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Old February 3rd, 2008, 06:54 AM
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Default Re: Advice for MA Man

I think that MA Man desperately needs magic diversity and has a hard time getting it. They also need a pretender with A4. You can not count on other people to give you air boosters.

Considering that A4 seems like a necessity so that you can craft boosters and ultimately summon air queens, cast fog warriors, craft staffs of storm, and turn your crones into thunder striking machines, a rainbow pretender seems like the best choice.

I would probably take a build like this.

Great Enchantress
Dormant
Dom 5
O 3
P 0
H 0
G 1
Misfortune 2
Magic 1

MAGIC PICKS
F1
A4
W3
E3
S3
D3
F1

Growth is important because your crones will get diseased very quickly without. Especially if you have death scales. By taking growth you're saving yourself a lot of headaches later on when your capital only mages start to die of disease.

Production is nice, but IMO unnecessary as in the early game you're going to spam longbowmen and cheap infantry to finish off what stragglers make it past. Later on you can build knights at multiple castles, and rally them together.

On the magic picks you need A4. For the other paths, since she's mainly a site searcher, and later on used to diversify your magic pool, level 3 of a given magic type will find 95% of those sites when you search. Having the 1 in N/F allows you to use rings of wizardy, which are easy to build since you can go Starshine skullcap, astral coin, ring of sorcery, ring of wizardy. Once you have those built you'll have access to every spell/item in the game off your pretender. Summon up some magic diversity and go from there.

I like recruiting lots of bards. They make great researchers, and in battle they can spam Protection. I've actually found that Protection, if you cast it on the heavy infantry, gives them something like 21 protection total. This makes them *hugely* effective when backed up by longbow men. 5-6 bards spamming protection can hit 15-18 units per round. By the time that the enemy closes the gap on your hold-attack units they'll be fully buffed. They can also cast Swarm, which is highly effective against early game SCs as they do 1 point of AN damage. 5-6 units casting swam for 2 turns creates a huge amount of the suckers, who will happily soak up enemy's flankers, and their units, delaying their advance and giving your archers more time to work.

The daughters are not so hot in the early game, but they can be an okay SC counter if the SC has no lightning protection. Once you have a staff of the storms you can have them cast storm power, then spam lightning bolts.

Never forget that your bards are absolutely ridiculous spies. When you want to invade someone, send them out first. Begin to sow confusion or unrest. If you have 10 or so on an enemy capital, the unrest will be so high the person will be unable to find the spies. If they don't move a large army back to patrol, then you will deny them tons of income, and all their production for the early game. Use this tactic so that you can fight a war of attrition, taking as many territories as possible, and avoiding a straight confrontation for as long as possible. Each turn that they can't produce from their capital is another turn that /you can/.

Also, if you can invade a territory nearby the enemy's main castle, and keep it open ,you can set your spies to retreat. When they're discovered by patrollers they will be able to easily run away. If there are no open provinces they will die.

For the long game, make sure you use auspex instead of relying completely on your pretender. You will want lots, and lots of air gems to pump out expensive boosters. Use your earth income to summon a earth troll with E3 to sit around and forge dwarven hammers all game. Use your research to get to fog warriors when you can, it's a house if your opponent has no counters. Air queens make great SCs. You can summon naidas to use up the water gems you get forging a clam economy, which can help you compete with more astral heavy nations.

I hope this helps.

Jazzepi
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