LA Marignon Questions

[Soyweiser]

Newbie game? Go for the bloodsac tactic. Teach them that a properly executed blood sacrifice tactic is very very dangerous.

If you have sailing, play around with that in a SP game. I played LA Atlantis, and there I learned how immensely powerful it can be. (You can skip one sea province, even if your army is already underwater. As sea provinces tend to have a lot of connections to other provinces (which is something that makes it hard for water nations to keep their dom up) you can really use this to your advantage.

Personally, I would go heavily for blood. You can bloodhunt like crazy, blood is crazy strong. (Gives communions, good summonables, reasonable SC's if you get there first(*), good combat magic). The only problem with blood magic is that you can never ever have enough blood slaves. (NEVER) So you tend to lag research wise, as you need your mages to blood hunt. (A heavy blood nation that leads in research while still being able to wage war has probably already won).

*: Never mind the SC's only get them if you have blood slaves to spare and what to deny them to others. http://dom3.servegame.com/wiki/Fallen_Angel Get those. f3d3b3 yes please . Rush for those. No upkeep, sacred, can bloodhunt, good stats... Nice .

(Of course, you could ignore me and go for the conjuration summons, also very good, but you probably need to build your pretender around summoning those).

LA marignon is very strong, access to almost all the paths except nature. (Harbringers give air). Blood, good mounted units as blockers, crossbows, sailing for raiding. Scouts.

I think I would go for n4e4 on the pretender (helps with the sacred mages, and late game sacred summons) dom10 and scales. Imprison the pretender for points (One downside, you only get to sitesearch with the pretender for N mage in very late. Rush blood for blood 7 to get access to death magic. Flood the world with blood sac, demons, or just get vampires, as your dominion is going to be everywhere, they are hard to get rid off. And 3 vampire lords can blood sabbath to get to d4 and cast darkness. So you don't even need to risk a 'expensive' skull staff into combat.

[Shangrila00]

It's really unfortunate that Marignon doesn't get that one female titan chasis with E/N. What chasis are you using? It's really hard to get E/N blesses and also dom10 at a reasonable price. There's the Lady of Love pretender with N2 and W, and you can imprison her for a W4E4N4 bless, dom10 and +4 scales. It's also 0 points remaining, which is satisfying, but the scales are kind of bad for a nation that won't get much use out of the bless before late game, and it's painful not being able to get the astral rings. You can't forge the elemental staves either, so no rings means even summoning Harbingers won't get you to Robes of the Magi. Having either ring or robe lets you get to the other, but not having either... I guess you could summon all the Arch Devils to get the one with S3, but that's a lot of slaves for rather mediocre units for Mari who already has all the fire they want, and there's no guarantee you would be first to them anyway.

And the bless is hard to use even late game. Fallen angels with that bless are bonafide SCs but they can't self bless. You could team it up with a Harbinger, but you can't guarantee having the pearls to pair Fallen Angels with Harbingers.

[Kobal2]

Originally Posted by Soyweiser

So you tend to lag research wise, as you need your mages to blood hunt. (A heavy blood nation that leads in research while still being able to wage war has probably already won).

Cool thing about Marignon: they have easy access to both feathers and lightless lanterns, and can even swing by skull mentors should they really wanna. And since those Fallen Angels are gonna want some gear anyway...

Blood, good mounted units as blockers, crossbows, sailing for raiding. Scouts.

Not just scouts: spies. And assassins.
OK, so assassins are something of a waste of time, but a surprise spy onslaught coupled with Rain of Toads spam can really mess someone up, particularly other blood nations. Finding spies at 200 unrest is non-trivial if you can't mindhunt them (which Mictlan, Jotun, Midgard, Abysia and Ulm will have a hard time doing).
More evil yet, Marignon can also send Dream Horrors on top of all that if they get lucky and score an S2 Geotic for some added insult: good on you, you found the spies ! Now you get to eat blood vengeanc'd astral claws !