Mictlan on turn 3 (it can happen though, which would truly suck no matter which nation you were playing).

Can we stop with the moving targets? We're talking about early game, not mid game. You're lucky if you have any fire drakes in the early game. Or Shadowbolts.

Ermor can easily field an army of 20+SVs with 30+ longdead horsemen by turn 5 and still have an expansion army or two attacking indies. That's not even hard, since they're kicking out ~10SVs/trn and reanimating starting on turn 2. On turn 5 you might have conjuration 1.

Funny thing about fire darts - they make a precision roll against SV defense, assuming they even hit a relevant square. W9S9 SVs, lets think about that for a moment. Def20 before xp stars. What's your precision again? 15 iff you buffed eagle eyes? (If you even have eagle eyes yet, since apparently you're rushing conjuration for those fire drakes in year 1) And if by some miracle you do hit a SV, twist fate saves them the first time, and fire darts *might* kill a SV if it scores a second hit on the same one. Of course, by that time your position is getting swarmed by quickened SVs.

Funny thing about shadow bolts - they aren't range 100. They aren't even range 50. Why would ermor place its 'non-undead commander' closer than the backfield?

Similarly, early game, you don't have firedrakes against Mictlan's EWs.