Thoughts on balancing MA Man

[Aezeal]

Well that is what was said.. so why I returned it.

[Tyrant]

I have to disagree strongly with those who say MA Man does not need help. They often make a go of it in the early game, but nearly always suffer a sudden and thorough crushing later in the game. I have seen this over and over again. I honestly believe that one reason for their frequent early success is that sharks leave them for later because they know that they wipe them out easily in the late game. Their collapse usually happens when they have the misfortune to face a foe with a couple of air mages and mid game research.

They can put forth a pretty formidable force with mass longbows and a ton of mages spewing lightning and soothed by song. But longbows are simple to counter, and lightning is single target- it takes many many mages to kill a full size army with lightning.

Lots of nations are in this situation- they have a powerful tactical combo that eventually becomes obsolete as other player develop counters, but Man's problem is that they have great difficulty coming up with a plan B. Their non-cap mages are very limited and Crones are overpriced, narrow,underpowered, slow, fragile and old. What it comes down to is that they basically have only one type of magic- nature- and no good battlefield mages. Nature magic is fine, but it really kinda lacks lethality. Crones are fine lab mages, but not so good in the field. Two air, which is what they get outside of Crones, gives you lightning and some forging. It's barely possible that you can get 4A on 1% lucky Crone and build some power ups, but failing that and absent astral you need to put air on your pretender to even have a shot at the powerful advanced air spells. Given how narrow your magic is to begin with, this is a painful necessity.

What about the army? Well, there's nothing really wrong with it, but there are many with better, and given it's similarity to knights and longbow indies anyone who can't beat it needs more practice before they play MP.

Many nations have both excellent casters and excellent armies. Most nations have one or the other. Some nations have spiffy national spells. Man has Song of Soothing and excellent spies. Neither of these is a basis for world domination.

Here are three pretty conservative suggestions for improving Man

-upgrade crones by one of the following methods listed in order of power:

1) Give them a second random of the same spec they have now with no cost increase. (weakest upgrade) or

2) Replace +1 100% A/N/W/E with +2 of the same. (This will let them make air power up items and Earth Boots.) or

3) Give them an additional +1 A/S/E/W (this will let them make power ups and do communions with $300 slaves or make Crystals)

I'd like to say limit the age problem as well, but Reno has a good point, it's thematic as can be. They'll just have to Transform.

- Why aren't Knights of Avalon sacred? There is no thematic or balance reason. Man is an old DomII race and DomII nations seldom had two kinds of sacred unit, that's why. Make them sacred.

- Upgrade either the Bard's leadership or the Lord Warden's stealth. As it is now their stealth troops are not stealthy enough to sneak into the kitchen for a midnight snack.

I reiterate that i believe Man's real problem is excessively narrow magic and what they truly need is an upgrade in air and/or a third magic type at high enough level that they can build it up and get something other than Nature going in the late game.

[thejeff]

Between the Middle and Late Ages, Man has come under some kind of Curse, that's led its mages to learn how to work under Drain. And apparently to abandon Nature magic, despite still having a Nature income. The Curse is mentioned in the descriptions, but left very unspecified. It could be related to Ermor's Fall or Ulm's Malediction, or not.

It would be thematic to give Man some high path summons or spells that tied into this. Something Nature based, but nasty and destructive. Is it possible to mod creatures that affect scales (increase drain)?

My creativity ran out before actually coming up with an appropriate creature.

[Endoperez]

Crones aren't the only old creatures that survive only thanks to their magic. Bogarus has those cursed crone summons with age 110/200 or similar, the Crone pretender is always advised to take magic, etc etc.

IMO, having Nature magic bring Crones to the safe or almost-always-safe age category would be fine, so that if they are ever Muted or Feeble-minded, they'll probably catch a disease next winter.

[JimMorrison]

thejeff said:
Between the Middle and Late Ages, Man has come under some kind of Curse, that's led its mages to learn how to work under Drain. And apparently to abandon Nature magic, despite still having a Nature income. The Curse is mentioned in the descriptions, but left very unspecified. It could be related to Ermor's Fall or Ulm's Malediction, or not.

It would be thematic to give Man some high path summons or spells that tied into this. Something Nature based, but nasty and destructive. Is it possible to mod creatures that affect scales (increase drain)?

My creativity ran out before actually coming up with an appropriate creature.

I know Pangaea kind of went the "dark druid" route, but they did so in a blood sacrifice direction..... What if man went nature+death? A couple of new vine creature summons early on, and then for late game, some sort of vengeful forest being? Perhaps they would be a good fit for Llama's Dark Treant from the endgame summons thread?

[Endoperez]

JimMorrison said:
I know Pangaea kind of went the "dark druid" route, but they did so in a blood sacrifice direction.....

Actually, LA Pangaea has least Blood of all Pangaea themes, and is the first one with reliable Death and reliable access to the national Nature/Death summons and the national undead reanimators. I don't see what's "blood sacrifice" about that...

[JimMorrison]

Well yes that's true, LA they do shift towards death, I wasn't thinking about that, since we're looking at MA, and Pan is blood in EA/MA.

Anyway, was looking for a way to tie into the "corruption" theme, with new summons.

Looking at them again, since they only have solid access to N and A, it's going to take some thought to add something that their national mages could hope to cast. Though, if a N+D theme was a good concept for them, they could be given a summons that only needs N, and gives a unit with some D on it. Of course, with the point that this unit, a Tainted Nymph or some such thing, would have a couple of N/D summons that would give the nation something new to work with.

Perhaps a new take on some sort of woodland vampire. These Tainted Nymphs would suck the magical essence from people, perhaps represented in combat by Mind Blast or Paralyze attacks. Their summons could be vampiric forest creatures of enhanced strength, dire wolves and bears and mooseseses.

[Xietor]

For those who think Man would be more fun to play with a few changes, I have incorporated a few of the suggestions, plus added some of my own into a mod, Kingdom of Avalon.

It is not yet 100 percent complete, as Foodtamp is making me a banner for it, and I wanted some feedback before posting it on the mod forums.

Do not tell me Man is too tough in the early game. They are not. Still pale compare to mictlan and ermor, and even the elephant nations.

So if you take the time to play several turns, I would love some feedback before I make this mod finis and devote my full efforts to Throne of Heroes.

http://www.mediafire.com/?jxyvyy0kolh