MA Man

[Jazzepi]

Actually, I forgot about the crone's old age problem. Do you recruit a lot of them? They seem like good combat mages, if they weren't so... fragile, and extremely expensive.

I could do...

Order 3
Prod 2
Cold 2
Death 0
Misfortune 3
Magic 1

Jazzepi

[Jazzepi]

The main thing I was looking for is a good analysis of the units. I can't really figure out which ones I should be building to expand with early. The knights are very nice, but too expensive to build early, and a lot of the meele feel underwhelming for their expense. I was messing around with the spearmen who are furtherest to the left in the production que.

Jazzepi

[Valandil]

Longbowmen?

[Jazzepi]

Obviously longbowmen are nice, but I'm talking about early expansion.

Jazzepi

[Shovah32]

Longbowmen ARE early expansion. Crank out as many as you can shieled by your starting infantry and you shouldnt have trouble dealing with anything less armoured than a knight .

[Meglobob]

I used longbowmen protected by a screen of knights for fairly rapid early expansion. Wind guide + Flaming arrows (if you can get it), for the mid game.

In my capital I recruited crones whenever possible.

Other castles, bards, bards and more bards. However the mother, N2 A1 is good when you get storm of thorns. 5 bards + locust swarms to shut down enemy castles...permanently. The mothers can stealthy raid.

[Jazzepi]

Okay, but on the first few turns I'm a little confused on what to recruit. Do you just build 2 knights? And how many long bowmen do you bring to a normal neutral expansion fight?


Jazzepi

[Tuidjy]

I build one spearman for every nine longbowmen in the very early game. When I
decide that need the cash for something else, and thus stop running out of
resources, I replace the spearmen with tower guards. I will not really recruit
heavy cavalry until I know who my first victim will be, and of course, heavy
cavalry is not necessarily good against everyone.

Bards are so damn effective that if Man was otherwise balanced, I would call them
an exploit. Unfortunately, Man is a rather limited race, and thus they need the
bards to survive. In MP games, there are a few things you really must do as Man:

1. Get a pretender with Air 4, and Nature 4. This is not a suggestion, it's a
must, period. Fire 1, Death 3 and Earth 4 are also very good to have. If you
dare, go with a rainbow pretender. Survive the first year, and you'll do fine.

2. Get a good, firm ally, who can help your pathetically limited magic. Go to war
on his side, as early as possible. Cripple the target with your bards. Start them
on the enemy capital as soon as you dare.

3. Try hard for the Air Queens and Treelords. Get as many Fairy Queens as you can.

4. Mass archers, use flaming arrows, spam lightning. Know these will stop working.

[Jazzepi]

Thanks Tuidjy. What is your normal late game strategy?

And why do you feel you need N4 on a pretender when you can build a thistle mace and the +1 nature bracelet?

Jazzepi