LA marignon guide

[Evilhomer]

I cannot find any good guide on LA marignon so I figured I would write one myself. Hopefully people will add enough feedback to make it decent. I'm no veteran on this specific nation, just played them a couple of mp games, but I will try my best. Note that it will be a work in progress and I will add more when time permits.
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Units:
crossbowman(10g/8r): Best unit available for recruiting. Good damage, and they can perform fair even in melee. These should be the unit you recruit most frequently.

swordsman/Halbardier/Pikeneer/Man at arms: All decent variations, with similar stats. I prefer the man at arms, since it has a shield, they perform well as meat shields for your crossbowmens.

Flagellants(10g/4r): Some people swear by flagellants with something like a f9s9 bless. I personally don't like that idea. To invest that heavily into sacred unit that dies like flies seems pointless. They will be massacred by your crossbowmen and they all have afflictions. No thanks.

Royal guard (50g/49r): Decent cavalry for those special needs (flanking/taking out commanders etc). Don't build many however, crossbowmen should be your core unit.

Commanders
Scout/spy/assassin - Basic scout/spy/assassin, not much to add, you know what these do.

Missionary(60g/1r) - A basic national priest, with one key difference. It has sailing, so it can be brought overseas.

Inqusitor/High Inqusitor - High level priest, especially good at preaching against enemy faiths. The high inquisitor also has H3, so it's good to use if you are going for a bless build (divine bless).

Diabolist(80g/1r) - A cheap blood hunter . Key unit you will be mass producing later on.

Goetic master(190g/1r)- Sacred mage, 2f+ (fire arrows etc), and strong in blood (you will get a bunch with 3+ in blood). Overall a very good mage.

Captain(75g/6r) - Commander with sailing.

Chartmaker(70g/2r)- You can build this guy without a laboratory. If you have a lab you have better commanders available.

Royal Navigator(150g/2r) - Good for site searching in astral and air. Later on I tend to empower a few in blood to spam Infernal tempest. A nice mage to have but I seldom have more than a few.

Admiral(100g/6r) - Similar to the captain, a bit more expensive, but can command 2x the troops.
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Specific summons
Conjuration tree - Will cover these later. They are all really good if you have the astral gems to summon them up. Usually I prefer to go up the blood tree instead so I tend to neglect these for a while.

Bind Harlequin(1 blood) - Jebus these are a waste of mage time to summon. Get them if you are really desperate.

Reascendance(88 blood) - Excellent SCs or backup mages. If I remember correctly they have 3D3F3B. They are actually more cost efficient than the standard ice devils/arch devils (in the role as SC fighters). A script like phoenix pyre/soul vortex/etc works best. There are no limit to how many you can summon either.
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Design:
Build 1: Baphomet, dom 9 -F9S9
order: 3 - I like order, gold is always nice
Sloth: 3 - Well flaggies don't take much production
Heat: 3 - Would ideally like to avoid it, but we need the points.
Growth: 3 - I really like to have growth 3 since it offsets the damage done by blood hunting.
Misfortune: 2 - My usual setting for this scale.
Magic: 1 - Should allow for a rapid research

Comment:I would not recommend this build, but it deserves to be mentioned for a couple of reasons. It will allow you to build decent flagies early on that can dish out damage. It will also allow all conj summons later on. Also a pretender with S9 in late game is very nice to have. I would still not recommend it since it's alot of design points, and in my opinion flaggies are not that great.

Build 2: Awake cyclops, dom 10 -earth 4
Order: 3
Productivity: 3 - massing alot of crossbow men for a maximum expansion rate
Heat: 3
Growth: 0
Misfortune: 2
Drain: 2

Comment: Excellent early game, the cyclops should be able to expand on turn 1, if you send it into a forest province. The powerful early game should be turnable into a strong late game with heavy blood dependency. Also you should be able to start a blood stone economy and with your pretender setting up the forge can be a viable plan. You will have a harder time accessing high level astral spells however.
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Much more comming up.....soon

[archaeolept]

i think you dismiss the flagellants too easily... many good strats can be based on them. sure, they die like flies, but are cheap enough - their big weakness is massed archers.

As to Build 1 - why would you take the oracle, and not the flaming head? redo the numbers... flaming head should give you a couple scales - increase the dominion, since a bless strat w/ flags is all about spamming them.

nice start at a guide

one comment, perhaps it is a bug, but you can recruit the chartmaker at a castle w/out a lab...

[Evilhomer]

i think you dismiss the flagellants too easily... many good strats can be based on them. sure, they die like flies, but are cheap enough - their big weakness is massed archers.

I simply seem to have less losses if I invest in crossbowmen instead against most types of indies at least. The flaggies are nice when you are up against heavy cavalry I must say.

As to Build 1 - why would you take the oracle, and not the flaming head? redo the numbers... flaming head will give you a couple scales.

Forgot about the flaming head - guide updated.

[archaeolept]

the revised build 1 is worse... if you do go for a flagellant bless strat you need high dominion in order to produce masses of them... dominion 6 just sets you up for failure, as you will be losing tons of them. You don't need the production, as your primary unit is the flags.


f9 s9 baphomet. imprisoned, dom 10 ord 3 sloth 2 heat 1 growth 2 misf 2 drain 2

or go magic 1 and lower production/growth/temp

[Evilhomer]

Just a quick edit. Wasn't done with it yet . But you are of course right, dom 6 is way to low for flaggies.

[KissBlade]

Demon Jesters used to be awesome in Dom II. Why are they considered so crappy now? Assuming it's the changes to the VQ?

[thejeff]

Demon Jesters were trash in Dom2 as well. It's not so much that they're bad (for the cost), it's that they're weak, cheap units, but you can only summon them one at a time.

Generally better to leave those mages blood hunting or researching and summon more expensive, but better demons.

No idea what VQ changes would have to do with them.

[Humakty]

I think that if you are to use flagellants, you'd better go F/B, to death curse ennemies, which is usefull as they die massively.
I think it is Sombre's idea

[ano]

archaeolept said:
one comment, perhaps it is a bug, but you can recruit the chartmaker at a castle w/out a lab...

I don't know whether it is a bug, but ANY mage with random picks only (Tien Chi minister of magic, Bakemono shaman, Marignon chartmaker, Vaetti hag and any others that don't have predefined magic paths opened) can be built without a lab. It's a common approach to build a fortress, then such a mage who will build a lab himself next turn.
Whether it is a bug or not, I think we should ask developers

[Sombre]

Humakty said:
I think that if you are to use flagellants, you'd better go F/B, to death curse ennemies, which is usefull as they die massively.
I think it is Sombre's idea

Whoah there. That's a strategy I used once for Ulm Reborn and their penitent. Ulm Reborn gets penitent in greater numbers than Marig can ever hope to get flaggies. I've actually posted a few times before about how bad an idea I think it is to use flaggies with a tailor made bless. They just aren't very good sacreds - especially if you're taking blood bless to go with them - that death curse is nice in theory, but in reality it does pretty much nothing.