amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

since one of my favorite is ma man, i did a little experimenting, and i got stuck with the amphipteres.any ideas for how to use them? i tested them with lycantropos amulets - they got high hp thats why - versus ma tien'chi's PD10 and even 6 of them (costing 30 air and 18 nature) got beaten. Maybe if i could give them leadership but how? their poison spit - which wasnt used this time because of the amulet - seems very weak too.

i am also looking for ideas when to use ma man's longspearmen, light cavalry and axemen. It seems - tho i didnt test it - that the tower guards (or the other units) are almost always superior choices (when i got the resources). I'm curious of your opinions.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

CBM makes longspearmen map move 2, which might give them a niche. (Though CBM is kind of mean to Eriu. Their longspearmen have the exact stats but only map move 1) The long-spear can be kind of good during expansion since it allows them to repel ordinary spears. The axemen simply looks really inferior to the tower guards, or almost any unit really.

That the way in dominions, sometimes units are added for flavour and not for their usefulness :)

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

I am also curious if anyone found a use for amphiteres and kithairon lions. Both units got commander status in CBM, but 0 leadership and only misc slots.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

kithraironic lions according to my experiences are useful when wearing a lycanthropos amulet. they are somewhat stronger then cu sidhe/animals/lamias summoned from the same amount of gems. However cu sidhe are stealthy and can be blessed (my testing didnt use any blesses).

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

So many better ways to make flying raiders with 30 air and 18N gems.

Now that you have them, only one good thing for them. Put them with an army of your knights and hope they take spells that would kill some of your good units (knights)

The only other thing I could think of is if you had some S casters and give them flying boots to cast ethereal on your flying gem sinks.

Even without a good bless A warden with that many gems makes a far superior flying raider, heck, you could make 2 wardens.

Flying boots, Vine shield. with just a n4, e4 bless this makes a far superior raider who can take out pd 10.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

It's anything but efficent and probably for messing around only, but maybe 2 water bottles on a Amphitere could work, though Con 6 might be a reach early on. In cold provinces it could be quite fun, against certain cold nations if may make a passable raider I suppose.

It'll be the modern equivalent of a bio-bomber heh, just be sure to keep it out of combat (hold x5 stay behind troops) or just retreat if there are others of your magic commanders present. It could possibly work as anti-raider PD patrol against certain raiders or just a quick "drop and run" in a front line battle (where you have other magic commanders). Lifelong protection on it might work, though blood access is a problem, you'll probably need a blood indie prov early to bother with it.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

that ice cold version of two molotov cocktails are a nice idea.

lifelong protection also gives 5 ud leadership, so that begins to look much brighter now. i wonder what should/could be led by the amphiptere.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

Note that there is not much inherently good that the Amphipteres themselves bring to the table for the ideas above, except for having enough hitpoints to survive a stray missile or two and flying.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

Amphis count as fliers, large monsters and archers. Use that to shield your other troops.

Give each a ring-of-regen, Place them in front with: "Hold or Fire (closest)" x5, Attack Rear
Place a gazillion of Longbowmen behind them, and the amphis will draw all the attacks and Fire orders which are aimed at closest, archers, fliers or large monsters. With the ring of regen they should be able to negate the damage they recieve and at least make them take less afflictions.


But would I summon amphis? Not likely, unless I got some special site which reduces the summoning price :)

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

Does the amphiptere even have swamp survival?

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

I noticed you won your game. What strategy did you use? :)

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

I tried to use a bless strategy for wardens and cu shidhes, and for thugging with lord wardens. After a lot a testing i have found that an E9N4 bless makes wardens a little stronger than a W9N4 (or an N9) in terms of taking out enemies using only them (even if we take into account that E9 adds basicaly nothing to cu shidhes). And e9' reinvig also have great use to all those girls and women who are the mages of man. So finally a choose an E9N4 lord of the wild. I took him awake, which in retrospect was suboptimal to a sleeper because of the misfortune i was forced to take (PD is very weak, have serious problems stopping even villains), and i feel the little help he provided to expanding (with starting equipment) was not too significant (longbowmen rock). So he provided me a very useful bless for thugging and sacreds, the earth economy (an E2 is needed to make the hammers with boots and witches have a realistic chance for E1 only), many animals to use as shield for the extremely useful longbowmen, and after reaching evo6 he could cast earthquake and with an air empower rain of stones (im not sure if the difference between EQ and RoS worth 50 A gems tho).
I used a sneaky blitzkrieg tactic with wardens and then switched to longbowmen versus bandar log's tiger riders. I was in second place when the leader turned AI, then not long after that all the others gave up. I hope u find it useful!

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

I'm using a similar Lord of the Forest for Eriu right now. But sleeping and with A1. Though in retrospect I think I should have gone A2 instead so that I wouldn't have had to waste an air booster on him. I agree that it isn't worth empowering in air, especially since your Crones can cast rain of stones with earth boots. Though I never seem to have enough air gems anyway.

It sounds like the game never got to late game? Late game seems to be MA Mans weakness so I was wondering how you managed.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

it didnt got to endgame, and it was my last game without edm, so it might have been a problem.

How do u use the crones with bots for rain of stones? give them one more e gems and hope the AI will use it to add 1 to the level of the crone in E? the other thing: is theere any way to avoid it being a suicide mission for the crone? wouldnt only one RoS kill her for sure? would air shield or a shield or some armor save her?

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

I think rain of stone applies a 14 dam physical attack to the head (bladewind on every square, thus a magical projectile that can be parried)? Correct me if I'm wrong.

So a cheap 20 prot helmet should be pretty good insurance, a shield with good parry or air shield should be great too.

Usually I think you want to cast RoS (or multiples of) first turn to get in before or interrupt/kill battlefield wide protection/attack (WoTFate, gold/lead/fog warriors ...etc), assuming you are defending and going first (otherwise you are out of luck), just make sure your top unit ID caster (or at least before any RoS is cast) drop a fog or xxx warrior before you proceed to drop pebbles.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

Air shield gives 80% protection against missiles. Slap on a lucky ring, and 50% of the missiles that get through are avoided. Black Steel helmet gives prot 20 to head, which should be enough to stop the few raining stones getting through the avoidances :)

E1A1 Crones with earth boots and scripted with Summon Earthpower become E3A1 :)

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

i did some testing, at it seems, that air shield (the one that comes from a bless) wont save a unit from the ros at all. I gave my which a horned helmet and a big shield still she died horribly 2 out of 2 times, but it would use some more testing.

Re: amphiptere plus ma man's units
 

I agree that helmets don't seem help much. The high fatigue gained by casting rain of stones guaranties a critical hit. Maybe mass protection + a good helmet is enough?

RoS doesn't count as a magic attack so the best protection is mistform. If you can spare one turn, have the crone cast mistform and then rain of stones. Fog warriors is great but kind of hard to get for Man since it needs A4. Once you've got access to fog warriors it's no problem dropping several RoS the first turn of combat :D
If you have access to a crystal shield, give it to an A3 mage. Just make sure fog warriors goes of before RoS; I've just managed to kill 4 important mages by messing up the casting order.

Crones come with at least A2. Recruitable, teleporting rain of stones casters :heart: