What nation(s) are best for fire? (Besides Abysia)

[DrPraetorious]

Machaka, foo! Recognize!

Of course, you won't be doing fire magic *exclusively*, but 1/4 Black Sorcerer will have F3. You also get the fire/death combo which lets you build flaming skulls.

Try this build:
dormant great sage, F4A4W4S3N4, dominion 5, order 3, prod 2, heat 3, mistfortune 2, magic 1.

He gives a surprisingly powerful blessing to your awesome sacred spider knights, piles of personal research points, and excellent scales. His dominion is somewhat weak.

Anyway, friendly fire is less of a problem when your frontline units regenerate.

[Managarm]

From my little newbie experience with both MA Marignon and Abysia, I'd recommend starting with Marignon, because it plays like a more conventional nation, having plenty of options and answers to (almost) everything

In terms of units, you can fulfill all the battlefield main roles: missile support (Crossbowman), expendable front liners (Flagellants), heavy infantry (Man At Arms) and very good (although expensive) cavalry (Royal Guard/Knights Of The Chalice). On top of that, Marignon also have plenty of priestly/magic powers to unleash and some tactical warheads like Assassins and Spies; although Abysia has got the superior assassins there.
Marignon can also benefit a lot from a good fire bless and dominion: Flagellants are dirty cheap, can be recruited everywhere and combining two attacks plus Flaming Weapons it's pure evil! Knights Of The Chalice also become very nasty with the Flaming Weapons feature, BTW.

In terms of magic, Grand Masters have Fire 3/Astral 2 base plus two additional random paths, and one it's 100%. Recruiting some of them (unfortunately they're capital only) you reach F4 or S3 easily without any empowerment or magic item.
F3 grants you fully access to Evocation gems such as Falling Fires, Flare, Fireball, Fire Cloud and Holy Pyre (National Spell)... You can also cast Flaming Arrows (Enchantment, F3 required) giving an edge to your Crossbowmen/indy archers. Enchantment also gives you the chance to make your troops flame immune thanks to Fire Fend/Warriors of Muspelheim.
Another worth mentioning spells, from Thaumaturgy school, are Raging Hearts (F4) for crippling enemies' economy alongside with Spies, and Soul Slay (S3) a basic anti-SC spell. If you go Astral you can also try some of the outstanding National Summons...

High Inquisitors are level 3 priests capable of Divine Blessing/Smite all day, and they're also very effective at killing enemy dominions

The biggest drawback they've is the ageing problems that the best units suffer (Grand Masters/High Inquisitors)

That's in a nutshell what can Marignon do for you...

[Sencha]

Thanks for the feedback, I'll give Marignon a shot.

[MaxWilson]

Managarm said:
Marignon can also benefit a lot from a good fire bless and dominion: Flagellants are dirty cheap, can be recruited everywhere and combining two attacks plus Flaming Weapons it's pure evil! Knights Of The Chalice also become very nasty with the Flaming Weapons feature, BTW.

Another thing you could try is an S9 bless, which almost doubles Flagellants' survivability. The two flail attacks ignore shields so they should already be pretty good at hitting, and if you want a damage boost B6 gives almost as good a damage boost as F9 against anything armored. An unblessed flagellant can expect to do about 5 points of damage per-hit against Prot 10, and either a B6 bless or a F9 bless will boost that to 7.5. (The +4 attack of F9 is non-negligible but you can also just throw an extra flagellant in the fight. 2 more attacks = -4 more to defense. Don't get too attached to the attack bonus.) Of course you could take both F9 *and* the B4 or B6, which lets you forge some nifty items. And Knights of the Chalice benefit a lot from the B6 bless.

Don't get me wrong, the F9 bless is clearly better, but the B6 is a lot cheaper.

-Max


Average per-hit damage for flagellants (2000 runs):
Prot 1 Unblessed dmg 13.11 Fire bless 19.47 B6 bless 16.05
Prot 2 Unblessed dmg 12.09 Fire bless 18.03 B6 bless 15.00
Prot 3 Unblessed dmg 10.91 Fire bless 16.55 B6 bless 13.89
Prot 4 Unblessed dmg 10.06 Fire bless 15.07 B6 bless 13.21
Prot 5 Unblessed dmg 9.19 Fire bless 13.86 B6 bless 11.86
Prot 6 Unblessed dmg 8.17 Fire bless 12.47 B6 bless 10.82
Prot 7 Unblessed dmg 7.44 Fire bless 11.51 B6 bless 10.06
Prot 8 Unblessed dmg 6.48 Fire bless 9.48 B6 bless 9.20
Prot 9 Unblessed dmg 5.58 Fire bless 8.73 B6 bless 8.10
Prot 10 Unblessed dmg 4.77 Fire bless 7.54 B6 bless 7.40
Prot 11 Unblessed dmg 3.99 Fire bless 6.59 B6 bless 6.54
Prot 12 Unblessed dmg 3.28 Fire bless 5.56 B6 bless 5.73
Prot 13 Unblessed dmg 2.82 Fire bless 4.77 B6 bless 4.78
Prot 14 Unblessed dmg 2.13 Fire bless 3.86 B6 bless 4.08
Prot 15 Unblessed dmg 1.70 Fire bless 3.33 B6 bless 3.32
Prot 16 Unblessed dmg 1.35 Fire bless 2.56 B6 bless 2.70
Prot 17 Unblessed dmg 1.11 Fire bless 2.29 B6 bless 2.29
Prot 18 Unblessed dmg 0.80 Fire bless 1.84 B6 bless 1.71
Prot 19 Unblessed dmg 0.59 Fire bless 1.71 B6 bless 1.26
Prot 20 Unblessed dmg 0.46 Fire bless 1.30 B6 bless 0.95

Average per-hit damage for Knights of the Chalice (2000 runs):
Prot 1 Unblessed dmg 16.84 Fire bless 23.57 B6 bless 20.05
Prot 2 Unblessed dmg 15.98 Fire bless 21.62 B6 bless 19.11
Prot 3 Unblessed dmg 15.04 Fire bless 21.01 B6 bless 17.77
Prot 4 Unblessed dmg 14.00 Fire bless 18.72 B6 bless 17.09
Prot 5 Unblessed dmg 13.24 Fire bless 17.77 B6 bless 15.98
Prot 6 Unblessed dmg 12.05 Fire bless 15.70 B6 bless 14.96
Prot 7 Unblessed dmg 11.17 Fire bless 15.06 B6 bless 13.86
Prot 8 Unblessed dmg 10.05 Fire bless 13.63 B6 bless 13.09
Prot 9 Unblessed dmg 9.33 Fire bless 12.47 B6 bless 12.29
Prot 10 Unblessed dmg 8.34 Fire bless 10.76 B6 bless 11.01
Prot 11 Unblessed dmg 7.14 Fire bless 9.99 B6 bless 10.47
Prot 12 Unblessed dmg 6.46 Fire bless 8.65 B6 bless 9.38
Prot 13 Unblessed dmg 5.49 Fire bless 7.68 B6 bless 8.31
Prot 14 Unblessed dmg 4.77 Fire bless 6.59 B6 bless 7.29
Prot 15 Unblessed dmg 3.89 Fire bless 5.54 B6 bless 6.38
Prot 16 Unblessed dmg 3.22 Fire bless 4.56 B6 bless 5.58
Prot 17 Unblessed dmg 2.82 Fire bless 3.95 B6 bless 4.81
Prot 18 Unblessed dmg 2.15 Fire bless 3.12 B6 bless 3.98
Prot 19 Unblessed dmg 1.53 Fire bless 2.56 B6 bless 3.26
Prot 20 Unblessed dmg 1.33 Fire bless 2.08 B6 bless 2.63

[Managarm]

Max,

Very good analysis, nice to see how things work statistically

Personally I'm not very fond of a S9 Bless for the cheap front line units, but as you said, since Flagellants die with a single blow, Twist Fate can be really useful here. OTOH the Twist Fate thing can save the mage's bacon from a lucky arrow hit, which is excellent.

Overall, I think that Marignon benefits more from a F9 bless instead of a high blood bless because Knights Of The Chalice are really difficult to amass.

In fact, with a proper Pretender selection and design you can reach high blesses without wasting tons of points.
In my Marignon test game, I used the following Pretender with pretty good results:
Imprisoned Baphomet (starting with F2S2)/F9S3/Dominion 8/Order 3/Production 3/Neutral Scales for Heat and Luck/Growth 2/Drain 2